WotC WotC blacklist. Discussion

[Ruin Explorer]

ENWorld was on WotC's recent survey. Seems like a weird thing to do with a site that you've blacklisted, when you could leave it to be written in under "other".

It's not that weird. Companies often have to acknowledge some other company they don't work with and don't want to work with.

@Morrus has done literally everything he can in this and the other thread to say "ENWorld is blacklisted by WotC", without actually saying it. So do you believe him? Because I do. Like, I don't agree with @Morrus on everything, but he is one of the most honest people I've come across in RPGs.

This also isn't the first we've heard about WotC having a blacklist. It came up before re: Orion Black. I can't remember exactly the situation, but there was some implication that after the bust-up with WotC, Orion Black would be blacklisted by WotC and others.

And historically WotC have been a bit... capricious... re: 3PPs and how they relate to them. Capricious and a wee bit hostile. That's been true all through 3E and 4E as well as 5E. I mean, sheesh at the start of 4E I'd describe WotC as both overbearing and hostile towards 3PPs, hence the idiotic GSL deal.

EDIT - Also, blacklisting doesn't mean WotC say, "hate" ENWorld. It might be that a number of WotC people, even a majority, hold a favourable opinion of ENWorld. But depending on the reason for the blacklisting, it could be down to a single person in senior management just hard-blocking any change to the status, or it could be for some exotic reason that wouldn't even make sense outside of WotC.

 

[deganawida]

That seems a rather big leap of correlation there. There are quite a number of things that have changed culturally in the late 90s to early 2000s, and more things have changed since. To pick out one and lay blame on it seems like it needs more support than "this happened around a time that kids have now grown up".

Not necessarily. Not speaking for the person to whom you are addressing, but I haven't had live TV in twenty years, only visit gaming and religious sites on the web for pleasure (everything else is work-related), and have spent the last twenty years working on my career and raising my children. Now that they are teenagers and are engaging in popular culture, what all has changed has left me a little shocked, as I was oblivious to changes as they occurred. It's almost like I left the country for 20 years and came back to find that it had an entirely different governmental system and language was significantly different. Not making a judgment call, there, but if you don't engage with culture due to other priorities, changes can seem rather stark from when you last engaged.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I dont remember it when I was younger either. First time I remember encountering this type of logic was in the late 90s/early 2000's when the participation trophy was instituted in tee ball. Now those kids are adults, see the connection.

This is beyond a stretch and into "2+2 = 143.7" territory.

The real change is a much more straightforward and direct one - the PR departments of companies have become massively more professional over the period 1990 through 2022. WotC actually trailed far, far, far behind other companies on this - to its chagrin!

Back in 1990, most companies, including a lot of very large multinationals, had extremely poorly run PR departments, and numerous ways that executives or even just mid-level people could talk to the press or individuals and circumvent both PR and legal. Executives would mouth off or say dumb things, but the lack of the internet meant such statements rarely went far, though heads often rolled if they did make it to the mainstream news (rather than just, say, Private Eye or an industry specialist publication).

As the internet came into being, and it became easier and easier to transmit information, like, say footage of a executive saying something awful, or email or screenshot of an email, or whatever, PR departments and legal departments had to up their game, and companies had to increase professionalism and training to stop people from circumventing them to mouth off (often in ways damaging to the company and/or its products). This in turn lead to consumers expecting better-quality and less slapdash responses.

WotC did an appallingly bad job here. It failed to teach professional behaviour to people like Mike Mearls, but put them in leadership positions regardless, and it failed to set up a situation where the communications of the guy who was essentially "the face of D&D" were adequately monitored by PR and legal. This lead to the Zak S fiasco we've been discussing in various threads. Mearls, being extremely unprofessional (like, dude makes me look a senior civil servant in terms of professionalism! Me! A random idiot! Mearls is seemingly the sort of guy who flat-out fail the easy multiple-choice training quiz on "What is the correct thing to do in this business situation"), and having, frankly, outstandingly poor judgement of the kind it takes a lot of entitlement to acquire, decided to take it upon himself to be both judge and jury on the Zak S matter, and to demand evidence from the women involved, despite having declared himself a friend of Zak S not long before and despite the fact that he had absolutely no business whatsoever being involved with this. Somehow, WotC's presumably either inept or powerless PR and legal weren't able to stop Mearls, even though this went on for days, until suddenly BOOM Mearls suffered the fate of the mediocre man promoted beyond his level of competence - he got promoted again, but this time to a position out of sight from the public, and told to shut his yap (a terrible fate to be sure!).

