How Activision and Blizzard Will Work Together
In case you weren’t aware, the above picture is Bobby Kotick, the man who engineered a raid turn around of Activision which, at the time, was essentially a failing game studio. Since his taking of the reins the company has flourished and in a recent display of just how far it’s come, Activision merged with Vivendi’s game division (That includes Blizzard).
Many players have wondered what the merger will mean for not only World of Warcraft but all future games made by the firm. Some undoubtedly are wary of the fact that other mergers of this kind tend to kill the heart and soul of the game studio and make them another faceless facet of a large corporation. Electronic Arts, the biggest gaming firm out there, is downright infamous for said tactics.
With this in mind, a recent interview with Kotick revealed some insight into what direction Activision will take it’s partnership with Blizzard. Here are the important takeaways from the interview:
I take it that in the Vivendi merger, you were most interested in Blizzard’s World of Warcraft.
We started hearing the rumors of how profitable that was. My guys kept telling me about the business, and I didn’t believe it. But we realized that this is not just a game. It’s a social network with a lot of elements, and people rely on the game for a lot more than just entertainment. It wasn’t the kind of thing that something else would come along and displace.
How did the deal happen?
We made an offer. It was more than we’d ever offered for anything—billions, almost equal to our own market value. And Vivendi said, “We’d really like not just to sell you the business but actually to become your partner.”
I would of course take this with a grain of salt, as any company describes a deal it’s made in favorable terms and wouldn’t ever come out and say “we plan to fire most of the original team and do our own thing.” However Kotick is a unique individual, and given his successes in other areas of the industry, it’s entirely possible that this may be a good move for Blizzard after all.
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