And then there were 8! On Chris Sims and Jennifer Clarke Wilkes' Layoffs...

I've seen quite a few people speculating that Chris Sims and Jennifer Clarke-Wilkes may not have been made redundant, but possibly fired for various reasons, or because contracts ended (given that Jennifer has been at WoTC for about 15 years, that latter guess was always going to be very unlikely!). For that reason, I feel it's a good idea to set things straight and find out exactly what happened; I'm sure neither want rumours like that to start! The short version: yep, they were lay-offs.

Chris Sims kindly shared with me that "Jennifer Clarke Wilkes and I were laid off on Wednesday the 28th. Our positions were eliminated, reducing the D&D team to eight people working directly on the tabletop game."

Hopefully that will put some speculation to rest! Here's the original article, for context.

Who makes up the 8 still working on the RPG? Mike Mearls, Rodney Thompson, Jeremy Crawford, Greg Bilsland, Chris Perkins, Peter Lee, Matt Sernett, Adam Lee.

The 8 does not include art or brand staff, including community manager Trevor Kidd, brand/marketing managers, Organized Play program managers and the like, which brings the number up to about 13.

As an interesting point of comparison, Paizo CEO Lisa Stevens kindly shared that "We don't have any part time employees. The 25 full-time were folks that worked directly on Pathfinder products in design, development, editing and art. Currently, we are pushing 60 employees in the company and growing. In the next few months, we will be hiring more editors and developers to support Pathfinder. 2014 was our best year ever in both sales and profits. Still going up!"

 

[fjw70]

I feel terrible for the folks laid off but I have to tell you the fact that they aren't planning to crap out splat books makes me happy. We need more adventures and settings. We don't need more classes, spells, items, etc. It is that kind of power creep that always ruins the edition.

Agreed. I am perfectly fine with the very lite splat book approach and want more adventures.

 

[Beleriphon]

I like D&D 5th Edition, it is a good game and is all you need for years of play...but I do get the feeling that WotC's plan is to now move the focus towards using the brand heavily in other areas rather than roleplaying. Maybe they actually have some super cool stuff on the horizon that they haven't shared but Tyranny of Dragons left me cold, I thought it was poor and the Elemental Evil thing doesn't sit right with me either...I am not interested in the product bible..cross market blah blah blah commercial squeezerama road that they seem to be following. It seems like a cheap way to leverage the Dungeons and Dragons name and history. That said...they have given us a very nice game. I hope they give it some oxygen rathr than just use it's title to sell other stuff.

I don't know, I think that's really the only thing they can do is push the brand rather than the game. The game honestly isn't worth that much money to a company like Hasbro if they can turn around make a few hundred million dollars on a movie with licensing. I also think if you compared Wizards of the Coast's entire staff, rather than just D&D, you'd find they actually have a pretty good sized staff if you take into account MtG and administrative folks.

The problem is that D&D at this point is only one small part of a much, much larger business. A business unit of 13 people is actually pretty good sized. I don't know what people want here, but Hasbro's share holders aren't super interested in a niche game, they're interested in brand licensing that will increase their profit share. Video games and movies are worth way more than the actual RPG they take their name from. All you have to look at is all the crappy Hasbro branded movies like Battleship. It was a terrible movie, but for Hasbro shareholders its a no brainer since the license was basically free money from whatever dingbat studio head thought it was a good idea to fund. The D&D brand is even better since it has even more cultural traction.

The comparison to Paizo is a poor one. If Paizo were a publically traded company they'd be in the same boat since the bottom line comes before anything else when push comes to shove. I don't think that the Wizards of the Coast team is going to be responsible getting the big brand moves pushed forward like movies. They don't have the corporate heavies to do so, and they never have really otherwise there wouldn't be the mess with movies rights like there is. Will they be involved with the creative direction of a movie? I would hope so if the people in control of those things at Hasbro have any sense, and looking that the success of the Marvel movies working closely with the people that made the comics so successful you'd think they would want to ape that process.

Ultimately D&D is so much more than a TTRPG now. We love our D&D for sure, and we want it to be successful in all things but in the long run the RPG portion Dungeons and Dragons is small potatoes. Like the comics The Avengers is based on the movie made more than the combined might of all of Marvel Comics did in a year. Using some rought figures of 100,000 comics per title sold per month, at $3.99 per issue, we're pulling somewhere around $95,760,000 per year on Marvel Comics sales and that's a generous figure. One movie over the course of about three months made $1,518,000,000. That's the box office, so total profit after the budget and such we're still well over $1 billion.

