Introduction: Maybe the "fruit of banknote power" really exists?
In the recently released game industry CEO annual salary list, six figures can only be regarded as a novice village, seven figures can barely "mix out of the personal look", eight figures are not impossible to open a bottle of champagne to celebrate, but only a few annual salaries reach nine figures, which is commonly known as "billion yuan household", to really afford the word "big guy". Activision Blizzard's CEO Bobby Caldick, who is on the cusp of public opinion, is on the list with a salary of $154.6 million (nearly 1 billion yuan).
And Microsoft announced the formal acquisition of Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion (about 440 billion yuan), and Caldike continued to serve as CEO of Activision Blizzard. If the happiest person in this acquisition is Bobby Kotick, the former CEO of Activision Blizzard, because he is the only executive of Activision Blizzard with control change protection, and if he is replaced after the acquisition, he will be financially compensated.
Based on Kotic's previously disclosed ownership, his stock is valued at $371,326,310 per share at $95 per share, meaning he was able to earn about $370 million from the acquisition.
Many players will subconsciously distinguish the success of Only Wolf from the release of Activision Blizzard, which is not objective
With the gradual expansion of Activision's commercial territory in this century, especially after the merger of Activision Blizzard, The commercial methods that Caldike has drilled into the eyes of money have increasingly become the biggest stumbling block for players to enjoy the fun of simple games. What is even more "illogical" is activision Blizzard's financial statements that have declined in recent years while their reputation has declined, and Caldik's own personal wealth has increased steadily.
This time, let's go back to the beginning of Caldec's career and see how this businessman, who doesn't like games at all, has become the "devil" CEO of the game industry that disgusts players and makes shareholders appreciate through Activision.
The hilarity is yours, and your money is mine
If you adapt Satoshi Iwata's famous quote that has touched countless players into a Version of Caldick, it goes something like this: "On my business card, I am the CEO of Activision Blizzard, in my mind, I am the project operator who squeezes employees and squeezes players, and in my heart, I have always been a mercenary businessman." In fact, when Satoshi Iwata entered HAL Studios and began to write and develop programs for classic games such as Star Kirby and Pokémon, which players liked, Caldik did not spend a second on the game, but always focused on making friends with rich people and convincing them to become their own investors and create more money in investment projects.
Since Caldick did not publish photos of himself when he was young, many media outlets cited actor Jonathan Hill's appearance in "The Wolf of Wall Street" as a reference
Many celebrities as children will use unusual things to predict their future talents, such as Edison hatching chicks, or Messi playing with children older than him on the court like playing a flock of chickens. Caldick was no exception, as a young man had secretly sold his mother's ashtray to a neighbor's child and earned his first income of his life, $3. Since then, the little Caldick has been out of control, and since the middle school, he has printed business cards for himself, including delivering takeaways, stringing tennis rackets, selling wallets and other livelihoods.
In high school, Caldick, who had already accumulated his original funds, rented a humble single-family apartment on the edge of Manhattan, which was slightly renovated and converted into a nightclub. While Wall Street elites would categorically not come to such low-end venues to spend, the New York Student Party, which is always seeking pleasure, clearly loves this meeting place that offers alcohol and music.
As a young operator, Caldick neither burns hormones to devote himself to the happiness of his peers, nor does he stay in the manager's office to observe the hot girls on the dance floor through the floor-to-ceiling glass, as is often seen in American dramas, he chooses to stand at the door with the security guards to check the tickets, and pushes the temporary rented ice cream to sell cold drinks and sweets while everyone is sweating. Never join the happy crowd, but know why the crowd is happy, this is the ability of Caldike to survive.
