A fun article:
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/ea-previously-had-the-worst-ceo-in-gaming-ex-activision-boss-says/1100-6529409/Ex-CEO of Activision Kotick shares his belief that ex-CEO of
Electronic Arts Riccitiello was the "worst CEO in gaming". It's good
to see the love these c-levels have for each other. ;-)
Because Kottick was no saint himself, and a lot of gamer ire has been
directed at him. Certainly there was a lot of cheering when he was
deposed after the Microsoft buyout. Personally, I think both Kotick
and Riccitiello were shit-heels and terrible for the hobby. And while
I disagree about Riccitiello being the worst CEO (I mean, what, no
love for Kreuzer of Embracer Group?), to some degree I get what Kotick
is saying.
Because from a certain point of view, Kotick was a better CEO than
Riccitiello. Not as a developer of games, no. Not as a manager of
employees, certainly not. Not as somebody interested in giving gamers
what they want; fuck no. Or somebody who cared about decency or
morals. This is a man who once boasted about how he lied to police who
came to seize property, and lied about owning an IP he had no rights
to when setting up a deal with a partner, pointing to both actions as
his cleverness as a businessman. He's a slimeball and prima facie
evidence of what's wrong with American capitalism. But if all you
cared about was getting the stock price of Activision up, then he was
the better man.
For all that Riccitiello pushed a lot of awful ideas, he at least
seemed to have some vision and interest in gaming. It wasn't
/entirely/ stock-price for him. And this meant that sometimes he made
decisions that didn't always pay off in the market. In that respect,
he was a worse CEO. But at least he seemed to care a jot more about
the games than Kotick, who always gave the impression that the actual
game development part was an unwanted side-venture to the actual
making of money; something you had to do, but preferably with the
least amount of creativity and effort. Kotick's tenure was one of just
shitting out the same crap year after year; Riccitiello at least
sometimes took chances (e.g., games like Spore, Mirrors Edge, Dead
Space and more were released under his tenure in attempt to diversify
the company's IP).
No saints either of them, and the industry (and the world) is better
with their sort gone (two down, too many to go), but given the choice,
I'd rather a Riccitiello than a Kotick.
CEO Slap-Fight