Project Lore

In early December 2007 Blizzard Entertainment was part of a merger between Activision and Vivendi Games.  The deal was essentially brokered to offload debt France's Vivendi SA had acquired, and give Activision something it severely lacked, a successful MMORPG.  It worked, creating a total (estimated) transaction of almost $19 billion.  In perhaps the most expensive example of monday quarterbacking, Robert Kotick, Activision's President and CEO, admitted to Game Informer that he believed Davidson & Associates was "insane" to pay $7 million, that's with an 'm,' for Blizzard back in 1995.

“That year Activision probably had 60 million in revenues. They said they paid seven million dollars for Blizzard. I’m like 'Are you out of your minds? They’re like a contract developer! They have Warcraft but what else do they have? You paid SEVEN million! That’s insane!

"I was talking to [Blizzard founder] Mike Morhaime the other day and I said, 'You know, I could have bought you for seven million and instead it was seven billion.' [Laughs]
He said, 'Yeah, could you imagine if I had just held out for the seven billion instead of the seven million?'”

You've got to hand it to Davidson & Associates for spotting this diamond in the rough.  With only a couple of quality titles before Warcraft: Orcs & Humans (they were released under a different company name, no less) Blizzard was largely unheard of, let alone highly respected.  Buy Blizzard it did, and D&A reaped the benefits for years to come.

Could you imagine if Blizzard wasn't given the proper time to execute on Warcraft II, Diablo, StarCraft or Battle.net.  Or how meh StarCraft: Ghost would have been when it was forced to ship.  I highly doubt BlizzCon would have ever of happened.  Who knows if WoW would have even been created.  And without WoW it's doubtful ProjectLore would exist!

My brain hurts.  Time to stop contemplating the mass implications to our space time continuum.  Let's just hope things remains solid going forward.

Like the pic?  Then buy the shirt.

Activision Blizzard CEO Robert "Bobby" Kotick on Thursday said he is "optimistic" about the future of the game industry as "a very low cost form of entertainment, if you look at the dollar-cost-per-hour." CNBC interviewed Kotick, who was in Sun Valley, Idaho, for the relatively secretive annual Allen & Company media mogul conference. Here's what he had to say about Activision Blizzard stocks performing above expectations in a down economy:

While Kotick does not speak specifically about WoW, there were some pretty interesting aspects to the interview that I wanted to elaborate on a bit because they can be applied to our favorite MMORPG. The journalist interviewing Kotick first points out that Activision Blizzard (and Electronic Arts) stocks were performing well Thursday. That's just a snapshot in time showing the trading levels at that point in the day, but if you look at the levels over the past six months or so, you'll see that the values have been rising steadily. Not surprisingly, the stock market apparently was on the minds of many Thursday who attended a panel on the economy at the conference. Although not an expert on the economy, Kotick pointed out that the availability of new hardware and the diversity of gaming experiences combine as a way to satisfy a lot of different entertainment needs all in one punch. As Kotick puts it, "While I'm relatively pessimistic about the economy, I'm very optimistic about the ability for video games to satisfy entertainment needs of consumers." And since we've been talking a bit about the future of WoW lately, I also found it interesting that Kotick said he's been looking at his expectations for Activision Blizzard over the next 5 to 10 years. He said that increasing production values, more effective in-game social interactions and the physical aspects of gaming "are really great catalysts for expansion of our audience; and we're still in the early days of markets like Western Europe, (and) in China." So perhaps WoW (or the next MMO) will be more of a world-wide audience? It seems that Kotick is hinting at that thought, which seems like smart business to me (more subscribers = more $$). Also along the idea of more money, Kotick said that lower the price of hardware, "the more consumers will be willing to purchase (it)." Makes perfect sense to me. Of course, a PC is a pretty hefty pricetag for someone just to play a game. But one would assume most people would have their computer for other uses, as well. What does everyone else make of this interview? Can you think of any other ways in which Kotick's ideas may be applied to WoW or the future of other Activision Blizzard MMOs, or do you think his points were too general to draw any real conclusions?

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