Prediction certainty 4/5 debate potential 3/5

Video games will eventually become as popular as traditional sports

Bobby Kotick · a16z Podcast | Gaming Goes Mainstream · Feb 26, 2019 · at 21:57

Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard, argues at a panel with MLB player Alex Rodriguez and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell that video games democratize athletic competition.

0:00 / 0:13exact quote · 13.6s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Video games is the only competitive medium that is going to give me that experience, and that purpose, and that sense of belonging, and that camaraderie that you get from sport. And so of course it's going to be as popular as sport, if not more popular as sport.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Bobby Kotick

Prediction Not checkable as stated
Augmented reality will have more near-term impact than virtual reality
“AR is gonna have more near-term impact than VR.”
Bobby Kotick Feb 26, 2019 ▶ 33:05 a16z Podcast | Gaming Goes Mainstream
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Steve Jobs threatened to cancel Apple's contract unless Kotick dropped out
“I will rip, and I can't say the word, I will rip this effing contract up right now if you don't quit college. So I quit the next day.”
Bobby Kotick Feb 26, 2019 ▶ 5:35 a16z Podcast | Gaming Goes Mainstream
Disclosure
Building a WoW competitor internally would have cost $1B and seven years
“And we looked at it and said, if we even could figure out how to do it would take us Five, six, seven years, and a billion dollars, and the likelihood is we wouldn't do a good job of it”
Bobby Kotick Feb 26, 2019 ▶ 12:22 a16z Podcast | Gaming Goes Mainstream
Assertion Contradicted
Activision offered up to $7B to buy Blizzard standalone from Vivendi
“And I asked them to sell us Blizzard, and we didn't have any interest in the rest of their games business, but we wanted Blizzard. And they said no repeatedly, and we offered them four billion, and then five billion, and then six billion, and then seven billio…”
Bobby Kotick Feb 26, 2019 ▶ 14:08 a16z Podcast | Gaming Goes Mainstream
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Fortnite was the first game where spectating drove viewers to play
“Fortnite, I think, was the first game where people would spectate, and it would actually be a catalyst for them to play.”
Bobby Kotick Feb 26, 2019 ▶ 24:18 a16z Podcast | Gaming Goes Mainstream
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Esports will never join the Olympics due to commercial ownership conflicts
“I actually don't think, like, the Olympics has never been about a commercial enterprise, and so if you think of the analog, right, there's not, like, if you had to pick a game, You're now endorsing someone's commercial enterprise.”
Bobby Kotick Feb 26, 2019 ▶ 26:48 a16z Podcast | Gaming Goes Mainstream
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 1,000 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.