Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Calhoun]

Why would you quit a job that is making you tons of dough?

That's bullshit and you know it. You don't know how rich he is. And even if he has tons money, there is no reason to STOP making money.

You can BLAME him all you want, but he is doing his job, and the gaming community as a whole is proving that he is doing it well.

[Puck]

Why would you quit a job that is making you tons of dough?

Because at some point it's bound to make you sick if you haven't become completely numb by then... if 14 mil on the bank (just the monehs from last year, btw) don't make you satisfied when it comes to material goods, chances are, there is something wrong.

Read that article, read his quotes. That guy isn't healthy anymore.

[chewie]

And he's not interested enough in games to change anything. He probably never played a game and doesn't see the difference between a good and a bad game. And he doesn't care, if there's no good game on the market, because he will get his millions anyway.

[Huesoo]

Have you guys seen him now? He's fat as a whale. Maybe he wants to connect with Gabe.

[dogstile]

when does his size have anything to do with it?

Now you guys are just being dicks.

[Lumbajak]

If we stopped letting drunk fratboys buy games and actually enforced the ESRB age restrictions, chances are games like they put out would stop making near as much profit.

[Muz]

Why would you quit a job that is making you tons of dough?

That's bullshit and you know it. You don't know how rich he is. And even if he has tons money, there is no reason to STOP making money.

That's also a problem with the system.. it encourages you to spend money to make money. Investments are often just "put money here, more money comes out". To some people, it's just like buying a lottery ticket and winning after a year; they don't even see the process or care. A few of the smarter/more skilled investors might be worried, but really, if it works, and people are giving them buckets of cash, who can criticize them?

The only thing you can do about it is to not buy it. If it really is crap, that shouldn't even be a problem. Sometimes I think the business world works because the customers are more stupid than the people who sell them stuff. I've seen restaurants selling stale food stay in business because everyone is used to eating there and won't go to another restaurant.

[SethCreiyd]

Threads like this make me happy to be stuck in time.

*plays Mechwarrior 2 in blissful ignorance*

[Lumbajak]

Travel back in time, buy Activision shares.

Become millionaire in present, donate one million to Toady.

[fenrif]

It's very easy to turn around and blame gamers for buying the products that put this guy where he is. But the fact of the matter is most people buying games aren't informed about this sort of thing, and aren't aware there are alternatives. They just go buy a 360 or ps3, and every now and again goto the local game shop to see what's out. Sure they could be more informed, but even then, where would they get information from? Games magazines and websites often have paid-for reviews. Even the more reputable ones are forced to stick to review embargos so the truth about a terrible game doesn't come out untill a week after release.

It also doesn't help that most gaming journalists report on things like bobby kotick saying he wants to take the fun out of gaming and people protesting diablo 2s colour palette in the exact same way. When issues like this, which are relativly important to anyone interested in the hobby are compared with any old random internet petition it becomes difficult to pick out what's worth worrying about.

Music, movies and TV have proven that it's possible to make a profit on something terrible if you throw enough money into the marketing. Most people don't have the time or energy to research every single decision they make, so if they want to see be entertained they goto the cinema and see what' showing. They turn on the radio and listen to whats on. I get the impression that the vast majority of gamers treat their hobby the same way. But you can't blame them for that. They're little kids, they're people with families of their own, they're busy, strapped for time and cash and energy, they only have a couple of free hours per day. They can either get a game and play it, or research which of the handfull of publishers has done the most riduculous anti-gamer thing this week.

I've got much more blame to throw at Kotick than people like that.

[Deon]

The guy can put on his biggest troll face and outright tell his customers that his job is to make people pay too much money for worthless milked-to-death garbage. I like that. I wish more businessmen would tell the world what they really think of their clientele. Would make the world a lot more interesting.

This. There're THOUSANDS of people which do that, and Kotick is one of a few which speak truth (probably to advertise himself and to reach some goal, he's a businessman after all).

