Game Lawyer Calls Bobby Kotick "Emperor Palpatine"
- Thread starter Greg Tito
- Start date
That he does, I really can't stand that man, and I refuse to buy any Activision or Blizzard games as long as they are still merged and he is running it.Frank_Sinatra_ said:
I'm with you on Guitar Hero Steel Panther. We'll put your talking rat on drums.Catkid906 said:
Bobby is something else, I loved his "I'm Luke Skywalker" talk. Someone should point out to Bobby that Pol Pot, Hitler, Ghengis Khan, David Koresh and Stalin all thought they were the good guys... most people disagree.
Kotick hates games because like Jack Thompson he scores a zero when ever he tries to play Pac man, Asteroid and Space Invaders. He is the whiny rich kid who says "If I cant do it then I will make sure no one else can either!"jackanderson said:
CONGRATULATIONS BOBBY KOTTICK, you have officially reached AL DAVIS status. and for those of you who don't know, Al Davis is the owner of the Raiders, and the reason why they suck right now, and the epitome of the corporate asshole who wants to take the fun out of everything so that they can fill their own fucking wallets.
Were I there, I wouldn't have bought that lawyer a drink; I'd have bought him the bar down the street and put his name over the door in neon lights.
Following that line of reasoning, I'll take it one step further... we are the clones. OH SNAP!!bismarck55 said:
That is the most awesome speech EVER.Greg Tito said:Game Lawyer Calls Bobby Kotick "Emperor Palpatine"
Game lawyer Tom Buscaglia compared Activision CEO Bobby Kotick to Darth Vader's boss in a rant at GDC 2010.
Game lawyer Tom Buscaglia, whose firm specializes in representing game developers, took Kotick to task for statements he made at the DICE Conference last month [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/98461-Bobby-Kotick-Doesnt-Mean-to-Come-Off-as-a-Dick] and during an Activision shareholders meeting earlier in the year. Buscaglia made the strong statements at the "Fired and Fired Up!" rant at GDC 2010 in response to the recent "screw-job" at Infinity Ward.
"At the shareholders meeting earlier in the year," said Buscaglia. "Bobby Kotick said to his shareholders in public, and I know a lot of people heard this, 'We're going to take the fun out of making games. These people don't take this shit seriously. We're going to make sure that they're serious about making games.'
"Ok. If there's no fun in making games, then the games suck, but I don't think he gets that," he said.
After that, Buscaglia said that Kotick began orchestrating what would be known as the scandal with Infinity Ward CEO Vince Zampella and CTO Jason West [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/98761-Rumor-Security-Locks-Down-Infinity-Ward-Ousts-Studio-Head-UPDATE]. "They instituted the deal to screw West and Zampella out of the bonuses for their team and all that other shit. If you read the lawsuit, it's just amazing. Then [Kotick] goes to DICE and starts off his speech by saying, 'You know, I used to think that I was Luke Skywalker but now I find myself on the Death Star.'
"Bobby, you're not on the fucking Death Star. You're Palpatine," Buscaglia said to laughs from the crowd. "You didn't get there by accident, you got there by the decisions you made."
Buscaglia then took umbrage with Kotick's attempt to curry favor with game designers in his DICE speech by saying that he respected their talent, all while he was performing the "screw-job at Infinity Ward." Buscaglia summed up his two messages to Bobby Kotick with his parting words:
Pull your head out of your ass, cowboy up, you are the fucking evil Emperor. Just be who you are and stop trying to pretend like you're one of us. Number 1.
And number 2, all you have is money. You sell games. We got the fucking games, and you got shit without us. So pony up and back your talent, and treat them right. If you won't do it, somebody else will, and then they're going to replace you and your big company.
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Sad to say it but it's like a fight between two Sith masters over who gets to oppress us poor peasants during one of their empirical reigns.
To explain this quick simply, the basic point about game developers is correct from things that I've read over a period of years explaining how the industry works. They generally speaking do not behave professionally, and they tend to waste massive amounts of money.
It is however also correct that if the producers/money bags get too draconian with them, they risk shooting themselves in the foot, especially since it is a valid point that developers can always try and find patronage elsewhere at least so far.
To put things bluntly us gamers pretty much get pwned anyway it goes. The reason being that with developers who think their job is supposed to be "fun" you wind up with a lot of goofing off out of the development budget, people not working, and living off of that money. With a huge budget there is a tendency to try and milk what is there. This is one of the reasons why a project can go massively over time and see very little finished, or not have half the features promised when released. Simply put the devs were all goofing off, and didn't do any of the work that was promised until surprisingly close to release at which point there was a "Supercrunch" to get it done.
To be honest, this seemed a lot like a boss telling his employees "fun time is over, we're going to be focusing on the work". Basically a producer who comes up with the money saying he's not going to be fronting money unless his people spend far less time goofing off and behave professionally and focus on the projects while they are getting paid.
Look at projects like "Duke Nuke'em Forever" and various "Vapourware" over the years that has been well financed and then disappeared into a vortex of development. That's the worst case scenario, and truthfully it seems to me that if anything developers are demanding larger salaries and even more perks than ever before, seeming to feel like they should be nerd-rock stars based on the example of a few.
This is of course not to say that the Producers are great either, because the flip side of the above is of course to create what amounts to a paid police state with horrible morale, and constant pushing to get something done to the point that instead of seeing stuff not implemented because nobody was working on it seriously, you see the same problem because the producers were pushing so hard to get it out the door and see a return on their money that things were just not finished, tested properly, or they simply did not want to wait for design work to be completed.
