What does Blizzard think of Bobby Kotick?

Bobby Kotick, head of Activison Blizzard, is the current gaming pantomime villain following the sacking of the creators of the Modern Warfare franchise and his now infamous desire to “take all the fun out of making video games”.

But what does Blizzard, which merged with Activision in July 2008, think of its CEO?

According to Blizzard executive vice president and co-founder Frank Pearce, Kotick has a bum rap.

“We had a leadership dinner where Bobby came and spoke,” he told VideoGamer.com.

“We asked him about that [the “take all the fun out of making video games” statement]. I wasn’t there so I don’t know exactly what he said, but it sounds to me like he was quoted out of context, which would not be unusual for the media to do.

“Bobby was talking to investors and was trying to make a joke, and that’s not how it came off. We’re making games. Making games is innately fun. You wouldn’t get great games if people weren’t enjoying what they were doing.”

Kotick became a hate figure earlier this year after he fired Infinity Ward founders Jason West and Vince Zampella.

That followed his talk at the Deutsche Bank Securities Technology Conference in San Francisco, in which he stunned the gaming world by saying: “The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games.”

Activision’s dispute with Infinity Ward has resulted in a mass exodus of Modern Warfare developers, many of whom have joined Zampella and West at their new EA-funded studio Respawn Entertainment.

It is thought that the spat was in part due to creative control over the Modern Warfare franchise.

Pearce, who is also the executive producer of MMORPG World of Warcraft and science fiction RTS StarCraft II, due out on July 27, says Kotick has “respect” for Blizzard’s autonomy.

“I like Bobby,” he said. “Yeah, I don’t have any issues with Bobby. Bobby and the leadership at Activision Blizzard level have a great amount of respect for what we’re doing at Blizzard and understand the industry as well as anyone and recognise the value in what we’re doing and how we’ve achieved it so far. We’ve got as much autonomy today as we ever had.”

Kotick described the relationship between Blizzard and Activision as “a collaborative process” and denied Blizzard requires approval from Activision Blizzard executives.

“There’s budgeting and there’s annual operating plans and all that stuff. It’s not so much approval as much as it is a collaborative process with us and the Activision Blizzard umbrella. We have as much autonomy today as we ever did.”