Bobby Kotick, when are you selling?

"

With respect to the franchises that don’t have the potential to be exploited every year across every platform, with clear sequel potential that can meet our objectives of, over time, becoming $100 million-plus franchises, that’s a strategy that has worked very well for us.

Record profits for activision this year.
THQ bankruptcy.
EA's stock at an all-time low.
Valve's doing fine.
CD Project/GOG appears to be doing fine.

Isn't this quote more than 4 years old?

"

Antilurker77 wrote:

Isn't this quote more than 4 years old?

So what?

Well, that's the point. Then and now.

Activision's 10-year plan has been to turn around dividends for its shareholders in self-destructive ways. Every strategy activision has involved itself in for the last 10 years has resulted in a popular series or title getting completely sabotaged. See what's going on with starcraft RIGHT NOW - they buy out massively successful titles and squeeze the breath out of them.

If you don't buy that, do some research into the fates of the various game studios that made guitar hero brilliantly successful. Instead of giving those guys all raises, hiring more developers, and developing the series, activision did the opposite: a whole list of studios gutted and consolidated into one, with barely enough talent left to produce content for a single new title. No innovation from this point forward, just new content, and a bare minimum at that.

Short sighted plans. Squeeze as many dollars out of your own stock as possible. He's probably been divesting for years (note, my thread's title is tongue-in-cheek: he's been selling for a long time).

This is a clear case where business execs purposefully deflated a company: ruined livelihoods of entire families, scattered lovingly assembled gaming communities. Execs can do this kind of thing knowing with 100% certainty that they'll see a 10-point hike in stock values for two weeks following the next quarterly report.

Yes, I'm accusing business execs in a USA corporation of being corrupt. It's not idiocy; that's just a facade.

Didn't Vivendi try to sell off their Activision-Blizzard shares earlier this year, but couldn't find a buyer? It was rumoured to be a way of stabilizing the parent company by reducing its liabilities, and/or that the higher-ups at Vivendi weren't satisfied with the direction ATVI had been taking.


Plus, it's not only Activision. I dimly remember EA completely shredding Westwood back in the day.

On the other hand: We're all here on GGG's site - a small indie developer. I think many of us know of and despise the destructive ways of major publishers. It's in a way similar to Hollywood: The bigger the budget, the less you can experiment, the less you can afford to fail. And that breeds repetition: New iterations of popular franchises until they're a dry husk of their former self.

And of course, the locusts know this and they've made their beds on greener pastures long before the crisis hits.

The only thing you really can do is what many of us are doing anyhow: Put our money where our mouth is. Don't get the shiny new Call of Dooty 16: Fightbattler 7: Revenge of the Disowned: Pay for your Ammunition Edition.

Instead spend your money on smaller indie companies. I think the movement towards responsible spending in VGs is growing. We have Kickstarter, we have ways of making smaller games work without a big publisher. Imo, some of the best games out there are indie, and it's only a matter of time until the "casual spender" gets his eyes on such titles.

By the way, I just got Amnesia: The Dark Descent. I just think I'll be to scared to actually play it.

I just looked up Amnesia: The Dark Descent...damn I think I'm gonna get that.

Totally going to go off topic on an off topic thread on an off topic board.

You should play it!

(THREAD INVOLVEMENT ACHIEVED!)