The bottom line is that both extremes are bad, and in the above back and forth I think your ultimatly seeing extreme 'tudes in both directions. Neither side is entirely right, or wrong. What's bets for games, and gamers, is something pretty much in the middle, but I feel that you rarely see such things.
As fanboys we tend to want to side with our favorite creators/developers, after all they are the people who make the games, however by the same token we have to consider the position of the people coming up with that money, and understand that they are not nessicarly wrong or being unfair when they expect developers to be able to create the games they say, within an agreed on time frame.
One thing you will find ironic is when you here from developers and such "well we're a big fan of these other developers, while we were working on this project we all spent a lot of time playing this other game by them and had this idea...". Or reading between the lines "we got paid out of that multi-million dollar production budget to sit around and play video games for months". Not to mention other expenses I've read about like development offices ordering out for food every day, for every meal. That kind of thing adds up, and is the kind of expense that doubtlessly annoys producers who expect people to buy their own food given the money they are being paid for the job, and use the money on the bloody games they are supposed to be making.
I probably am not articulating this right, but the basic point is that neither point of view is 100% correct. Read enough stuff about "how the industry works" in articles tossed around here and there (Game Informer, The Escapist, etc.. have all had them, even if they do contridict each other at times), it's not black and white from either perspective.
At any rate, I guess we can always hope they duel each other with lightsabers and simultaneously decapitate each other. Then we can hope the next Sith Masters are more benevolent and beat us less... because honestly, this issue aside, the game industry really doesn't care much about us gamers other than how badly we can be exploited nowadays. We're just bipedal money bags to them in the final equasion.
To explain this quick simply, the basic point about game developers is correct from things that I've read over a period of years explaining how the industry works. They generally speaking do not behave professionally, and they tend to waste massive amounts of money.
It is however also correct that if the producers/money bags get too draconian with them, they risk shooting themselves in the foot, especially since it is a valid point that developers can always try and find patronage elsewhere at least so far.
To put things bluntly us gamers pretty much get pwned anyway it goes. The reason being that with developers who think their job is supposed to be "fun" you wind up with a lot of goofing off out of the development budget, people not working, and living off of that money. With a huge budget there is a tendency to try and milk what is there. This is one of the reasons why a project can go massively over time and see very little finished, or not have half the features promised when released. Simply put the devs were all goofing off, and didn't do any of the work that was promised until surprisingly close to release at which point there was a "Supercrunch" to get it done.
To be honest, this seemed a lot like a boss telling his employees "fun time is over, we're going to be focusing on the work". Basically a producer who comes up with the money saying he's not going to be fronting money unless his people spend far less time goofing off and behave professionally and focus on the projects while they are getting paid.
Look at projects like "Duke Nuke'em Forever" and various "Vapourware" over the years that has been well financed and then disappeared into a vortex of development. That's the worst case scenario, and truthfully it seems to me that if anything developers are demanding larger salaries and even more perks than ever before, seeming to feel like they should be nerd-rock stars based on the example of a few.
This is of course not to say that the Producers are great either, because the flip side of the above is of course to create what amounts to a paid police state with horrible morale, and constant pushing to get something done to the point that instead of seeing stuff not implemented because nobody was working on it seriously, you see the same problem because the producers were pushing so hard to get it out the door and see a return on their money that things were just not finished, tested properly, or they simply did not want to wait for design work to be completed.
The bottom line is that both extremes are bad, and in the above back and forth I think your ultimatly seeing extreme 'tudes in both directions. Neither side is entirely right, or wrong. What's bets for games, and gamers, is something pretty much in the middle, but I feel that you rarely see such things.
As fanboys we tend to want to side with our favorite creators/developers, after all they are the people who make the games, however by the same token we have to consider the position of the people coming up with that money, and understand that they are not nessicarly wrong or being unfair when they expect developers to be able to create the games they say, within an agreed on time frame.
One thing you will find ironic is when you here from developers and such "well we're a big fan of these other developers, while we were working on this project we all spent a lot of time playing this other game by them and had this idea...". Or reading between the lines "we got paid out of that multi-million dollar production budget to sit around and play video games for months". Not to mention other expenses I've read about like development offices ordering out for food every day, for every meal. That kind of thing adds up, and is the kind of expense that doubtlessly annoys producers who expect people to buy their own food given the money they are being paid for the job, and use the money on the bloody games they are supposed to be making.
I probably am not articulating this right, but the basic point is that neither point of view is 100% correct. Read enough stuff about "how the industry works" in articles tossed around here and there (Game Informer, The Escapist, etc.. have all had them, even if they do contridict each other at times), it's not black and white from either perspective.
At any rate, I guess we can always hope they duel each other with lightsabers and simultaneously decapitate each other. Then we can hope the next Sith Masters are more benevolent and beat us less... because honestly, this issue aside, the game industry really doesn't care much about us gamers other than how badly we can be exploited nowadays. We're just bipedal money bags to them in the final equasion.
Now, we just have to issue Order 65 before Kotick gives Order 66...
This guy is one of my favorite people right now. Awesome. Kotick is to gaming what Stalin was to the USSR- not their leader, their tyrant. All he wants to do is make money. He doesn't care about "the consumer." Can we stop buying Activision published games? Can we stop playing WORLD OF FUCKING WARCRAFT?!?!?
