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!"

 

[messy]

paizo should hire those eight guys, andy collins, and david noonan.

 

[Mark CMG]

Yeah, but with no new products to purchase, there's no reason for people to go online to do a search and thus find the "bad press".

Still, if I get a new car that happens to be a 2005 model (or an RPG book or a boardgame), I do a web search first and see what folks are saying, and bad press accumulates over time.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Still, if I get a new car that happens to be a 2005 model (or an RPG book or a boardgame), I do a web search first and see what folks are saying, and bad press accumulates over time.

What bad press though? You're not going to scour every message board that even remotely talks about 2005 models. You're going to see only overviews and the most popular articles. And with 5e, it's been largely very good things so far.

 

[DongMaster]

None of my group of gamers are even remotely interested in talking D&D to people on the internet.

Nor mine - massiv post counts don't mean anything to us.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

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.

It is rather convenient to blame Blume and Williams, and they do certainly deserve a lot of blame, but Gygax made his share of mistakes, too.

But to your latter point, 8 people who are full time making new product is not such a small number, if they are insulated from the day to day hassles of running a business by existing within a larger division and can outsource things like layout and art.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

It sure would be fantastic if they released it for the OGL so people could start making their own stuff and selling it without fear of retribution. If wizards doesn't want a fast schedule then allow others to put stuff out for it. It's such an easy fix. Wizards can't have it both ways, releasing stuff on a slow schedule and holding the license. People are getting impatient and it needs to be remedied at some point. The two ways of doing that are release stuff faster or let other people do it on their own terms. Of course people are creating their own stuff anyway, but I'm sure if they could release it for money it would be a bit higher quality.

I agree with your take. Unless you are planning on a splatbook per quarter like the 3e days of old, how much staff producing content do you really need? You bring on people for a year or two contract if you have a big release of a new campaign world, then let them go.

It is not a business plan that I happen to personally like, but it makes sense, and I do not see the need to speculate anyone is evil here.

 

[Mark CMG]

What bad press though? You're not going to scour every message board that even remotely talks about 2005 models. You're going to see only overviews and the most popular articles. And with 5e, it's been largely very good things so far.

Like most people who make the effort to search for information on something they might purchase, I'm as much looking for details about potential problems and what might go wrong as I am looking for what people liked. I might make note of the estimated percentage of good to bad, and would certainly note an overwhelmingly bad percentage, but I am assuredly making a point of seeking some bad press if only to eliminate it as not relevant to me (e.g. This can is not good for folks with short legs [my legs are average length and I am 6' tall]). When I look for information on something I might purchase, I definitely seek out bad press even if it isn't on the first page of a web search. BUT this goes beyond my point that in this day and age bad press is persistent. It's always there and not just part of a news cycle. Pages of the Internet aren't used to wrap fish the day after they are read and forgotten.

 

[wedgeski]

Like most people who make the effort to search for information on something they might purchase, I'm as much looking for details about potential problems and what might go wrong as I am looking for what people liked.

But what will people find on 5E though?

* Tons of posts and data on the extended playtest. Awesome. WotC went out to the community to help design their game.
* Massive praise and hype for the PHB. Great reviews everywhere.
* MM and DMG considered two of the best ever examples of the breed.
* Some people griping that wizards don't rule the world.
* WotC just made two people redundant.

Conclusion? Go and buy 5E immediately. It's great.

 

[Mark CMG]

But what will people find on 5E though?

* Tons of posts and data on the extended playtest. Awesome. WotC went out to the community to help design their game.
* Massive praise and hype for the PHB. Great reviews everywhere.
* MM and DMG considered two of the best ever examples of the breed.
* Some people griping that wizards don't rule the world.
* WotC just made two people redundant.

Conclusion? Go and buy 5E immediately. It's great.

First off, "BUT this goes beyond my point that in this day and age bad press is persistent. It's always there and not just part of a news cycle. Pages of the Internet aren't used to wrap fish the day after they are read and forgotten."


But honestly, what I know from my own experience is that 5E is a mixed bag. What I've read of the bad (some of which doesn't apply to me) includes bad bindings on books, large sections of adventures that seem like padding or badly written, playtesting that could have benefited from OGC solutions if the OGL were being used, a game hyped as being the new old school that really has too many new schoolisms to pull it off, etc. The list of complaints and critiques is much larger than that but those are just a few examples. I love your enthusiasm, Wegdeski, but making this about the hype is missing the point in a way I don't expect from you. If I wanted "Four legs good, two legs better" I could click on the first or second result of a web search.

 

[Chocolategravy]

What bad press though? You're not going to scour every message board that even remotely talks about 2005 models. You're going to see only overviews and the most popular articles. And with 5e, it's been largely very good things so far.

You're comparing a $20,000 purchase to a $20. Few people research board games even with convenient things like BGG around, almost no one researches RPGs, it almost always comes down to someone saying "hey, I'm going to run a game of..."