I’m not convinced esports is a long-term viable thing, even as someone who is a pot monster and has entered some events.
What I think Activision is cutting isn’t OWL, but the esports events that didn’t get any grassroots support like HOTS.
I’m not only “not convinced”, I outright think esports is a loser in the west. It only achieved mainstream popularity in Korea. People have been trying to make esports work for nigh twenty years now. The CPL was founded in the late 90s. Nobody gave a shit then, and it’s not much more popular now.
The future is individual streamers, because viewers care about their relationship with a specific personality. It isn’t really about the gaming, and it certainly isn’t about the competition.
While e-sports has a real chance to be a massive revenue and profit generator it’s not clear that Activision has a meaningful path to being part of that. The company’s core competency is making games, not live stream production, not picking team talent, not sponsor management, etc…
It’s not just about throwing money at something until it becomes successful, it’s really hard to completely pivot your company in a completely tangental business that requires a huge spend like e-sports will, a lot of things have to go right and you really have to dedicate your business to that type of operation. That’s hard to do without being a distraction from your core competency, and if their core competency of game development suffers then the e-sports division will fail too (unless Activition starts running tournaments for non-activision games, which wouldn’t be good).
It does not make sense for most game development companies to run their own high money e-sports production and team sponsorship. It’s much more efficient to farm that out until you are ready. EA doesn’t need their own e-sports division to have successful tournaments, they just hire a live event production team to run it. They don’t sponsor teams like Activision was doing, they don’t require million dollar buy in from teams, etc… They use the tournaments as an advertising vehicle for their games which is the smarter, cheaper play.
Esports will be about as successful in the US as soccer. I think this year will be the last year of the Overwatch league.
The problem is there’s too many games to hold interest long term. They don’t put out new Footballs every month to compete with the NFL. Overwatch was cool 3 years ago now it’s dated. Fortnite overtook it, and now Apex Legends is the new thing. You can’t build a team around a game when the game becomes lame after a year or 2.
Events and community are what makes esports, and that’s something that is very hard to monetize.
To me, the event esports needs to copy is the WSOP. I have my biases here given my long history with fighting games, and while fighting games have never had the money the OWL has, they’ve proven resilient and able to adapt from game to game and grow steadily (though the next couple of years will be challenging)
Tell that to Baseball players.
Yes, 911? I would like to report a fire. It appears that the entire MLB just went up in flames. No one appears to be screaming, though. Just laying down, ready to finally accept death’s sweet embrace."
As much as I dislike Bobby Kotick (e.g. for turning Raven Software into Call of Doody factory), he took a company with 150 employees and turned it into company with 9000 employees today.
And I actually do not think it is wrong to lay people off if you do it with severance and think you have no work for them, even if you are profitable. Nobody is entitled to a job provided by someone else.
Did Bobby Kotick do that? I think perhaps those 150 people making and marketing games had something to do with it. ;)
We should just hang a sign up. If you get laid-off, take your severance, shut the fuck-up, don’t bother coming around showing us any of that humanity stuff you’re feeling. Be grateful you little shits.
I think part of the discussion here is whether there actually is good work they could be doing there or if Activision/Blizzard is just moving to wring out their properties before falling off a cliff they could have avoided if they hadn’t fired all the long term expertise.
You give him way too much credit. Anyone who was not a moron could have taken the CoD franchise for the ride it did and ended up near where they are today. He came in at a great time in their history and rode the wave then took credit for being some kind of mastermind. Pumping out a billion CoD’s is not brilliant.
Reading wiki, Activision was heavily in debt and the first thing he did was fire everyone except 8 people apparently :)
But of course I would never ascribe all of Activision’s success solely to him. Still though, it is much easier to lose money than to make money, and the company grew immensely and provided jobs for lot of people with him in charge.
I appreciate the passion and I don’t want you to think that I am some hearless unempathetic monster.
But being employed is, at the end, a business relationship based on a contract. I work for a multinational corporation (50K employees). Been here a decade, but I am perfectly 100% aware that I can be laid off at any time for any reason and I am fine with that. Just like I can quit the company anytime I want, the company can quit me any time it wants. The company is not entitled to my time and labour and I am not automatically entitled to its money for my salary. Even if it would suck because I like the people here who have become friends. And because I am aware of this, I put part of my salary into savings so I can survive without work for as long as possible if needed.