Anyway, TLDR, point is, the real change is professionalism in PR/legal in response to the speed of information distribution, which changes expectations/standards re communication. It's nothing to do with "participation prizes" or other bizarre fantasies. You might as well connect it to the price of Freddos! (look it up lol)

 

[Steampunkette]

It was way before the Zak S. situation that he stopped posting here.

It appears my memory is failing, last post to this forum appears to be in 2017 here, which I think (but could be wrong) predates the Zack S thing.

You're both right.

He stopped posting in 2017 and Zak's public horribleness happened in 2019.

Just kind of all a blur of "Pre-Covid-Times" for me, at this point...

 

[Blue]

Not necessarily. Not speaking for the person to whom you are addressing, but I haven't had live TV in twenty years, only visit gaming and religious sites on the web for pleasure (everything else is work-related), and have spent the last twenty years working on my career and raising my children. Now that they are teenagers and are engaging in popular culture, what all has changed has left me a little shocked, as I was oblivious to changes as they occurred. It's almost like I left the country for 20 years and came back to find that it had an entirely different governmental system and language was significantly different. Not making a judgment call, there, but if you don't engage with culture due to other priorities, changes can seem rather stark from when you last engaged.

Sure. But "all culture changes that happened over decades" is a much, much larger thing than "this one culture change I picked for personal reasons, and could be related because those people are now adults (as well as many adults who had childhoods at other times). They are comparible mainly in the orders of magnitude larger what you are commenting on is than what the original poster pointed out.

 

[Mort]

This is beyond a stretch and into "2+2 = 143.7" territory.

The real change is a much more straightforward and direct one - the PR departments of companies have become massively more professional over the period 1990 through 2022. WotC actually trailed far, far, far behind other companies on this - to its chagrin!

Back in 1990, most companies, including a lot of very large multinationals, had extremely poorly run PR departments, and numerous ways that executives or even just mid-level people could talk to the press or individuals and circumvent both PR and legal. Executives would mouth off or say dumb things, but the lack of the internet meant such statements rarely went far, though heads often rolled if they did make it to the mainstream news (rather than just, say, Private Eye or an industry specialist publication).

As the internet came into being, and it became easier and easier to transmit information, like, say footage of a executive saying something awful, or email or screenshot of an email, or whatever, PR departments and legal departments had to up their game, and companies had to increase professionalism and training to stop people from circumventing them to mouth off (often in ways damaging to the company and/or its products). This in turn lead to consumers expecting better-quality and less slapdash responses.

WotC did an appallingly bad job here. It failed to teach professional behaviour to people like Mike Mearls, but put them in leadership positions regardless, and it failed to set up a situation where the communications of the guy who was essentially "the face of D&D" were adequately monitored by PR and legal. This lead to the Zak S fiasco we've been discussing in various threads. Mearls, being extremely unprofessional (like, dude makes me look a senior civil servant in terms of professionalism! Me! A random idiot! Mearls is seemingly the sort of guy who flat-out fail the easy multiple-choice training quiz on "What is the correct thing to do in this business situation"), and having, frankly, outstandingly poor judgement of the kind it takes a lot of entitlement to acquire, decided to take it upon himself to be both judge and jury on the Zak S matter, and to demand evidence from the women involved, despite having declared himself a friend of Zak S not long before and despite the fact that he had absolutely no business whatsoever being involved with this. Somehow, WotC's presumably either inept or powerless PR and legal weren't able to stop Mearls, even though this went on for days, until suddenly BOOM Mearls suffered the fate of the mediocre man promoted beyond his level of competence - he got promoted again, but this time to a position out of sight from the public, and told to shut his yap (a terrible fate to be sure!).

