Lessons Learned from the Life of Videogame Executive Bernie Stolar (venturebeat.com) 46
VentureBeat reports:
Video game legend Bernie Stolar, former president of Sega of America, has passed away at the age of 75, friends said.
Bernie Stolar was the first executive VP of Sony Computer Entertainment America, according to their article, and helped line up the games for the launch of the first PlayStation, eventually signing franchises like Crash Bandicoot, Ridge Racer, Oddworld Inhabitants, Spyro The Dragon and Battle Arena Toshinden.
VentureBeat remembers how Stolar then became president/COO of Sega of America, helping lead the development and launch of the Sega Dreamcast (while killing development of their home video console Saturn). Stolar acquired Visual Concepts for Sega of America, which ultimately led to the creation of 2K Sports. Joining Mattel in 1999, he helped the company sell a line of videogames.
But then Stolar became an adviser/director at Adscape Media, and later sold that company to Google for $23 million. The lead writer for VentureBeat's GameBeat remembers what happened next — and what he'd learned after interviewing Stolar in 2015: "There was no interest in games at Google at the time," Stolar said. "I went to the CEO, who was Eric Schmidt, and said, 'Why don't we put advertising in all these games and give them away for free online?' He said, 'We're not in the game business." I said, 'We're not going into the game business. We're not developing games. We're taking games from publishers and streaming those through our online network.' He wouldn't do it. That's when I knew I should leave the company...."
Toward the end of our interview in 2015, Stolar said, "I've been doing this since 1980. I love this business. I love it because I get to work with people who are young and passionate. I'm one of the old gray-haired guys in the industry, but it's wonderful to work with all this young talent."
Stolar joked he could be the grandfather for the CEOs he was advising. I asked Stolar how long he would work.
"Put it this way. I've spoken to two individuals about this, Sumner Redstone and Rupert Murdoch," he said. "They're both in their 80s. They're both multi-billionaires. They certainly don't have to work, right? And they've both said to me, 'If you retire, you die.' I believe that. My father, when he sold his liquor store and stopped working, passed away three months later. I'm not going to stop."
Bernie Stolar was the first executive VP of Sony Computer Entertainment America, according to their article, and helped line up the games for the launch of the first PlayStation, eventually signing franchises like Crash Bandicoot, Ridge Racer, Oddworld Inhabitants, Spyro The Dragon and Battle Arena Toshinden.
VentureBeat remembers how Stolar then became president/COO of Sega of America, helping lead the development and launch of the Sega Dreamcast (while killing development of their home video console Saturn). Stolar acquired Visual Concepts for Sega of America, which ultimately led to the creation of 2K Sports. Joining Mattel in 1999, he helped the company sell a line of videogames.
But then Stolar became an adviser/director at Adscape Media, and later sold that company to Google for $23 million. The lead writer for VentureBeat's GameBeat remembers what happened next — and what he'd learned after interviewing Stolar in 2015: "There was no interest in games at Google at the time," Stolar said. "I went to the CEO, who was Eric Schmidt, and said, 'Why don't we put advertising in all these games and give them away for free online?' He said, 'We're not in the game business." I said, 'We're not going into the game business. We're not developing games. We're taking games from publishers and streaming those through our online network.' He wouldn't do it. That's when I knew I should leave the company...."
Toward the end of our interview in 2015, Stolar said, "I've been doing this since 1980. I love this business. I love it because I get to work with people who are young and passionate. I'm one of the old gray-haired guys in the industry, but it's wonderful to work with all this young talent."
Stolar joked he could be the grandfather for the CEOs he was advising. I asked Stolar how long he would work.
"Put it this way. I've spoken to two individuals about this, Sumner Redstone and Rupert Murdoch," he said. "They're both in their 80s. They're both multi-billionaires. They certainly don't have to work, right? And they've both said to me, 'If you retire, you die.' I believe that. My father, when he sold his liquor store and stopped working, passed away three months later. I'm not going to stop."
"Why don't we put advertising in all these games" (Score:2)
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Just another C-suite leech that didn't care about the product, but more about how he could wring money out of it. "Legend" my ass.
Wonder how many ads, funded entire products...
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Too many. Too many ads, too many purely-ad-funded products.
Alright, let me rephrase.
I wonder how many ads, paid for products you love.
Yes, I hate the over-valuation of advertising in general (HOW much for a 30-second ad everyone doesn't watch?!?), and the cheerleaders in Marketeering with over-inflated egos. Doesn't mean it's a completely worthless venture, and it is a revenue stream for most who use it wisely.
Not sure most gamers would prefer a $200 MSRP, because programmers and game writers sure as hell aren't getting any cheaper, and shareholders aren't any le
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> I'm not 100% against ads. They are ... necessary.
Nonsense. Ads = propaganda not respecting the viewer. Many games don't have ads. Your business excuse is not my problem.
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Just another C-suite leech that didn't care about the product, but more about how he could wring money out of it. "Legend" my ass.
