-
The VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
More lay-offs at WOTC! [Merged]
- Thread starter jaults
- Start date
- Status
You seem to be painting this situation as an either/or. There is plenty of ground in the middle where comfortable profit is to be had while still making a decent product in alliance with your artistic principles. In fact, that is how *most* business operates.
If the US is anything like Canada, the vast bulk of the companies are small or medium business and are privately owned. What this means, in general, for these companies is that the owner often still runs things, sees the products, meets the customers, etc. This hands-on experience changes how he or she does business (for the better, IMO).
The absentee shareholder of the big corporation, though, has literally no connection to the company he owns a part of except for the annual statement he receives in the mail. If he holds the company as part of a mutual fund, he doesn't even get that, but rather receives a statement lumping all his shares under an umbrella fund name. If the shareholder is exceptionally civic-minded, he will attend the annual meeting, but this is very rare except when the company is in dire straits.
Does this affect how the company does business? Of course it does. In my opinion, ownership without responsibility breeds irresponsible corporations because the incentive to actually care about the workers and customers is gone. You don't see them every day, meet them for golf, attend the company picnic with them, etc. You certainly don't have any pride of ownership over the products because you don't have a hand in how they are made.
The big business, in so many words, is just a big, impersonal, abstract, money-making tool to a shareholder. Small business, though, is very personal, concrete and community minded in comparison.
I don't think, then, that Coreyartus was necessarily against capitalism as a concept, but only a certain type of it that gets most of the press.
Mobius..
You obviously don't understand what profit and thus price
represent and they function in a market conomy. Price is a SIGNAL of aggregate preference. Let me make this simple for you, by maximizing profits a company is infact WHAT PEOPLE WANT AND IN AN EFFICIENT MANNER and thus increases the VALUE of an economy. There is a reason those small businesses you laud are small and appeal to a very limited market; they don't create what a large number of people want. That is fine for the individual entr who prefers that lifestyle, but to say it holds a societally more valued role that the cooperative enterprise is asinine.
You obviously don't understand what profit and thus price
represent and they function in a market conomy. Price is a SIGNAL of aggregate preference. Let me make this simple for you, by maximizing profits a company is infact WHAT PEOPLE WANT AND IN AN EFFICIENT MANNER and thus increases the VALUE of an economy. There is a reason those small businesses you laud are small and appeal to a very limited market; they don't create what a large number of people want. That is fine for the individual entr who prefers that lifestyle, but to say it holds a societally more valued role that the cooperative enterprise is asinine.
Last edited:
Thanks for simplifying that for me. I would have never gotten that on my own.
What about marketing and branding, then? The actual value of the products isn't increased at all. The efficiency of the company certainly isn't increased, either. When you walk into a shoe store and pay $120 for a pair of sneakers, ask yourself if what the market actually 'wants' is to pay that amount for a pair of $6 sneakers, or whether the desire to do so was artificially created through a good branding campaign. When you run into companies practicing psychological warfare on their customers in order to increase their profits, your explanation of the market falls down.
It also points to a cogent aspect of humanity: value is a relative term.
Take, for example, the war that is playing out across Canada and the US right now, but which never makes the news. Wal-Mart faces almost routine opposition in any town where they seek to install a store. By your definition of selling what people want - judged solely by sales - Wal-Mart is a valuable commodity, so why the opposition? Some people's perception of value is very different from the perception of value held by Wal-Mart, obviously. Some look at the intangibles that Wal-Mart neglects to measure or openly disregards:
1. the net loss of jobs in the community
2. the loss of overall autonomy as owners become workers
3. the drop in the average wage
4. the loss of locally circulating currency to a head office far away
...all aspects of Wal-Mart moving into town, and they don't like what they see.
Judged by your criteria, Wal-Mart is a great company. Judged by the criteria of its opponents, Wal-Mart is one of the worst. Both judgements were based on a completely differing set of ideas towards 'value'.
Last edited:
Coreyartus
Explorer
Re: Re: Re: The Quandry
"Why is it so hard to understand that products created by human beings have to be paid for, if you want to see similar products in future?"
I don't mind paying for what I like. I don't mind paying a lot of money for it either--if I want it bad enough I'll find a way to get it. What I'm angry about is the big-business need to manipulate that simple transaction of creating a product and then selling it with aritificial standards of measurement, mass-production and saturation of a market, regurgitating endless spin-off variations of the same product that water-down the original product's idea, and generally stepping in to "help". Let it be.
RPG's are a niche market. D20 companies makes specific products for a specific group. Why think of it as anything else? Do the best you can with the realities of the situation, and don't puff yourself up to the point of inevitable collapse. Smaller companies know their limits, know the industry, know what they can creatively accomplish, know their audience... Hasbro simply doesn't and never will. And no fill-in-the-dot product consumer return-by-mail card will ever tell them that. And they aren't interested in learning. Hasbro has let big-business ruin WotC, trampling through it like a bulldozer.
I don't mind companies letting creative people go. I don't mind companies growing. What I do mind is companies that apply incorrect business standards and principles to an industry they know nothing about, and then turn around and blame the employees for not knowing how to play by rules that they were never responsible for establishing. I don't think the creative types should suffer for the ignorance of their administrators. And smaller companies are less likely to find themselves in that situation, because the risks are too great to get into it in the first place.
Yeah, I would contribute to some fund or company or whatever to "save D&D" if I actually felt that there was a heart to it. But a company that starts out with the sole intention of making money as the priority over creating a product that is worth selling--well, that's what's got us into the economic slump America is in now. The core of any business has to be either the product they sell or the service they provide. Making money as the only goal of going into business can't cut it anymore, not in our society, and certainly not in business as a whole, and as these message boards attest certainly not in the RPG industry.
