# Unconfirmed: More Layoffs at WotC



## davethegame

Chris Sims just posted this on Twitter:



> What the heck is going on at WotC? Two layoffs in RPG R&D today, at least (Torah Cottrill, Andy Collins). Me sad.




http://twitter.com/ChrisSSims/status/13740775672

Andy Collins was pretty high up there in the D&D side, and often was a public face on R&D. That's big news.


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## ggroy

More info.



> Correction: Andy Collins might not have been laid  off, but it is his last day at Wizards. My fault. Torah was laid off.




Collins may have tendered his resignation voluntarily?


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## firesnakearies

I find the number of big-name, well-known, and very talented core writers/designers laid off from WotC since 4E came out to be disturbing, and depressing.  If they ever lay off Bruce Cordell, I'm boycotting them forever.


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## davethegame

ggroy said:


> Collins may have tendered his resignation voluntarily?




Yeah, my hope is that some big software company offered him a lot of money, and not an actual lay-off as previously reported.



firesnakearies said:


> I find the number of big-name, well-known, and very talented core writers/designers laid off from WotC since 4E came out to be disturbing, and depressing.  If they ever lay off Bruce Cordell, I'm boycotting them forever.




I'm with you there!


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## Mouseferatu

Wow.

Voluntary departure or not, he'll be missed. His efforts were more or less tireless, and on a personal level, he's responsible for a lot of the opportunities I've had so far in working with WotC.

Thanks, Andy. Fair winds and following seas in whatever comes next.


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## Scribble

Well thats sad... :-/

Wish them well, whether laid off or not...


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## Jdvn1

Wow, that's definitely a shame.

I'm not very familiar with Torah--seems like he's been with WotC for less than two years?


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## Alzrius

I feel bad for Torah. Nothing like being told you're let go to ruin your day for many days to come. 

If Andy left of his own accord, I'd guess that means he has something else lined up. I just hope it's because he got a great offer, rather than being upset with his current job to the point of wanting to leave - it's always preferable to go towards something better, than trying to escape something that's becoming worse.


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## ExploderWizard

Another day at Zorg Industries.............


....._Fire a million._


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## ggroy

Jdvn1 said:


> I'm not very familiar with Torah--seems like he's been with WotC for less than two years?




Torah Cottrill appears to be an editor, who was hired back in mid-late 2008.

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (What Happens in Vegas ...)

(scroll to the "staff updates" section)


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## ki11erDM

If Andy left that makes me, for the first time, think something is a bit off with those guys.  That was Andy's dream job so ether the job changed or his dream did.  But i have yet to see any official post...


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## renau1g

Dreams are good, but they don't pay the bills. Perhaps an offer came by that was too good to pass up from a financial perspective.


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## ggroy

ki11erDM said:


> If Andy left that makes me, for the first time, think something is a bit off with those guys.  That was Andy's dream job so ether the job changed or his dream did.  But i have yet to see any official post...




It could be anything at this point, such as low morale in the workplace, management problems, etc ...


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## billd91

ggroy said:


> It could be anything at this point, such as low morale in the workplace, management problems, etc ...




It could also be knowledge that layoffs were on the way and making the decision to move on his terms - plus saving someone else (who probably gets paid less) from being laid off. I seem to recall there have been other cases of people seeing the writing on the wall and getting out before the WotC layoff hammer came down.

Odd not to be occurring at the end of the year, though. Has WotC laid off at this time of year before?


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## lurkinglidda

I'm bummed :-(


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## DaveMage

firesnakearies said:


> I find the number of big-name, well-known, and very talented core writers/designers laid off from WotC since 4E came out to be disturbing, and depressing.  If they ever lay off Bruce Cordell, I'm boycotting them forever.




With WotC, for their employees, it seems a matter of "when", not "if".  The only way to survive seems to be to leave before you're axed.  (Although, reportedly, their severence package is generous.)


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## Erik Mona

Dreams also have a way of dying hideous deaths under the aegis of bad management. 

Just sayin'.

--Erik


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## Alzrius

So who are the "big names" left at WotC at the moment? I know Bruce Cordell and Bill Slavicsek are still there.


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## dmccoy1693

Add me to the list of bummed. Best of luck in the future to those no longer working there. May you find another job soon.


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## ggroy

billd91 said:


> Odd not to be occurring at the end of the year, though. Has WotC laid off at this time of year before?




There were confirmed mid-year layoffs back in 2008.

Wizards Layoffs « Geek Related


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## DaveMage

Alzrius said:


> So who are the "big names" left at WotC at the moment? I know Bruce Cordell and Bill Slavicsek are still there.




Though he's only been there since '05 (IIRC), I'd put Mike Mearls in the category of a "big name" who is still there.


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## ggroy

Alzrius said:


> So who are the "big names" left at WotC at the moment? I know Bruce Cordell and Bill Slavicsek are still there.




Mike Mearls, James Wyatt, Richard Baker, Rodney Thompson (Star Wars SAGA) ?


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## lurkinglidda

ggroy said:


> There were confirmed mid-year layoffs back in 2008.
> 
> Wizards Layoffs « Geek Related




Indeed. WotC generally has a re-org most Decembers, but is not adverse to a mid-year round every now and then. I believe I made it though a dozen lay-offs before my number was called.


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## Steel_Wind

Alzrius said:


> So who are the "big names" left at WotC at the moment? I know Bruce Cordell and Bill Slavicsek are still there.




Chris Perkins and Mike Mearls, certainly would count. Rodney Thompson seems to be the main guy working on _Dark Sun _and the _D&D Essentials_ line. Wyatt still there?


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## Alzrius

DaveMage said:
			
		

> Though he's only been there since '05 (IIRC), I'd put Mike Mearls in the category of a "big name" who is still there.






ggroy said:


> Mike Mearls, James Wyatt, Richard Baker ?






			
				Steel_Wind said:
			
		

> Chris Perkins and Mike Mearls, certainly would count. Rodney Thompson seems to be the main guy working on Dark Sun and the D&D Essentials line.




All big names that I'd forgotten. 

Is Ed Stark still with WotC?


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## davethegame

I believe Steve Winter is still there as well, and I'd certainly consider him a big and established name.


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## wedgeski

Er, we have one (what looks to be voluntary) exit and one (what looks to be) redundancy, but could be anything. Hardly a "mid-year round of lay-offs" just yet.

Good luck to Mr. Collins wherever he goes!


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## wedgeski

lurkinglidda said:


> Indeed. WotC generally has a re-org most Decembers, but is not adverse to a mid-year round every now and then. I believe I made it though a dozen lay-offs before my number was called.



I hope this isn't too intrusive a question, but how did you guys handle the uncertainty?


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## ruemere

One of the most unbearable experiences while working for a big company is something called "project-driven management".

Because of this approach, employees are divided into project management staff and expendable specialists. 
Since the projects are oriented toward short term gains or results, once completed, the expendable specialists and surplus project management are being let go, restructured or put on hiatus pending internal assessment.

The effects of this policy should, in theory, yield predictable business plans and quantifiable results in addition to significant rate of resource output. 
In reality, due to low job security, you get low morale, cynicism, no loyalty except toward abstract numbers (or salaries). 
At the end of this rat race, all you hope for is good severance pay and someone else to work for.

Basically, this yearly layoffs and frequent restructuring indicate something like that happening at WotC... and if this is a case indeed, the best you can hope for guys you cheer for, is to let them find another place to work, and quickly. Yes, they can produce something good, but cases of burnout, health problems or simply incredible discomfort of being run like a racehorse are going to be frequent.

So, kudos to Andy Collins (and consider this a benefit if he is getting out of this out of his own free will).

Regards,
Ruemere


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## Darrin Drader

Andy's a great guy and a great designer. This comes as a surprise to me, but I suspect that his services will be in demand as he looks for a new job.


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## Fifth Element

wedgeski said:


> Er, we have one (what looks to be voluntary) exit and one (what looks to be) redundancy, but could be anything. Hardly a "mid-year round of lay-offs" just yet.



Indeed. The _*unconfirmed *_part of the thread title seems to outstrip the _*layoffs *_part, at this point at least.


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## Blastin

Gak.....I can't imagine the stress that working under those circumstances would cause...


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## Dausuul

lurkinglidda said:


> Indeed. WotC generally has a re-org most  Decembers, but is not adverse to a mid-year round every now and then. I  believe I made it though a dozen lay-offs before my number was  called.




Dear God! Layoffs every year is abysmal management. Either the executives are consistently overestimating their revenue stream, or they're consistently underestimating costs.

If you have to lay people off - not just firing bad workers, but getting rid of good workers because you can't afford to pay them - that's a huge red flag that you need to change something about your company. Every effort should be made to ensure that it's a one-time event (at least for the next few years). Multiple rounds of layoffs wreaks havoc with employee morale and sends turnover through the roof... and the people most likely to quit are the ones best able to get a job elsewhere, i.e., the best workers.

I've been pretty skeptical of claims that the D&D division of WotC is entering a TSR-like death spiral, but if they really do have layoffs every December (and sometimes an extra round in the summer!)... then either the person running the D&D line is utterly incompetent, or they know D&D as a profit-making enterprise is doomed and they're just trying to keep it going as long as they can out of love for the game.

Either way it's a bad, bad thing.


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## The Shaman

Erik Mona said:


> Dreams also have a way of dying hideous deaths under the aegis of bad management.



Ouch.

Been there. Not good.


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## Mark

Aside from their yearly X-Mas layoffs, haven't they always chopped personel at other times of the year?  Some people like Monte Cook and, apparently, Andy Collin are usually astute enough to see these things coming and arrange to make a move before it happens to them, but this doesn't only happen at the one time of year, IIRC.  Scott Rouse wasn't a X-Mas thing either, was he?  Of course, Chris Sims will likely get called on the carpet for leaking the info and it'll be weeks before more of this is known but at corporations with this built into the nusiness model these usually come in bunches not in ones and twos.


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## Mark

Dausuul said:


> If you have to lay people off - not just firing bad workers, but getting rid of good workers because you don't have enough work for them - that's a huge red flag that you need to change something about your company.





That's actually part of the business model not a coincidental thing that they just haven't noticed is a trend.


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## lurkinglidda

wedgeski said:


> I hope this isn't too intrusive a question, but how did you guys handle the uncertainty?




You rely on each other for support. We formed bonds as we went through the traumatic times together. We became family and support systems for each other. And when we lost someone it hurt. Even if you yourself have already been let go it still hurts.  

There's a grieving period. You deal with survivor's guilt. Then you get back to work and keep your nose down for a few months. 

Also, I packed up my desk about once a year, so in case I was let go it wouldn't take long for me to get out of dodge. When I was let go I was out in 20 minutes.


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## Darrin Drader

Dausuul said:


> Dear God! Layoffs every year is abysmal management. Either the executives are consistently overestimating their revenue stream, or they're consistently underestimating costs.




There's also option 3: the expectations of the parent company exceed the earning potential of a particular brand. Niche, specialized games, even when it's the biggest one in its category, isn't enough to justify the expenses to a large corporation. Put the same game in the hands of a smaller gaming company, one that is used to running on a tight budget, and it would seem to them like money was raining down from heaven, even with the number of employees WotC has.


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## Dausuul

Mark said:


> That's actually part of the business model not a coincidental thing that they just haven't noticed is a trend.




Seriously? That's their business model - to shrink the business year by year? What's the long-term strategy then? Do they expect to revive the product with 5E or just let it wither away altogether?

...I suppose the latter could be a viable strategy, actually. If you honestly don't think D&D has a future, but there's profit to be had now, then squeeze it for what it's worth until the well runs dry. But it's a pretty grim outlook if that's the case.



Darrin Drader said:


> There's also option 3: the expectations of  the parent company exceed the earning potential of a particular brand.  Niche, specialized games, even when it's the biggest ones in its  category, isn't enough to justify the expenses to a large corporation.  Put the same game in the hands of a smaller gaming company, one that is  used to running on a tight budget, and it would seem to them like money  was raining down on them, even with the number of employees WotC  has.




To me that falls under the heading of "overestimating revenue stream." If the company isn't earning enough to justify ownership by the parent company, and attempts to change the situation fail, then the parent should a) spin the company off, b) sell it, or c) liquidate it.

But I will certainly grant the possibility that the mismanagement is coming from Hasbro rather than WotC.


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## firesnakearies

Sounds like a horrible business model, to me.

I mean, I'm not saying that it might not _work_, that it might not be very profitable for the company.

It's just . . . unfortunate.


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## DaveMage

Dausuul said:


> What's the long-term strategy then?




Maximize profit.


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## wedgeski

Dausuul said:


> I've been pretty skeptical of claims that the D&D division of WotC is entering a TSR-like death spiral, but if they really do have layoffs every December (and sometimes an extra round in the summer!)... then either the person running the D&D line is utterly incompetent, or they know D&D as a profit-making enterprise is doomed and they're just trying to keep it going as long as they can out of love for the game.



It's been going on like this for a long time, back to early 3E and 3.5 days. It's just the way they roll over there.


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## MortonStromgal

Darrin Drader said:


> There's also option 3: the expectations of the parent company exceed the earning potential of a particular brand. Niche, specialized games, even when it's the biggest ones in its category, isn't enough to justify the expenses to a large corporation. Put the same game in the hands of a smaller gaming company, one that is used to running on a tight budget, and it would seem to them like money was raining down on them, even with the number of employees WotC has.




/Agree

Lets be honest they bought WOTC for Pokemon, which then underperformed. I wouldn't be surprised if expectations are far to high.


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## davethegame

Mark said:


> Of course, Chris Sims will likely get called on the carpet for leaking the info and it'll be weeks before more of this is known but at corporations with this built into the nusiness model these usually come in bunches not in ones and twos.




Huh? "Called on the carpet" by who?


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## CleverNickName

Wow...sorry, guys.  It sucks to be between jobs, whether it's voluntary or not.  I wish you the best, and hope you guys get back into a new routine soon.

Layoffs always make me worry about a company, even if they are part of the "business model."  It's such a messy, painful way to do business.


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## ggroy

Mark said:


> Of course, Chris Sims will likely get called on the carpet for leaking the info




Chris Sims was canned back in the xmas 2009 layoffs.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...offs-rob-heinsoo-logan-bonner-chris-sims.html


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## wedgeski

Dausuul said:


> Seriously? That's their business model--to shrink the business year by year? What's the long-term strategy then? Do they expect to revive the product with 5E or just let it wither away altogether?



You need far fewer people to maintain an edition than you do to create it in the first place. It's probably as simple as that.


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## Mark

Dausuul said:


> Seriously? That's their business model--to shrink the business year by year? What's the long-term strategy then?





Cull the herd to keep salaries down and pick up fresh meat when gearing up for a new edition from among the best and brightest in the industry while keeping a few old hands on to smooth the transition.  Easier to do in the days when WotC supported the OGL and they could easily spot the odd Mearls or two.  There will always be young turks willing to pack up their lives and move cross country to work in the big show, even if it only means for a year or two with constant job insecurity.  I'm sure a lot of the staff was expecting the X-Mas layoffs (and these new losses) after the brand manager switch that herladed, in house, the run up to the "Essentials" revision of this edition.  Things always get spun with the air of stability but the cycles are easier to read if you ignore the verbal spin that accompanies it.


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## Mark

davethegame said:


> Huh? "Called on the carpet" by who?







ggroy said:


> Chris Sims was canned back in the xmas 2009 layoffs.
> 
> http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...offs-rob-heinsoo-logan-bonner-chris-sims.html





Oh, that's right.  Poor fellow.  I hope he has landed on his feet.  Well, maybe that means the pipeline for more information won't be as easy to squelch.  We'll have to see if his source remains fluid.


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## Dausuul

Mark said:


> Cull the herd to keep salaries down and pick up fresh meat when gearing up for a new edition from among the best and brightest in the industry while keeping a few old hands on to smooth the transition.  Easier to do in the days when WotC supported the OGL and they could easily spot the odd Mearls or two.  There will always be young turks willing to pack up their lives and move cross country to work in the big show, even if it only means for a year or two with constant job insecurity.  I'm sure a lot of the staff was expecting the X-Mas layoffs (and these new losses) after the brand manager switch that herladed, in house, the run up to the "Essentials" revision of this edition.  Things always get spun with the air of stability but the cycles are easier to read if you ignore the verbal spin that accompanies it.




Yeesh. Well, I guess some companies roll that way, and WotC has enough starry-eyed gamers eager to design games for a living (and no real competition in their tiny niche market) that they'll never lack for "fresh meat." Still, I maintain that a company which adopts such strategies is a company with problems. Good, experienced people should be worth higher salaries, and creative folks are seldom at their best when working in an atmosphere of dread.

If it were just laying off a bunch of folks once the new edition was up to speed, that'd be one thing, but "ramping down" from an edition change should be a one-time event (or once per edition), not a fresh round of layoffs every year.


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## ruemere

wedgeski said:


> You need far fewer people to maintain an edition than you do to create it in the first place. It's probably as simple as that.




Common reasoning, seriously flawed in context of long term endeavors.

Producing knowledge/information/content results also in certain culture and information barrier one has to scale to join the group of creative people. Once you fire people who made the product in he first place, you will have to deal with severance costs (of those leaving) and then introduction costs while hiring new developers.

Since there is time gap between these two points in time, it is quite often not factored in enterprise cost plan... however, cost is cost, and while clever accounting people can hide it, it is still there. Additionally, replacing creative people produces significant risk of damaging the brand - it is just betting that new folks are not worse that veterans who left.

To put it short: extremely shortsighted policy, results in short time gains at the expense of longterm profitability and quite often quality.
Oh, and it's evil - an employee is a commodity, not a person according to this perspective.

Regards,
Ruemere


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## billd91

lurkinglidda said:


> You rely on each other for support. We formed bonds as we went through the traumatic times together. We became family and support systems for each other. And when we lost someone it hurt. Even if you yourself have already been let go it still hurts.
> 
> There's a grieving period. You deal with survivor's guilt. Then you get back to work and keep your nose down for a few months.
> 
> Also, I packed up my desk about once a year, so in case I was let go it wouldn't take long for me to get out of dodge. When I was let go I was out in 20 minutes.




Cripes, that sounds like a stressful environment.


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## Thornir Alekeg

It seems to me like it is a strategy of bringing in new people, picking their creative minds for a while, then cycling some of them out to make space for new brains to pick rather than expect the many current ones to come up with new ideas.  

Fresh meat = Fresh ideas


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## Ampersand999

One other possibility is that this is a part of a round of Hasbro-wide layoffs. Then their shareholders will presumably like, and the stock will soar after their latest quarterly conference call, or even before it. It's not like they are expecting their products to be the profit producers that they have been all together. Why hasn't Hasbro tried to sell off Wizards to another company by now is beyond me, even I am aware that selling off underperforming subdivisions of their company isn't Hasbro's usual modus operandi.


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## ggroy

Ampersand999 said:


> Why hasn't Hasbro tried to sell off Wizards to another company by now is beyond me, even I am aware that selling off underperforming subdivisions of their company isn't Hasbro's usual modus operandi.




In the event that Hasbro sells off the D&D intellectual property, most likely it will not come cheap.  No idea offhand who in the tabletop pen-and-paper rpg business would have the deep pockets to make such a huge acquisition.


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## firesnakearies

Sometimes I forget why I hate corporations.  Now I remember.


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## ggroy

More from Chris Sims' twitter feed.



> My sources say WotC laid off Andy Collins, Jesse  Decker, and Torah Cottrill today. Peter Schaefer left lastFriday. Sad #dnd day for me. =(


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## JohnRTroy

> Easier to do in the days when WotC supported the OGL and they could easily spot the odd Mearls or two. There will always be young turks willing to pack up their lives and move cross country to work in the big show, even if it only means for a year or two with constant job insecurity




Just a correction, it wasn't "easier to do" under the OGL, as many or most TSR employees got it through that method.  Warren Spector came from Toon and SJG, Monte Cook from Rolemaster, many others via Dragon submissions or other industry work.  So this has always been true, and will always be true.