Exactly, even if he put his 'own' money into stuff, that money came from overpriced and poorly supported products. These transnational corporations are not our friends, they are the enemy. They cheat, lie and steal. Worse, they use thier excess profits to corrupt markets and our public institutions and they've solidified a classist and exploitive irresposnsible society that's busy wrecking our biosphere.
Let's call it what it is, an insataible greed for power combined with an unethical lack of self-restraint
If you retire, you die... (Score:4, Interesting)
That's probably true for people whose lives revolve entirely around their work. They retire and then realize their life is hollow, because they never invested in anything else. They need to be in charge of something, need people to boss around, etc.
Me, I can't fucking wait for retirement. It's going to be great. And it's not like I hate my work or anything (I make videogames), but it's still something they need to pay me to do.
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Same here. If you find your life is empty without your job, you have failed at life.
Now, I can see me cherry-picking some specific paying projects after retirement (and there probably will be a real selection, competent IT security people are _rare_), but most of the stuff I do now is somewhat interesting but not something I would really do if there wasn't a need to earn money.
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So, caring about others, feeling an emotional motivation to meet the needs of others, feeling a desire to be relevant to the rest of the world, wanting to meaningfully contribute to humanity's existence, means you have failed at life?
A salary is, among other things, a gauge of how valuable your efforts are to everyone else. Seeing as how we are pack animals, most of us have an instinct that motivates us to care about that, and can tolerate true selfish hedonism for only so long before feelings of self-cont
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Currently wrestling with this issue in my current job, as I have incurable (but usually slow progressing) cancer. Do I try and take retirement, knowing that I have likely 6 to 10 years remaining? That answer is presently no:
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I am not interested in your pep-talk for the wage-slaves.
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So, caring about others, feeling an emotional motivation to meet the needs of others, feeling a desire to be relevant to the rest of the world, wanting to meaningfully contribute to humanity's existence, means you have failed at life?
A salary is, among other things, a gauge of how valuable your efforts are to everyone else. Seeing as how we are pack animals, most of us have an instinct that motivates us to care about that, and can tolerate true selfish hedonism for only so long before feelings of self-contempt start to creep up.
The OP said work. You can try and have that motivation to meet the emotional needs of others outside of work. This is what both terrorists and activists do. Okay, they do get "paid", but most of them get paid far less if we quantify the good or destruction they do.
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So, caring about others, feeling an emotional motivation to meet the needs of others, feeling a desire to be relevant to the rest of the world, wanting to meaningfully contribute to humanity's existence, means you have failed at life?
Perhaps "failed at life" is a little overdramatic, but the underlying idea is correct. If you measure your value in life by your attachment to your job, then your values are dramatically misplaced. It's not your fault, though. We are conditioned from a very young age to attach our self esteem to our jobs. You are more than the sum of your job achievements. If you think all of the objectives you listed are best accomplished by your 8-5 job, then you are suffering from social conditioning intended to mostly d
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Me, I can't fucking wait for retirement. It's going to be great.
Hear, hear! Like you, I have a good job. But it's a job. I have management and customers I answer to, periods of high pressure under which I have to deliver, a daily routine of waking up much earlier than I would prefer, the tether to communication software and hardware, etc.
There are two days a week when I get to have fun doing things I prefer to do, where it doesn't matter if I fail or succeed. Whether my work product is useful or trash during those days doesn't matter. I'm not doing it to make a product.
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That's probably true for people whose lives revolve entirely around their work. They retire and then realize their life is hollow, because they never invested in anything else. They need to be in charge of something, need people to boss around, etc.
I believe the term used to be "workaholic". Not sure if that's an acceptable term anymore. Probably not. We'll have to go with relax-challenged I suppose.
And it is sad. Very sad. The relax-challenged pro who writes books about how to succeed, fails to include a chapter on Time Off or Retirement. And yet, people seek out their "formula for success".
Early Google (Score:2)
I remember back in the mid 2000's, Google was great because you actually didn't mind the ads it would give you. Particularly if you searched for something to buy - e.g. 'running shoes' it would give you a good mix of popular shoes and online stores with good prices where you could buy them from. If my actual goal is to find something to buy, then there is nothing wrong with a bit of advertising.
Similarly, I remember learning about new products or tools in the electronics world from google ads associated wit
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My parents were too old to get into the video gaming in their youth, but I think they would absolutely love it (particularly my father who is an engineer and would probably really get into something like minecraft) if the gaming industry cared at all about anyone (customer or workers) over the age of 25.
The gaming industry does have genres where those people are typically considered. Mostly they are simulation games, and in particular this long has meant flight sims, but these days driving sims also frequently have high-end features for the gamer with a budget. There's really not a big apparent difference between the younger and older gamer, except that older gamers are somewhat likelier to be into puzzle games, and the youngest kids can't afford a big complicated sim setup.
It's a test of what you have made of your job. (Score:2)
My father retired and then got bored and went back to work.
I think it is the real test of what you have really made of your job - far more than your income or status - if you would PREFER to carry on working.
I am not quite there yet...
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I like my job, don't get me wrong. I'm a security researcher and pentester, responsible for finding flaws in financial software, but I would rather explore and examine security problems that interest me rather than checking servers for PCI-DSS compliance.
