Unconfirmed: More Layoffs at WotC

[Mark]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

*Looks into a crystal ball*

Where's the magic 8-ball?

 

[Jdvn1]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.