But, I think the sad thing is now is that the game market is somewhat depressed, and with WoTC being at the head of the pack, the only way to go is down if you go with another publisher.  The OGL did lead to a lot of former WoTC staff forming their own labels, but that market has depressed and I don't think those spin off opportunities are there.

So, I can only see people going in a few directions:  The only place "up" in the same industry is the computer game market.  It's possible they could end up at Paizo, White Wolf, or elsewhere, but 

More likely, they will have to get a job in another field.  Which might be better, financially speaking, but I have a feeling we'll be seeing more creative types taking this action in the future, and I know people will miss them.


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## lurkinglidda

JohnRTroy said:


> More likely, they will have to get a job in another field. Which might be better, financially speaking, but I have a feeling we'll be seeing more creative types taking this action in the future, and I know people will miss them.



Case in point. I now market seafood. These people wouldn't know an orc if it hit them. 

*gasp* I just saw Jesse's name on the list. That makes me a very sad panda. :-(


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## Darrin Drader

lurkinglidda said:


> *gasp* I just saw Jesse's name on the list. That makes me a very sad panda. :-(




Me too. He and I share the same alma mater, and I owe a lot to him for his time as the editor in chief of Dragon.


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## ggroy

Here is Peter Schaefer's resignation post on his WotC blog.

Whoops! Browser Settings Incompatible

http://community.wizards.com/wotc_peters/blog/?pref_tab=blog


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## I'm A Banana

Peter Schaefer and Jesse Decker and Andy Collins are all names I recognize from stuff I've loved.

From the "big names left" category, Rich Baker does OK, Rodney Thompson does boffo stuff, Mearls can be a bit hit or miss (he's got a strong "simple is better" vein that tends to remove the interesting complexity from things that need it, IMO, but he's also done some great stuff), and a lot of the time I think Wyatt is trying to design a game I'm not really that interest in playing. 

That's not a bad record. But I generally thought Collins and I were on a lot of the same pages. 

....is it too dorky that I can list of D&D devs like some folks list off pitchers for the Yankees/Lead singers in Black Flag? 

Anyway, it's sad whenever anyone gets the axe, but here's hoping they can find lucrative careers in the booming videogame industry. Each ending is the opportunity for a new beginning, and you don't all have to go into making Gorton's Fisherman commercial like Linae.


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## nedjer

The tabletop RPG industry has been chasing the videogame industry's tail for long enough. If it continues to do so the videogame industry will turn round and swallow tabletop gaming whole. The jobs and the 'value' lie in USPs, creativity and integrity; not tie-ins.


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## Matt James

My thoughts and prayers are out for these guys. I have worked with a couple of them and this is a shock. Here's hoping they land on their feet.


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## Erik Mona

I find rumors that they laid off Jesse Decker to be so shocking that I will not believe it until it is confirmed from multiple sources.

Pics or it didn't happen!

--Erik


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## Doug McCrae

lurkinglidda said:


> Case in point. I now market seafood. These people wouldn't know an orc if it hit them.



By strange coincidence, orc can also refer to a sea monster. There's a chapter in Orlando Furioso, The Orc, in which Rugero battles such a beast while mounted on a hippogriff. It's described as having tusks like a boar, which might be why orcs in early D&D products (like the cover of Keep on the Borderlands) are depicted as pig-men.


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## Erik Mona

Ok, that was quick. Confirmed from about four sources.

AMAZING.

--Erik


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## ggroy

Erik Mona said:


> I find rumors that they laid off Jesse Decker to be so shocking




What would this signify if true?


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## Erik Mona

Well, not much given the other top-tier talent the company sheds on a semi-annual basis, but my understanding was that Jesse had taken on many of Scott Rouse's brand management duties over the last several months. He's also a great guy and one of the hardest workers I've ever had the pleasure to work with, so it's just surprising is all. 

--Erik


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## Psion

ggroy said:


> More from Chris Sims' twitter feed.




I shouldn't be shocked by this sort of news anymore.


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## Edgewood

Just so I understand this, and perhaps those who worked at WoTC in the past could clarify, but when one is hired, do they have you sign a term contract? Do they advise you that this is not a permanent arrangement? With WoTC's record for laying off folks (no matter how talented, or seemingly integral they may be), that must create a hostile work environment if they don't. Can someone enlighten?


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## Dark Mistress

Wow, at this rate it won't be that much longer and I doubt i will reconise anyone's name that works at WoTC anymore.


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## Zaukrie

Layoffs suck. I hate that word, but it's the right word. They suck for everyone involved. I can't believe that Jesse Decker got it. As an outsider, that just seemed like a name that would somehow last the ages....Good luck to everyone - I hope you find a job you are passionate about (or you get to retire or something).


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## lurkinglidda

Edgewood said:


> Just so I understand this, and perhaps those who worked at WoTC in the past could clarify, but when one is hired, do they have you sign a term contract? Do they advise you that this is not a permanent arrangement? With WoTC's record for laying off folks (no matter how talented, or seemingly integral they may be), that must create a hostile work environment if they don't. Can someone enlighten?



Most employees are "at will." Perhaps 10% are on contract.


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## Flatus Maximus

Edgewood said:


> Do they advise you that this is not a permanent arrangement?




They don't have to. This isn't the Supreme Court.


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## Alzrius

lurkinglidda said:


> Case in point. I now market seafood. These people wouldn't know an orc if it hit them.




Would they know a sahuagin? 

All kidding aside though, its sad to hear about Peter and Jesse leaving also. WotC seems to be whittling away at all the D&D guys I know faster than they're letting new talent grow in their company.


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## Dausuul

Flatus Maximus said:


> They don't have to. This isn't the Supreme Court.




Granted, but this isn't a question of legal obligations. It's about professional courtesy and, frankly, basic good management. If you hire people and tell them it's only for a year, and then after a year you let them go, they'll be more productive and creative than if they spend their days waiting with bated breath for the axe to fall.

Layoffs are BAD. If you just need some short-term labor, hire temps or bring in freelancers. But laying off long-term workers should be reserved for emergency situations, where you have a great yawning hole in your balance sheet and no other way to bridge the gap. And if you do find yourself in that situation, it's important to be up front with your workers about what you're doing and why. Layoffs as an ongoing strategy are moronic.


----------



## HyrumOWC

Dausuul said:


> Layoffs as an ongoing strategy are moronic.




Yes, but fairely routine in the game industry. WotC used to have their annual layoffs, and Upper Deck was having layoffs every 6 months for the past 3 years.

Hyrum.
Super Genius Games
"We err on the side of awesome."


----------



## Flatus Maximus

Dausuul said:


> Granted, but this isn't a question of legal obligations.




If they signed a contract, then there might be some surprise (shouldn't be if they are students of history) but they still get paid. Otherwise, they are just like the rest of us. I'm not saying it ain't a cryin' shame...


----------



## I'm A Banana

To all those laid off, or those facing lay offs, or those who may be hired in the next month or two who will inevitably be laid off, may I suggest a cathartic game of mini golf?


----------



## Dausuul

Flatus Maximus said:


> If they signed a contract, then there might be some surprise (shouldn't be if they are students of history) but they still get paid. Otherwise, they are just like the rest of us. I'm not saying it ain't a cryin' shame...




Again - it isn't about getting paid and it isn't about the legal status of the employees. It's about running a company in a halfway sensible way.

I work on an at-will basis, like pretty much everyone I know who isn't in academia or the public sector. My boss _could_ walk up to me tomorrow and say, "You're fired. Grab your coat and be out of here in ten minutes." And in the absence of provable discrimination or malfeasance, there wouldn't be a damn thing I could do about it. I wouldn't even get severance pay if they didn't feel like giving it to me.

However, if my boss did that, he'd be shooting himself and the company in the foot. For one thing, he'd be losing all the knowledge I've built up about the company and its operations over the last six and a half years. I know the ins and outs of all kinds of systems, in a way that my replacement would take a very long time to learn.

And for another thing, it'd freak out the rest of the department. Nobody wants to work in a place where the brass goes around firing employees without warning. If it happened repeatedly, everybody would be polishing their resumes and keeping an eye open for new jobs, and the people who would be quickest to find those new jobs would be the best workers. Meanwhile, the people still there would be in CYA mode at all times.

I'm not saying WotC can't do it, legally - clearly they can. I'm not saying it doesn't happen - clearly it does. I'm just saying it's a shortsighted and self-destructive way to run a business.


----------



## MerricB

I'm saddened to learn more people I like and respect will be leaving Wizards of the Coast.

What I find amazing that there are still people that I like and respect there, but the company keeps changing its personnel roster, and I'm finding it hard to keep up. Rodney Thompson's still there, isn't he?

It's worth noting that Wizards no longer has the Star Wars license; how much that has affected available placings is an open question. You'd imagine it would be a relatively minor thing, but this company baffles me as to how it handles its people.


----------



## Steel_Wind

Mark said:


> Cull the herd to keep salaries down and pick up fresh meat when gearing up for a new edition from among the best and brightest in the industry while keeping a few old hands on to smooth the transition.  Easier to do in the days when WotC supported the OGL and they could easily spot the odd Mearls or two.  There will always be young turks willing to pack up their lives and move cross country to work in the big show, even if it only means for a year or two with constant job insecurity.




I don't doubt that this probably is their thinking. BUT... I have no idea whether this has anything to do with today's events or not. 

Let's assume for the moment that they are *not* connected. 

I accept that what you state appears to be the _modus operandi_ of WotC, generally speaking, when it comes to their RPG department over the past eight years under Hasbro's ownership.

As a short-term business strategy, it's difficult to argue with this approach. It makes sense. Problem is, this has been a _modus operandi_ for so long, _i*t's no longer a short term strategy*_ .  No - I would say that it's a part of the firm culture at WotC by now.

Does that matter? I would argue that once it might not have - but it does when there are competitors for the talent in the marketplace -- and that talent has goodwill and legitimacy attached to their name, too.

I would also argue that throwing out the experienced designers to go freelance for your competitors sounded like a reasonable strategy when under the OGL -- the freelancing was directed at ultimately creating things which supported your products anyway.

Now? Now I would say that several of those chickens have come home to roost over the past decade. 

They dismissed a wide swath of staff when Paizo was spun off. Paizo was then garbed in the legitimacy of "true stewards" of the game when they were the creative talents behind _Dungeon _and _Dragon_. When the principal people who created the 3.xx game leave the company and end up freelancing (or being hired by ) Paizo?

Not so good - but still - not necessarily bad if it's 2005.

But fast forward to the end of the decade and things aren't nearly so brightly-colored. Paizo continues to enjoy the benefit of "name talent" by people now creating _Pathfinder_ products for them. Paizo's staff remains at a manageable size (same now as when the periodical division was first spuin off if I recall Lisa Stevens recent comments) -- but Paizo has a ton of goodwill -- and WotC does not. 

And if Paizo has to compete to hire staff vs. someone at WotC? Paizo doesn't have the spectre of "we'll fire you at the end of the quarter" when they are hiring, either. 

All by way of saying: WotC can manage to get away with that sort of staffing approach with name talent and act like a monopolist *only for so long as they actually are one. *

The problem is, many of WotC's business decisions in the past decade seem to have been focussed on ensuring that if they are a monopolist (and I would argue that for all intents and purposes, they were in 2001) -- they seem bound and determined not to remain one in the decade to come.


----------



## ExploderWizard

Dausuul said:


> I'm not saying WotC can't do it, legally - clearly they can. I'm not saying it doesn't happen - clearly it does. I'm just saying it's a shortsighted and self-destructive way to run a business.




Heh. George Steinbrenner did ok.


----------



## Remathilis

While I didn't agree with Collins on some of his design theories (esp. during the 3.0 -> 3.5 era) He was a strong writer and and designer.

Sigh, I'm glad I don't buy WotC anymore; most of the people I liked are gone. In fact, its down to Cordell and Thompson.


----------



## Fifth Element

firesnakearies said:


> Sometimes I forget why I hate corporations.  Now I remember.



You should probably narrow that down a bit. I own a corporation, and run my business through it. Do you hate my corporation too?


----------



## GMforPowergamers

I was working for a company (I considered it a career not just a job) and was an up and comer... then we lost our 2 biggest accounts int he same week. We tried for over a year to stay afloat... I was layed off about 10 months into that year... but finaly we had to close. 

  From there I bounced almost right back... 3 month later I was an account manager at another job, and thing look good... until 7 1/2 months in to that job (Not even a full year from my last layoff) the new company merged with another, and everyone with less then a year in was layed off...

    I have done 4 diffrent temp jobs, and 3 stints in the US census... and now have a longterm temp office job that ends right before the 4th of july...

   in 3 years I have gone through 9 jobs... through no fault of my own... My heart goes out to the people who lost there jobs, but really it is kinda comon place today...


----------



## Qwillion

My hope is they land on their feet, and find an even better job.


----------



## Azgulor

billd91 said:


> Cripes, that sounds like a stressful environment.




It is.  I went through it in a different industry, but the culture sounds exactly like what I lived through.

The survivor's guilt is real.  When the pattern first emerges, you tell yourself it was just bad luck.  Once you can predict the pattern, you swing from survivor's guilt to constant fear/paranoia you're next.  

In my situation, I was blessed to find a better job and exit on my own terms. Being stuck in the previous environment aged me - or at least the constant stress wore at me in a way that was obvious to anyone who knew me.  I was blown away by the number of people who didn't know I had changed jobs but commented on how I "looked younger".  Smiling will do that, I suppose.

I wish those affected the best.  I hope that those who left before them moved on to bigger and brighter futures.

And before everyone says, "that's corporate America", BS.  I'm a capitalist and a fan of corporate America.  The job I left was a culture that was stressful and avoidable.  The job that I moved to was so far away from that culture it was breathtaking. 

Bottom line: Corporate vision counts.  Management philosophies count.  Corporate priorities count.  _*Employees and customers *_count.  WotC isn't the way it is b/c it _has_ to be.  WotC is the way it is b/c that's what those running it have decided it _should or must_ be.

I'm an outsider with no claim to criticize other than the Internet let's me do so.  Feel free to discard my opinion without reservation.  I'm just a guy in corporate America who's seen the view from a poorly-run company and a well-run company.

Whatever anyone thinks of my analysis of WotC's business plan/management style, when you can set your watch by annual or bi-annual layoffs, then it's an irrefutable pattern -- it's intentional.  If WotC had a problem with it, they'd find a way to change it.  I have yet to see a WotC employee, current or future, that has indicated that the WotC execs are bothered by the cycle, let alone trying to change it.  

And don't play the Hasbro card, either.  Hasbro's involvement probably starts and stops with "meet these profit targets".  The WotC Execs call the shots on how those targets are met or what actions are necessary when they aren't.


I keep hearing "it's typical for the game industry" and maybe it is.  However, Linae's comments are the closest I've ever seen to employees knowing it's the nature of the beast.  If it's truly that widely known AND people still willing commit to a job that they know is short-term in nature than I sincerely tip my hat to you.  You have more guts than I do to pursue your dreams at the sacrifice of financial stability.  Your love of the hobby has helped me enjoy & sustain my love the hobby and you have my sincere thanks. (Even if I'm not a 4e fan.)


----------



## Derulbaskul

My condolences to all who have been affected.

This is one of the many aspects I hate, loathe and detest about large US corporates (in particular); somehow churning through staff is seen as a virtue.

On a positive note, my understanding is that salaries in this (pseudo-) industry are extraordinarily low. These folks clearly have talent and a solid work ethic so I am sure that there are more significant rewards available from a range of other employers. Good luck to them all.

I do hope that either Hasbro is able to do a _Transformers_ with the D&D brand and create a movie which is a major box office success so that D&D is no longer the red-headed stepchild of their brands. Unfortunately, D&D is simply not big enough for Hasbro; I can only hope a smaller group steps up to the plate to buy them out.

(Heck, if it wasn't an American company I would put my private equity contacts together and have a go at doing the deal. However, there are too many risks with doing business in the USA particularly when large litigious corporates are involved.)


----------



## Steel_Wind

MerricB said:


> I'm saddened to learn more people I like and respect will be leaving Wizards of the Coast.
> 
> What I find amazing that there are still people that I like and respect there, but the company keeps changing its personnel roster, and I'm finding it hard to keep up. Rodney Thompson's still there, isn't he?
> 
> It's worth noting that Wizards no longer has the Star Wars license; how much that has affected available placings is an open question. You'd imagine it would be a relatively minor thing, but this company baffles me as to how it handles its people.




Rodney Thompson is still at WotC. He is lead designer on _Dark Sun_, wrote three of the forthcoming  _D&D Essentials_ books and has worked on/is working on some other as yet unannounced projects.  He was the only full time designer from _Star Wars :Saga Edition_ who was full time staff at WotC. 

The rest of the SW:SE game series (every one of the 13 hardcover expansion books) all utilized freelance designers.


----------



## Steel_Wind

Morrus is reporting Peter Schaefer and Jesse Decker(!) left WotC as well today.

Wasn't Jesse Decker the Manager of Development for all RPGs at WotC? As in -- that's one hell of a pretty senior guy to get the axe/depart the company.

*shakes head*

No WAY would I work for a company like that. Not a frikkin chance.


----------



## MerricB

Steel_Wind said:


> Morrus is reporting Peter Schaefer and Jesse Decker(!) left WotC as well today.
> 
> Wasn't Jesse Decker the Manager of Development for all RPGs at WotC? As in -- that's one hell of a pretty senior guy to get the axe/depart the company.
> 
> *shakes head*
> 
> No WAY would I work for a company like that. Not a frikkin chance.




Well, even if you _were_ working for a company like that, it probably wouldn't be for _very long_...

Peter left voluntarily. Andy Collins may have done so. (per Chris Sims' tweeting).

Cheers!


----------



## The Ghost

To those who lost their jobs today... I wish you the best.

To those "in the know"... were the layoffs limited to those who work on the D&D brand or were there also layoffs on WotC's other brands (M:tG, A&A, Duelmasters, etc.)?


----------



## Klaus

Dausuul said:


> I work on an at-will basis, like pretty much everyone I know who isn't in academia or the public sector. My boss _could_ walk up to me tomorrow and say, "You're fired. Grab your coat and be out of here in ten minutes." And in the absence of provable discrimination or malfeasance, there wouldn't be a damn thing I could do about it. I wouldn't even get severance pay if they didn't feel like giving it to me.




That is one thing I like in Brazilian labor law: after you've been hired for more than three months, your employer can't fire you without just cause. If he does, he has to pay you an additional 1/3rd of your salary. And he's obligated by law to give you a 30-day forewarning (so no "be out in 10 minutes"). Plus, an employee who's fired can access the special savings account the government sets up for every working citizen (which otherwise would only be available at retirement).


Back on topic: I wish the best to all involved. Jesse Decker reviewed my first Dragon article, back in issue 274 (1999).

Smooth sailings to all!


----------



## Scott_Rouse

I am sad to hear that people have lost their jobs. Having been on both sides of the table it is a gut wrenching experience and I don't envy anyone involved. Wizards lost some amazing game designers, business people, marketing experts, and editors today.  Many of whom I worked with for years and consider good friends.  

  Having recently gone through this myself I thought I'd share my perspective on losing my job.

It was the worst day of my life.

Working at Wizards was amazing. It was (and still is) a collection of incredibly talented people, making fantastic games, that enrich the lives of those who play them. I cherish the nine and a half years I worked there and I would not trade the experience for anything. For this, losing my job at Wizards was one of the worst days of my life. I went through all the stages of emotion, from guilt through anger, but I never spent too much time dwelling on the negativity of my situation. For the five months I was out of work, I treated my unemployment as a chance to reconnect with my family and reflect on my career with specific intent of coming out of the situation in a better place. Yes, it sucked being on unemployment for five months, applying for over a hundred jobs, going on a dozen interviews and getting passed over. It was a difficult period in my life but in that time I learned from failure, celebrated success, and grew as a person. Onward and upward was my mantra. 