Anyway, TLDR, point is, the real change is professionalism in PR/legal in response to the speed of information distribution, which changes expectations/standards re communication. It's nothing to do with "participation prizes" or other bizarre fantasies. You might as well connect it to the price of Freddos! (look it up lol)

I largely agree with your assessment. Except Mearls was/is a very good game designer. BUT game design, management and PR are completely different skill sets. Expecting someone to be good at 2 of the three skills is unlikely expecting someone to be good at all three unrealistic bordering on incredible.

At a small company, there's nothing you can do about, people have to double/triple up. But with WoTC as it became big? Totally unrealistic to expect someone to fill more than one role well.

 

[Oofta]

I think there's a difference between "blacklisted" and "generally ignored". No, we don't get promotional items here any more, but as Moruss stated, it's not like that's a loss. WOTC has changed their approach to social media and the game has grown significantly.

Is there really any other forum where WOTC employees are active on a regular basis other than posting their promotional materials?

 

[DEFCON 1]

Well, I dunno when any company-wide decision was made to have the D&D team stop talking to the huddled masses... but all that comes into my mind was the absolutely insane and entitled reaction by the gaming public who got all bent out of shape when a supposed player-facing book being possibly designed around the time of Princes of the Apocalypse... a book that had never been announced or indeed that anyone was even aware was being made UNTIL some rando went dumpster-diving in the depths of the internet and found the barest indication one was being bandied about and then spread that rumor like wildfire... was then "cancelled" by WotC. And when WotC said "You can't cancel something that was never announced in the first place", ENWorlders (and other sites) lost their ever-loving SH%T! And made some of the most ridiculous and overreactive crap responses to them that was basically them trying to kick the D&D employees in the groin over and over and over again in punishment for daring to not give them what their entitled little asses demanded.

And at that point it was made abundantly clear to the D&D team that trying to talk to us internet rando fans like reasonable people was a complete and utter waste of time. And they rightly shut the F up after that because a bunch of us here ruined it for the rest of us. And ever since then? It's been proven time and time again that their decision was indeed the correct one, as we STILL get people here calling members of the D&D team talentless and lazy because they choose to institute rules into the game that the ENWorlder doesn't like. So quite frankly, I don't blame them ONE BIT that they don't show up around here anymore because there is nothing to be gained by them doing so. We ENWorlder message board cretins have made sure of that.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

But how does WotC wield their blacklists?

i am all over the map on this one... I don't trust blacklists...

yes "I am not doing business with bad people" sounds great, as long as you agree with who bad people are.

lets say I root for team orange, and you root for team purple. but some people in public say that anyone rooting form team orange must be bad people... and other on team orange say the same about rooting for team purple... it leads to issues.

 

[Greg Benage]

Except Mearls was/is a very good game designer. BUT game design, management and PR are completely different skill sets. Expecting someone to be good at 2 of the three skills is unlikely expecting someone to be good at all three unrealistic bordering on incredible.

The internet changed, too, and specifically "the TTRPG space." It feels like it changed quickly, though that could be down to the fact that I'm old. The interaction with fans used to be more of a free-for-all. My boss at FFG used to rip into BoardGameGeek reviewers, and that community would rip him back. The infamous "Hey, Net Punk" fiasco was in 1994, and if you go read it now, you'll note that several of the people who flamed Ken Cliffe most ardently eventually became prominent developers for the company.

Was any of that "good PR strategy"? Almost certainly not, but there was much less a sense that online interaction with other gamers needed to be confined to a PR strategy, that it needed to be polished, and massaged, and reviewed by legal. I suspect developers who came up during that era were particularly unsuited for an internet culture in which, if you said the wrong thing or handled a situation poorly, you weren't just a hapless nerd -- you were evil and your company was evil and you should be fired and your company should be boycotted.

Is it possible "the blacklist" is simply what it looks like when The Professionals take control of a company's online presence?