Thread by @Ghostcrawler

I’ll share a Bobby Kotick story. I have a few. I cannot 100% verify this happened since it came to me from a dear friend, but I have no reason to doubt its veracity. It stars donuts.

My friend led a group on the WoW team. One of the things they would do for team morale was to invite executives to come visit their team in a casual setting. Usually this was someone like Mike. But one day they invited Bobby.

To everyone’s stunned disbelief, Bobby said yes. But on one condition. He has just bought a new doughnut making machine and wanted to make the team doughnuts. This sounds so wholesome right?

Dear reader, you are probably imagining a doughnut unit the size of an air fryer or microwave. Something that sits on a counter maybe.

Oh no. Bobby had recently acquired something like an industrial Krispy Kreme unit. It was MASSIVE. This machine had infrastructure. It traveled about in a semi, one imagines with highly trained escorts, and perhaps armed guards. And BK was going to bring this machine to the Blizzard campus.

Many discussions ensued. Principal among these was the power draw. One does not plug these units into a standard USA 120 volt outlet. I do not know what they require, but in my mind is something like a Tesla supercharger.

There were logistics about really thick extension cords and how long they could stretch and how to avoid pedestrians from tripping over them. Then there was the question of the hundreds of PCs in the building, with you know, dev teams making armor and quests and sparkle ponies.

I don’t know if someone finally had to say no or if the Irvine Company (who owns all things in Irvine including the campus that Blizzard leases) had to be invoked.

But the doughnuts never happened. Or if they did, nobody invited me, which is also a possibility.

Bobby did visit the WoW team once or twice. He told us he wishes we were faster and less expensive, which I understand to be his trademark, but in fairness was also probably objectively true of the WoW team.

Again, this is ultimately not my story to tell, and if I thought my friend might share, I would have reserved it for them. But today when we are remembering the tenure of Bobby Kotick, it seemed worth sharing. 🍩🍩🍩

/thread