It was the best day of my life

  7 months later, I can comfortably say that losing my job at Wizards was one of the best days of my life because it forced me to realize that there was something bigger and better out there for me. Early on in my job search, I decided that I wanted to work on the Xbox business at Microsoft. After countless job applications and many interviews,  I landed a job working on partnerships and promotions for Xbox 360 and first party game titles (e.g. Halo).  After two months, I feel like my career in the games industry is on a new trajectory and I couldn't be happier. I work at an amazing company, with an outstanding group of people, and every day I learn more about the games business. 

    Today, I am sad for my friends and loss they are feeling. But I can't forget that many of my former WOTC colleagues have moved onto greater opportunity and tomorrow brings the hope that Andy, Jesse, Peter, and all those affected will soon be onto bigger and better opportunities. 

Onward and upwards friends.


----------



## Raven Crowking

So, can you confirm that each employee must roll 1d20 every quarter, and if the die comes up on a natural "1" they are layed off?  Is there a bonus if you roll "20"?

All the best to all who lost their jobs.

I couldn't work under those conditions.


RC


----------



## DaveMage

Azgulor said:


> And before everyone says, "that's corporate America", BS.  I'm a capitalist and a fan of corporate America.  The job I left was a culture that was stressful and avoidable.  The job that I moved to was so far away from that culture it was breathtaking.
> 
> Bottom line: Corporate vision counts.  Management philosophies count.  Corporate priorities count.  _*Employees and customers *_count.  WotC isn't the way it is b/c it _has_ to be.  WotC is the way it is b/c that's what those running it have decided it _should or must_ be.




Exactly.


----------



## amethal

Dausuul said:


> I work on an at-will basis, like pretty much everyone I know who isn't in academia or the public sector. My boss _could_ walk up to me tomorrow and say, "You're fired. Grab your coat and be out of here in ten minutes." And in the absence of provable discrimination or malfeasance, there wouldn't be a damn thing I could do about it. I wouldn't even get severance pay if they didn't feel like giving it to me.



Is that normal for the USA? And does it work both ways?

If 90% of WotC staff are on an "at will basis", then in theory can they all decide at lunch time that they fancy a change, and quit with immediate effect? That doesn't seem like a very sensible way to run a business.


----------



## JediSoth

amethal said:


> Is that normal for the USA? And does it work both ways?
> 
> If 90% of WotC staff are on an "at will basis", then in theory can they all decide at lunch time that they fancy a change, and quit with immediate effect? That doesn't seem like a very sensible way to run a business.





It's more of a state thing than a national thing. In some states, employers must show cause before they can arbitrarily downsize. In other states, employment is at-will and can be terminated at any time by either party without cause (as is in the case in Indiana and, apparently, Washington, among others). It's very attractive for larger employers. Not so much for the employees. It takes a long time to develop a sense of job security when you work in an at-will state.


----------



## Zaran

> Originally Posted by *Dausuul*
> 
> 
> _Dear God! Layoffs every year is abysmal management. Either the executives are consistently overestimating their revenue stream, or they're consistently underestimating costs._




Or they are just wanting to increase their profits for the year.  Looking at their books.  They are consisting giving us less product for our dollar.   And to me, the Essentials line is just repackaging what they already have so I figure they have too much developement staff for what they need.  

I also think that letting the Star Wars license go was a profit decision.  I would like to know if they lost money on the Saga line or they just didn't make enough to impress some corporate big wig.   But with Star Wars getting a live action TV show soon I can't see that being a good decision.  Who else could handle the cost of that license?


----------



## Eridanis

Scott_Rouse said:


> It was the worst day of my life.
> 
> It was the best day of my life.




Can't give you XP, so I'll say thanks for sharing your experience. I'm glad things have worked out well for you, and I hope those affected by these layoffs have a similar journey of self-discovery.


----------



## Raven Crowking

Covered.


----------



## Desdichado

Dausuul said:


> I'm not saying WotC can't do it, legally - clearly they can. I'm not saying it doesn't happen - clearly it does. I'm just saying it's a shortsighted and self-destructive way to run a business.



You keep saying this.  WotC continues to thrive.

Perhaps you don't know what shortsighted and self-destructive mean?


----------



## Raven Crowking

I tend to think of "thriving" as being characterized by vigorous growth.  This seems the opposite, although it might lead to WotC prospering.


RC


----------



## crazy_monkey1956

Not sure if this has been noticed yet, but Andy Collins confirms his departure in his latest blog.


----------



## Silverblade The Ench

More reason to hate the Corporate World of abuse and stupidity.

Hm, the Blood War really does exist! Corporate exec devils ruling through fear and greed, vs stock market demons bringing the world to ruin!!
Muhaha! 

*plays Sympathy for the WOTC by The Rolling Stones*


----------



## ggroy

Silverblade The Ench said:


> *plays Sympathy for the WOTC by The Rolling Stones*




Pleased to meet you.  Hope you guess my game.


----------



## TerraDave

Hobo said:


> You keep saying this.  WotC continues to thrive.




They continue to exist. With smaller and smaller staff. Thats all we know. So its not (yet) _suicidal_, but it can be other things.


----------



## MrMyth

TerraDave said:


> They continue to exist. With smaller and smaller staff. Thats all we know. So its not (yet) _suicidal_, but it can be other things.




Except they have been doing this since the start of 3rd Edition. The staff fluctuates, but I don't know if there is any indication it has shrunk to a fraction of its former self. 

For myself, I wish all the best to those moving on, and the hopes of quickly finding new and better things to comes. 

As far as WotC itself, I don't feel it is the best practice, nor is it the sort of environment in which I'd want to work. But as a corporation, it is the sort of decision they have the right to make, and I certainly don't have the relevant experience or authority to be making judgement calls about how terrible a strategy it is or not.


----------



## Wicht

Hobo said:


> Perhaps you don't know what shortsighted and self-destructive mean?




Shortsighted means trading in long term good/gain for immediate profit/gratification.  

Self Destructive means engaging in behavior that will eventually lead to ruin or loss.  

Being able to point to an immediate benefit from an action does not negate the possibility that it is both short-sighted and destructive.  It is impossible in the short term to say with certainty and accuracy that a particular behavior is not short-sighted as we cannot predict the future.  It is easier though to point to certian things and conclude, based on prior experience, that there might eventually be problems.  For instance, a man who insists on continually driving drunk might be able to say, truthfully, "I've never had an accident yet." But I would feel confident in saying that he will if he does not change his behavior.

Creating a hostile work environment can not have long term benefits and will eventually produce detrimental results, though they may not be immediatelly obvious. Profits may indeed be up and creative people may still work in such a place.  But eventually, there will be that talent who decides they would rather have security than that moment of bliss and so will go elsewhere.  You will have moments in which good people, who do work for you now, will decide its not worth it and leave.  The full ramifications may be impossible to predict but one cannot help but feel that they will eventually, over the long term, manifest.  

All that aside, I hope for the best for those people who are now seeking other work.


----------



## Hadrian the Builder

We don't know the sales numbers so we DON'T have facts on D&D's performance, so we can't conclude with certainly that this management policy has any effect, destructive or otherwise, on the brand. It's hard to analyze WotC's management decisions and conclude that their revolving door is entirely exploitve and "bad".

For one, probably everyone that works at WotC, and every prospective employee knows the company's reputation for anuual layoffs. And knowing gives you the power to prepare somewhat.

Second, working at WotC means putting "WotC, a subsidiary of Hasbro" on one's resume. That pedigree helps when looking for a new job.

Finally, I don't know about how good the pay and benefits are, but a primary benefit is that you get paid to play and create for the game you love. If you know that you're likely to be laid off eventually anyways, you enjoy it the best you can, for as long as you can, and plan an exit strategy.

If you really believe that Wizards is in a tailspin then buy from Paizo. When (IF) the time comes that Hasbro decides to unload the D&D brand due to poor perfomance, I bet Lisa Stevens has the smarts and the wherewithall to snap up the opportunity and take good care fo the brand. 

Being laid off sucks, and I don't like the revolving door strategy, but if I could work at WotC for awhile I would, and the talent is lined up 9 deep to do the same.


----------



## Desdichado

TerraDave said:


> They continue to exist. With smaller and smaller staff. Thats all we know. So its not (yet) _suicidal_, but it can be other things.



And given how long that environment has perpetuated, it doesn't seem like it's ever going to be suicidal either.  Everything else is either speculation or knee-jerk emotional reaction.  WotC continues to prosper with this strategy, so the claim that it's a disastrous one is easily disproved.

The claim that it's one you wouldn't want to work under, however... well, that's fair game.  I wouldn't either.  My condolences to those who've lost their jobs.  It's tough.  I work in an industry that just went through a lot of uncertainty, contraction, and job loss too, and although we seem to be coming back from the worst of it, I know it's a tough thing to endure.

But lets not let our empathy put us in a position where we're making claims that are easily demonstrably untrue.


----------



## Lisandro

It seems clear to me that WotC has a very well thought out plan for managing one of its most important brands.

1 - Lay off all the experienced, talented people who know the game intimately.
2- ...
3- Profits.

These news do not bear well for WotC or D&D especially, whatever denial state some people may be in. In any company, but more so in one that gets its money off creative people, experience and peace of mind regarding job security are invaluable assets.


----------



## Dausuul

Hobo said:


> And given how long that environment has perpetuated, it doesn't seem like it's ever going to be suicidal either.  Everything else is either speculation or knee-jerk emotional reaction. WotC continues to prosper with this strategy, so the claim that it's a disastrous one is easily disproved.




Companies can stay in business in spite of bad management practices, especially if they have a near-monopoly in their market. That doesn't make the bad practices any less shortsighted or self-destructive, it just means the company has enough advantages elsewhere to offset the effects.

And I want to see their bottom line and year-over-year sales figures before I accept the statement that they are "prospering." Right now all we can say with certainty is that they haven't gone out of business, which is not at all the same thing. TSR was shooting itself in the foot every which way - bad management practices were the least of its problems - and it still hung on for quite a few years before it finally crashed and burned.


----------



## Mark

Hobo said:


> WotC continues to prosper with this strategy, so the claim that it's a disastrous one is easily disproved.
> 
> (. . .)
> 
> But lets not let our empathy put us in a position where we're making claims that are easily demonstrably untrue.





Please, demonstrate.  As far as I have ever known, there is no data to prove nor disprove the prosperity of which you contend.


----------



## Maggan

Lisandro said:


> 1 - Lay off all the experienced, talented people who know the game intimately.




Not all.



Lisandro said:


> whatever denial state some people may be in




I don't think it's denial, since not everyone at R&D have been laid off. I believe it is possible to run D&D with a small and focused core staff.

I believe that there is a potentially effective strategy to adopt for D&D, and that is to have a few in house editors and designers, who farms out all the heavy lifting to freelancers.

All the RPG companies I've worked for have done this, to varying degrees. D&D is not, IMO, dependant on WotC having a huge design staff. There are other ways of doing things.

It doesn't have to be "denial" for people to consider that other strategies than "gotta hire them all" could result in a successful D&D.

That said, good luck to those who were laid off!

/M


----------



## Dausuul

Maggan said:


> I don't think it's denial, since not everyone at R&D have been laid off. I believe it is possible to run D&D with a small and focused core staff.
> 
> I believe that there is a potentially effective strategy to adopt for D&D, and that is to have a few in house editors and designers, who farms out all the heavy lifting to freelancers.




Certainly that's a perfectly viable business model. But where do yearly layoffs come into this? In fact, where do layoffs at all come into it? If you want to hire people for two years and then fire them, hire them for a two-year contract and let them go at the end. It's not that complicated, and in fact I should imagine it's a great deal less paperwork than laying people off... you don't have to jump through all the hoops to make sure you aren't leaving yourself open to a lawsuit.


----------



## MortonStromgal

Layoffs are never good but it doesn't mean that WOTC is doing bad, just under performing. If your a 2 million dollar company and your projecting 80 million in earnings, people are going to get laid off because your not hitting that 80 million mark but that is what your hired staff to fill for.  You still may have made 4 million dollars or more but you cant justify the staff for an 80 million dollar company. I've sat in some meetings where the CEO was crazy and the CFO was a yes man. It was a 60 million dollar company and they were projecting 90 million for the next year despite the declining economy (which several people pointed out was an insane number). When we ended at 72 million, we had layoffs... big surprise. I'm sure that after a few adjustments the projection and the actual will  line up better and the staffing will become more steady.


----------



## Jdvn1

Mark said:


> Please, demonstrate.  As far as I have ever known, there is no data to prove nor disprove the prosperity of which you contend.



The argument is:
The strategy has stood the test of time. They've used it for many years (even during a major recession), and it it apparently working for them because they have survived. If it wasn't working for them, they would have changed their strategy (this is part of the concept of revealed preference).

While it's not necessarily a "proof" (proving such a thing is very difficult), given many data points it tends to be pretty reliable (many data points could be the same strategy for many years or many companies using the strategy). Of course, with the volatile nature of many industries, what works then may not work now, but there's probably more evidence that the strategy isn't suicidal than evidence that the strategy is suicidal.


----------



## Dausuul

Jdvn1 said:


> The argument is:
> The strategy has stood the test of time. They've used it for many years (even during a major recession), and it it apparently working for them because they have survived. If it wasn't working for them, they would have changed their strategy (this is part of the concept of revealed preference).
> 
> While it's not necessarily a "proof" (proving such a thing is very difficult), given many data points it tends to be pretty reliable (many data points could be the same strategy for many years or many companies using the strategy). Of course, with the volatile nature of many industries, what works then may not work now, but there's probably more evidence that the strategy isn't suicidal than evidence that the strategy is suicidal.




Nobody said it was suicidal, just stupid. And the claim was "prosperity," not "survival." It's entirely possible that the D&D side of Wizards has been hanging on by its fingernails for years. It could even be headed down a slow-motion slide to oblivion, the same way TSR was. We wouldn't know.

I second the person who was curious to know if the same crap happens on the M:tG side of the company. I see Mark Rosewater, the current "face" of M:tG design, has been with Wizards since 1995.


----------



## Scribble

Dausuul said:


> Certainly that's a perfectly viable business model. But where do yearly layoffs come into this? In fact, where do layoffs at all come into it? If you want to hire people for two years and then fire them, hire them for a two-year contract and let them go at the end. It's not that complicated, and in fact I should imagine it's a great deal less paperwork than laying people off... you don't have to jump through all the hoops to make sure you aren't leaving yourself open to a lawsuit.




I think the issue is they don't really know what the timespan will be.

They know at some point there will only be room for x amount of money to be spent on x area of the company... But how to best decide to spend that money and exactly what amount that money will be isn't something you can answer from the get go.

So instead of hiring on with a definitive contract, they leave it open with the terminate at will clause.

Then later on down the road when you find out what X amount is, you get the horrible job of figuring out on whom to spend it.

Sux no matter what way you look at it sure, but it doesn't automatically mean it's "suicidal." And  in a way, I'm sure the EEs already know their jobs aren't perfectly secure from the start.

I mean, after what? 9 years of the same strategy- Fool me once...

Too bad the game industry isn't big enough that the designers have the power to motivate the company, rather then the other way around.


----------



## Jdvn1

Dausuul said:


> Nobody said it was suicidal, just stupid. And the claim was "prosperity," not "survival." It's entirely possible that the D&D side of Wizards has been hanging on by its fingernails for years. It could even be headed down a slow-motion slide to oblivion, the same way TSR was. We wouldn't know.



Sorry, "self-destructive." I'm not sure what the difference is, but the argument applies nonetheless if you replace "suicidal" with "self-destructive."

The likely case is prosperity, not survival, because since breaking even--exactly--for several years is pretty unlikely (and we've already acknowledged that losses are unlikely as well), so they've probably seen some profits. Whether or not that passes _your_ definition of "prosperity," is kind of moot: once we establish they have made a profit, the cut-off for "prosperity" is subjective.

And, like I said earlier, if the strategy wasn't working for them (if they've been in a slow decline), they'd change their strategy. They haven't. The TSR analogy doesn't apply because a) it was a different company with different strategies, and b) they didn't stick to one such strategy for their lifespan anyways, they desperately tried a number of things to stay afloat. This isn't the case with WotC--they've been pretty consistent in their practices.


----------



## tomBitonti

This is getting to be quite a side discussion, but regular layoffs as a strategy provides a way to trim under-performing employees, and provides a clear statement to employees that they need to maintain a competitive edge.

That may be viewed as a downside, in that there tend to be pressures to "work as a part of a team".  That is true, but one has to be careful to find a team that accurately recognizes contributions, and that doesn't create modes where a person ends up doing another person's work.

For a number of professions, for example, working in a stage production, or for a professional sports team, the idea of competition for scarce slots is hardly a surprise.  What perhaps is the difference is that individual contribution is probably more recognizable.  Plus, a sports team is probably a much more transparent environment, what with very visible public performances and coaches and trainers in abundance.

What is corrosive is mind games played by team members and managers, where personnel undercut each other, or mis-represent work done, or hide information, or evaluate performance on the basis of friendship or familial relationship, or on poorly quantifiable means.  The corporate environment has quite a lot of hidden information.

Net: Competition for scarce slots is a usual way to operate.  Also: A part of being a profession is understanding this, and learning both how to be competitive while also working within team and managed structures.


----------



## Jdvn1

tomBitonti said:


> This is getting to be quite a side discussion, but regular layoffs as a strategy provides a way to trim under-performing employees...



It can also be a way to get rid of high-salary employees, people at the top of their pay grades.


----------



## DEFCON 1

Ampersand999 said:


> Why hasn't Hasbro tried to sell off Wizards to another company by now is beyond me, even I am aware that selling off underperforming subdivisions of their company isn't Hasbro's usual modus operandi.



Because it isn't the games themselves which are important... it's their brand names.  So long as the names "Dungeons & Dragons" and "Magic: The Gathering" and "Pokemon" have any sort of resonance with the general public, there's no way Hasbro's ever going to just let them go.  There will always be a way to make money off those brands in some sort of fashion at some point in the future... even if it's not the actual games themselves.  Quite possibly the film industry, maybe eventually something else.

Transformers, G.I.Joe, Battleship, Monopoly, Candyland etc. etc... all properties that are being branched out to Hollywood.  At some point the stink off the D&D movie will finally disappear and a new one could possibly be branded and released.  Same with a M:tG film if they were so inclined.

I think we've learned from the comics industry that even if the hard copy sales have fallen by the wayside compared to their golden monetary age... there is still money to be milked by the brands.  It's just a matter of finding the right method to do so.  So I wouldn't get anyone's hopes up that the "Dungeons & Dragons" brand gets magically released back into the wild any time soon.  The potential future earnings for the brand for Hasbro is too great to just dump it to some other small indy game company for a couple mil.


----------



## Mark

Jdvn1 said:


> The argument is:
> The strategy has stood the test of time. They've used it for many years (even during a major recession), and it it apparently working for them because they have survived. If it wasn't working for them, they would have changed their strategy (this is part of the concept of revealed preference).
> 
> While it's not necessarily a "proof" (proving such a thing is very difficult), given many data points it tends to be pretty reliable (many data points could be the same strategy for many years or many companies using the strategy). Of course, with the volatile nature of many industries, what works then may not work now, but there's probably more evidence that the strategy isn't suicidal than evidence that the strategy is suicidal.





Sadly, the claim seems to be that D&D is fine because WotC exists, while brands like MtG and Pokemon tend to have the actual reputation for being the breadwinners of WotC.  In the absence of numbers showing the prosperity of the D&D brand specifically, and given that the target of regular WotC layoffs appear to mostly be from the D&D sections of the company, I often find the claims of D&D being in good shape post-Hasbro takeover to be suspect.  Seems more like a property that Hasbro has hope will perform longterm because it had a 30+ year history when they picked up WotC.  I don't think they've found the right medium for it yet but guess they are working toward it with their trends toward making it more MMOPRG-esque.  When the virtual gametable is finally accomplished and the rules are revised to the point of being able to jump in and play D&D online at any time night or day for monthly fee, and move that game seamlessly between that virtual environment and the tabletop, then I think they'll be a lot closer to achieving the type of monthly and quarterly numbers they'd like to expect from the brand.


