Inside Activision and Blizzard’s Corporate Warcraft

Bobby Kotick and Mike Morhaime couldn’t have been more opposite if they’d been grown in a laboratory. Perhaps the only things they had in common were that they both ran video game companies and they both were very rich as a result.

Before he became the charming and boisterous chief executive officer of Activision, which produces the war shooter franchise Call of Duty, Kotick skipped classes so he could focus on moneymaking endeavors and eventually dropped out of college. Morhaime, who co-founded and ran Blizzard Entertainment, was the nerdy, introverted student who sat in the front row and cracked open VCRs after school for fun. When they were fully grown, Kotick went to celebrity parties in the Hamptons. Meanwhile, Morhaime called up his programmers to ask about changes he’d noticed during late-night sessions playing StarCraft II. Kotick maintained a private art collection worth millions of dollars. Morhaime’s house tiles were inscribed with insignias from World of Warcraft.