Well, That's Nice

Is he doing this for kicks, or is there some logic behind demoralizing your workers? I guess it isn’t enough for execs to be overpaid and live posh lifestyles, they need the underclass to actually act like they’re dirty, unhappy slaves.

I get the feeling that his philosophy of fear has begun seeping its way through blizzard, or will very soon.

I’ve worked at places where some of the employees were deliberately demoralized by management.

You’d think that employee retention rates would drop through the floor. In fact the opposite seems to happen. Demoralized employees tend not to have a great opinion of their own work – if the boss doesn’t think you’re doing good work, then perhaps you aren’t very good at your job. The end result is that you don’t leave because you are scared that you wont do well at the next place.

(Some) management like this because it gives them control over the employee. If and when they leave it will be on the boss’ terms.

Sometimes it backfires. One guy I worked with was so down on himself he quit to become a massage therapist.

Well, at least he is honest

I thought that second quote was your usual added snark. Imagine my surprise when I clicked through to the article and found out that wasn’t the case.

Perhaps Scott has found the reason why people view game development as a soulless attempt at chasing the latest trend for a fast buck….

It was a presentation at “the Deutsche Bank Securities Technology Conference” which sounds like it probably was to their share holders. He’s saying “we whip our employees till they’re raw and don’t spend any of your pennies on anything other than chasing profit!” which is what the shareholders want to hear…

Bobby Kotick is still a douchebag. More news at 11.

The world is a place that seems much more comfortable when you can put it in a convenient conceptual box. When you’re a manager, and your focus is on the people you manage, it’s an natural tendency to want to put the people in conceptual boxes as well. He patting himself on the back for harnessing the power of the recession to motivate his employees, remaining fairly ignorant that his employees likely found ways to motivate themselves and all his policies are doing is adding another difficulty for them to circumnavigate.

“We have a real culture of thrift. The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games.”

That must be some kind of joke or is taken out of context. I check the reference and it does not have the full interview either.

@SctyheNoire

You are wrong. They are the SECOND most hated company in video games. The first place it belongs to EA.

Ummm? Wait, I know this may be blasphemy around here, but I am actually not seeing that much of a abd thing about what he is saying. His target was a video game company where the employees understould the economics behind what they were doing. Learned to work with an eye towards thrift, and actually worked in a non “fun” adult professional manner to get things done and produce product. And amazingly this grown up approach actually produced fun, popular and profitable products. Gee maybe there is something to be said for groing up and leaving neverneverland.

Think about what alot of game development houses are actually like. Think about how much funding, how many resources they squander in their search to promote free creativity and fun. Studios collapsing because their entore staffs were doing nothing but playing Everquest or X-Box. Squandering investment dollars on insanely uneeded perks like break lounges and come and go hours.

Tying bonuses to profits not just box sales is a good thing. It encourages the design team to find ways to not spend as much on the front end, as well as hoping for good sales on the back end.

There is nothing inherrantly wrong with taking the common frat house environment out of video game production and replacing it with an actual professional adult workplace. If done right it is neither evil nor is it stifling of creativity. It can actually be alot more respectful of your employees, and there are quite a few who will vastly prefer the grown up workplace. Mostly those who have previously been working in the out of control frat houses.

Obviously you cant respect person saying they focus on depression or they are against fun.

That said I think a lot of game companies that fail might succeed if they had from the start created a culture of economy and thrift.

His management philosophy is rather outdated. That sort of thinking can work in teh short-term, during an economic crisis for example. But in the long run it will kill a company if maintained, as the better employees leave for greener pastures and only the incompetants remain behind to keep animating the rotting corpse of a once-lively corporation. It can lumber on for decades, but everyone knows it’s better days are behind it and no one wants to work there anymore.

If he keeps it up he’ll kill Activision. I just hope Blizzard doesn’t go down with it.

I think the “Management through Fear” folks are the same ones that brought us the incredibly useful “Management by Walking Around” philosophy.

The last three companies I worked at had managers who proudly espoused managing through fear as their preferred MO. At my last job, my boss recommended that I adopt this approach rather than be encouraging and try to inspire my staff, otherwise I might find my tenure short there. He was right.

Me thinks he was just trying to appeal to the banker audience with talk of the bottom line. Uncouth, obnoxious, and idiotic… possibly. Predictable… certainly. Entirely true… probably not. One look at the Blizz office tour confirms. Hardly conservative and thrifty.

Apparently he was talking to investment bankers at the time, and if you’re trying to get on those guy’s good side, then telling them you’re crushing the life out of your workers in the name of thriftiness is the way to go about it.

‘The executive said that he has tried to instill into the company culture “skepticism, pessimism, and fear” of the global economic downturn, adding, “We are very good at keeping people focused on the deep depression.” ‘

That seems fairly out of context and hard to interpret, couldn’t that just as easily (and more believably) mean “We’re trying to make sure our projects ship on time and on budget, because the economic downturn means that we expect decreased sales and we don’t have a lot of extra room for profit”?

That seems more realistic than how you guys seem to be interpreting it more as a “We’re mass emailing our employees and reminding them about the bad economy so they will tremble with fear and worry every waking moment if they are on the chopping block next.. it keeps them from getting uppity!”

The context is interesting, but the notions are still a bit skewed. While there is a certain value to “rule by fear and depression”, I have a feeling it’s a little easier to say that when you control one of the most lucrative franchises ever. This franchise’s success is no doubt linked to more than just “taking the fun out of video games” and “Taking advantage of the recession”.

You know what they say:

“Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. And then there’s management.”

Oh yes, I forgot to add: the facepalm-causer of this philosophy, at least as it relates to videogames, is that most of the “brands” and “franchises” that a company – say, Activision – acquires at such incredible cost are actually worth precisely dick. It’s the talent that can execute the concepts and generate new ones that is going to recoup all that money for the parent company.

Imagine if, for whatever reason, 90% of Blizzard walked off the job tomorrow. Do you think having the right to call games “Warcraft” and “Diablo” and deputize and ordain new Blue names would keep Activision in the black?

*Welch, not Welsh.

@Doug
Don’t tempt him. Knowing these CEO types, he’d be like, “come to think of it, why aren’t I keeping my more attractive employees as sex slaved in my dry well?”

I worked as an assistant to a few investment banking firms on Wall Street for about eight years. It makes perfect sense to me that he is speaking their language.

Lowest form of humanity on the planet, second only to murderous crazed dictators. Because of that experience I am loathe to ever set foot in NYC again.

Dang lack of an edit function. I’m too lazy and rushed to use a spell checker before posting :/

@Amaranthar

If Kirk is the ruler by which you measure leadership then uh… well… you need to get out more. All I am saying is that Kirk is only a fine example of having an odd cadence of speech. Actually he’s a second rate example as long as we have Christopher Walken boldly injecting pauses where no pause has been before.

This guy clearly is the same as a verbally abusive spouse. Perhaps the state needs to send counseling into his offices.