--Coreyartus
"Why is it so hard to understand that products created by human beings have to be paid for, if you want to see similar products in future?"
I don't mind paying for what I like. I don't mind paying a lot of money for it either--if I want it bad enough I'll find a way to get it. What I'm angry about is the big-business need to manipulate that simple transaction of creating a product and then selling it with aritificial standards of measurement, mass-production and saturation of a market, regurgitating endless spin-off variations of the same product that water-down the original product's idea, and generally stepping in to "help". Let it be.
RPG's are a niche market. D20 companies makes specific products for a specific group. Why think of it as anything else? Do the best you can with the realities of the situation, and don't puff yourself up to the point of inevitable collapse. Smaller companies know their limits, know the industry, know what they can creatively accomplish, know their audience... Hasbro simply doesn't and never will. And no fill-in-the-dot product consumer return-by-mail card will ever tell them that. And they aren't interested in learning. Hasbro has let big-business ruin WotC, trampling through it like a bulldozer.
I don't mind companies letting creative people go. I don't mind companies growing. What I do mind is companies that apply incorrect business standards and principles to an industry they know nothing about, and then turn around and blame the employees for not knowing how to play by rules that they were never responsible for establishing. I don't think the creative types should suffer for the ignorance of their administrators. And smaller companies are less likely to find themselves in that situation, because the risks are too great to get into it in the first place.
Yeah, I would contribute to some fund or company or whatever to "save D&D" if I actually felt that there was a heart to it. But a company that starts out with the sole intention of making money as the priority over creating a product that is worth selling--well, that's what's got us into the economic slump America is in now. The core of any business has to be either the product they sell or the service they provide. Making money as the only goal of going into business can't cut it anymore, not in our society, and certainly not in business as a whole, and as these message boards attest certainly not in the RPG industry.
--Coreyartus
Here is the cold, hard fact :
No one is left at Hasbro that knows anything about GAMES.
The top level executives are all corporate DRONES, *I* along with half the posters of this message boards could do a far better job than any of the tools Hasbro share holders are trusting with billions of dollars.
Now, I can see your replys coming from a mile away. "Managing a multi-billion dollars company is'nt as easy as it sounds" "It's great and all to know about gaming, but you need level-headed executives at the top of even a game company".
Both of those statements are true. Unfortunately, the top level management at Hasbro does'nt get EITHER of those. First of all, they CONSISTENTLY go for the _EASY_ route, putting out tired and old versions of decades old toys. There is not one person among Hasbro's top level management who is willing to take any risk. And that is KILLING the company.
The only thing the top-level management is interested in is the Company's bottom line. Sounds good, right? The management of a top level company should always be looking out for the bottom line, right? Right. But they should also be looking towards building strong, INNOVATIVE brands, especially in the case of a games & toys company. That means investing money to build future strong intellectual properties. That is something the company's top level execs are absolutely, completely incapable of doing. Or even comprehending. All they comprehend is _THIS QUARTER'S EARNINGS_.
Hell, I was supposed to be done by now, but I'm not done hammering those nails in the coffin.
A few years ago, Hasbro got rid of it's electronics game division, and sold the electronics rights to all their brands to Infogrammes ( Hasbro's top level execs would'nt be able to build a solid videogames & electronics games division if their lives depended on it .) For the next 10 years or so. TEN YEARS. The future of toys & games is electronics. But it made the balance sheet look good. Short-mid term at least it does. I doubt the company's leadership expects to be still around in 8 or so years when this deals finishes.
As one of the quoted people said on the front page, "Hasbro is intellectually bankrupt".
Solid game companies, in the long term, make money and grow because they can depend on a strong intellectual capital. Old & supposedly 'dependable' brand names can help you hide your weaknesses for only so long.
No one is left at Hasbro that knows anything about GAMES.
The top level executives are all corporate DRONES, *I* along with half the posters of this message boards could do a far better job than any of the tools Hasbro share holders are trusting with billions of dollars.
Now, I can see your replys coming from a mile away. "Managing a multi-billion dollars company is'nt as easy as it sounds" "It's great and all to know about gaming, but you need level-headed executives at the top of even a game company".
Both of those statements are true. Unfortunately, the top level management at Hasbro does'nt get EITHER of those. First of all, they CONSISTENTLY go for the _EASY_ route, putting out tired and old versions of decades old toys. There is not one person among Hasbro's top level management who is willing to take any risk. And that is KILLING the company.
The only thing the top-level management is interested in is the Company's bottom line. Sounds good, right? The management of a top level company should always be looking out for the bottom line, right? Right. But they should also be looking towards building strong, INNOVATIVE brands, especially in the case of a games & toys company. That means investing money to build future strong intellectual properties. That is something the company's top level execs are absolutely, completely incapable of doing. Or even comprehending. All they comprehend is _THIS QUARTER'S EARNINGS_.
Hell, I was supposed to be done by now, but I'm not done hammering those nails in the coffin.
A few years ago, Hasbro got rid of it's electronics game division, and sold the electronics rights to all their brands to Infogrammes ( Hasbro's top level execs would'nt be able to build a solid videogames & electronics games division if their lives depended on it .) For the next 10 years or so. TEN YEARS. The future of toys & games is electronics. But it made the balance sheet look good. Short-mid term at least it does. I doubt the company's leadership expects to be still around in 8 or so years when this deals finishes.
As one of the quoted people said on the front page, "Hasbro is intellectually bankrupt".
Solid game companies, in the long term, make money and grow because they can depend on a strong intellectual capital. Old & supposedly 'dependable' brand names can help you hide your weaknesses for only so long.
- Status