Wizards of the Coast's D&D success for Hasbro is the success of Marvel Comics having a banner year in comic sales for Disney. The shareholder's really don't care that much because its a percentage of a percentage total when compared to the big picture. If you want to see the TTRPG expand dramatically there's only way to do that, monetize play beyond buying one set of books. That's the main reason that Magic: The Gathering has remained so successful all these years later, they found a really good way to make money with a game by encouraging players to constantly want to, or even need to, buy new material. Paizo to some degree has done the same thing with the AP subscriptions. I don't have any good ideas for D&D since copying Piazo's model probably wouldn't work that well at this stage.

 

[Hathorym]

WotC shows its commitment to women gamers by removing the only woman on the team. I'm glad they're not sexist in their firings.

 

[Beleriphon]

WotC shows its commitment to women gamers by removing the only woman on the team. I'm glad they're not sexist in their firings.

I'm not sure what you're trying to imply here, but the impression I'm getting is one of lack of need of a position regardless of who happened to be filling it at the time.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

Sometimes a layoff is just a layoff.

 

[Gecko85]

I've been reading "Designer's & Dragons - 1970's" today (which actually covers quite a bit of the 80's). Loving it because I remember that entire period well. Anyway, I'm at the part where Kevin Blume exiled Gary Gygax, took control of the company (TSR) then proceeded to run it into the ground, turning a multi-million dollar a year company into a pile of debt and bad investments.

An interesting thing to note is that from late 1982 to 1984, TSR downsized from over 370 employees to only 100. During 1983, the Design Department went from 12 people down to 4...So, this is nothing new.

 

[mach1.9pants]

I also think the comparisons to Paizo are not very accurate. Paizo have warehouse staff, accountant types etc. Whereas it appears DnD is only the co-ordinators of the game. Leadership, and they are freelancing out pretty much everything. But, as is obvious, DnD is not putting out monthly splats! Paizo's output is prolific, the amount of feats/traits/classes/subclasses etc probably far outweighs official releases by WotC in 3E!*

*Note: WAG pulled from nowhere, but there is a lot!

 

[Parmandur]

I've been reading "Designer's & Dragons - 1970's" today (which actually covers quite a bit of the 80's). Loving it because I remember that entire period well. Anyway, I'm at the part where Kevin Blume exiled Gary Gygax, took control of the company (TSR) then proceeded to run it into the ground, turning a multi-million dollar a year company into a pile of debt and bad investments.



An interesting thing to note is that from late 1982 to 1984, TSR downsized from over 370 employees to only 100. During 1983, the Design Department went from 12 people down to 4...So, this is nothing new.

That's an interesting perspective, considering the eight now are comparable to those 12-4 employees back in the day. Am I wrong in understanding that Blume was responsible for the ballooning of the staff, and Gygax led the way in paring down to keep costs in line with revenue?

 

[werecorpse]

Sure, but you combine the layoffs with the anaemic release schedule for the tabletop game and it doesn't paint a picture of a vibrant new edition. All this cross media hype just seems to mean the ttrpg is a not very significant part of the D&D brand, rather than being the main game.
It's difficult not to compare it to Pathfinder, but maybe this is a mistake, maybe it's never going to be that big again, maybe as a ttrpg it should be compared to 13th age , or mongoose Runequest

 

[Parmandur]

Sure, but you combine the layoffs with the anaemic release schedule for the tabletop game and it doesn't paint a picture of a vibrant new edition. All this cross media hype just seems to mean the ttrpg is a not very significant part of the D&D brand, rather than being the main game.

It's difficult not to compare it to Pathfinder, but maybe this is a mistake, maybe it's never going to be that big again, maybe as a ttrpg it should be compared to 13th age , or mongoose Runequest

Well, the TTRPG is nit where they are planning to make money, see the giant multimillion dollar lawsuit over the movie rights. The RPG is a sideline to the brand, and that might be better for the RPG: I for one plan to be buying every 5E. That wouldn't even be possible for any other edition than...1E :-o

 

[Gecko85]

That's an interesting perspective, considering the eight now are comparable to those 12-4 employees back in the day. Am I wrong in understanding that Blume was responsible for the ballooning of the staff, and Gygax led the way in paring down to keep costs in line with revenue?

