EA and Activision execs trade barbs

Apropos of the discussion that took place in this article, you Dragons and Dragonettes might be interested to read about a wee dust-up that took place between EA and Activision executives over the weekend:

Activision’s Bobby Kotick and EA’s Jeff Brown…[lobbed] sound bites back and forth at each other. Kotick was first, boasting in the latest issue of Edge…that his company allows its studios to maintain their independent cultures; citing Treyarch, the embattled Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games as examples. Kotick suggested that EA doesn’t offer this luxury, and that’s why Activision has successfully hired developers from its competitor’s ranks. “We have no shortage of opportunity to recruit out of EA,” he said. “That’s their biggest challenge: Its stock options have no value. It’s lost its way.”

Of course, Brown, EA’s corp comm VP, was quick to respond: “[Kotick’s] company is based on three game franchises — one is a fantastic persistent world he had nothing to do with; one is in steep decline; and the third is in the process of being destroyed by Kotick’s own hubris.”

Kotick has a bit of a point, I think, but not a particularly good one. It may be that more of Activision’s developers enjoy a degree of independence and freedom that smaller developers acquired by Electronic Arts do not…but equally, let me just throw out a few names here: BioWare, Mythic Entertainment (or BioWare Mythic if you prefer), and Criterion Games. It is true that the vast majority of EA studios are named “EA Something“, but it’s obviously not entirely true. Indeed, it is especially not true for those studios which are, let’s admit, producing some of the hottest titles in the EA library these days.

And indeed, as we have seen in recent days, being an EA studio doesn’t seem to be a constraint on at least one developer’s impetuousness and creativity.

6 Responses

  1. Sslaxx says:

    Yeah, could be considered interesting times seeing as EA seems to be more consumer-friendly than Vivendi’s Activision.

  2. wtf_dragon says:

    Interesting times indeed, though I suppose the jury is still out on whether that’s in the “Chinese curse” sense of the term.

  3. Sort of reminds me of the (American) Democrats and Republicans arguing with each other, when really they’re pretty much the same thing. Commercial viability is still number one, balanced against the investment in development and continued maintenance costs. No stockholder-driven company is going to continue to allow freedom when for whatever reasons the bottom line is in the red.

  4. wtf_dragon says:

    True to a point. Google is probably the most extreme example to take here, but it does serve to demonstrate that a company can do well by giving its developers a bit of leeway to innovate and invent; how many “big name” Google products began as “20% projects”?

    Yes, revenue is king, but I think EA is starting to realize that a balance can be struck between revenue now and even more revenue later if a project is allowed a little more time to mature (if that’s what’s needed).

  5. I hope you’re right about that. Fostering innovation and the indie spirit is certainly the impression they’d like to give to potential hires or studio acquisitions. If EA weren’t such a powerful force in the games biz then I wouldn’t be concerned, but like Stan Lee says, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

  6. wtf_dragon says:

    Heh, I hope I’m right too.

    Mythic’s brashness of late is a good sign in this regard, and I hope they are allowed to continue their good work in that vein.