Fair enough, that is a good question.
I mean, he came in when the company was failing, 11 years before CoD was a thing.
Here in “socialist Europe” (the Netherlands), it’s not possible to “just” fire an employee unless you have a pressing reason (they stole from you, you’re bankrupt, etc.). Here, if your employer wants to get rid of you, they either have to wait until your contract expires (if you don’t have a permanent contract) or they have to negotiate with you (read: give you enough money until you agree to quit). There’s a third option (go to the government or the courts), but that’s seldom used. Oh, you also get unemployment benefits (70% of your last earned salary for at least three months, up to quite a bit longer depending on how many years you’ve worked in total).
It’s utterly baffling to me that in a country like the United States, there are seemingly no laws at all to protect employees. I cannot imagine living with that kind of uncertainty.
You don’t need unions. You need laws that actually protect the people doing the work.
We used to have laws, then republicans destroyed them.
Yes, it is the current usual investment strategy. The fold the company, or merge it, or sell it, and go look for a healthy company to buy with the cash.
Rental housing, as well as games are new targets. Since both have proven they are sectors where you can grind out cash as the capital (games studios or houses) decays. According to some articles (not sure this recent one mentions it), the firms doing this are using pension funds they manage for the cash. So they can wipe out your job, your rental house and what ever pension you have now, all in one go. And walk off with the cash looking for the next thing to raid and run down.
This isn’t “capitalism” per se. The definition is who owns the capital. But that ownership is hidden behind structures that protect the owners from any failures, and other laws allow socialization of the losses (ironically). The issue is the people with the capital, or in the case where they’re managing your money to make money*, they only care about short return, and he who dies with the most toys wins (as I’ve had it described to me, they were comparing yachts). When the oligarchs and financial managers compete with each other on that metric, mostly, and we all lose.
* check out both (lack of in US) fiduciary rules and how preferred stock works on backruptcy, the rich eat their own (poorer investors) as well as your money (pension funds).
Say what you want about their politics **, but the Koch’s and others, that have strong companies free from the trampling of investors can do by keeping those entities private. Berkshire-Hathaway is an exception, but is still tightly controlled, limiting investors to making money (which they are happy to do), and got big by being heavily into well-regulated sectors (insurance). Capitalism then works quite well, for them, and with regulation for stability in financial vehicles (aka insurance).
Recent attempts in finance to regulate or limit the damage the “plague of locust” type investors do have all failed. Companies either protect themselves via specific structures, or remain private. Blizzard looks like it has neither?
I guess one other nice thing about supporting indie studios is you keep your money out of the hands of the locusts for a little while anyway.
** will go to politics if anyone wants to go there
Touché. My heart goes out to the US, it really does.
Don’t mind me, I was just being flippant. :) I just always find if an NBA team wins a championship, it’s the players that won it. No one says “Joe Lacob and Bob Meyers have won three championships in the last four years!”. Sure, they might get a nod for good management (and they clearly play an important part!), but ultimately it’s the players that win the championship.
That all changes in the business world, where it’s the CEO who makes a massively successful company while the hundreds or thousands of employees who developed the infrastructure, designed, built, marketed, and sold the product are disposable cogs that had nothing to do with the success. It was all the doing of people like Bobby Kotick, so if hundreds or thousands of people get tossed into the dumpster for a bump in the stock price, no big loss. It’s always rankled me a bit. :)
You make a good argument for socialism. :)
That was indeed sarcasm. I really don’t think you’re a heartless bastard, but it’s harsh to see something like that after 800 people just got shown the door.
I am not actually anti-Capitalism, but I do question some of the long-term visions of these people in charge of these large companies because a lot of it seems short-term / temporary type decision making. 8% is not a small amount. Even healthy companies shed and hire, but hopefully in more transparent ways.
Usually the first ones we here from are going to be the angry and bitter ones, the people surprised even if they aren’t really surprised, Later there will be more an eventually we get those 20 page story bits on it.
No one wants to be laid off. I’ve been through it a few times, one was a organization decision, the other head on fire after months of seeing red on the books, no literally, our department did the profit reports and there just… wasn’t any… When these gaming companies do it though it just seems ick, like more than usual. Activision isn’t even the only company that did it recently. I swear there were a few more in the news.