These games bring the player's pleasure, and Caldick is not interested in it at all
After entering the university, Caldick believed that only those rich people who spent thousands of dollars at the gambling table would have a risky interest in the projects of college entrepreneurs, so he ran to the casino to talk and laugh with the gamblers who looked like "people are stupid and have a lot of money", and successfully persuaded an Asian gambling king to be an angel investor, see the booming OF it industry, and founded TDC. Under the care of Caldec, the company grew rapidly in just a few years, and when Caldec was 25 years old, he sold the company for 26 million, at the same time, Activision in the game market was facing the threat of bankruptcy with 30 million debts due to a serious decline in performance, and Caldec believed that the time had come to enter the game industry.
The result of The Cowick buying and buying was a game that I matched with the black team in the COD
In 1991, several consecutive years of poor management, so that Activision, a large game company founded in the Atari period, was heavily indebted and faced the dilemma of closing the door, and Caldik was like the moment when the door was about to close, the god of wealth who slipped in from the crack of the door, first persuaded Philips, one of Activision's biggest creditors, to convert the debt into equity ("It is impossible to repay the money, it is better to bet on a buddy who can turn over in the future"; and then from the capital market, he pieced together and pressed on personal assets. A total of $440,000 was purchased in a one-third stake in Activision, and in the end, Caldick became CEO, which began his career at the helm of Activision, which in turn changed the ecology of the entire game industry.
You may not believe it, but the core idea of Caldick's transformation of Activision at that time was to use EA as an evil sample of capital devouring game creativity, by separating market managers and game designers from each other, and returning the personality and freedom of game development to the hands of developers. This strategic "abandoning business, guaranteeing creation" business philosophy, although Activision struggled in the first three years of Caldecott's first three years, even the company's computers and furniture were once sold to cover various imminent expenses. However, the process of repairing the "internal force" was still successfully fruitful by 1995, when Activision released a total of 30 games led by the hit "Mecha Warrior 2", with a turnover of more than $200 million, and finally climbed ashore from the mire of poor management, and Caldik also had more funds to call.
Instead of putting his income in the bank for interest or asking company employees to travel around the world, Codik, a natural money-headed coddler, waved a check and started a series of commercial acquisitions. Listing the names of the acquired is inevitably too commercial, so take the familiar Activision watch game Call of Duty as an example to see how Caldick assembled into this industry aircraft carrier.
In 1997, Caldec acquired Raven, a company that now has more bugs in the online mode of Call of Duty than the next door Battlefield 2042 because of its squeeze of employees; in 2002, Activision Poached EA's 22 outstanding developers of FPS games and funded the establishment of the famous IW Studio, which gave birth to Call of Duty; in 2007, Activision acquired the Irish multiplayer game technology company Demoware, which specialized in designing the matching mechanism for multiplayer games, from the beginning "Match weaker opponents for kryptonite players to reward their consumption behavior", to such as today's anger, but Activision death also insist on the implementation of the "B.S.M.M" system (based on your recent game performance, match to players with similar strength, the better you play, waiting for your next round of opponents the stronger, and then derive the vicious play habits such as hanging up fish and squatting to kill each other), are the embodiment of the company's technical prowess.
During the "COD Vanguard" Christmas event, the "Caldec" that was made into the game let players find out and shoot out
Of course, none of these acquisitions caused much of a reaction from the industry at the beginning, until Caldec set its sights on Blizzard and the pattern opened up in an instant.
You recharge the card, I krypton blueprint, and Caldick buys a sea view house
Do you know whose influence It was that Caldick finally made the decision to merge Activision and Blizzard to become Activision Blizzard? It's you, it's me, it's us thousands of Chinese players, or more specifically, thousands of Chinese World of Warcraft players.
In 2006, Activision's main product lines were confronted with EA, with Guitar Hero vying for record rights; Tony Hawk Skateboarding and Skate frantically fighting for the youth market; And Call of Duty, which had just stepped on the Medal of Honor, and soon the battlefield challenge. But only the MMO, the emerging type at that time, the two major manufacturers can not be said to be unprepared, but there is no fart at all.
