Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has insisted that his company remains committed to keeping the “fun” in gaming.
Kotick – who was speaking at the DICE gaming convention – was referring to an earlier statement in which he reportedly said:
“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.”
According to Kotkaku’s Stephen Totil, Kotick claimed that commitment to excellence can often make people come across as being “like a dick.”
“I don’t know how this happened, but all my life I was the rebel flying the Millennium Falcon or the X-Wing fighter and suddenly I wake up and I’m on board the Death Star,” explained Kotick.
“And when I say things like ‘taking the fun out of making video games,’ it was a line that has been often-quoted lately, but it was a line I used for investors. It was mainly because I wanted to somehow come across in a humorous way that we were responsible, in the way we made our games in that it wasn’t some wild west, lack of process exercise.
“So I say things like ‘taking the fun out of video games’ knowing full well that all we’re actually trying to do is keep the fun in the process because, as most of you know, when you’re getting into crunch time it becomes really difficult to meet those milestones or get things polished the way you would like, that isn’t a lot of fun.”
