Activision CEO: We Need to Fix Our Hardcore Reputation

[mjc0961]

So here's a free tip, Eric: Teach Bobby Kotick that gamers don't hear the same meaning behind "exploit" as investors do. Or rather, how about you just teach him to think about who's listening before he says things? That might help a little bit.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

"We Need to Fix Our Hardcore Asshole Reputation"

Fixed that. Acitivsion's problem isn't it's target audience, it's the way it presents itself as a company. Kotick isn't a well liked public figure. In fact, quite the opposite, and match that with the Infinity Ward bullshit and the DLC pricing for MW2 and presto, you've got your universally hated company.

When he said he needs to fix their "Hardcore Reputation", he was referring to the company's "reputation among hardcore gamers". AKA: People like you and me and who read about the latest news in the industry and thus have a loathing for Activision because of how it runs its business. He even more-or-less states that the casual market is likely less of a problem to appeal to, and he's right. Most gamers are not you or I, and they wouldn't know why we hate Activision if they were to over-hear us talking about it.

So he was right in the first place. They need to fix their hardcore (gamer) reputation.

 

[Silver Patriot]

I'm wondering how long it will take before this guy's efforts at PR get royally sabotaged by another one of Kotick's "brilliant ideas" that he reveals to the public.

Taking all bets!

I have 12-3 hours BEFORE the first commercial goes live.

 

[Mr.Kitetsu]

is it just me or is it that everyone in the game industry is either stupid or slow?

 

[Mr. Spazza]

I get confused when people speak of the "hardcore gaming audience". What exactly qualifies someone as a "hardcore gamer": a collection of varied games and knowledge of gaming, or asshole elitists; typically the kind talking about how *insert BioWare game here* is the best game ever and how *insert console game here* is the worst piece of trash that has ever existed, EVER?

Because, the way I see it. If you fit into the first category, you dont have a problem selling the games. Guitar Hero and Call of Duty are the only things you need to plaster on the box, and it sells. Your problem is with quality control: you rush your games, and dont bother to listen to the community. And when you DO listen to the community, you listen to the prattling 12 year olds on the forum, that dont represent the core gaming audience.

If your applying for the second position, then stop. The type of "hardcore" gamer you're thinking of is a snooty crowd; that will claim to hate your game even if they play it constantly, or never at all. Trying to appeal to the "hardcore" gamer requires you to put thought and effort into your game, characters, and mechanics, to a degree where you alienate most others who would normally play the game. TF2 and Halo 3 will appeal to a different crowd of people. Stick to what you're good at. You're in the business to make money. You're making money. Work on quality control, and maybe THEN I'll start buying Guitar Hero again.

I couldn't agree more.

It seems like a "hardcore gamer" is someone who is all butt-hurt because more people are involved in their hobby. Because people enjoying the same stuff as you is one of the most absolutely terrible things that can happen to you. God forbid other people like the same things as you.

Quality control is a big problem too.
$60 for a less than mediocre, five hour campaign in MW2, how dare you!?

 

[Banana Phone Man]

He can start by putting a bullet in Bobby Kotick...

Make sure it is a pure silver bullet, from the silver of a cross that has been melted down from a holy church. It has then been dipped in the fountain of holy water, touched by the tears of 100 virgins, kissed by the holiest figure from every country, and etched (not sure that's spelt right at all) into the shape of a steak and fired from a cross bow.

Got to take every measure we can. Of corse if that don't work there is always fire.

 

[John Funk]

Good step in favor of the supposed 'hardcore' community would be fixing Battle.Net 2.0 for SC2. Give back LAN, give chats, give more map making freedom, get rid of region lock, fix custom games browsing and password protection.

Then again, they probably just will stick those politics to shooters *cries*

You know that we are getting chats and cross-region play after launch, right?

The region locking makes sense when you think about it - what they're doing with the special pricing models for places like Russia/South America, etc. It's already segmented, and it wouldn't surprise me if it was harder to implement normal cross-region play right off the bat with it. But they've said they'll be adding it for sure.

"Group chats" or whatever the hell they called it where you probably need to have someone else on your friends list already isn't really "chat chat" though, and it still remains open as to when that feature is supposed to come or if it'll cost something...

Also, yeah it makes total sense to remove a key feature from their games that was a prominent free and beloved one in almost all of their previous titles (e.g. StarCraft, WarCraft 2/3, Diablo 1/2). It's literally OOOOOZING sense xD

It makes sense if you are the publisher and want to "tap different clientele" with different pricing models, advertisements and features, but it shouldn't ever make "sense" to anyone as a player/gamer...



As far as Activision goes, I can't wait for all the people "Thanking" and "Wooing" for Activision cause of a few funny gimmicks while they are the same old bastards overall...

