Despite his litigation with his Infinity Ward studio co-founders, Activision Blizzard chief executive Bobby Kotick says that his company treats its studios the right way and preserves studio culture, while rival Electronic Arts suffocates its development teams.
Grooming and retaining key talent and studios is critical to the results of these giant companies and so its important to both EA and Activision Blizzard to be perceived as friendlier to developers — and to point out that others are unfriendly to developers.
Speaking in the latest issue of Edge, Kotick commented, “The core principle of how we run the company is the exact opposite of EA. EA will buy a developer and then it will become ‘EA Florida’, ‘EA Vancouver’, ‘EA New Jersey’, whatever. We always looked and said, ‘You know what? What we like about a developer is that they have a culture, they have an independent vision and that’s what makes them so successful.’ We don’t have an Activision anything – it’s Treyarch, Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer.
Electronic Arts fired back with its own sharp retort.
“Kotick’s relationship with studio talent is well-documented in litigation,” EA corporate communications vice president Jeff Brown told Industry Gamers in a statement. “His company is based on three game franchises – one is a fantastic persistent world (World of Warcraft) he had nothing to do with; one is in steep decline (Tony Hawk); and the third (Call of Duty) is in the process of being destroyed by Kotick’s own hubris.”
Brown refers to the various instances where Activision has had problems with retained studios, most famously for the utter gutting of Infinity Ward after studio heads Vince Zampella and Jason West were led out of their studio by security guards. Remaining employees eventually sued Activision for unpaid bonuses. (See Industry Gamers for more).
[Photo courtesy of Elisabeth Caren].