----------



## Umbran

Mark said:


> In the absence of numbers showing the prosperity of the D&D brand specifically, and given that the target of regular WotC layoffs appear to mostly be from the D&D sections of the company, I often find the claims of D&D being in good shape post-Hasbro takeover to be suspect.




Okay, it is a long thread, so maybe I missed it - has anyone done a count to see how many people have been let go from other parts of the company?

I ask merely because we must be careful of the appearances - we are apt to talk a lot about D&D-side layoffs, while layoffs in other portions could happen without comment on these boards.  We remember what we see, and all that.


----------



## TerraDave

tomBitonti said:


> This is getting to be quite a side discussion, but regular layoffs as a strategy provides a way to trim under-performing employees, and provides a clear statement to employees that they need to maintain a competitive edge.




From what we know--which is limited--top performing employees seem as likely to be let go, if not more so. We have heard of many of these people.


----------



## Pramas

For the record, WotC has not published Pokemon for 7 years now, though many ex-WotC folks work for the company that does (Pokemon USA).


----------



## Jdvn1

Mark said:


> Sadly, the claim seems to be that D&D is fine because WotC exists, while brands like MtG and Pokemon tend to have the actual reputation for being the breadwinners of WotC.  In the absence of numbers showing the prosperity of the D&D brand specifically, and given that the target of regular WotC layoffs appear to mostly be from the D&D sections of the company, I often find the claims of D&D being in good shape post-Hasbro takeover to be suspect.  Seems more like a property that Hasbro has hope will perform longterm because it had a 30+ year history when they picked up WotC.



I totally believe Hasbro has long term expectations for WotC, and that they're trying to grow the brand. Every well-functioning company should have similar aspirations. Every company has both short term and long term investments, and I'm sure there is a similar situation at WotC. Still, you don't rely on a hope, and you don't expect "the next big thing" to solve all of your financial woes. That's just not how large companies are run.

It's not like Hasbro evaluates WotC every six months, and _every_ six months they're surprised, "Oh! WotC has underperformed! We didn't see this coming! Let's cut the staff." Hasbro, WotC, and their employees all know this happens every six months. It's not a sign they're going under, and it won't cause them to self-destruct, it's just part of their normal operation procedure, and they have apparently been satisfied with its results.

Sure, maybe MtG and Pokemon are more successful than D&D. That is simply besides the point, though. Every other brand isn't necessarily doomed to failure.


----------



## TerraDave

tomBitonti said:


> This is getting to be quite a side discussion, but regular layoffs as a strategy provides a way to trim under-performing employees, and provides a clear statement to employees that they need to maintain a competitive edge.




From what we know--which is limited--top performing employees seem as likely to be let go, if not more so. We have heard of many of these people.

EDIT: Ooh, split double post! What do I win?


----------



## Jdvn1

Umbran said:


> Okay, it is a long thread, so maybe I missed it - has anyone done a count to see how many people have been let go from other parts of the company?
> 
> I ask merely because we must be careful of the appearances - we are apt to talk a lot about D&D-side layoffs, while layoffs in other portions could happen without comment on these boards.  We remember what we see, and all that.



I haven't seen it, but maybe I missed it too.

Being largely unfamiliar with the other brands, I don't know how many "big names" there are in them either--so any lay offs may get less attention. D&D, I think, is somewhat unique among the WotC brands in that there's much more text to write (and, I'd guess, more complicated rules), and so good writers matter more and get more attention.


----------



## Mark

Jdvn1 said:


> I totally believe Hasbro has long term expectations for WotC, and that they're trying to grow the brand.





I think we all agree with that, or hope it is the case anyway.




Jdvn1 said:


> Every well-functioning company should have similar aspirations. Every company has both short term and long term investments, and I'm sure there is a similar situation at WotC.





Fair enough.




Jdvn1 said:


> Still, you don't rely on a hope, and you don't expect "the next big thing" to solve all of your financial woes. That's just not how large companies are run.





Here's where you begin to get confused, since WotC has multiple properties and they do hope the properties all out perform their previous mark, and that is how all companies are run.  It is also true that Hasbro hangs on to properties for the long haul and that they are apparently planning to hang on to D&D.  They had the chance to unload it right after getting WotC and plenty of opportunity since.  When a corporation holds properties, it generally tries to do something with them, either in-house or through licensing.  WotC does both with D&D and they do indeed _hope_ but cannot guarantee that those efforts will be entirely fruitful.




Jdvn1 said:


> It's not like Hasbro evaluates WotC every six months, and _every_ six months they're surprised, "Oh! WotC has underperformed! We didn't see this coming! Let's cut the staff." Hasbro, WotC, and their employees all know this happens every six months. It's not a sign they're going under, and it won't cause them to self-destruct, it's just part of their normal operation procedure, and they have apparently been satisfied with its results.





Where to begin . . .  This bit of hyperbole starts by creating your strawman (no one but you seems to be claiming Hasbro is staffed by morons?), then mischaracterizing what others are saying (going under?), then drawing a conclusion (Hasbro satisfied?) for which there is no definite evidence one way or another (as mentioned up thread).  I'm amazed how much you crammed into that little passage.  To reply with some sense, corporations regularly have companies and divisions that underperform, and the indicators of this are viewed far more often than simply every six months (even what they are charged to show their shareholders comes every quarter).  A sign that some portion of a company is in trouble relative to how they are expected to perform is how stable the workforce is maintained.




Jdvn1 said:


> Sure, maybe MtG and Pokemon are more successful than D&D. That is simply besides the point, though. Every other brand isn't necessarily doomed to failure.





As Erik points out for both our benefit, no more Pokemon, and though there are other properties, MtG is certainly the one that apparently stands out as having a reputation for being worthy of mention when touting what in WotC can be reported to Hasbro and their shareholders during quarterly reports.  D&D doesn't seem to get a mention.  As to the assertion upthread that other areas of the company aside from the D&D departments have similar layoffs, while that would be a shame, I've never seen any evidence of this.  Anyone who wishes to dispute that the D&D areas of WotC shoulder the largest burden of the systematic/periodic layoffs, please step up and go on the record.  In the absence of evidence to the contrary, we can only go on what we know.


----------



## tomBitonti

TerraDave said:


> From what we know--which is limited--top performing employees seem as likely to be let go, if not more so. We have heard of many of these people.




Well, you have to include a cost factor in your estimate of "top performing".  "Top performing" but "most expensive" is perhaps a wash.


----------



## renau1g

Jdvn1 said:


> It can also be a way to get rid of high-salary employees, people at the top of their pay grades.




I've seen this a lot in the automotive sector. A Senior Project Manager makes $80k, a more junior one makes $55k. They do relatively similar jobs, although the senior PM is usually better at keeping his project on track. However with the recent meltdown of the big 3 many of the senior one's were let go to lower operating costs despite more years of service and expertise. One of the ones I knew was the "top performer" at his shop, but making $115k was too much for the owners despite his skills.


----------



## mudbunny

Umbran said:


> Okay, it is a long thread, so maybe I missed it - has anyone done a count to see how many people have been let go from other parts of the company?
> 
> I ask merely because we must be careful of the appearances - we are apt to talk a lot about D&D-side layoffs, while layoffs in other portions could happen without comment on these boards.  We remember what we see, and all that.




We also don't know how many people have been hired. Is the number of D&D employees at a steady state, increasing or decreasing.


----------



## Jdvn1

Mark said:


> Here's where you begin to get confused, since WotC has multiple properties and they do hope the properties all out perform their previous mark, and that is how all companies are run.  It is also true that Hasbro hangs on to properties for the long haul and that they are apparently planning to hang on to D&D.  They had the chance to unload it right after getting WotC and plenty of opportunity since.  When a corporation holds properties, it generally tries to do something with them, either in-house or through licensing.  WotC does both with D&D and they do indeed _hope_ but cannot guarantee that those efforts will be entirely fruitful.



You're using some imprecise terms that are a little confusing. WotC may want all of their properties to out perform their previous mark, but that's not how companies are run. Companies are run to make a profit. If one quarter their profit is $1M, and the next their profit is $2, they don't need to keep increasing their profit, or their previous mark. If they make a 5% return on their investments one quarter, they don't necessarily need to improve on that number the next quarter. That's just unrealistic. They would be happy if they could get consistent growth every quarter--say, 3% every quarter, or more likely an average of 3% every quarter (or whatever).

Further, but they don't expect every investment in their property will be profitable. For example, not every book sells equally well. Some may not turn a profit, and some may. As long as they turn a profit on average, they're going to make a profit overall, they'll be happy, and they won't have to shrink their workforce. There are a variety of D&D products on sale, and for each one, you better believe they have projected costs and sales. As long as they have a decent array of products and decent projections, they're not relying on a hope of one product selling, they're relying the law of averages. They don't hope things will sell, they already have an idea how much things will sell, and provide enough products to make up for statistical anomalies.



			
				Mark said:
			
		

> Where to begin . . .  This bit of hyperbole starts by creating your strawman (no one but you seems to be claiming Hasbro is staffed by morons?), then mischaracterizing what others are saying (going under?), then drawing a conclusion (Hasbro satisfied?) for which there is no definite evidence one way or another (as mentioned up thread).  I'm amazed how much you crammed into that little passage.  To reply with some sense, corporations regularly have companies and divisions that underperform, and the indicators of this are viewed far more often than simply every six months (even what they are charged to show their shareholders comes every quarter).  A sign that some portion of a company is in trouble relative to how they are expected to perform is how stable the workforce is maintained.



No one claimed that Hasbro is staffed by morons, but by claiming that their business practices are self-destructive, you certainly imply it. And, if you have a problem with the term 'going under' then I point out that you never clarified the difference between 'suicidal' and 'self-destructive.' And, I already explained why the conclusion of Hasbro being satisfied with their practices is a reasonable conclusion.

I said six months because it's been mentioned that the lay offs occur roughly ever six months. But, that isn't even the point. The point is that if the company were in trouble, they wouldn't have scheduled lay offs anyways. They'd lay people off as necessary, not according to a schedule. Scheduled lay offs, on the other hand, are a very stable way of managing your workforce.



			
				Mark said:
			
		

> As Erik points out for both our benefit, no more Pokemon, and though there are other properties, MtG is certainly the one that apparently stands out as having a reputation for being worthy of mention when touting what in WotC can be reported to Hasbro and their shareholders during quarterly reports.  D&D doesn't seem to get a mention.  As to the assertion upthread that other areas of the company aside from the D&D departments have similar layoffs, while that would be a shame, I've never seen any evidence of this.  Anyone who wishes to dispute that the D&D areas of WotC shoulder the largest burden of the systematic/periodic layoffs, please step up and go on the record.  In the absence of evidence to the contrary, we can only go on what we know.



MtG certainly gets a mention in some quarterly reports. But, mind you, a quarterly report will mention the positive and negative aspects of a company, and likely ignore the average aspects of a company.

And, regarding lay offs in other WotC departments, your earlier claim that:


			
				Mark said:
			
		

> In the absence of numbers showing the prosperity of the D&D brand specifically, and given that the target of regular WotC layoffs appear to mostly be from the D&D sections of the company, I often find the claims of D&D being in good shape post-Hasbro takeover to be suspect.



Is probably not a good claim to make given that there's no evidence to support it (and, claiming the opposite is probably not a good claim either, for the same reason).


----------



## Jdvn1

mudbunny said:


> We also don't know how many people have been hired. Is the number of D&D employees at a steady state, increasing or decreasing.



It's a good, important question. There are sometimes mentions in WotC articles about new hires, but I don't think any one knows if those are exhaustive, or if they focus on more visible positions. Everyone seems content to assume the number of D&D employees is shrinking, though.


----------



## Shemeska

mudbunny said:


> We also don't know how many people have been hired. Is the number of D&D employees at a steady state, increasing or decreasing.




Unless they've not been posting open positions for D&D on the main WotC/Hasbro open positions page, it's been steadily decreasing. For instance the DDI team (again unless they've been doing hiring entirely off the board) is a fraction of its original size (both when outsourced and compared to the subsequent internal dev and testing team).


----------



## mudbunny

Jdvn1 said:


> It's a good, important question. There are sometimes mentions in WotC articles about new hires, but I don't think any one knows if those are exhaustive, or if they focus on more visible positions. Everyone seems content to assume the number of D&D employees is shrinking, though.




For me, there is just not enough data. We are only seeing one side of the equation. Without the other bits of data (number of hires, number of transfers from one part of WotC to the other, increase/decrease in number of freelancers, change in focus from employees to freelancers, ...) we just don't (IMO) have the ability to make any statements that have any sort of factual basis whatsoever. They are as precise as trying to predict who will win the NHL playoffs by looking at the scoring percentage of one player.


----------



## Dausuul

Jdvn1 said:


> No one claimed that Hasbro is staffed by morons, but by claiming that their business practices are self-destructive, you certainly imply it. And, if you have a problem with the term 'going under' then I point out that you never clarified the difference between 'suicidal' and 'self-destructive.'




"Self-destructive" is generally taken to mean "harmful to oneself," which is not the same as "fatal to oneself." If I unconsciously sabotage my career by picking a fight with my boss every time I'm up for promotion, that's self-destructive. It won't kill me and it may not even kill my career, it'll just keep me from making much if any progress.

It also does not imply that the person engaged in self-destructive behavior is a moron. You can be very smart and still do some stupid things. If you're smart and talented enough, you can do stupid things on a regular basis and still succeed overall.


----------



## TerraDave

We are not posting about a rational indvidual or a small business, but a collection of people inside a collection of people inside a collection of people...

Bad practices certainly can and do persist in an organization, perhaps for many years.

In terms of companies that publish RPGs, you have to think hard to find the _good_ business examples. But the not so good examples--Chaosium, ICE, TSR, Palladium--abound. 

And for big companies like Hasbro, whole industries revolve, or devolve, around persistant problems they frequently have, year after year.


----------



## Desdichado

Jdvn1 said:


> The argument is:
> The strategy has stood the test of time. They've used it for many years (even during a major recession), and it it apparently working for them because they have survived. If it wasn't working for them, they would have changed their strategy (this is part of the concept of revealed preference).
> 
> While it's not necessarily a "proof" (proving such a thing is very difficult), given many data points it tends to be pretty reliable (many data points could be the same strategy for many years or many companies using the strategy). Of course, with the volatile nature of many industries, what works then may not work now, but there's probably more evidence that the strategy isn't suicidal than evidence that the strategy is suicidal.



Exactly.  And, while Hasbro doesn't report the earnings of separate divisions, and even if they did, the only comments that they've made in annual report type documents is that Pokemon and Magic have underperformed in some quarters, we've had plenty of folks in the know confirm that D&D itself has been successful.  Often here on these boards.

Since I'm not one of those tinfoil hat conspiracy types who's going to claim that WotC has been lying to us about the success of D&D, I'll take those comments at face value.


----------



## Jdvn1

Dausuul said:


> "Self-destructive" is generally taken to mean "harmful to oneself," which is not the same as "fatal to oneself." If I unconsciously sabotage my career by picking a fight with my boss every time I'm up for promotion, that's self-destructive. It won't kill me and it may not even kill my career, it'll just keep me from making much if any progress.
> 
> It also does not imply that the person engaged in self-destructive behavior is a moron. You can be very smart and still do some stupid things. If you're smart and talented enough, you can do stupid things on a regular basis and still succeed overall.



If you participate in self-destructive actions for multiple years, fatality isn't a surprising result. If you sabotage your career for multiple years, you may very likely end your career in that industry ("You've had how many jobs in the past 10 years?"). In a company, "harmful to oneself" like means "suffering loses." Over time, the results are going to be much more obvious, and that is certainly the case for a company that has been around 87 years, like Hasbro.

Also, Mark first used the term 'moron'. I agree that a smart person can do stupid things. This is beside the point, though.


----------



## mudbunny

TerraDave said:


> And for big companies like Hasbro, whole industries revolve, or devolve, around persistant problems they frequently have, year after year.




I believe that this has been happening since before WotC was purchased by Hasbro. Also, from what I recall being mentioned by people here on ENWorld, Hasbro is very much a "hands off" style of owner unless things pear-shaped.



Shemeska said:


> Unless they've not been posting open positions for D&D on the main WotC/Hasbro open positions page, it's been steadily decreasing. For instance the DDI team (again unless they've been doing hiring entirely off the board) is a fraction of its original size (both when outsourced and compared to the subsequent internal dev and testing team).




How often would they hire D&D developers via an open posting as opposed to directly contacting a freelancer that they have experience with and whose work they like? (Not trying to be patronizing or anything. I honestly don't know and would be curious to find out how it is done.)


----------



## Jdvn1

TerraDave said:


> We are not posting about a rational indvidual or a small business, but a collection of people inside a collection of people inside a collection of people...
> 
> Bad practices certainly can and do persist in an organization, perhaps for many years.
> 
> In terms of companies that publish RPGs, you have to think hard to find the _good_ business examples. But the not so good examples--Chaosium, ICE, TSR, Palladium--abound.
> 
> And for big companies like Hasbro, whole industries revolve, or devolve, around persistant problems they frequently have, year after year.



While this is a good point and general true, it's probably less true in a monopolistic market.


----------



## Scribble

Do we even have any sort of evidence that this has anything to do with finances either?

I have a friend who works for 2k sports, and he told me most video companies start phasing people out when they're in their mid-late 30s, because they're starting to get too far away from the target demographic. (And starting to get stuck in the "my generations way of doing it is the only way that's good" mode...)

So, even though he has his dream job of working for a sports video game company, he's still studying to take up a new career, because he knows his time is limited.

It wouldn't surprise me if Wizards had a similar thought.


----------



## Jdvn1

Shemeska said:


> Unless they've not been posting open positions for D&D on the main WotC/Hasbro open positions page, it's been steadily decreasing.





			
				mudbunny said:
			
		

> How often would they hire D&D developers via an open posting as opposed to directly contacting a freelancer that they have experience with and whose work they like?



Most companies don't initially post open positions on publically available pages. Once they decide to hire, if they don't already have a person in mind, they'll first post the position internally.

Of course, I don't know how WotC works, specifically, but that's how large companies generally work.


----------



## Steel_Wind

Jdvn1 said:


> No one claimed that Hasbro is staffed by morons, but by claiming that their business practices are self-destructive, you certainly imply it.




Hey. Stop picking on Mark by having to put words in his mouth. Pick on me. I'll even say the words for you so you don't have to imagine them:
_*
Any company that lays off their creative staff as a standard part of its entrenched firm culture, is a company managed by morons.*_

Yup. Let me repeat that for you so you can write it down. Take your time, even:  MORONS.

The question you see, isn't whether or not Hasbro/WotC management _believes_ the practice to be reasonable. There are all kinds of completely improbable things  -- even IMPOSSIBLE things -- that people believe in my friend, I assure you of that.

The question is whether the practice is, *in fact*, reasonable.

WotC has been doing this for quite a while - since about 2001. It's part of their firm culture. They bulk up on creative design staff when they are tooling up for a new edition -- and let those people go after the edition has been released. They otherwise act like this even during relatively neutral times during their production cycles. The philosophy cuts across other aspects of their business too - up to an including brand managers and business people. It's equal-opportunity bean-counting.  A _Reign of Terror _that cuts across class lines, as it were.

WotC does this because they are managed by a philosophy which appears wholly driven by bean-counting and places almost ZERO value on their own employees' skills and value as a corporate asset. 

They treat their workers as if they bring essentially nothing to the table and as if each and every one of them was utterly and completely replaceable at the drop of a hat. If you are in the business of manufacturing and bottling _Coca-Cola_, that might be a justifiable management style.

