One of my New Year’s resolutions was to stop talking so much shit about my mortal enemy, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, if only to avoid any awkward situations if we ever run into each other at gaming-related events. That’s why I tried to avoid writing this story at first. However, his cover story and profile in the latest issue of business mag Forbes are forcing me to break my vow, only 20 days into the year. The article summarizes Kotick’s history of business ventures and tenure with Activision, starting with selling his mother’s ashtray at the age of 3 and renting out clubs for parties when he was a teenager.

Of course, Kotick is most famous for his work at the third-party video game publisher, despite the fact that he was “lacking any passion for games” and thought “playing video games was a waste of time.” You know, that actually makes a lot of sense, given his love of exploiting series (see: Guitar Hero) until gamers are sick of them (see: Tony Hawk). Actually, to be fair to Mr. Kotick, part of my beef here is with Forbes itself, which called Rock Band a “shameless knockoff” of Guitar Hero, without recognizing the fact that Rock Band was made by Harmonix, the same people who made the first two Guitar Hero games, or mentioning that Harmonix was the one to bring multiple elements into the music game genre, a move that Activision has since copied. (The “knockoff” quote was removed from the article after a barrage of negative comments).

Okay… maybe Bobby Kotick didn’t actually do anything wrong in this particular instance, other than looking far too arrogant for my liking on the cover of Forbes and accompanying picture for this article. Maybe he’s just happy. Hey, if I had a giant pool of money to swim around in, I’d be pretty freaking happy too. Don’t think this makes us friends just yet, Mr. Kotick. This isn’t over.

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