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DICE 2010: Kotick Talks Passion For Industry, Debuts Indie Contest
by Simon Carless [PC, Console/PC]
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February 18, 2010
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Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick has developed something of a reputation as the industry's newest big, bad executive -- but he says he's always felt like more of a rebel on board the Millennium Falcon.
And yet, "suddenly I wake up and I'm on board the Death Star," he joked. In fact, as part of Kotick's whimsical, personal keynote at this year's DICE Summit, he mounted a defense of his alleged Machiavellian ways -- he says that keeping passion in game development is something that's important to him. He also announced a $500,000 independent video game competition for small indie developers working with new platforms.
Kotick joined Mediagenic 20 years ago, after paying over $400,000 for 25% of a bankrupt company that wasn't even yet called Activision. He did this, he says, because he loved the earlier Activision games, from KaBoom! through the Infocom titles, and liked the heritage of the company's founding -- that "developers get to make the games they want to make."
Kotick is himself a former developer, he reminds -- he created Apple II games for companies like EA starting in 1983, and "the idea that we could restore Activision" was really appealing to him.
He said pointedly of taking over Activision in 1990: "These were properties that I really had a great affection for… [and there was a] great amount of opportunity, both financially and creatively."
The exec also revealed that in 1987, he tried to buy Commodore in association with a hedge fund partner. He believed that taking the Amiga 500 and removing the keyboard and mouse would create a dedicated video game console that "would have eclipsed anything being sold at the time" -- even Nintendo's NES. Although it didn't work out, it made Kotick passionate about building a video game company.
The Activision boss also talked about his love of the early game industry from the perspective of a player. That love, he said, underpinned his two-decade career at Activision. Now, as the company has grown, he "can't really get too involved" in individual games, he says, because he needs he game creators to have ultimate control.
But, on the other hand: "When you're 50,000 feet above what's going on... you get insulated from that creative passion," he adds. In fact, Kotick says not being engaged with the creators on that level has cost him and the shareholders lots of opportunities.
For example, Kotick recalls the sale of Maxis; although Sim City 2000 was the big company focus, Will Wright was quietly at work on Jefferson, which eventually became The Sims. The Activision execs never went to look at it, and ultimately passed on the deal.
Kotick's also made another significant miss: choosing the wrong acquisition among the Guitar Hero co-creators. "We knew about Harmonix... [who had] lots of good ideas, but nothing that was really commercially viable," he said. Activision instead acquired RedOctane in 2006.
According to Kotick, Activision believed if they gave the franchise's development to Neversoft, great games would result. But he said that if they had also gone to Boston to talk to Harmonix, things might have turned out differently, and "it would probably be a profitable opportunity for both of us."
It's vital for Activision to be "respectful of the independent cultures" of individual developers within a company, he adds. Creating a culture that "fosters independent thought" will result in great games games -- although he agrees that it's not always possible when balanced with the needs of a public company.
"You can't always do what you'd like to," he says -- but there is a middle ground.
In two deals, ex-Activision execs, perhaps fighting against the creative/financial balance, formed new companies -- JAMDAT and Pandemic -- both of which were sold to Electronic Arts for large amounts of money. The exec joked, to much mirth in the DICE audience: "We're a great mother ship... if you want to sell out and move on, there are definitely other companies to talk to."
Aware of recent criticism of some of his remarks to investors -- remarks about taking the fun out of making video games and working in an environment of skepticism, pessimism and fear, to name a few -- Kotick says that too much brashness means "you can come across as being like a dick."
He particularly addressed his 'taking the fun out of video games' comment: "I wanted to somehow come across in a humorous way that... it wasn't some Wild West lack of process exercise." Nonetheless, he says, he regrets how it was misconstrued.
For investors, Kotick thinks that a history of high-profile industry failures, from Atari's first '80s fall through more recent companies like Spectrum Holobyte and GT Interactive, have soured some institutional investors on the whole market.
So, to help both re-imagine that early passion and potentially fund smaller creators, Activision is announcing a $500,000 independent video game competition for small developers "using new platforms and technologies", hoping to create or honor "super-compelling and engaging" titles.
[UPDATE: Activision has released preliminary guidelines (PDF link) for the game competition, noting that more concrete information will be issued in March.
Entrants will be required to submit a two-page game proposal, including defining features, along with a short video depicting development materials like concept art, animatics, previsualization, or the game itself.
Potentially conflicting with Kotick's statement, the official release values the grand prize at $100,000. It is possible the $100,000 figure refers to the grand prize amount, while the $500,000 figure refers to the total value of all the competition's prizes.]
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http://www.activision.com/ROOT/media/sweepstakes/indie_game/Indie%20Game%20Compe
tition%20FINAL%20-%20WEB.pdf
In a hit-driven industry, a blockbuster game needs to become the most wildly-selling mega-hit of the century, or it is considered a huge failure. But if the indie/casual genre is given more credence by the big publishers, I see it as a way to better the industry, where a game with even mild to moderate sales becomes a fiscal success.
Just my opinion.
to the "Death Star", as the head honcho is calling his sweatshop nowadays.
I agree, too much resources and money are going into games now and days and studios are getting shut down if it don't sell. The big publishers are all shifting focus to casual gaming because more material is going through the web. Smaller dev, on a focus more on gameplay, less on fancy visuals. (Nintendo's wii has been on that track) This sounds really interesting and could spark something good, gonna take a look at the rules in a sec..
@phil
Put more thought into your statements.
I don't think that's really the case; it doesn't sound like they're asking for completed games, it sounds like they're asking for concepts. I'm not sure what the end goal is there, but it wouldn't make sense to look for team acquisitions on that basis.