But when you are in the creative business of selling words printed on paper -- as if words were of equal value no matter who they are written by -- that's an utterly foolish  business practice. IMO, it is a business practice that it not only utterly arrogant, but one which is *absolutely certain* to result in the utter destruction of their business model if they persist in it. 

Why? Because WotC doesn't have the secret recipe to _Coca-Cola_. The closest they got is a patent on tapping cards during game play that will soon expire. That’s it.  The rest is just smoke and mirrors.

No - what they've got is a few trade-marks and little else.  

WotC makes games and sells words and artwork on sheets of printed paper. Their vaunted intellectual property is not, in fact, all that special at all. The less they do with it -- the more they confirm that very fact. 

Indeed, when it comes to RPGs, WotC owns a trademark for the words _Dungeons and Dragons_. The ideas that are inherent in that game they gave away for free a decade ago. The other ideas and copyrights they have in the vault are deemed of so limited a value - WotC doesn't even bother to try and sell them anymore.

What WotC is now selling was essentially invented a few years ago by people whose skills they demonstrably place no value upon. If you are a software company and act like WotC does - you might as well just turn out the lights and pass in the keys. 

You think the business of selling words on paper is dramatically different than selling Ones and Zeros on DVDs? Nope. Just like a software company, your company's most valuable assets goes home every night and goes to sleep.

The people who create and market the intellectual property that has meaning and value to WotC are the very people that they have let go over a course of years. If those people had no goodwill or name recognition within the marketplace - that might be a defensible practice. 

But it's simply not true.  These names have credibility and skills to match; moreover, all words are not of equal value. WotC seems to have forgotten that they gave away the keys to others to compete with them  – FOR FREE. 

So it comes down to this: WotC is rolling the dice that their trademark will protect them and their business model on an evergreen basis over the long-term of the business cycle.

That is not a bet a prudent man would make. What they have, in the end, is a grossly misplaced sense of the value of the trade-mark "Dungeons and Dragons".

Just like TSR - these bozos are going to be crushed by their own hubris and short sightedness. I don't doubt it for a second. May take another decade yet - but with this management style?

That train is coming down the tracks. Count on it.


----------



## Shemeska

mudbunny said:


> I believe that this has been happening since before WotC was purchased by Hasbro. Also, from what I recall being mentioned by people here on ENWorld, Hasbro is very much a "hands off" style of owner unless things pear-shaped.




From what I was told by people there at the time, the failure (and expenditures) of Gleemax (and the outsourced DDI) actually got Hasbro's attention, and it was not happy. Not a clue how things have been since then.




> How often would they hire D&D developers via an open posting as opposed to directly contacting a freelancer that they have experience with and whose work they like? (Not trying to be patronizing or anything. I honestly don't know and would be curious to find out how it is done.)




Not a clue. I've occasionally heard from career freelancers about interviews, and once about an open development position call, and once Andy Collins pitching an editor position that would report to him. But I don't freelance fulltime, so I don't much pay attention to how the whole thing works. Others who have actually been through the process might know more about how the positions tend to be filled (I suspect a lot of internal transfers up however probably muck with an outside perception of drastic losses, but maybe not. No way to know without a copy of the company directory a year ago versus now, etc).


----------



## JLowder

Erik Mona said:


> Dreams also have a way of dying hideous deaths under the aegis of bad management.
> 
> Just sayin'.
> 
> --Erik




Yes indeed. 

I was rereading _Animal Farm_ the other day. A version set in Renton would not require all that many changes.

Cheers,
Jim Lowder


----------



## mudbunny

Shemeska said:


> From what I was told by people there at the time, the failure (and expenditures) of Gleemax (and the outsourced DDI) actually got Hasbro's attention, and it was not happy. Not a clue how things have been since then.




I am fairly certain that Gleemax is a good definition of something going pear-shaped.


----------



## Twowolves

Thornir Alekeg said:


> It seems to me like it is a strategy of bringing in new people, picking their creative minds for a while, then cycling some of them out to make space for new brains to pick rather than expect the many current ones to come up with new ideas.
> 
> Fresh meat = Fresh ideas





Ah yes, the "New Coke" business model....


----------



## Silverblade The Ench

ggroy said:


> Pleased to meet you.  Hope you guess my game.




Oh, going by WOTC's HASBORG-inspired floundering I'd say...you are the weakest link, Lorraine Williams, goodbye! Er, welcome back!

*rimshot!*


----------



## Silverblade The Ench

Steel WInd
damn well said! 
needs pinned by dart gun to the bum of every stupid exec and politician in the world, we're tlaking about D&D but it's equally asvalid about any government, business, group, nation etc out there.

The most important asset ANY nation, government or company has, is it's PEOPLE, not it's bloody idiot IP, Copyright patents etc, because only _real _things, real PEOPLE matter.


----------



## Mark

Jdvn1 said:


> You're using some imprecise terms that are a little confusing. WotC may want all of their properties to out perform their previous mark, but that's not how companies are run. Companies are run to make a profit. If one quarter their profit is $1M, and the next their profit is $2, they don't need to keep increasing their profit, or their previous mark. If they make a 5% return on their investments one quarter, they don't necessarily need to improve on that number the next quarter. That's just unrealistic. They would be happy if they could get consistent growth every quarter--say, 3% every quarter, or more likely an average of 3% every quarter (or whatever).







Mark said:


> WotC has multiple properties and they do hope the properties all out perform their previous mark, and that is how all companies are run.





Collectively.  They hope that their properties outperform their previous mark _collectively_.




Jdvn1 said:


> Further, but they don't expect every investment in their property will be profitable.





Do you not understand that is what I posted as the following?




Mark said:


> When a corporation holds properties, it generally tries to do something with them, either in-house or through licensing. WotC does both with D&D and they do indeed hope but cannot guarantee that those efforts will be entirely fruitful.







Jdvn1 said:


> No one claimed that Hasbro is staffed by morons, but by claiming that their business practices are self-destructive, you certainly imply it.





Can't seem to find where you claim I posted that, please link to it for me.




Jdvn1 said:


> And, if you have a problem with the term 'going under' then I point out that you never clarified the difference between 'suicidal' and 'self-destructive.'





Never posted either that I can find, please link to it for me.




Jdvn1 said:


> And, I already explained why the conclusion of Hasbro being satisfied with their practices is a reasonable conclusion.





It doesn't seem to be necessarily supported and might even be untrue if you consider that the regular layoffs in the D&D departments of WotC suggest otherwise (i.e. dissatisfaction).




Jdvn1 said:


> Scheduled lay offs, on the other hand, are a very stable way of managing your workforce.





They are a way of making your workforce constantly nervous and less than productive as they divide their time between working and keeping abreast of other employment opportunties.  That's not stability.




Jdvn1 said:


> MtG certainly gets a mention in some quarterly reports. But, mind you, a quarterly report will mention the positive and negative aspects of a company, and likely ignore the average aspects of a company.





What negative aspects have been mentioned during the quarterly reports?  You're citing non-mentions as evidence of averageness and thus success?




Jdvn1 said:


> And, regarding lay offs in other WotC departments, your earlier claim that: (. . .)
> 
> Is probably not a good claim to make given that there's no evidence to support it (and, claiming the opposite is probably not a good claim either, for the same reason).





The evidence to support that there are layoffs in the D&D departments is the layoffs in the D&D departments.  There is no evidenced to support that there are as many (any?) layoffs in other areas.  If there are, please show them.


----------



## ggroy

Silverblade The Ench said:


> Oh, going by WOTC's HASBORG-inspired floundering I'd say...you are the weakest link, Lorraine Williams, goodbye! Er, welcome back!
> 
> *rimshot!*




(sung to the tune of "Sympathy for the Devil" by the Rolling Stones)

"Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a woman of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long year
Stole many a gamer's soul and faith

And I was 'round when Gary Gygax
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game

I stuck around Lake Geneva
When I saw it was a time for a change
Killed Gary Gygax and his ministers
Gamers screamed in vain"


----------



## Mark

Hobo said:


> (. . .) we've had plenty of folks in the know confirm that D&D itself has been successful.  Often here on these boards.





How many still work for WotC?  Have they _successful_led themselves right out of a job?  Business is always looking good and the future is always looking great and then suddenly you're looking for work.  It's a _successful_ing shame, if you ask me, though I like the new definition of _successful_ we've developed.




Hobo said:


> Since I'm not one of those tinfoil hat conspiracy types who's going to claim that WotC has been lying to us about the success of D&D, I'll take those comments at face value.





And, really?  You're going with the "tinfoil hat" trope as a way to counter the argument that seeing layoffs is a sign that not all is well?  Brilliant.  You've _successful_led yourself pretty good there.


----------



## mudbunny

The presence of regular layoffs does not provide an indication of the success (or not) of a company or industry. Layoffs could mean that there is not enough money coming in. They could also mean that there are younger, more talented people that have been hired at a lower salary.

Without any other info (and to be realistic, we don't have any other info), the only thing that is indicated by regular layoffs is that there have been regular layoffs.


----------



## Belen

Andy Collins is gone.  I cannot say that makes me unhappy.  I thought he was really poor at design with a narrow vision of D&D that he pushed on everyone else.

*See my warning below. ~ PCat*


----------



## I'm A Banana

Hobo said:
			
		

> Since I'm not one of those tinfoil hat conspiracy types who's going to claim that WotC has been lying to us about the success of D&D, I'll take those comments at face value.




No company has ever come out and said "One of our flagship products, that we have poured millions of dollars into, over years, and remain dedicated to for the next few years at least, isn't doing as well as we would have hoped, and it is entirely our fault."

Even if such a thing were true, it would be couched in "market conditions" and "exciting new directions" and "external factors" and "perfect storms." You don't say a central product is failing. Even if it is. You probably don't even believe it. Even if it is.

But even if it is, this entire side-convo is a red herring. You don't have to _not be successful_ to think that laying off some staff is a good idea. Heck, you can be at the top of everything, entirely in the black, the most profitable you've ever been, and still think that firing people is a grand idea to squeeze another few dollars out of the rock. Cutting staff is a time-honored tradition for it.

I imagine D&D is still very successful, but that's essentially a subjective call based on what I would (reasonably) define "success" to be. It's entirely possible that Greg Leeds or Hasbro brass have a different definition. 

And it doesn't really have any bearing one way or another on hiring or firing. Any statements about the current health of the game based on HR practices are, at the very least, misinformed. 

And on the other note, I would broadly agree that a job whose corporate culture seems so...*tense*...would not be a job that I could perform well at. I think Steel Wind overstates it a bit, but he's got the the right idea. The idea that labor is expendable is something that worked well in the Industrial era, when anyone can pull a switch, but not so well now that your creative staff is your core provider of _things you actually sell_.

Not that D&D hasn't been taking steps away from that since before 4e (Minis: make 'em once, sell 'em forever).


----------



## Jdvn1

Mark said:


> Collectively.  They hope that their properties outperform their previous mark _collectively_.





			
				Mark said:
			
		

> Do you not understand that is what I posted as the following?



"Collectively" doesn't make you right. Previous has nothing to do with turning a profit. Hope has nothing to do with turning a profit. Companies want profit to be greater than zero at all time periods, regardless of other periods, and they consciously plan for it when possible.

You posted that WotC hopes their properties to outperform their previous marks. I'm saying the property (D&D, WotC's property) plans to make a profit. If you agree that D&D is making a profit, let us move on.



			
				Mark said:
			
		

> Can't seem to find where you claim I posted that, please link to it for me.
> ...
> Never posted either that I can find, please link to it for me.



My apologizes, I got your post and someone else's confused. Being a 'moron', I think, is moot anyways. I never said anyone was a moron, you characterized my statement as that.

But either the policy is causing the D&D brand to lose money or it's not causing the D&D brand to lose money. In the long run, losing money equates to going under/is self-destructive/is suicidal (in a business sense).

Also, aside from being mis-characterized as claiming that Hasbro is staffed as morons, I see you mis-characterized my argument in your first reply to me, in which you said that 


			
				Mark said:
			
		

> the claim seems to be that D&D is fine because WotC exists



Which isn't the claim.



			
				Mark said:
			
		

> It doesn't seem to be necessarily supported and might even be untrue if you consider that the regular layoffs in the D&D departments of WotC suggest otherwise (i.e. dissatisfaction).
> 
> They are a way of making your workforce constantly nervous and less than productive as they divide their time between working and keeping abreast of other employment opportunties.  That's not stability.



You may not like their employment practices, but regular, scheduled layoffs is a stable way of maintaining a workforce. Firing randomly, on the other hand, isn't. It's not a way of maintaining stable nerves in a workforce. Which makes for more productive employees is a different issue--either way, if you have evidence that the workforce is spending time keeping abreast of other employment opportunities, please let us know. I've only heard that WotC employees are generally happy with their jobs, despite being aware of the employment practices.



			
				Mark said:
			
		

> What negative aspects have been mentioned during the quarterly reports?  You're citing non-mentions as evidence of averageness and thus success?
> 
> The evidence to support that there are layoffs in the D&D departments is the layoffs in the D&D departments.  There is no evidenced to support that there are as many (any?) layoffs in other areas.  If there are, please show them.



You're citing non-mentions of firings as other WotC brands as evidence that they're not firing and thus stability? Non-mentions as status-quo makes sense anyways, if you've ever watched or read or heard any kind of news (and, certainly also in financial news).


----------



## Elton Robb

One question:
How many layoffs do they need to do until they overwork the staff?  The RPG Dept. is one that can use as many creatives as possible in order to churn out product.  If there is one guy left on staff of the RPG Dept, then that would be bad for WotC.


----------



## Jdvn1

Mark said:


> How many still work for WotC?  Have they _successful_led themselves right out of a job?  Business is always looking good and the future is always looking great and then suddenly you're looking for work.



As has been mentioned, success and size of workforce are not necessarily correlated. Computers caused a lot of people to lose jobs, but businesses did well. Just because you _successful_make a point doesn't mean it has any bearing on reality. I've seen plenty of companies say the future doesn't look great while talking to new hires.


----------



## mudbunny

Jdvn1 said:


> You may not like their employment practices, but regular, scheduled layoffs is a stable way of maintaining a workforce. Firing randomly, on the other hand, isn't. It's not a way of maintaining stable nerves in a workforce. Which makes for more productive employees is a different issue--either way, if you have evidence that the workforce is spending time keeping abreast of other employment opportunities, please let us know. I've only heard that WotC employees are generally happy with their jobs, despite being aware of the employment practices.




I submit that anyone taking a position at WotC is well aware of the regularity of layoffs.


----------



## Mark

Jdvn1 said:


> Companies want profit to be greater than zero at all time periods (. . .)





That's the essence of what I posted.




Jdvn1 said:


> My apologizes, I got your post and someone else's confused.





Apology accepted.





Jdvn1 said:


> You may not like their employment practices, but regular, scheduled layoffs is a stable way of maintaining a workforce.





You may like the practices, I do not, nor do I agree that "regular, scheduled layoffs is a stable way of maintaining a workforce."





Jdvn1 said:


> (. . .) if you have evidence that the workforce is spending time keeping abreast of other employment opportunities, please let us know.





I've already stated that I don't believe they are morons.  I think that's evidence enough that anyone working in a corporation that thinks "regular, scheduled layoffs is a stable way of maintaining a workforce" ought to be keeping one eye on other employment opportunities.





Jdvn1 said:


> I've only heard that WotC employees are generally happy with their jobs, despite being aware of the employment practices.





I've only thus far seen one post that glowingly referred to being laidoff as a happy circumstance.




Jdvn1 said:


> You're citing non-mentions of firings as other WotC brands as evidence that they're not firing and thus stability? Non-mentions as status-quo makes sense anyways, if you've ever watched or read or heard any kind of news (and, certainly also in financial news).





Now you wish to maintain that the non-mentioning of non-firings in other sections of the company is evidence of stability?  You have a truly dizzying intellect.


----------



## DaveMage

Elton Robb said:


> One question:
> How many layoffs do they need to do until they overwork the staff?  The RPG Dept. is one that can use as many creatives as possible in order to churn out product.  If there is one guy left on staff of the RPG Dept, then that would be bad for WotC.




No, they have freelancers.


----------



## mudbunny

Mark said:


> I've only thus far seen one post that glowingly referred to being laidoff as a happy circumstance.




People saying that they are happy with their jobs, even whilst aware of the possibility of getting laid off is not the same as being happy to be laid off, and it is rather disingenuous to suggest that Jdvn1 was suggesting that was the case.


----------



## blargney the second

Belen said:


> *mean stuff*



That was unbelievably tacky.  If I could give you negative XP, I would.

Another human's well-being is more important than your opinion about a game.
-blarg


----------



## Mark

mudbunny said:


> People saying that they are happy with their jobs, even whilst aware of the possibility of getting laid off is not the same as being happy to be laid off, and it is rather disingenuous to suggest that Jdvn1 was suggesting that was the case.





*Backhanded insult removed by Admin. Don't do that, Mark. ~ PCat*   My apologies.  It is, however, rather ridiculous to suggest that people are happy with a corporate policy of "regular, scheduled layoffs" as "a stable way of maintaining a workforce."  Do you disagree that he was saying that?


----------



## Jdvn1

Mark said:


> That's the essence of what I posted.



So you agree that WotC has both short term and long term goals with D&D, and that it has been profitable?


			
				Mark said:
			
		

> You may like the practices, I do not, nor do I agree that "regular, scheduled layoffs is a stable way of maintaining a workforce."



Planning the size of your workforce ahead of time is a sign of stability. This is how large businesses are run. You may not be familiar with how large businesses are run.


			
				Mark said:
			
		

> I've already stated that I don't believe they are morons.  I think that's evidence enough that anyone working in a corporation that thinks "regular, scheduled layoffs is a stable way of maintaining a workforce" ought to be keeping one eye on other employment opportunities.



Re this and less productivity:
That doesn't necessarily seem to be supported and might even be untrue if you consider that they took the jobs in the first place.


			
				Mark said:
			
		

> I've only thus far seen one post that glowingly referred to being laidoff as a happy circumstance.



This has nothing to do with the sentence of mine you quoted. Again: I've only heard that WotC employees are generally happy with their jobs, despite being aware of the employment practices. It is possible to dislike being laid off and yet to have enjoyed your job.


			
				Mark said:
			
		

> Now you wish to maintain that the non-mentioning of non-firings in other sections of the company is evidence of stability?  You have a truly dizzying intellect.



Does that mean you concede that there isn't enough evidence to conclude that the lay offs are confined to the D&D brand, and that to make a claim one way or another is unfounded?


----------



## Fifth Element

Mark said:


> It is, however, rather ridiculous to suggest that people are happy with a corporate policy of "regular, scheduled layoffs" as "a stable way of maintaining a workforce."



It seems to work for H&R Block. So it might work for certain businesses.

(Please do not read this as an endorsement for H&R Block. As a tax professional, I could not do that in good conscience.)


----------



## Fifth Element

blargney the second said:


> Another human's well-being is more important than your opinion about a game.



Well said. I'd give you XP, but have done so too recently.


----------



## mudbunny

Mark said:


> It is, however, rather ridiculous to suggest that people are happy with a corporate policy of "regular, scheduled layoffs" as "a stable way of maintaining a workforce."  Do you disagree that he was saying that?




I don't think that is what was being suggested at all.

I read it as two things existing simultaneously.

People enjoying their job at WotC which would be a dream job for most wannabe RPG developers; and
people being aware of the regularity of layoffs at WotC.

_Edit to add - There is no requirement for people to like the fact that layoffs happen regularly for people to enjoy working at WotC._

Jdvn1 is also saying that regular layoffs are a stable way of maintaining a workforce. 

I didn't notice any attempt to imply that people who work at WotC are *happy* with the regular layoffs or that they think that it is the best way to do so.


----------



## Fifth Element

Mark said:


> You have a truly dizzying intellect.



_Wait till I get going!_


----------



## mudbunny

Fifth Element said:


> Well said. I'd give you XP, but have done so too recently.




