Charles Ryan (and others) out at WotC?

DaveMage · Dec 2, 2005

I wonder who are the other 10 people that were affected.

Sad news.

Psion · Dec 2, 2005

This concerns me. Under Charles Ryans watch, it seem like they were trying to bring D&D to a wider audience for the first time under WotC. Charles was a gaming creative sort from a ways back. Now can we expect some suit with an MBA to step in and sap the creative life out of the game.

Umbran said:
Darn it, Charles Ryan seemed a pretty good egg. If he had to go, I'm hoping it was at least a mutual decision.

Considering the number of people let go, I doubt that.

Psion · Dec 2, 2005

DaveMage said:
I wonder who are the other 10 people that were affected.

Apparently one of them is Michelle Lyons.

d20Dwarf · Dec 2, 2005

Psion said:
Apparently one of them is Michelle Lyons.

This is correct.

Shemeska · Dec 2, 2005

Psion said:
Apparently one of them is Michelle Lyons.

So she said, but I thought that she was freelance, and not on staff. What position did she hold?

KB9JMQ · Dec 2, 2005

Well that sucks. I liked that Mr. Ryan was a pretty frequent poster here.
I hope they all do well in the future.

heirodule · Dec 2, 2005

BrooklynKnight said:
Just as D&D was vamping its marketing operations up and up.

Right, which makes me suspicious that those efforts were not seen as paying off.

Does anyone think WotC saw any growth in D&D that could be attributed to marketing?

---
Update after reading the article:

Um, yeah: 2 marketing guys, and a brand manager (also marketing) and the developer of a game that my guess is that it is going nowhere (hecatomb).

So what's the "changing trend"? D&D has reached saturation, and addtional efforts are simply too marginal?

kenobi65 · Dec 2, 2005

Well, carp in a hat.

Guess I'm glad I didn't get that job as WotC's Director of Market Research, after all...

Mark CMG · Dec 2, 2005

Bad news for those 15 and I'll keep a good thought for them over the holidays. Since we know the brands are doing well enough, I wonder what caused the shake up? The 2006 releases seem to suggest business as usual, don't they? The layoffs cross a number of lines so I wonder if there was a budget cut directive from above? It's been said that most of Hasbro's brands/properties are seasonal assets (ramping up toward the end of the year through the holidays and then dropping back way down around now, after everything has shipped out to stores). I wonder how this effects decisions to layoff people right around this time of year?

Turjan · Dec 2, 2005

Good luck for those 15 fellows!

Shemeska said:
So she said, but I thought that she was freelance, and not on staff. What position did she hold?

I heard mostly editing and some design stuff.

heirodule said:
Right, which makes me suspicious that those efforts were not seen as paying off.

Does anyone think WotC saw any growth in D&D that could be attributed to marketing?

Didn't they just start with their new efforts? I suppose it's too early to tell.