Today, Caldecott, known as the worst CEO in the gaming industry, finally announced that he is leaving Activision Blizzard, and it is said that Caldecott's next stop may be Coca-Cola, this article introduces Caldecott's early history before becoming the CEO of Activision Blizzard, and see why he became one of the most hated people by players!
In 1963, Robert M. Born in the United States and raised in New York as a child, Robert A. Kotick developed an interest in business from an early age and showed an extremely cunning flair for business. When he was in elementary school, Calderick took his classmates to visit his home, and he ran the train to say that his mother's ashtray was an old antique and sold it to his classmates at a high price of "$3".
In junior high school, Calderick printed his business cards and distributed them around for business, such as delivering sandwiches, repairing tennis rackets or selling wallets.
In 1980, Calderick did not choose a major in finance, but majored in art history at the prestigious University of Michigan, when he first entered the university, Caldek planned to study Xi literature and enter the field of art in the future, but it was the 80s, the computer and Internet industry was developing rapidly, and Calderick, as an aspiring young man, naturally skipped classes every day.
But coincidentally, Caldecott's roommate is named Howard Max, a computer wizard, under Caldecott's fooling, the two founded a technology company called Arktronics in the dormitory, Howard squatted in the dormitory every day to write code, and Caldek is mainly responsible for business communication, to put it bluntly, it is to make money.
At that time, Apple released the Apple II computer, marking Apple's first personal computer for the consumer market, and Calderick saw a business opportunity at a glance and persuaded Howard to develop computer software for the Apple II, but at this time, Calderick's company was very short of funds. During his sophomore year, Calderick attended a prom in Dallas to see if he could run into a few bigwigs.
As fate would have it, 19-year-old Caldek was strolling through the prom, with an unfinished piece of software, which attracted the attention of Las Vegas tycoon Stephen Wynn, yes, the Wynn Palace you know is the property of this boss, Wynn "discerning", and the next day he made a decision and sent a check for $300,000 to Caldecott's Arktronics company to invest in Caldecott.
When Apple was still selling the $10,000 LISA system, Calderick Arktronics developed the Jane system in '84 for less than $300, and since then Calderick has been on a helicopter, and even Jobs has heard about Arktronics, and has come to Ann Arbor to meet with Caldecott, and suggested that Caldek drop out of UMich and focus on making software. In this way, Calderick accepted Jobs' advice to drop out of school and put all his energy on Arktronics.
At the age of 20, Calderick appeared on the Forbes page for the first time as a corporate company owner, and at this time Calderick's mind was full of software for Apple's new system, at this time he could be said to have no intersection with the game, and Caldecott himself thought that playing games was a waste of time.
But by chance, Calderick came into contact with EA and soon became EA's software outsourcing service provider, Calderick found that game companies could make a lot of money as a layman, and Atari's Nolan Bushnell and EA founder Tripp Hawkins became leaders of the times through their unique vision and love for games.
But Caldecott's way of thinking is different, he is not interested in games, but he is very interested in the sales of games, at that time a game can make hundreds of millions of dollars in profits, but the programmer developer who writes code can only get an average salary of 20,000 US dollars at that time, Caldek has evil thoughts and establishes a new goal in life, that is, to make a lot of money by squeezing game practitioners, as for the game itself is secondary.
But at this time, Calderick did not have enough funds to take over a large company like EA or Atari, but Calderick suddenly had an idea, why not buy a company that was about to go bankrupt, and then transform it into a game company through its own capabilities, and finally sell the company for a good price? Fortunately, Calderick also encountered the collapse of Atari, and the entire game software field was in mourning.
In 1987, Caldeco tried to buy the famous Commodore company, planning to remove the keyboard and hard drive from the Amiga 500 and make it into a game, but the chairman of the company at the time saw through Caldeco and firmly disagreed. In 1990, by chance, Caldek set his sights on a game company that was about to go bankrupt, Mediagenic, a company with a balance sheet but a long history.
The company's programmers first quit their jobs because of Atari's low salary, and Calderick and several investors bought 1/4 of the company's shares for only $500,000 and changed the company's original name - Activision.
Caldek undertook a complete restructuring of Activision and refocused the company on gaming, saying that he would be committed to building a company with a high-quality, well-managed organization and a focus on independent developers, however, the first thing Caldek did when he became the owner of Activision was to lay off employees, at this time Activision had a total of 158 employees, and Caldeco laid off 150 people, leaving only 8 people, thus starting a 33-year path to Activision CEO, but this is far from refreshing Caldecott's bottom line...... (To be continued, the next part will continue to introduce Caldecott's operation after becoming the boss of Activision)