Covered.


----------



## Mark

Jdvn1 said:


> So you agree that WotC has both short term and long term goals with D&D, and that it has been profitable?





I agree that is what they would like/hope/plan to do.  I don't believe the evidence regarding the "regular, scheduled layoffs" supports a claim of "profitable."




Jdvn1 said:


> Planning the size of your workforce ahead of time is a sign of stability. This is how large businesses are run. You may not be familiar with how large businesses are run.





You think all businesses of the size of WotC has "regular, scheduled layoffs" as "a stable way of maintaining a workforce?"




Jdvn1 said:


> That doesn't necessarily seem to be supported and might even be untrue if you consider that they took the jobs in the first place.





So, you now claim that anyone who goes to work for WotC is a moron?  That's cold, even for you.




Jdvn1 said:


> This has nothing to do with the sentence of mine you quoted. Again: I've only heard that WotC employees are generally happy with their jobs, despite being aware of the employment practices. It is possible to dislike being laid off and yet to have enjoyed your job.





Like it is possible to enjoy an apple but not enjoy having one shoved down your throat, yet if you are largely sure that to enjoy an apple you have to agree that you will likely have to endure having it shoved down your throat, I am contending that it is considerably less enjoyable.




Jdvn1 said:


> Does that mean you concede that there isn't enough evidence to conclude that the lay offs are confined to the D&D brand, and that to make a claim one way or another is unfounded?





I am conceding that we agree that the only evidence that exists is that there are "regular, scheduled layoffs" at WotC in the D&D department(s).


----------



## Fifth Element

Mark said:


> You think all businesses of the size of WotC has "regular, scheduled layoffs" as "a stable way of maintaining a workforce?"



That doesn't seem to be what he's saying. He's saying that planning your workforce size is an indication of stability. The way in which you achieve the desired size can vary from company to company without invalidating this claim.



Mark said:


> So, you now claim that anyone who goes to work for WotC is a moron?  That's cold, even for you.



Or it would be, if that's what he were saying. That seems to be a rather serious misrepresentation.


----------



## Jdvn1

mudbunny said:


> I submit that anyone taking a position at WotC is well aware of the regularity of layoffs.



Possibly, but that doesn't mean they spend a significant amount of time considering their options to the extent their productivity suffers. It's not like they make sure they have back-up jobs waiting for them (based on what the Rouse said). Linae Foster described that after layoffs, you grieve and then you get back to work.


----------



## Piratecat

*Heads up, everyone.

Tensions are running high, and we don't particularly feel like entertaining rude or insulting posts. So please think twice before posting. Just as importantly, do not insult WotC executives even if you happen to be criticizing the company's management practices. There are actual people there, and you don't have the right to call them morons (or what have you) even if you think the layoffs are mismanagement. We're fine with you criticizing/discussing/analyzing the layoff decision itself, of course; just please don't be insulting people while you do so.

I'll also add that if you happen not to care for one or more of the people laid off, you may wish to keep your opinion to yourself unless it's relevant to the thread. Time and a place, folks, time and a place.

PM me if this is in any way unclear.*


----------



## tenkar

Everytime a WotC layoff thread hits the boards I thank God I didn't follow my dream to get published in the RPG industry and became a civil servant instead.  Downsizing is nearly unheard of in my profession (its politically unpopular... they use attrition instead)

My best to all those that were forced to move on... may it be to bigger and better things.


----------



## CleverNickName

Has there been any sort of public statement or announcement from WotC about this?  I'd like to know a little more about what happened, from the horse's mouth.


----------



## Blastin

I don't recall WOTC ever making a public statement about this or any of the previous rounds of layoffs.


----------



## ggroy

CleverNickName said:


> Has there been any sort of public statement or announcement from WotC about this?  I'd like to know a little more about what happened, from the horse's mouth.




Don't know about official sources.  Only semi-official sources at this point, such as "resignation" blog posts written by the laid-off/resigned individuals in question.

Peter Schaefer:
Whoops! Browser Settings Incompatible

Andy Collins:
Whoops! Browser Settings Incompatible


----------



## Wulf Ratbane

If I were, say, a Mike Mearls or an Ari Marmell, I'd be insulted at the insinuation that I could never be as creative and talented as anyone ever let go during any prior stewardship of D&D, or that I got my break solely due to a policy of moronic mismanagement.

My condolences to those who were let go. Onward and upward!


----------



## Steel_Wind

Wulf Ratbane said:


> If I were, say, a Mike Mearls or an Ari Marmell, I'd be insulted at the insinuation that I could never be as creative and talented as anyone ever let go during any prior stewardship of D&D, or that I got my break solely due to a policy of moronic mismanagement.




I never suggested nor insinuated that in the least; nor is that a logical inference from what I said Wulf. You're just stirring the pot. 

I DID suggest that a systematic policy, as a long-term firm culture at WotC towards ALL its creative staff since 2001, demonstrates that the company places little value upon the skills and contributions of their individual creative staff and considers all of them easily replaceable. 

That's what I said; you were the one who said what you said -- not me. 

I believe the current firm culture to be the staffing policy of a monopolist. It works only so long as they actually *are* a monopoly. They were in 2001. They _might_ still be in 2010 -- though the cracks are surely showing.

If WotC continues down that same staffing road through to  2020? I don't think WotC will be in the business of publishing D&D anymore.  They will have given their direct  competitor (which has an alternative but well-rooted claim to the "goodwill and longstanding affections" of fans of the game) far too many writers that bring with them ever-increasing skill, talent, legitimacy and goodwill.

How you can turn that into a swipe against Mike Mearls is beyond me.


----------



## booboo

nobody was crying for me when i lost my job its a bad economy and lot of people like me haven't bought many rpg products. so cutting back on staff is a good business decision.


----------



## mudbunny

Steel_Wind said:


> I DID suggest that a systematic policy, as a long-term firm culture at WotC towards ALL its creative staff since 2001, demonstrates that the company places little value upon the skills and contributions of their individual creative staff and considers all of them easily replaceable.




It is not a binary situation, as you seem to be suggestion. It is possible to have immense respect for the devs on staff, but feel that for a lower salary, you can get someone equally as good or better.

And, as cruel as it is to say, the pool of potential developers for D&D is much, much greater than the number of positions available. It truly is an employers market, not an employees market.


----------



## Olaf the Stout

Hobo said:


> You keep saying this.  WotC continues to thrive.
> 
> Perhaps you don't know what shortsighted and self-destructive mean?




Sometimes businesses can thrive despite management seeming to do everything they possibly can to screw things up.  I'm not saying that is the case here, but sometimes the market can be so good that even incompetent management can be overcome.

Olaf the Stout


----------



## billd91

Fifth Element said:


> It seems to work for H&R Block. So it might work for certain businesses.




I think that's different though. People see H&R Block's swelling and contracting as seasonal changes based on the workload. Regular seasonal changes. The same is true for agricultural work, tourism, Xmas-based retail, and so on.

Working R&D for a game company that publishes year round shouldn't be seen as seasonal. Without WotC's terrible management of this issue, I would think people should be able to expect to work there as long as they're doing good  work and there's appropriate work left for them to do. Well, guess what? Having a history of success there seems to make you more likely to be cut for being too expensive.


----------



## Fifth Element

billd91 said:


> Working R&D for a game company that publishes year round shouldn't be seen as seasonal.



Seasonal isn't the only form of cyclical, though. I'm not necessarily agreeing that layoffs like this are a good idea (I really don't think we know enough about them to make a call like that), but I can accept that it's plausibly a valid strategy.


----------



## billd91

mudbunny said:


> And, as cruel as it is to say, the pool of potential developers for D&D is much, much greater than the number of positions available. It truly is an employers market, not an employees market.




It can certainly put the employee in a terrible bind. If you don't get at least a cost of living raise, you get paid less and less each year in real dollars. But if you get some kind of raise to keep up with the cost of living, your salary looks bigger and bigger until, after you've been there long enough, you look a lot more expensive to keep around than hiring a newb and all you've been doing is treading water.


----------



## Fifth Element

mudbunny said:


> It is not a binary situation, as you seem to be suggestion. It is possible to have immense respect for the devs on staff, but feel that for a lower salary, you can get someone equally as good or better.
> 
> And, as cruel as it is to say, the pool of potential developers for D&D is much, much greater than the number of positions available. It truly is an employers market, not an employees market.



That's a good point, I think. From a management perspective, with a surplus of potential employees, holding on to staff and paying higher and higher salaries is difficult. Some companies might do so as part of their corporate culture, but economic realities might make it untenable as well.


----------



## Elton Robb

DaveMage said:


> No, they have freelancers.




Oh.  Good thing I am officially in Rebellion.  I don't think I could stomach the proposal review process again.


----------



## Steel_Wind

mudbunny said:


> It is not a binary situation, as you seem to be suggestion. It is possible to have immense respect for the devs on staff, but feel that for a lower salary, you can get someone equally as good or better.
> 
> And, as cruel as it is to say, the pool of potential developers for D&D is much, much greater than the number of positions available. It truly is an employers market, not an employees market.




I appreciate the thrust of what you are saying, though I think the phrase "immense respect" tends to mean something else -- when we _really mean it_, that is.

More to the point, your reasoning is quite logical and is, I'm quite sure, exactly the reasoning utilized by WotC/Hasbro in these matters.

The problem is, it's a short-term assessment only and views the creative talent as not having _earned_ any legitimacy or goodwill of their own by reason of their many years of accumulated experience and effort. Because that's what you are paying them for.  That's the cost of retention.

Instead, it views the problem of staffing only in terms of the opportunity cost of hiring a replacement at some vague and uncertain date in the future, while ignoring the goodwill and name recognition that attaches to its "immensely respected" creative staff -- as it throws them to the wolves. Or at least - that's where they used to throw them.

Now, its wolves + a potential hire/freelancer for their direct competitor. This is a new development  which is an EXTRMEMELY recent phenomenon in the RPG "industry" such as it is.

In fairness, until _Pathfinder_ came along, neither WotC or TSR had to deal with a direct competitor in the marketplace that had its hooks in to both their IP and core business as well as to a competing claim on the goodwill and affection of their fans. Because _that_ development is new.

And that's my point: you pay these people more money because there is legitimacy and goodwill attached to their names. If you don't pay for it -- somebody else gets it at a fire sale price.  

Bean-counters count beans. They don't count soft-assets. They attribute values to those things at year end for tax purposes. But they don't count them - and they certainly don't plan to manage or grow those assets with the short term hiring policy that you describe. 

The line on your balance sheet that says "goodwill" and the other line that says "depreciation" next to your  capital assets where it lists "trade-marks"? Those are notional amounts on a balance sheet which are_ extremely_ hard to actually estimate real values for. 

You can't count them in inventory; you can't _really_ locate them in a file. You can't directly spend them. It's difficult to pledge or hypothecate them. If you try and pay a dividend based upon their supposed value -- it's almost always a sign of inflated values ascribed to IP coupled with smoke and mirrors accounting.  

But that doesn't mean that those values aren't real and that they don't matter. It just means they are very hard to count and harder still to manage.


----------



## Mark

Fifth Element said:


> I'm not necessarily agreeing that layoffs like this are a good idea (I really don't think we know enough about them to make a call like that), (. . .)





I can say with certainty that I know enough about the effect of such layoffs on workers and their families to make the call that they are not a good thing.


----------



## Banshee16

Mark said:


> I can say with certainty that I know enough about the effect of such layoffs on workers and their families to make the call that they are not a good thing.




I believe it's been pretty well established by business management specialists, industrial/organizational psychologists and other experts that layoffs are not a good thing.  I remember tonnes of studies to that effect were available 10 years ago when I was in school.....and those studies had already been around for years.

It's not good for the employees, and it's not good for the companies.  But it makes the shareholders happy in the short term, and allows the managers who order the layoffs to justify their bonuses.

Banshee


----------



## Shemeska

Blastin said:


> I don't recall WOTC ever making a public statement about this or any of the previous rounds of layoffs.




They made a public statement in the wake of the 'Digital Consolidation' following the large purges during the blowback from Gleemax and the missed launch of the DDI. That involved a number of management folks, and the circumstances were rather unique at that point versus any of the semi-annual D&D cutbacks. I wouldn't expect any press release for this most recent round of layoffs, the Xmas one(s) or others for whom the circumstances really don't compare in scope to that one.


----------



## CharlesRyan

Hi, all, sorry for jumping in a little late, but I just didn't have time to plow through the entire thread yesterday.

I just wanted to reiterate a bit of what Scott said. Working at, and leaving, WotC is a real bundle of contradictions. On the one hand, WotC truly provides one of the greatest working environments of any business I've even heard of, let alone worked for. The company attracts brilliant, creative people, and works hard to develop an atmosphere that keeps those people productive and excited about their work. I will always think warmly of my six years there, not just because I enjoyed it, but because of the people I worked with and the tremendous personal and professional growth I got out of it.

The downside is that the axe can fall on anyone at anytime. That alone is stressful, as is the constant realigning of duties and increased workloads that follow. But to add to the contradictions, WotC's severance provisions are among the best I've ever been exposed to. In the grand scheme of things that may be petty consolation, but for someone suddenly looking at a lengthy employment search that can be a huge stress reducer.

My heart goes out to those who have lost their jobs (every time it happens). It always sucks, and it particularly sucks to be kicked out of Eden. But like Scott, I've found it's a time to reevaluate, and to move on and up. Andy and Jesse, in particular, are close friends, and I know that with their skills and genius they'll be able to follow that same path.


----------



## Silverblade The Ench

ggroy said:


> (sung to the tune of "Sympathy for the Devil" by the Rolling Stones)
> 
> "Please allow me to introduce myself
> I'm a woman of wealth and taste
> I've been around for a long, long year
> Stole many a gamer's soul and faith
> 
> And I was 'round when Gary Gygax
> Had his moment of doubt and pain
> Made damn sure that Pilate
> Washed his hands and sealed his fate
> 
> Pleased to meet you
> Hope you guessed my name
> But what's puzzling you
> Is the nature of my game
> 
> I stuck around Lake Geneva
> When I saw it was a time for a change
> Killed Gary Gygax and his ministers
> Gamers screamed in vain"




Muhaha!!


----------



## MoxieFu

I wonder if the constant stream of layoffs is causing two things I see as problems:

1: Fragmentation of the market, and
2: WotC's inability to publish good adventures

Laying off good, creative, and experienced developers puts expertise outside of the company. It creates competition and even thought the word monopoly has come up a few times, I have read much discussion about the splintering of the player base. If a company keeps creating their own competition this way, how long can they continue to be a monopoly?

Now I know that there are some who would say that WotC DOES publish good adventures, but I have seen a great deal of discussion to the contrary. Paizo has been cited many times as producing superior adventures. Many of the people there are ex-WotC employees. Is it possible that the layoffs at WotC and the hiring of these people at Paizo has led to this?

I am not claiming that my ideas presented here are ironclad. In fact I would appreciate hearing some discussion on this by someone who knows more about it than I do.


----------



## Maggan

MoxieFu said:


> Is it possible that the layoffs at WotC and the hiring of these people at Paizo has led to this?




How many people from WotC has Paizo hired?

/M


----------



## DaveMage

MoxieFu said:


> I wonder if the constant stream of layoffs is causing two things I see as problems:
> 
> 1: Fragmentation of the market, and
> 2: WotC's inability to publish good adventures




Well, they may be fragmenting their own audience soon with the release of the "essentials" line.  Nothing like brand confusion to make matters worse...

However, this would seem to be a natural progression of the D&D brand anyway.  After 3E was 3 years old, 3.5 came out, invigorating the brand (or at least, invigorating the sale of core rulebooks).  If 4E is really going to last the 8-10 years that Scott Rouse said it would when the game was released, it's only natural that they won't need as many people to run it going forward.  If D&D survives for 5E (and it really is 8 years between editions), look for them to start hiring again in 2013 - 3 years or so before the new edition would arrive.  Until then, they could coast with freelancers or simply repackaging products.  (Spell compendium, Adventure bundles, etc.)


----------



## Bullgrit

ggroy said:
			
		

> Don't know about official sources. Only semi-official sources at this point, such as "resignation" blog posts written by the laid-off/resigned individuals in question.



Is it irony that the post immediately before Andy's resignation post is his post announcing he's looking to hire an RPG Editor? "This person reports directly to me...."

Bullgrit


----------



## BryonD

Steel_Wind said:


> Bean-counters count beans. They don't count soft-assets. They attribute values to those things at year end for tax purposes. But they don't count them - and they certainly don't plan to manage or grow those assets with the short term hiring policy that you describe.



If you are correct, then the December lay-offs looked good on paper, but the bean counters are now seeing less net beans as the true and tangible impact comes along.

I really doubt that is the case.


----------



## Fifth Element

Mark said:


> I can say with certainty that I know enough about the effect of such layoffs on workers and their families to make the call that they are not a good thing.



I was speaking from the perspective of the business, of course. They are certainly not a good thing for certain people.


----------



## ggroy

In principle, the bean counters at WotC do have some hard numbers to *indirectly* estimate the relative value of some "soft assets" (such as game designers).

In the case of rpg game designers, there's the number of books a particular designer contributed to directly (ie. word count) and how many copies each book sold.  From these figures, in principle the bean counters can determine an approximate cents per word rate for each particular game designer on staff.


----------



## Herschel

renau1g said:


> Dreams are good, but they don't pay the bills. Perhaps an offer came by that was too good to pass up from a financial perspective.





Yeah, I'd love to still be doing radio, playing in bands or spinning vinyl at night clubs but like having a good car, disposable income, a nice house and time for gaming.


----------



## DaveMage

Bullgrit said:


> Is it irony that the post immediately before Andy's resignation post is his post announcing he's looking to hire an RPG Editor? "This person reports directly to me...."
> 
> Bullgrit




Yep.

Sad, isn't it?


----------



## Fifth Element

Steel_Wind said:


> Bean-counters count beans. They don't count soft-assets. They attribute values to those things at year end for tax purposes. But they don't count them - and they certainly don't plan to manage or grow those assets with the short term hiring policy that you describe.



Speaking as a professional bean-counter, while it's true that you can't *count *intangible assets, they are considered when making business decisions. Or at least, they should be. (Though you certainly don't worry about them for tax purposes, the only intangible assets that affect your taxes are the ones you pay cash money for).



Steel_Wind said:


> But that doesn't mean that those values aren't real and that they don't matter. It just means they are very hard to count and harder still to manage.



Indeed, they are impossible to count and very difficult to estimate a value for. And management of them can be very difficult. It's easy to play armchair CEO and dismiss certain corporate decisions as being short-sighted or misguided, but it's typically more complicated than it seems.


----------



## Dausuul

BryonD said:


> If you are correct, then the December lay-offs looked good on paper, but the bean counters are now seeing less net beans as the true and tangible impact comes along.
> 
> I really doubt that is the case.




It's not "less net beans," period. It's "less net beans *than the business would have made* if it didn't engage in such practices." And it's an exceptional bean-counter indeed who can reckon up that sort of hypothetical bean with any degree of certainty.

Measuring the financial impact of a single well-defined business initiative is bloody tough. I know, I've helped do it. Measuring the impact of "fuzzy stuff" like morale and experience lost due to layoffs... it's virtually impossible for a single business, which is why we have studies across large numbers of companies. And the results of those studies indicate layoffs are typically bad for the company in the long run. A couple of articles on the subject:

Lay Off the Layoffs
The Real Cost of Layoffs, Cost Controls Article - Inc. Article

Now, maybe WotC is the rare example where layoffs are beneficial (for the company, not the laid-off employee). However, the odds are against it. Just like 90% of drivers think they're better than the median... any given person who thinks that _might_ be right, some of them _will_ be right, but the majority are wrong.


----------



## JohnRTroy

The big problem I see is WoTC making short term decisions over long term ones.  This is based on several things they did.

They sell off GenCon, then realize they want a Con, so they make Winter Fantasy the official one for D&D.