I never quite understood why people would want to "get back to their work", even if they're good at it and even if they enjoy it. There's always parts you don't enjoy, and things you would do differently if you didn't have to care for billable hours but rat
Re:It's a test of what you have made of your job. (Score:5, Insightful)
Same here. Once I have reached enough for retirement I am going to retire. I will still be "working" quite a bit, but it will be for myself and only on stuff I find interesting. And there is a lot of that. I will not miss regular work one bit. Because I chose to not work full-time (security people never have problems finding work and it is only getting better), that will probably take until I hit 65, but I have absolutely no regrets.
So in actual reality, whether you feel a need to continue doing your job is actually a test of what you have made of yourself.
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Same here. My grandfather worked like a dog because he wanted to enjoy retirement. He died with 66. Same with my mother, also dead about the same time she could retire.
I retire now. I work as many hours as I need to get by, which is surprisingly little when your expertise is in very short supply and very high demand. The rest of my time I do almost the same I do for money, just at projects that interest me.
Frankly, the only reason I still work at all is that I get access to machines you couldn't get your fi
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"I retire now. I work as many hours as I need to get by,"
That's not retiring. That is what some poor people do ALL THEIR LIVES !
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The difference is maybe that I could simply say "screw it" and leave whenever I please and wouldn't be in any trouble because of it.
It's comforting to know you have enough money to last you a lifetime.
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"I never quite understood why people would want to "get back to their work", even if they're good at it and even if they enjoy it."
Erm, they want to get back to it because they enjoy it ! If on the whole it is enjoyable, then you want to keep doing it.
There may be parts you don't enjoy as much, but that is true of hobbies as much as work.
And enjoyable work can have its own rewards, that hobby projects don't deliver.
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Why would I want to have a hobby I don't enjoy? If there are really parts that you don't enjoy, hire someone to do it for you. People do the weirdest shit for money.
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Alternately, it's a test of what you have made of your life.
If you value working over living your own life, you're exactly what the rulers our capitalist society want you to be; a self-made slave dedicated to making more money for the high level executives and the wealthy people who own most of the stock.
The saddest part is that you're proud of your father for living his life like that and you think it's a good thing.
My advice to you is to stop trying to spend your entire life being a cog. Take time to be
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The saddest part is that you're doing a shit job and hating it and can't believe other people live happy, productive lives doing work they love.
What's there to learn? (Score:3)
CEO likes working? Gee, I wonder why. I wonder why a CEO loathes retirement while everyone under him is waiting for that day. Could it be that he gets to decide and everyone else gets to suffer from it? Could it be that he makes multi-million blunders and the people underneath him get fired for it? Could it be that he does the least work and gets the most money?
At 75, he died 75 years too late.
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Or could it be that he never managed to make anything out of himself besides somebody filling a role? How pathetic. A modern human being needs some sophistication. Obviously none of that is to be found in these people.
At 75, he died 75 years too late.
Yes, pretty much.
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These people essentially play a business sim, just with real money, real people and with the difference that they don't lose when they fuck up. They just get a load of money dumped on them and continue playing with a differently named savegame
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That is an excellent analogy. Most of these psychos certainly act as of their decisions would not affect real lives.
Probably also the same modus the Putins, Xis and Trumps of this world operate. For the religious leaders, I think they know exactly how much pain and misery and death they cause and they are fine with it.
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At 75, he died 75 years too late.
That's somewhat uncalled for. The guy was a CEO, and was also a human being.
Are you saying that all CEOs are unnecessary/dangerous/evil and should therefore be shot?
The TFA does not say that he was some modern Nero or similar.
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It may not be in the featured article, but many fans of mid to late 1990s video games believe Stolar's tenure at the US branches of Sony and Sega was responsible for killing the market for 2D video games in North America.
"If you retire, you die." (Score:2)
Way to have failed at becoming a person. How pathetic.
Wait, he fucked up the Saturn AND the Dreamcast? (Score:2)
And we're talking about him as if anything he had to say was worth hearing? He literally destroyed SEGA as a console manufacturer!
Uber Villain (Score:2)
He wanted money more than he wanted players to enjoy the games they make. This is not an example of a video games company CEO we should be promoting to the world. Let him die quietly. Nothing to admire here.
Tom Kalinske / Console Wars (Score:2)
Anyone who's any bit of a Sega fan should read Blake J. Harris's Console Wars. It covers in great depth the eponymous Genesis vs. SNES battle from the eyes of Tom Kalinske, President and CEO of Sega of America from 1990-1996.
Retirement .... (Score:2)
So many of you are criticizing this guy for wanting to work as long as possible. But IMO, he's not wrong! I'm 50 now, and getting to that age where I'm at least starting to look carefully at retirement life and how it's working out for my friends who are old enough to do it.
So far? I'd have to say it's not more than a 50/50 split between the ones who retired and love it, and the ones who retired and are now rather "lost".
EG. One guy I know was a firefighter and took advantage of an early retirement offer.
Lessons Learned (Score:2)
Beware of the dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
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