On the other hand, in his previous endeavor he just had to make a multi-million dollar company seem "more human", his job right now could probably be kind of described as hanging balloons up in hell and painting the walls in different colors to make it look more nice. Not gonna help much when there's a pile of wailing souls burning and rotting in the corner xD

As for me it's simple, if it has Activision/Blizzard anywhere on the cover, I ain't buying it...

They mentioned private channels too, last I checked.

And it makes *technical* sense, I meant - there is a reasonable technical hurdle to overcome, and their resources are better allocated on making sure the damn thing works at launch. That's the only sort of sense.

 

[Eldarion]

Yep thats right Eric your now incharge of putting out a 20 story building fire with a glass of water. Congrats!

My thoughts exactly. The only way for Activision to look good again in the eyes of many gamers would be if they killed Booby Kotick and but his head on a pike outside the office.

 

[John Funk]

They mentioned private channels too, last I checked.

And it makes *technical* sense, I meant - there is a reasonable technical hurdle to overcome, and their resources are better allocated on making sure the damn thing works at launch. That's the only sort of sense.

It makes no technical sense whatsoever, it only makes business-sense

The only thing they'd have to do to make it "technically viable" is add a new GUI-element at the top-right with a drop-down menu saying "Europe, Asia, North/South America, Russia" etc., that's one-man-work of an hour or two (and there aren't any cross-realm issues really, cause people have been playing all over the world during Beta)

Upon which the only thing that changes in the Netcode is that your client just connects to another Realm/points to another Master-server instead of the one you were previously on.

In what way does it make business sense? They've said they're going to be patching it in post-launch. They have nothing to gain by delaying the addition of a popular feature that people want, and only things to lose.

Either they're just being lazy, or it's more of a problem than it looks on the surface thanks to the way Bnet is segmented. Like, if you get the cheap pay-to-play Russian version, you can only play on the Russian servers, but if you get the full-price version you play on the normal Euro servers. It's probably simple to go "If account is subscription, access server cluster A, if it's not access server cluster B," but once they implement it, how do you handle people with non-Russian accounts who want to play on the formerly secluded Russian servers, etc?

It doesn't make logical sense to hold off on implementing it otherwise.

 

[Motiv_]

Here's an easy 5 step guide to repairing Activision's reputation.

1. Get Fuhrer Kotick impeached.
2. Undo all of his terrible mistakes such as franchise milking and DLC overpricing.
3. Get an ice cold beer and enjoy being carried around on the shoulders of your fanatical fans.
4. ???????
5. Success.

 

[duchaked]

He can start by putting a bullet in Bobby Kotick...

I was gonna say that he make Kotick speak "through" him (i.e. censor/reword/ignore)...but ya that works too

 

[SupabadMan]

Right now, I'm at level 'Fuck Activision'. If he can fix that, by all means go ahead.

And he says that he thinks that gaming industry is too serious? Blame Kotick. If he wants to make it better and loosened up a bit more, then he and Kotick are not going to get along.

 

[Knight Templar]

I would not want to be hired to market Activision to "hardcore gamers".

 

[Cody211282]

The only way most gamers will start respecting them again is if they fire Bobby Kotick. He IS the reason your company has a bad reputation, and hell anything else you do besides that is just PR damage control.

 

[Jake Martinez]

"We Need to Fix Our Hardcore Asshole Reputation"

Fixed that. Acitivsion's problem isn't it's target audience, it's the way it presents itself as a company. Kotick isn't a well liked public figure. In fact, quite the opposite, and match that with the Infinity Ward bullshit and the DLC pricing for MW2 and presto, you've got your universally hated company.

And don't forget the bullshit they pulled with Brutal Legend. No amount of public PR is going to fix Activision. They need to change the way they treat their customers and their developers and I highly doubt that's going to happen.

I completely agree. I wish to God that developers would stop feeding the beast that is the mega game publishers. I understand the pressures of resourcing and financial constraints (I'm an executive at a commercial software developer), but these mammoth publishing houses cannot exist without a slash and burn cycle of consumption - ergo they consume good creative development houses and then spurt out "product".

For a long time now I have been hoping that the advent of digital distribution would be the sling shot that would slay these Goliath's, but now I am dubious as to if this will ever happen because despite the obvious financial success of that business model, it seems that the developers themselves are always hungry for more lucre to fund bigger and better projects.

Frankly I perceive that the industry itself may be heading into a dark age similar to the cartridge glut (aka shovelware) phenomena of the 80's and 90's. The only consolation I have is that hopefully the next gaming Renaissance will capitalize on the awesome developer tools, technology and distribution channels that are being created today - but this time by people with artistic vision and integrity.

 

[Dexiro]

As soon as they get rid of Kotick and start making some decent games.