They spin off Dragon and Dungeon licensed to Paizo, then they revoke the licenses for that.

They create the OGL, then revoke it, and before that change strategies (licensing out stuff like monster IP for Tome of Horrors and stuff like campaign settings, then reversing their stances).

I see them making a lot of short term decisions that appear to be biting them in the rear.  And while I can see layoffs as a possibility to keep profit flowing, I think a constant rotation of creative types will not be good for the company long term.


----------



## Desdichado

Mark said:


> How many still work for WotC?  Have they _successful_led themselves right out of a job?  Business is always looking good and the future is always looking great and then suddenly you're looking for work.  It's a _successful_ing shame, if you ask me, though I like the new definition of _successful_ we've developed.



You're being ridiculous.  If you're going to ask me to "prove" my statement that D&D appears to be successful, then I'm going to also insist that you establish _any_ kind of causal link for these wild ass assertions that you're making.


			
				Mark said:
			
		

> And, really?  You're going with the "tinfoil hat" trope as a way to counter the argument that seeing layoffs is a sign that not all is well?  Brilliant.  You've _successful_led yourself pretty good there.



You don't think "WotC is lying about how successful D&D is" is tinfoil hat territory?

I have no words.


----------



## Desdichado

blargney the second said:


> That was unbelievably tacky.  If I could give you negative XP, I would.
> 
> Another human's well-being is more important than your opinion about a game.
> -blarg



Uh... excuse me, but didn't we establish a long time ago that Andy Collins _*voluntarily*_ left WotC?


----------



## Desdichado

Olaf the Stout said:


> Sometimes businesses can thrive despite management seeming to do everything they possibly can to screw things up.  I'm not saying that is the case here, but sometimes the market can be so good that even incompetent management can be overcome.



While I don't disagree with that on general principle, I think it's a bit (a lot, really) more of a hard sell to suggest that _now_ is one of those times.


----------



## Herschel

The intarwebs: Boosting tin foil sales for two decades and running.


----------



## ruemere

In reply to Mark Hobo wrote:


Hobo said:


> [...]
> You don't think "WotC is lying about how successful D&D is" is tinfoil hat territory?
> 
> I have no words.




Term "lying" might be to strong to use here, however "avoiding factual statements" appears to be appropriate.
It's a common practice and form of brand protection, since being viewed as unsuccessful could damage sales.

Hence use of "tinfoil hat" is not appropriate here.

Regards,
Ruemere


----------



## Dausuul

Hobo said:


> You don't think "WotC is lying about how successful D&D is" is tinfoil hat territory?
> 
> I have no words.




Oh really? Find me a company that admits to having a bad business strategy in place. Regardless of what executives are saying to each other in the privacy of the conference room, regardless of what shows up on the internal profit-and-loss analysis, the company's going to put on its best face for public consumption. You think they want their stock to tank?

I don't think WotC is _lying_, per se, though the possibility is not nearly as far-fetched as you seem to believe--hello, Enron? I do think they're putting a carefully positive spin on the product line regardless of its actual success or failure, because that's what you do as a company. It's SOP. I'd be shocked to find a company that didn't do it. All the children are above average, and every product line is doing well and going big places until the day it's canceled. Only after cancellation will the company admit, "Yeah, this line wasn't doing so hot."

Unless you can find me a place where they give specific numbers on how well they're doing, I'm not going to accept the assertion that D&D is just fine and the outlook is rosy, based purely on the company's public statements of confidence and optimism. (I'm not asserting that D&D is _not_ fine, by the way, just that we have no way of knowing and vague "We're excited about the future of D&D!" statements are evidence for exactly nothing.)


----------



## Dausuul

<deleted, double post>


----------



## Desdichado

ruemere said:


> Term "lying" might be to strong to use here, however "avoiding factual statements" appears to be appropriate.
> It's a common practice and form of brand protection, since being viewed as unsuccessful could damage sales.
> 
> Hence use of "tinfoil hat" is not appropriate here.



It's entirely, 100% appropriate.  You've substituted another phrase that doesn't sound so harsh, but semantically it has the exact same meaning.  Take off your tinfoil hat, dude.


----------



## ggroy

ruemere said:


> Term "lying" might be to strong to use here, however "avoiding factual statements" appears to be appropriate.




Lying by omission?


----------



## Shemeska

Hobo said:


> Uh... excuse me, but didn't we establish a long time ago that Andy Collins _*voluntarily*_ left WotC?




Did we? His WotC blog doesn't say he resigned, and Gwen Kestrel's facebook entry doesn't indicate it was either. I've heard speculation that it was a voluntary resignation, but the two people who would directly know don't say anything like that.


----------



## Herschel

Shemeska said:


> Did we? His WotC blog doesn't say he resigned, and Gwen Kestrel's facebook entry doesn't indicate it was either. I've heard speculation that it was a voluntary resignation, but the two people who would directly know don't say anything like that.




Maybe because it's none of your (or my) business why they left, nor is it appropriate to comment on someone else's job status and that can be cause for termination under many company HR policies. Nor do they owe any of us a "timely" explanation even if they are inclined to give one.


----------



## Herschel

Keep political commentary off these boards, please. _-Eridanis_


----------



## Dausuul

Hobo said:


> It's entirely, 100% appropriate.  You've substituted another phrase that doesn't sound so harsh, but semantically it has the exact same meaning.  Take off your tinfoil hat, dude.




"Avoiding factual statements" does not mean the same thing as "lying." It means "avoiding factual statements," as in, "We're going to talk about how optimistic we are and how we think D&D has a great future instead of saying anything concrete about profits and sales."


----------



## BryonD

Dausuul said:


> It's not "less net beans," period. It's "less net beans *than the business would have made* if it didn't engage in such practices." And it's an exceptional bean-counter indeed who can reckon up that sort of hypothetical bean with any degree of certainty.



Are you saying Steel Wind is one of these exceptional bean-counters?
Are you saying you are?

Or, are you saying that Steel Wind's comments are hollow?

I certainly don't see any disclaimers of "hypothetical bean with any degree of certainty" when it is presented as a damning case of wrong action. You can't have it both ways.  You particularly can not have it both ways when trying to make the case that you know better than the insiders actually making the decisions.

You can't intermix wishful thinking for cherry-picked karma with honest economic assessment.


----------



## Shemeska

Herschel said:


> Nor do they owe any of us a "timely" explanation even if they are inclined to give one.




I never claimed that they or anyone else does. I just wanted to counter the earlier claim that it was totally proven that he resigned. Beyond wanting to counter what I saw as a false claim, I don't care, and in fact I wish them and everyone else impacted by this the best of luck.


----------



## Dausuul

BryonD said:


> Are you saying Steel Wind is one of these exceptional bean-counters?
> Are you saying you are?
> 
> Or, are you saying that Steel Wind's comments are hollow?
> 
> I certainly don't see any disclaimers of "hypothetical bean with any degree of certainty" when it is presented as a damning case of wrong action. You can't have it both ways.  You particularly can not have it both ways when trying to make the case that you know better than the insiders actually making the decisions.




I am saying that

*a)* it's virtually impossible to calculate the total cost (including damage to morale and loss of experience) of a given round of layoffs to a given company;
*b)* it _is_ possible to estimate the impact statistically, across large numbers of companies that have had layoffs;
*c)* when such analysis has been done, it has found that layoffs typically lead to bad results for the companies that do them;
*d)* clearly companies that do layoffs think they're going to get good results;
*e)* the fact that most of them are wrong indicates WotC is probably wrong too.

The arguments advanced for why the layoffs "must be" improving WotC's bottom line could be applied to any sizeable company that lays people off. Hence, if such arguments were valid, we should see layoffs improving the bottom lines of most companies that do them. In fact, the opposite is true.


----------



## jgbrowning

Hobo said:


> It's entirely, 100% appropriate.  You've substituted another phrase that doesn't sound so harsh, but semantically it has the exact same meaning.  Take off your tinfoil hat, dude.




It's rational to assume that spokespeople of a company put positive spins on situations because it is ubiquitously common.

joe b.


----------



## Mark

Fifth Element said:


> I was speaking from the perspective of the business, of course. They are certainly not a good thing for certain people.






Defining those two circumstances as separate is problematic and at the heart of our disagreement.  The fact that they are directly related and yet have proponents espousing the business aspect as good while ignoring the resultant damaging effect on individual workers and their families is what I find most abhorrent.


----------



## Jdvn1

Dausuul said:


> Oh really? Find me a company that admits to having a bad business strategy in place. Regardless of what executives are saying to each other in the privacy of the conference room, regardless of what shows up on the internal profit-and-loss analysis, the company's going to put on its best face for public consumption. You think they want their stock to tank?
> ...
> Unless you can find me a place where they give specific numbers on how well they're doing, I'm not going to accept the assertion that D&D is just fine and the outlook is rosy, based purely on the company's public statements of confidence and optimism. (I'm not asserting that D&D is _not_ fine, by the way, just that we have no way of knowing and vague "We're excited about the future of D&D!" statements are evidence for exactly nothing.)



There are two things being talked about here: business strategy and "how the company is doing." Companies usually won't say they have a bad business strategy. They will say when they're not doing well.

At least, Hasbro will. Companies provide forecasts of how their profits are going to look like--if they get close to those forecasts are exceed those forecasts, investors like that. If they miss their target substantially, investors don't like that, and your stock tanks.

Hasbro beat their forecasts recently, and has been doing well for some time.


----------



## smug

Hobo said:


> Uh... excuse me, but didn't we establish a long time ago that Andy Collins _*voluntarily*_ left WotC?




I thought that Scheaffer did but that Collins was given the Spanish Archer, as were the others. Perhaps I am misremembering.


----------



## Dausuul

Jdvn1 said:


> There are two things being talked about here: business strategy and "how the company is doing." Companies usually won't say they have a bad business strategy. They will say when they're not doing well.
> 
> At least, Hasbro will. Companies provide forecasts of how their profits are going to look like--if they get close to those forecasts are exceed those forecasts, investors like that. If they miss their target substantially, investors don't like that, and your stock tanks.
> 
> Hasbro beat their forecasts recently, and has been doing well for some time.




Sure. And I expect WotC's total profits look good, even if D&D is doing poorly. M:tG covers a multitude of sins. Incidentally, the lead designer for M:tG, Mark Rosewater, has been with Wizards since 1995. He's been lead designer since 2003. How many lead designers has D&D gone through in that time?

Does anyone have hard numbers on how D&D, specifically, is doing?


----------



## ggroy

Dausuul said:


> Does anyone have hard numbers on how D&D, specifically, is doing?




*Looks into a crystal ball*  

Where's the magic 8-ball?


----------



## Jdvn1

Dausuul said:


> Sure. And I expect WotC's total profits look good, even if D&D is doing poorly. M:tG covers a multitude of sins. Incidentally, the lead designer for M:tG, Mark Rosewater, has been with Wizards since 1995. He's been lead designer since 2003. How many lead designers has D&D gone through in that time?
> 
> Does anyone have hard numbers on how D&D, specifically, is doing?



You missed my point, maybe. 

Companies will certainly say how they're doing. If they're going to do poorly, they'll say so. Therefore, company announcements that they're doing well shouldn't necessarily be disregarded.


----------



## Mark

Dausuul said:


> Does anyone have hard numbers on how D&D, specifically, is doing?





Can't we cite the generous severance packages received by those laid off as a sign of WotC's and D&D 's profitability?


----------



## Dausuul

Jdvn1 said:


> You missed my point, maybe.
> 
> Companies will certainly say how they're doing. If they're going to do poorly, they'll say so. Therefore, company announcements that they're doing well shouldn't necessarily be disregarded.




I got your point, but companies don't make those announcements because they want to. They make them because they _have_ to. They are legally required to provide certain information to their shareholders and to make that information public. (Privately owned companies don't have to provide squat.)

To the extent that a company can spin its failures as successes, it will do so. There's not a lot you can do to spin "We lost fifty million dollars last year" as anything but bad. However, you can bet that before any such announcement, there's a whole lot of work going on among the executives to find a way to reassure investors and the public that the company has a plan to dig itself out of its hole.

And that's why I'm more or less disregarding anything other than hard numbers to judge D&D's success or failure. WotC isn't going to come out and say D&D is going down in flames, even if it is, and why should they? If D&D _were_ going down in flames, admitting the fact would just seal the deal - players would start migrating to other systems or quitting the hobby, and any hope of salvaging the product line would be lost.


----------



## Desdichado

smug said:


> I thought that Scheaffer did but that Collins was given the Spanish Archer, as were the others. Perhaps I am misremembering.



The early posts in this thread say the opposite.

But that's part of the problem too; we're all running around half-cocked about what happened, without really having any knowledge of what _really_ happened.  And I know its fun to play armchair CEO and make all kinds of strategic recommendations, and complain about mismanagement and whatnot, but c'mon.  None of us (with the exception of the former WotC employees who've posted, and even then, it's pretty dubious) are in a position to make those kinds of judgements, because we have no idea what we're talking about.  Similarly, it's fun and makes us feel good to make broad, sweeping claims about layoffs in general, or bemoan the fact that anyone ever has to lose a job, and whatnot, but c'mon.  Those really aren't reasonable things to say either.


----------



## Steel_Wind

BryonD said:


> If you are correct, then the December lay-offs looked good on paper, but the bean counters are now seeing less net beans as the true and tangible impact comes along.
> 
> I really doubt that is the case.




Not at all. I don't suggest this will show up that soon in the least. Quarter to quarter - even annual results - are short-term in the business cycle. Medium-term decisions are those that extend out to three - sometimes even five years, depending on.

Beyond five years in the future -- that's the horizon I'm referring to when I speak about the "long term" impact of decisions to layoff creative staff as an enshrined matter of firm culture at Wizards.

We certainly do know that these decisions have had an effect to date. The whole firm culture goes back to 2001 -- the same year that events are put into motion which results in the decision to spin off WotC's periodicals division in early 2002. That periodical division became Paizo Publishing.

How that story turns out ultimately remains unknown. But yes - I believe it all has its genesis in the firm culture we are discussing here.

If you are looking for the present impact of these past decisions, I put it to you that a significant portion of the millons of dollars in sales revenue generated through the sale of products published by Paizo would have otherwise been dollars spent on products published by WotC.

In that sense, the opportunity cost of such layoffs and goodwill transfers has already been higher than the operating expenditures supposedly "saved".

Not every sale earned by Paizo is revenue that is subject to such a prisoner's dilemma that can be posited or otherwise attributed as a dollar that "ought" to have been earned by WotC. But a sizeable portion of those sales? Yes. I think so.

If that is so, we're already talking millions of dollars in foregone revenue already.


----------



## Desdichado

Dausuul said:


> I got your point, but companies don't make those announcements because they want to. They make them because they _have_ to. They are legally required to provide certain information to their shareholders and to make that information public. (Privately owned companies don't have to provide squat.)



And I specifically said that's not what I'm talking about.  I'm talking about employees _on their own time_ telling us (in admittedly vague terms) that D&D is successful for no reason other than because they want us, a tiny subset of the potential costumers and fans of the product, to not spout misinformed speculation about D&D.  I'm not talking about official corporate statements.  I specifically referred to comments made here, and elsewhere.


----------



## Dausuul

Mark said:


> Can't we cite the generous severance packages received by those laid off as a sign of WotC's and D&D 's profitability?



Sure, but then I get to cite the layoffs themselves as evidence that D&D is going to hell in a handbasket. 

Summarizing all of my above points:


In general, layoffs are bad; repeated layoffs are worse; hence, WotC's yearly layoffs are very likely a Bad Thing.
Beyond the observation that it hasn't tanked so badly as to be canceled, we do not know the health of the D&D line, and we will not know until WotC gives us some hard data (which they won't) or shuts it down.


----------



## MrMyth

JohnRTroy said:


> The big problem I see is WoTC making short term decisions over long term ones. This is based on several things they did.




I think you may be confusing 'short term decisions' with 'changing business strategies based on past experiences'. They gave the magazine licenses to Paizo, and that worked out well for them. With the launch of 4E, they wanted to bring those in house and online - and that, too, has worked out well for them. 

There was a span of, what, 8 years between creating the OGL and revoking it? That doesn't seem like a short term impulse, but a deliberate change in direction. 

I mean, I don't know if all their decisions have been good ones (and I certainly don't agree with some of them), but I think it is pretty inaccurate to portray them as simply made on impulse, or focused on some short term goal. Something like DDI is clearly a long term goal, and I don't think there is any evidence to suggest otherwise.


----------



## Atlemar

I survived two rounds of layoffs at my last job before I got caught in the third. After each round, management would hold a meeting or send out an e-mail explaining a rationale. (I worked at a newspaper, so it was all about declining ad sales.)

For the ex-WotC employees (if any are still reading this deep into the thread), were there ever explanations of the layoffs from management? Or was there another generalized sense, maybe an internal conventional wisdom, of why management picked how many and when and who to lay off?


----------



## MrMyth

Steel_Wind said:


> If that is so, we're already talking millions of dollars in foregone revenue already.




Except we don't know how much that compares to money brought in by new products that wouldn't have been there in different circumstances. Keep in mind that the majority of the money brought in by Paizo was not the result of them being established independantly in 2002, but of the release of 4E. 

Does the amount Paizo has brought in compare to the amount WotC have made on 4E? Would WotC have been better served if they had retained their earlier creative staff, and were now responsible for both 4E and a continuation of 3.5 that was in competition with it?

I think there are several very big assumptions being made here that the release of creative staff close to a decade ago has led to millions in lost revenue for WotC. 

I'm still not arguing that the culture of layoffs is correct or even profitable, but there really are a lot of claims being made in this thread without the relevant data to confirm them, or appropriate experience to support them.


----------



## Jdvn1

Dausuul said:


> Does anyone have hard numbers on how D&D, specifically, is doing?



To answer this question, no one does. Well, except the WotC people, probably.

Hasbro doesn't list segments in that much detail, though net revenue in "Games and Puzzles" is up 7% year-over-year.

Though, Transformers is their biggest line. The only mentions I can find from their 2009 annual report:

"The increase in gross profit in dollars was more than offset by increased product development and sales and marketing expenses related to investments the Company made in both core brands and its digitial initiative related to its Wizards of the Coast subsidiary..."
(bad)

"The Company expects amortization expense to decrease in 2010 primarily as a result of the property rights related to Wizards of the Coast becoming fully amortized in the fourth quarter of 2009."
(good)

"In 2007 the Company reacquired the remaining digital gaming rights for its owned or controlled properties held by Infogrames Entertainment SA (Infogrames), with the except of rights to DUNGEON & DRAGONS, for an acquisition price of $19,000..."
(neutral)

So, really, this is a small amount of information regarding the health of D&D, though the D&D digital initiative probably didn't help.


----------



## Eridanis

We've had a lot of constructive discussion in this thread, but it's starting to go sour. Keep away from sniping, and the thread can stay open.


----------



## Jdvn1

Dausuul said:


> WotC isn't going to come out and say D&D is going down in flames, even if it is, and why should they? If D&D _were_ going down in flames, admitting the fact would just seal the deal - players would start migrating to other systems or quitting the hobby, and any hope of salvaging the product line would be lost.



If D&D was going down in flames, they'd cut bait and sell. Holding on to it would result in further losses.


----------



## Shazman

I'm not surprised that WotC is showing the same amount of respect and consideration to it's employees as it has to it's customers.  They have done more than enough things in the past to warrant a boycott.  Now they definitely deserve to be boycotted.  Consider my DDI subscription cancelled.


----------



## CleverNickName

Without any specific report or press release, about the closest thing we have to "hard data" on the health of the company is through the stock exchange.  According to this link, Hasbro stock is up 2.83% from yesterday, closing at 42.42.  Not too bad...not stellar, but fairly solid.

Of course, this is for Hasbro, Inc. as a whole, not Wizards of the Coast LLC specifically.


