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[IbizaPocholo]

Activision Blizzard's CEO Doesn't Think Its Games Should Be Political

Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick doesn’t think his companies’ games should be used as platforms for sharing political views. He said as much an interview appearance on CNBC earlier today.

kotaku.com

Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick doesn’t think his companies’ games should be used as platforms for sharing political views. He said as much an interview appearance on CNBC earlier today.

“We’re not the operator of the world’s town halls,” Kotick, who in 2017 made 28.6 million running the video game company behind Call of Duty and Diablo, told CNBC anchor Becky Quick. “We’re the operator of the communities that allow you to have fun through the lens of a video game.”

Quick had asked Kotick how he’s grown in recent years as a CEO during a time when the public increasingly seems to look to the heads of companies like Apple and Facebook for leadership.

“My responsibility is to make sure that our communities feel safe, secure, comfortable and satisfied and entertained,” he said. “And so I don’t—I don’t—that doesn’t convey to me the right to have a platform for a lot of political views, I don’t think. I think my responsibility is to satisfy our audiences and our stakeholders, our employees, our shareholders.”

At the same time, Kotick said he is inspired by CEOs who do show leadership in these areas.

“I think there are some business people who are incredible examples of character and integrity and principle and have what you see are the great attributes of leadership, and I think that they are incredibly inspiring for me,” he said. “But I think, you know, they do have the right to articulate views and visions and voices about government and policy and politics, and I love engaging with those people.”

Apparently he is not one of them.

Thanks mods for the title change

 

[DeepEnigma]

Can't argue with this.

Now, how about that Blizzard bending the knee to China?

 

[Mihos]

He is right

But I still don't like him

 

[RavageX]

He is right

But I still don't like him

Agreed.

 

[johntown]

Wish more devs would take this stance.

 

[DeepEnigma]

At the same time, Kotick said he is inspired by CEOs who do show leadership in these areas.

“I think there are some business people who are incredible examples of character and integrity and principle and have what you see are the great attributes of leadership, and I think that they are incredibly inspiring for me,” he said. “But I think, you know, they do have the right to articulate views and visions and voices about government and policy and politics, and I love engaging with those people.”

Apparently he is not one of them.

Nice little backhanded comment there, Kotaku.

 

[IbizaPocholo]

Activision Blizzard CEO Says Company Can Have A Billion Customers In Five Years

gamingbolt.com

Speaking at the CNBC Evolve Los Angeles event, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick said that with streaming and gaming become more open to other areas of the world, there’s really no reason the company can’t eventually reach 1 billion people. He also thinks it’ll happen fairly soon, within five years in fact, meaning he sees 650 more customers coming in half a decade.

“Today we have roughly 350 million customers in 190 countries, there is not a good reason why that number shouldn’t be a billion in the next five years. It starts with more frequent release of content, taking franchises that we have and growing them onto new platforms. And this is probably the single biggest change in the business in almost 30 years that I can recall, which is that up until very recently, five years ago, to play games you had to spend $300 for a PlayStation or an Xbox or $1,000 for a personal computer. And when games became available on phones, the market exploded and the audience size went from a few hundred million to billions of potential consumers.”

 

[FranXico]

I agree on that.

But then again, he doesn't exactly feel strongly about games being good either...

 

[Slings and Arrows]

It's easy to have a billion players when your games a mindless, bottom-of-the-barrel, lowest-common-denominator, cookie-cutter tripe that is chocked full of psychological manipulation, persuasion and subversion, coupled with addictive, dopamine producing 'fake' cyclic reward systems, catalysed through gambling, RNG and MTx.

Go fuck yourself Bobby.

P.S. can you hit me up a cool million? Come on, don't be a dick

 

[Later Alligator]

It's easy to have a billion players when your games a mindless, bottom-of-the-barrel, lowest-common-denominator, cookie-cutter tripe that is chocked full of psychological manipulation, persuasion and subversion, coupled with addictive, dopamine producing 'fake' cyclic reward systems, catalysed through gambling, RNG and MTx.

Go fuck yourself Bobby.

P.S. can you hit me up a cool million? Come on, don't be a dick

is it? even fortnite "only" has 250 million players

 

[Slings and Arrows]

is it? even fortnite "only" has 250 million players

Yeah, it is.

It'll happen when one of these companies have the genius idea of cross-play and cross-genre games. I know it has been tried before, but...

One dude on a phone is collecting coins/resources.
One dude on a console is playing an FPS, think of C&C Renegades where you play as a general
One dude on a PC is playing an RTS.

All three are playing the same game, either as a team, or solo through the course of the day to help their own 'quest'. You build a base, you farm resources, you run around in the world you've built, helped by the power of the cloud to bring it all together.

Phone addiction (Smart phone generation) + Online play/ Battle-royale (fortnite/console generation) PC RTS (Old crusty gamer generation).

I imagine a little more refining would help, I literally came up with that idea off of the top of my head.

Edit : I would like to add that I believe 250 million players is bullshit. I'm going by 'corporate' numbers, not real life numbers. 1 billion players is impossible without using 'modern methods' of inflating those figures. at least 75% of any players on popular online games are Ai or Bots