Blizzard's "World of Warcraft" at this time justice at this time the amazing speed of madly expanding the population of the continent of Azeroth, especially in the mainland, which was still full of piracy at the time, "buy genuine" is about equal to the potential market of "something wrong", players will play "World of Warcraft" for an average of 11 hours a week, The 160,000 Internet café netizens (we all know that the actual number is much more than that) will spend $150 million a year on this game, just like the fast-growing Chinese economy, the best MMOs and the market that is cashing in on huge purchasing power, I am afraid it is not too much to describe The mood of "hungry" to describe The mood of Caldick.
Blizzard's parent company, Vivendi, certainly wasn't the fool who opened the deal the day before, and Vivendi's then-president Levy offered a condition for Caldike to hand over full control of Activision and get a 2 percent, $135 million stake after the merger. Vivendi will hold a 52 percent stake in the new company for $5 billion.
In other words, Caldec will exchange a lower stake and control for more personal gains from Activision Blizzard's new company in the future. After a fierce ideological struggle and interest considerations (mainly the latter), Caldec took the money in tears and won the CEO position of the new company, Activision Blizzard was born, and now Caldike's annual salary of $150 million plus the dirty and dirty things behind him also proved the correctness of his original choice and the accompanying career risks.
With the game industry growing to its current scale, is It equally important for Khadik and Hideo Kojima?
At the time of writing, the latest news came from Activision Blizzard, the company has laid off more than 30 "problem" employees after a series of internal chaos and related remediation work that began last year, but As the "source of all evil", Caldecott is still supported by the company's board of directors, so that the CEO, who is hated by employees, continues to stay in his current position.
And at present, Microsoft has officially acquired Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion, and Caldick's position has not been shaken in any way, and will continue to serve as activision Blizzard CEO, and whether to continue to stay after the completion of the future transaction is still inconclusive. After the completion of the acquisition, Activision Blizzard will report directly to Phil Spencer, and future Activision Blizzard classic games and new games will be added to the console and PC Game Pass.
If Caldick is a game developer rather than the CEO of the golden egg, and is also caught in the crusade of public opinion for some reasons, will he, as a shareholder of his company, try to protect his position with a conscience like today?
I tend to think no (Ban Heng Companion Letter: The same goes for me).
When World of Warcraft can only rely on nostalgic clothes to sell love words to temporarily activate those AFK old players; when Overwatch sits by and watches players lose and still updates as fast as constipation; when Heroes of the Storm is no longer mentioned; when the remake of Warcraft 3 collapses a thousand miles; when Call of Duty is simply for the sake of sales with a lot of S beep settings that affect the game experience, how do we evaluate Cardick's work?
Even in advanced capitalist countries in the West, such as skateboarders or punks playing rock bands, they are often classified as "subcultures", and consumerism does find them when needed, such as Nike's SB skate shoes and our variety show "Summer of the Band", but usually not as the main hit. Admittedly, I was somewhat amazed at how Caldick, a rich man in the absolute sense of the word, a businessman who had been wondering how to make money since he was a student, had fallen in love with niche game genres like Tony Hawk Skateboarding and Guitar Hero.
At the same time, the popularity of "Spider-Man" developed by the T group was far before the MCU hot comic genre; "Call of Duty 4" ushered in the era of large online home console FPS. In recent years, Activision Blizzard's "Only Wolf" has won the TGA Game of the Year, and the return of "Ancient Wolf" after many years has also achieved a great improvement in the quality of the game.
In short, Caldec does not produce games, he is the manager and decision maker between game developers and development resources.
Conclusion: Caldick's career, in the final analysis, is to earn as much money as possible through the "tool" of the game industry, the rapid growth of the game industry in the past two decades, the continuous growth during the epidemic, after the epidemic, the "blessing" of the "meta-universe" is bound to grow in the environment, whether Caldick is in his position, he and the capital he represents will always add chips to the game industry.
After all, the game will change, but the profit-seeking nature of capital will not change.