----------



## mudbunny

Jdvn1 said:


> If D&D was going down in flames, they'd cut bait and sell. Holding on to it would result in further losses.




The value of D&D as a game is dwarfed by the value of D&D as an IP. If D&D was going down the tubes, it is unlikely that Hasbro would sell it off. Rather, they would simply shelve it and wait for it to become valuable again.


----------



## Jdvn1

Dausuul said:


> *b)* it _is_ possible to estimate the impact statistically, across large numbers of companies that have had layoffs;
> *c)* when such analysis has been done, it has found that layoffs typically lead to bad results for the companies that do them;



This simply isn't true. Layoffs typically come after or during bad periods or possibly in anticipation of bad periods. Research has shown that such layoffs increase productivity, reduce costs, and end up in relatively good results. And, it's good that research shows this, because it backs up the theory as well. Layoffs are a necessary evil to ensure long term success. The most obvious case in point--the US economy. We suffered massive layoffs, but as a result we've been able to start recovering, and job creation last month was at a four year high. It's a similar story for every recession at every developed country.


			
				Dausuul said:
			
		

> The arguments advanced for why the layoffs "must be" improving WotC's bottom line could be applied to any sizeable company that lays people off. Hence, if such arguments were valid, we should see layoffs improving the bottom lines of most companies that do them. In fact, the opposite is true.



In fact, we see the bottom lines of most companies improving.


----------



## Jdvn1

mudbunny said:


> The value of D&D as a game is dwarfed by the value of D&D as an IP. If D&D was going down the tubes, it is unlikely that Hasbro would sell it off. Rather, they would simply shelve it and wait for it to become valuable again.



The value of D&D as an IP and the value of D&D as a game are each part of the overall value of D&D. Hasbro certainly has a dollars-and-cents valuation of D&D in the short and long terms, and if the overall value of D&D is going down, they're losing money, and they're better off selling.


----------



## Jdvn1

mudbunny said:


> The value of D&D as a game is dwarfed by the value of D&D as an IP. If D&D was going down the tubes, it is unlikely that Hasbro would sell it off. Rather, they would simply shelve it and wait for it to become valuable again.



The value of D&D as an IP and the value of D&D as a game are each part of the overall value of D&D. Hasbro certainly has a dollars-and-cents valuation of D&D in the short and long terms, and if the overall value of D&D is going down, they're losing money, and they're better off selling.


----------



## Herschel

Shazman said:


> I'm not surprised that WotC is showing the same amount of respect and consideration to it's employees as it has to it's customers. They have done more than enough things in the past to warrant a boycott. Now they definitely deserve to be boycotted. Consider my DDI subscription cancelled.




 Layoffs happen, whether or not a company or line is doing well. Large companies reallign regularly, meaning often people get squeezed out. Other times, people get a better offer and leave. One of these cases is likely true. Which one is pure speculation and it's funny but it appears the majority of people saying layoff are 3E fans and a large chunk of those refuting are 4E fans. 

Edited out the belligerent parts. We've asked to keep the discussion civil; trying to incite flames doesn't help that.


----------



## Jdvn1

CleverNickName said:


> Without any specific report or press release, about the closest thing we have to "hard data" on the health of the company is through the stock exchange.  According to this link, Hasbro stock is up 2.83% from yesterday, closing at 42.42.  Not too bad...not stellar, but fairly solid.
> 
> Of course, this is for Hasbro, Inc. as a whole, not Wizards of the Coast LLC specifically.



There are some other hard numbers in your link.

Net Profit Margin 8.77%, for example, as well as links to more information.


----------



## Jdvn1

CleverNickName said:


> Without any specific report or press release, about the closest thing we have to "hard data" on the health of the company is through the stock exchange.  According to this link, Hasbro stock is up 2.83% from yesterday, closing at 42.42.  Not too bad...not stellar, but fairly solid.
> 
> Of course, this is for Hasbro, Inc. as a whole, not Wizards of the Coast LLC specifically.



There are some other hard numbers in your link.

Net Profit Margin 8.77%, for example, as well as links to more information.

Also, 2.83% on the day is a) beating the rest of the market by a lot (which is pretty stellar) and b) unreliable, since stocks fluctuate wildly.


----------



## Fifth Element

Jdvn1 said:


> "The increase in gross profit in dollars was more than offset by increased product development and sales and marketing expenses related to investments the Company made in both core brands and its digitial initiative related to its Wizards of the Coast subsidiary..."
> (bad)



We don't know enough to say this is bad. Investing in a product line can increase future profits. It hurt the bottom line that year, but doesn't tell us about any future positive effects.



Jdvn1 said:


> "The Company expects amortization expense to decrease in 2010 primarily as a result of the property rights related to Wizards of the Coast becoming fully amortized in the fourth quarter of 2009."
> (good)



This one is neutral. Amortization is an accounting concept, and has nothing to do with whether a product line is successful or not.



Jdvn1 said:


> So, really, this is a small amount of information regarding the health of D&D, though the D&D digital initiative probably didn't help.



We don't know if they digital initiative has helped, since we don't know its costs or revenues. There have been failures and successes in that arena.


----------



## Azgulor

Mark said:


> Can't we cite the generous severance packages received by those laid off as a sign of WotC's and D&D 's profitability?




A sign of WotC profitability?  Perhaps yes.  It's likely even.  However, there may be other determining factors.

A sign of D&D profitability?  Definitely no. 

Note: I'm not saying D&D isn't profitable.  It's just that WotC is not going to have multiple HR organizations & policies for product lines.  Therefore, whatever HR-policies apply (such as severance packages), would apply to employees of the company as a whole.  

There may be (and almost certainly are) variances based on employee type (e.g. executive vs. management vs. full-time salaried employee).


----------



## Jdvn1

Fifth Element said:


> We don't know enough to say this is bad. Investing in a product line can increase future profits. It hurt the bottom line that year, but doesn't tell us about any future positive effects.
> 
> 
> This one is neutral. Amortization is an accounting concept, and has nothing to do with whether a product line is successful or not.
> 
> 
> We don't know if they digital initiative has helped, since we don't know its costs or revenues. There have been failures and successes in that arena.



That's true. I'm using "good" and "bad" very loosely, to imply that, in the absence of other information, a cost is "bad" and less cost is "good." It certainly doesn't imply anything overall about the overall story or the longer term story.


----------



## Jdvn1

Azgulor said:


> A sign of WotC profitability?  Perhaps yes.  It's likely even.  However, there may be other determining factors.
> 
> A sign of D&D profitability?  Definitely no.
> 
> Note: I'm not saying D&D isn't profitable.  It's just that WotC is not going to have multiple HR organizations & policies for product lines.  Therefore, whatever HR-policies apply (such as severance packages), would apply to employees of the company as a whole.
> 
> There may be (and almost certainly are) variances based on employee type (e.g. executive vs. management vs. full-time salaried employee).



Hasbro is probably not likely to have several HR departments and policies, at least in the United States. So, I'd argue that it's no indication of WotC necessarily either.


----------



## CleverNickName

Jdvn1 said:


> There are some other hard numbers in your link.
> 
> Net Profit Margin 8.77%, for example, as well as links to more information.



I know, right?  I'm looking over their numbers for the last few years, and they seem to be doing well.  Very well in fact, considering we have been in a recession for the last couple of years.



Jdvn1 said:


> Also, 2.83% on the day is a) beating the rest of the market by a lot (which is pretty stellar) and b) unreliable, since stocks fluctuate wildly.



Very true.  But still, they have shown steady and consistent gains over the last five years.  Not every company can say that nowadays.

Perhaps I should move my portfolio around a bit...

*EDIT:* Actually, I should have done that around 2006.  Not sure about today.  (But are we ever?)


----------



## mudbunny

Jdvn1 said:


> The value of D&D as an IP and the value of D&D as a game are each part of the overall value of D&D. Hasbro certainly has a dollars-and-cents valuation of D&D in the short and long terms, and if the overall value of D&D is going down, they're losing money, and they're better off selling.




If you look solely at the short term, yes. But Hasbro needs to look at the long term. See the Transformers, for example. Before the movie came out, it had little to no value. Now, after two highly successful movies (critical reviews notwithstanding), the value is really, really high.


----------



## DEFCON 1

Jdvn1 said:


> The value of D&D as an IP and the value of D&D as a game are each part of the overall value of D&D. Hasbro certainly has a dollars-and-cents valuation of D&D in the short and long terms, and if the overall value of D&D is going down, they're losing money, and they're better off selling.



However, this is one thing we all on these message board can _in no way_ even begin to determine or guess at the moneys involved for the Hasbro parent company.  It's futile enough for us to guess at how important the D&D brand is to Wizards of the Coast... now we want to try and value it to Hasbro as well?  Nuh uh.  We can't.  We are all truly completely clueless on this.

As much as it seems many folks here wish Hasbro/WotC would sell off the D&D brand to someone else... someone who (in the guesstimation of the folks here) would treat the game and its designers "better"... the simple fact is that it is completely foolhardy of us to try and figure out just whether that sale would be justified.  The _brand_ has potential profit streams and costs from avenues all over... not just the roleplaying game itself.  Whether that be Hollywood, or novels, or action figures, or videogames, or comic books, or board games, or tee-shirts, or bedsheets, or breakfast cereal etc. etc. etc... for us to believe that Hasbro would just up and sell off the Dungeons & Dragons _brand_ because the roleplaying game is not making the company any money is a pipedream that I don't think we should get our hopes up in thinking it will eventually come true.


----------



## Jdvn1

DEFCON 1 said:


> However, this is one thing we all on these message board can _in no way_ even begin to determine or guess at the moneys involved for the Hasbro parent company.  It's futile enough for us to guess at how important the D&D brand is to Wizards of the Coast... now we want to try and value it to Hasbro as well?  Nuh uh.  We can't.  We are all truly completely clueless on this.



Maybe, but some of us are knowledgeable about general business practices--we won't figure out the amount, but we can take a stab at the direction of change, if any.


----------



## Jdvn1

mudbunny said:


> If you look solely at the short term, yes. But Hasbro needs to look at the long term. See the Transformers, for example. Before the movie came out, it had little to no value. Now, after two highly successful movies (critical reviews notwithstanding), the value is really, really high.



I did mention the short and long terms. It's not hard to compare the short and long terms against each other, to see which outweighs the other.


----------



## SkidAce

BryonD said:


> You can't intermix wishful thinking for cherry-picked karma with honest economic assessment.




Mmmmmmm mixed cherry milkshake...


----------



## mudbunny

Jdvn1 said:


> I did mention the short and long terms. It's not hard to compare the short and long terms against each other, to see which outweighs the other.




Easy enough to value the short term yes. The long term?? Not so much.


----------



## Steel_Wind

mudbunny said:


> The value of D&D as a game is dwarfed by the value of D&D as an IP. If D&D was going down the tubes, it is unlikely that Hasbro would sell it off. Rather, they would simply shelve it and wait for it to become valuable again.




Well – if “by wait for it to become valuable again” you mean wait until the Atari licensing deal is dead and free of all litigation claims – then I suppose so. Otherwise, I disagree. The profit and bonuses to management that come with the sale of assets encourages Hasbro’s management to sell now – not sit on them until some vague and uncertain date. 

As the "big" value of the D&D brand IP is on the electronic side, I think it likely that Hasbro will sell the whole brand to EA, Ubisoft or Activision or maybe even Disney.  The most likely candidate is EA -- as we know that EAs present management had expressed interest in the past.  

In any event, the very nature of publicly traded companies are all about the here and now.  This is especially so when management bonuses are tied to immediate quarterly returns – not for the uncertain fruits of future hopes. 

The real problem in all of this is that the most potentially valuable element of that IP – electronic licensing, has never been properly appreciated by Hasbro. We know this, because within 2 years of that IP coming into Hasbro's  possession when they bought WotC, they sold the electronic license rights on an extremely long term basis to Infogrammes Entertainment SA as a mere sweetener to persuade Infogrammes SA to purchase Hasbro Interactive for $100 million (A company which was, at the time of the dot.com bust, bleeding red ink in the nine figures).  

As we all know, Hasbro’s throwing in of the long-term electronic rights to IESA for most of its core brands in 2001, most especially D&D, was an excellent, well-reasoned and imminently respectable business decision, made with prudence and after careful and deliberative consideration of all the relevant factors.  Indeed,  that business decision, in hindsight, can only be described as the very essence of  _Grace under Pressure_ and is deserving of veneration, deference and our ongoing respect for the superlative and farsighted management skills of the entire Hasbro team.  I’m sure that if Hasbro management was confronted with an opportunity to revisit those events  – they‘d “double down” and do it all over again, too.


----------



## Jdvn1

mudbunny said:


> Easy enough to value the short term yes. The long term?? Not so much.



Sure it is.

Future and Present Value of Money
Time Value of Money
If Wikipedia was working for me, I'd link to more information.

The equations used assume that the long term value won't change dramatically (like, due to a successful movie, not that D&D has had any of those), but factoring that in isn't too complicated. There may also be more sophisticated equations they can use, but it's certainly not an insurmountable task.


----------



## Azgulor

Jdvn1 said:


> Hasbro is probably not likely to have several HR departments and policies, at least in the United States. So, I'd argue that it's no indication of WotC necessarily either.




I'd tend to agree.  HR policies per division could be in play, however, so that's why I gave the benefit of the doubt to the first conclusion despite thinking it an unlikely indicator.


----------



## pedr

Azgulor said:


> I'd tend to agree.  HR policies per division could be in play, however, so that's why I gave the benefit of the doubt to the first conclusion despite thinking it an unlikely indicator.



I'm pretty sure that I'm not following this conversation terribly well, but I thought WotC was an individual company which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hasbro, rather than part of the Hasbro corporation itself (I'm no company lawyer, but my mental image is of WotC as something Hasbro owns, and over which it has absolute control due to its 100% shareholding). 

If that's the case, WotC will have separate everything - legal, HR, building management, etc departments, and their own policies, set by the directors/executives appointed by Hasbro. Terms and conditions of employment could be entirely different for people who work at WotC compared with people who are directly employed by Hasbro. I could be wrong, and this could be irrelevant to the discussion here (which has become very complex!) but I thought it worth noting.


----------



## MrGrenadine

Jdvn1 said:


> The point is that if the company were in trouble, they wouldn't have scheduled lay offs anyways. They'd lay people off as necessary, not according to a schedule. Scheduled lay offs, on the other hand, are a very stable way of managing your workforce.




Sure...if you'd like to manage your workforce down to zero.

Without commensurate hiring to balance the layoffs, periodic layoffs are simply not a sign of corporate health.

Now, if WotC was somehow automating their work flow, or otherwise making themselves so much more efficient that they simply don't need as many bodies in the office, then thats a different matter.

But I would find this hard to believe, since WotC's product line consists of creative work done by rare, talented individuals who (hopefully) care about the product.  Tough to automate that.


----------



## MrMyth

MrGrenadine said:


> Sure...if you'd like to manage your workforce down to zero.
> 
> Without commensurate hiring to balance the layoffs, periodic layoffs are simply not a sign of corporate health.




But... does anyone actually feel that WotC only has layoffs, and never brings in any new staff? I mean, the periodic layoffs have been happening for almost a decade now. I've always gotten the sense that new employees are also getting brought in on a regular basis. 

With exceptions like the Gleemax situation, it has not been my understanding that WotC has done nothing but shrink. Perhaps generally a bit more bulking up around any edition launch, and then slimming down after that, but both of those still involving ongoing hiring and firing throughout.


----------



## Hadrian the Builder

MrGrenadine said:


> But I would find this hard to believe, since WotC's product line consists of creative work done by rare, talented individuals who (hopefully) care about the product. Tough to automate that.




With respect for those who do the job, and have more talent for this line of work than I do, there is no shortage of talented and capable people who want to work at WotC. So WotC gets to cherry-pick and lay off with no apparent business consequences.

The discussion of whether or not the management's decision to have regular layoffs is good or bad is clearly going nowhere. Former employees have indicated in this thread that layoffs are not necesarily related to financial perfomance, and have not been for years.  

So aside from the fact of the layoffs and the people affected by the decision, what's left to discuss? Unless Greg Leeds decides to explain the rationale, we're just not going to know.

It just occured to me that even the CEO position has been a bit of a revolving door at WotC as well...there have been 5 CEOs in the last 10 years.


----------



## Fifth Element

pedr said:


> If that's the case, WotC will have separate everything - legal, HR, building management, etc departments, and their own policies, set by the directors/executives appointed by Hasbro.



It's quite possible for some of these things to be seperate - but one of the reasons that one company acquires another is to take advantage of efficiencies. Hasbro's legal department, for example, might make a seperate legal department at WotC redundant.



pedr said:


> Terms and conditions of employment could be entirely different for people who work at WotC compared with people who are directly employed by Hasbro.



They very well could be. On the other hand, Hasbro could very well have policies that apply to all its subsidiaries.


----------



## ruemere

ruemere said:
			
		

> Term "lying" might be to strong to use here, however "avoiding factual statements" appears to be appropriate.





ggroy said:


> Lying by omission?




Lying by omission is about providing information in such a way as to lead someone else to draw false conclusions.
Avoiding factual statements is about not providing certain information - there need not be any ulterior motive to this apart from company policy or desire to protect trade secrets.
There is a world of difference between these two.

Note: 
I am intentionally replying to you, as Hobo comes forward bit too aggressively for my taste - I tend to avoid crusading characters due to their tendency to oversimplify things.

Note 2: 
I strongly suspect that you probably made that remark to draw my reply only. You've succeeded. 

Note 3:
I am in favor of closing this topic. While I think that Hasbro/WotC deserve negative karma, empty speculation is out of place - things which needed to be said, appeared within 10 pages of the beginning of this thread. 
Now we have various people arguing over possible, yet groundless, explanations.

So, be positive, try to discourage people from working there (good parting terms do not change the fact that people there are treated like cows - milk them dry, then throw them out) and move on.

Regards,
Ruemere


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## PaulofCthulhu

It's all a bit "Greek Science", really. The people in the know aren't talking and it's virtually impossible to make accurate inferences from scraps of information.

As of now, WotC is still there, still producing D&D and with lots of plans to do so as far as I can see. 

Whatever your views on the current edition of D&D, it's still a social tabletop game and should be celebrated as such. Well, I think so.


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## Jack99

This popcorn is awesome!


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## coyote6

Jack99 said:


> This popcorn is awesome!




Is it buttered?

Real butter?


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## Jasperak

MrMyth said:


> They gave the magazine licenses to Paizo, and that worked out well for them. With the launch of 4E, they wanted to bring those in house and online - and that, too, has worked out well for them.




Did it work out well for them? Since WOTC gave the licenses to Paizo they lost  $10-15 per month from me. Paizo gained that money and built up their brand and grew what I would presume to be a profitable business. Just on the magazines that WOTC didn't want in-house anymore. WOTC didn't re-earn my business when they brought the magazines back in-house.

I wonder on the grand scale if WOTC makes more profit on Dragon and Dungeon now than Paizo did when they were the stewards. I guess if there were people that signed up for their online subscription service only for their RPG articles and not edition specific applications (Character/Monster Builder), then you could say that Dragon and Dungeon are successes for them.

/tangent


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## redboxrazor

ruemere said:
			
		

> In reply to Mark Hobo wrote:
> 
> Term "lying" might be to strong to use here, however "avoiding factual statements" appears to be appropriate.
> It's a common practice and form of brand protection, since being viewed as unsuccessful could damage sales.
> 
> Hence use of "tinfoil hat" is not appropriate here.
> 
> Regards,
> Ruemere




A lie of ommision is still a lie. This very idea is a principled topic in ethics courses.


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## Fifth Element

Jack99 said:


> This popcorn is awesome!



As awesome as bullywugs? Doubtful.


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## Alzrius

coyote6 said:


> Is it buttered?
> 
> Real butter?




Of course it's real; Jack99's got milk, remember.


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## Eridanis

Despite warnings, this thread has degenerated beyond saving. Thread closed.


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