I guess that does make sense. I wonder what their end goal is then. Is Activision really trying to further the Indy market of games for the sake of just being benefactors? Some how I really doubt it, though I do hope it is true. It would be a good thing for companies like Activison to foster the Indy scene. We shall see I suppose.
- - -
So I wonder. Is this $100,000, or is this another one of those "nudge nudge wink wink" publishing/distribution deals we've been seeing? If this is a pseudo grant for "small indie developers working with new platforms", then okay, you have my attention. I.e. drop a sponsorship nod in the credits similar to some of the Canadian grant programs (but minus the whole paying back part). Otherwise get in line, 'cause it's nothing new.
I'll try to reserve judgment until the official rules are available. The fine print could make a big difference.
For years I've been talking to people about how important game visionaries and just the game concepts are important to the evolution of gaming. But everyone keeps saying it's about the programming, that every Tom, Dick and Harry has a concept.
That might be true to a point but it also makes it where some very genius yet very simple and fun game conceptions are simply overlooked.
The tools and redtape are limiting the imagination.
Is "fear" and "depression" good for your recruitment, Mr Kotick?
What about a little contest to prove you love indies, and statements that say you were a dev once, too?
Anyway, the contest could be interesting.
It's also true that a lot of game concepts that sound good on paper turn out to actually not be very interesting once they're finished. This is why prototyping is so important.
With games there's also the fact that there are technical restrictions in place. People who want to design games without some skill in programming (or at least a good idea about how programming works) can easily underestimate the complexity of actually making their ideas come to fruition or just how much work they're asking of others. There is no such thing as a game with an unlimited budget or time (unless you work for Blizzard!) so it's important to understand what kind of work is going to be required to make things like game mechanics and level designs come to life.
Actually a NDA is quite common for contests run by for profit corporations. When Bioware ran their Writing and level design contests you had to sign a NDA as part of the application.
The difference between that NDA and standard employment NDAs is that the bulk of it was understanding that Bioware was not going to steal your ideas. So this is probably similar.
There are many people who have ideas but can't program, and those who are most passionate and serious about it go off and get teams of people together and start making things happen. There's always something someone can do to contribute to a project in a meaningful way, without being the one doing the code.
I led a team to create a closed captioning mod for Doom3. I had no programming skills, just and idea of how the mod should work so that deaf and hard of hearing people could play the game without frequent frustration. My lack of programing skills didn't mean I was doing nothing and barking orders. I was writing design docs, writing captioning files, doing UI mock-ups, recruiting translators for other languages and most of all, playtesting the mod and giving feedback to the programmers for improvements. I was after all the target audience for the mod.
There's frequent discussion about how big publishers are driving away creativity and innovation and yet the same people who cry about that will repeat the falsehood that to make new games you need to have the idea AND program. But if we really want to see creativity and innovation, we should be open to the idea that anyone can make a game with a great idea, even without any programming skills, because that way we'll attract new talent outside of the industry and see fresh new games.
@ Alexander... I am always trying to find a way. Thing is, I know games can be made differently, I just can't afford the tools. If someone, anyone gave me the tools I asked for to build a game,... and i know they exist... the market will be flooded with innovative titles. But I can't find the right people to listen.
What tools do you think you need? Game Maker is free. BlitzMax is free. AS3 development is free. XNA and VisualStudio are free. Unity is free. There are all kinds of free audio, graphics, and modelling programs.
What redtape is stopping you? If you make it for PC/Mac/Linux/Web there's nobody controlling what you can release like there is for consoles!
Nothing is stopping you! If noone else wants to program it for you, you can learn to program! Or you can use Klik-n-Play, Construct, or something else that doesn't require programming knowledge!
If you want to make a game, you should!
I used to have ideas, so my response was to go off and learn how to do everything so that I could make games. Like anything, it just took time. Modding is as good a place as any to start learning how to do things, because you already have an entire game there for you! You just need to start taking what you're given and work on turning it into something else. If you're wondering whether modding is ever feasible for demonstrating new concepts and ideas, my answer would be of course, that's what I'm doing. I'm working with Unreal, and all of my projects with it have been entirely against what Unreal was actually for. I keep using Unreal because it's tools are amazing and let me do what I need to do without getting hindered.
If all you're seeing is red tape, you're not trying hard enough. The biggest blocker to getting your ideas out there is not having the motivation to learn something new. World class programmers weren't born with that ability. They had to learn it, and may have spent their lives doing so. Same as artists, or any other skill really. You need to give it the time required to learn how to do it properly, but you're never going to get those abilities if you don't seriously try.
The dime a dozen comment refers to there being more people who "have ideas" than there are those who can make them happen. People who have the ability to create things don't need to take on board everyone elses ideas, because they're busy with their own.
Ed: Oh, in response to the original article, I'll believe it when I see it. Kotick seemed like a decent guy in his talk, but if you're in his position it's actions that count, and Activision's actions for the past few years have seemed mostly mercenary and moneygrubbing. I'd like to believe that he's acting in the best interest of games as a medium, but he's got a long way to go to convince me, and until he does, my one-man Activision boycott continues ;)
The tools available aren't the tools I need. I do have a concept for the tools I need. But If i tell you what tools I need and how they work and they come to life, will I get credit for it?
The tools I need and the "red tape" I need to cross, need to be handled compentantly. But it's actually a very simple thing to do for those who know how to do it. I personally can't make it happen, I need backing, not money, just backing. the money will come after it's done.
Hopefully that's explains it a little. If it doesn't, let me know and I'll try to elaborate some more.
Sorry Bobby... but it's kind of hard to take you seriously when your actions speak louder than words.
http://savetsl.co.cc/?cat=1