It doesn't make him evil, it makes him popular.

[Calhoun]

I've got much more blame to throw at Kotick than people like that.

I have a bigger problem with people who don't care about what they are doing than Kotick. If you don't care enough about your hobby to be informed of it, then it probably isn't for you. If you have no passion for your hobby, why are you engaged in it at all? When I go to see a movie, I'm not just going to pick from the list when I get there, I'm only going to go if there is something that I want to watch playing. I won't go scouring all the review sites to see if that cool trailer for whatever movie is as good as the actual movie, but I'm not going to waste my money on a film I don't care about and don't want to see. I don't watch the cooking channel because I can't be bothered to flip the channel to something that appeals to me. I don't listen to WKIQ 99.1 because the music on that station is not my cup of tea, so I listen to a channel that plays songs I like.

Games aren't even the same as movies and TV or radio. They are much longer and more involved experiences. They are very, very different from TV and Radio. But even a comparison between movies fails to suffice. Movies are much cheaper and much shorter experiences. Advertisement for movies is also much more prevalent, and movies come and go from theaters in a matter of weeks, while games can be on store shelves for years.

The only time I've bought a game on impulse was on Steam (GET IT?), it was $2.50, looked unique, so I thought I'd take a chance. It wasn't great, but I didn't pay very much. I would never, purchase a 60 dollar game without knowing what I was getting into. I don't have that kind of cash. Maybe most other people do, but I certainly don't.

Even worse than Kotick in my mind, however, are those in the Boycott groups who buy the games they are boycotting. I will not buy Modern Warfare 2 because it lacks dedicated servers. I might would years later, when it was dirt cheap, but at that time they will probably have long since shut down the service, so I can safely say I will never buy it. I don't go out of my way to show people that, but that's how I feel and that is the decision I came to. However, the people who did say that, as loudly as possible, and yet BOUGHT the game, even PRE-ORDERED the game. Those people I can't even respect, not one bit.

Kotick is an asshole who does his job well. He has the balls to say exactly what assholery he is engaged in and do it. That I can respect, even if I don't LIKE the man.

[Grakelin]

Am I the only one who hates Activision and sticks by it? It's been years since I bought anything of theirs.

Aye. No StarCraft II for me.

I also have not really bought anything of Activision's, not because of the whole "Evil corporation" thing, but because none of the games generally interest me.

Other than a few blizzard games, such as Warcraft 3.
Which, as I went back to it recently, I found that it was basically impossible to play any of the custom game types, such as DoTA.
Was that a side effect of the whole Activision-blizzard merger, or was it unrelated?

Are you joining custom games hosted by bots? Downloading from the bots sometimes breaks people's internet connections, so you need to download lots of the stuff before you go in.

Otherwise, it's probably clientside.

[Zironic]

1. Stop making threads OP.

Mildly agree.

2. OH GAWD SOMEONE IS DOING THEIR JOB! OH NO A BUSINESS MAKING MONEY? OH GAWD EVIL EVIL! CAPITALISM IS GUD BUT FUCK ANY COMPANY THAT DOES WELL AND MAKES MONEY! OH GAWD NO!

Seriously, get real.

His exact methods are, quite openly stated (by himself, no less), "reduce quality, raise prices, squash innovation, and torment employees". He's not just the quintessential soulless businessman; he's the living embodiment of malevolent, short sighted greed.

How can I purchase a share of this enterprise?

Seriously, He is complete based around profit, over anything else. If selling high quality games garnered him a 100 million, he'd be out selling it. But, the new game industry is all about regular people. People who just don't care.

[Muz]

I don't see anything wrong with selling them to people who don't care. Once those people start caring and look for a quality game, you'll see them here with Bay12 and Paradox.

Hollywood is also rather soulless, but they make epic movies with epic budgets and rake in millions. So many millions that they don't even bother with screwing legally paying customers with anti-piracy methods. Which is why I blame the system.