Yeah, pretty much. Blume also expanded into a bunch of crap including (I kid you not), a needlepoint business. Way too much expansion, way too fast. Gygax came back, regained his title for a bit, then was ousted again (permanently) in a stock option coup led by the Blumes and the woman who Gygax had brought onboard to help get the finances in order (Williams). The Blume's sold all their stock to Williams, making her the largest shareholder. Gygax was then ousted and wound up selling all his shares to Williams as well, then leaving for good.

interstingly, the biggest point of contention between Gygax and the Blume's was over expansion. Gygax favored slower, steady, planned expansion, while the Blume's were more of the "throw a bunch of stuff against the wall and see what sticks" types.

 

[mflayermonk]

I've been reading "Designer's & Dragons - 1970's" today (which actually covers quite a bit of the 80's). Loving it because I remember that entire period well. Anyway, I'm at the part where Kevin Blume exiled Gary Gygax, took control of the company (TSR) then proceeded to run it into the ground, turning a multi-million dollar a year company into a pile of debt and bad investments.

An interesting thing to note is that from late 1982 to 1984, TSR downsized from over 370 employees to only 100. During 1983, the Design Department went from 12 people down to 4...So, this is nothing new.

This is a good article but might have some redundancy."Ambush at Sheridan Springs: How Gary Gygax Lost Control of Dungeons & Dragons" by Jon Peterson, author of Playing at the World.

https://medium.com/@increment/the-ambush-at-sheridan-springs-3a29d07f6836

 

[Doc_Klueless]

WotC shows its commitment to women gamers by removing the only woman on the team. I'm glad they're not sexist in their firings.

This sentiment irritates me. The position was eliminated. A woman held that position. The two are not necessarily and with all probability are NOT related.

I'm firmly of the belief that if a position is not longer needed and is eliminated then the person in that position should also gone, be they man, woman, black, Hispanic, straight, gay, what have you, unless there is another position already in existence that is open which they would be qualified to fill if they were willing. I say this as the straight white guy who was let go so that the downsizing company wouldn't have to deal with the backlash of letting a minority go.

Granted this was in my teenage years 30 years ago, but I'm still a bit bitter about it.

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

I don't like it that only men are working on the RPG.

That does not concern me as much as the brain drain that WotC habitually engages in. With every firing they lobotomize themselves, in this case losing 15 years experience with Wilkes alone.

They seem to be doing a good job not repeating past mistakes in terms of game design. I'd hate to see that end for want of someone who's been around long enough that can point out when when a seemingly new idea has already been tried and failed.

 

[Mercurius]

WotC shows its commitment to women gamers by removing the only woman on the team. I'm glad they're not sexist in their firings.

This would only be true--that is, WotC being sexists in their firings--if the fact that Wilkes is a woman had anything to do with their decision, which as far as I can tell there's no reason to think is true, so we probably shouldn't start such nasty, groundless rumors!

 

[Serendipity]

Wow. Wishing them both very well, hoping they land on their feet in short order.

 

[DongMaster]

I don't like it that only men are working on the RPG.

I do!

I mean, now the nerds can finally concentrate on writing good D&D material instead of getting all nervous when the "hot girl" walks into the office, and ruins their lunch play with rubber swords and plastic doll princesses..

 

[Evenglare]

Basically our speculation was correct. Sucks. I can only draw from this that 5e didn't do nearly as well as we thought. I'd love to hear evidence to the contrary though.

 

[Stacie GmrGrl]

I'd rather have setting and more classes and class powers than adventures from them, considering that there are already a whole bunch of adventures coming out for it from non-official 3rd party companies.

If all they are going to do is their own version of adventure paths than I'm going to get rid of 5e from my collection and switch to Pathfinder. It's quite obvious which company actually believes in their own product and which company doesn't.

I hope the two let go find new jobs somewhere and soon and do great wherever they end up.

 

[dracomilan]

The comparison should be 13 vs 25 (the development in Pathfinder should include brand management roles, no?).
Since Paizo also produces card games et al., maybe we should now start comparing the 60 Paizo staffers to the whole WotC staff (on linkedin it shows 661 staffers, but usually some are ex staffers who didn't update the profile, freelancers etc.).
And regarding the presence of female staffers, I guess Shelly Mazzanoble is still onboard....