Divorced from reality - RPGers & Corporate America

[Eldragon]

There is a story my dad told me long ago, and now that I am an adult I find it to be 100% true.

All companies from founding to collapse go through three specific phases.

When a company is first created, the Product leads the company. The product generates sales, and the company focuses on making the product better. Customers flock to the product because it is new, innovative, or just better than competition. The product generates all the revenue for the company.

When sales drop off and competition picks up, and Marketing leads the company. The company focuses on advertising, and getting their product into as many hands as possible. The marketing increases sales, and generates great profits for the company. The product does not change much during this time, instead the company is focused on increasing the sales numbers.

Eventually sales fall off again, and never really pick up. The company is no longer getting the growth it was accustomed to from its early days. So the Accountants begin to run the company. The accountants reduce costs, cut unprofitable divisions, and ensure that every penny saved is a penny earned... And no company has ever recovered.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

I don't view corporations as evil. I view them as amoral, greedy (sadly I can't think of a value neutral way to express this), risk limiting legal entities designed to provide profit to their owners, while shielding them and their assets from personal responsibility (usually the financial kind, but occasionally others as well) if the enterprise fails.

That's a pretty good explanation of Neutral Evil, or Jacob Marley....

They don't care what their actions do, they only care for $$$.
That's bad for everyone, including, eventually, the company which must inevitably crumble.

This would explain where daemons come from! muhaha!

 

[Krensky]

That's a pretty good explanation of Neutral Evil, or Jacob Marley....

They don't care what their actions do, they only care for $$$.
That's bad for everyone, including, eventually, the company which must inevitably crumble.

This would explain where daemons come from! muhaha!

Actually, neutral evil would be the actions of many owners/investors/shareholders demanding unrealistic and ever expanding profits.

 

[Ysgarran]

More proof that WotC eats babies and prints their books with puppy blood.

Perhaps I am immune to sarcasm but...

No, that is not what was said. To paraphrase more succinctly the discussion; some publicly traded would gladly jettison their customers if they didn't need them to make a profit. If abandoning 20% of their customers would result in a 40% increase in profits then some (I won't speculate what percentage) companies would very quickly make that decision.

Closing off an avenue of sales with little or no notice from customers who have started to rely on it does not strike me as an example of putting the customer first.

Ambrose Bierce had it correct about 100 years ago:
Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.

The news over the past year should show give at least a few examples of that statement.

 

[Panzeh]

The new moves seem really ill-conceived and not very well thought out. I mean, people try to paint this as something WoTC had to do, but could they not have seen piracy as a problem before releasing PHB2? All of their books have been heavily pirated before, it's rather strange to wait until the PDFs are already out in pirated channels before moving in to keep the PDFs out of the public. I suppose they wanted to try to sue some pirates by letting them try, but it seems to me that seeing how the cat is already out of the bag, that's pointless. If they didn't want PDFs in the typical pirate channels, they should not have sold them in the first place, and maybe it would delay the pirates somewhat. As it is now, it seems like a pointless decision, the only rational basis I can think of is that they hope to make up for reduced profits with the settlements for these lawsuits, which is absurd.

I'm kind of thinking WoTC is uniquely incompetent, but I could be wrong here.

 

[hexgrid]

Closing off an avenue of sales with little or no notice from customers who have started to rely on it does not strike me as an example of putting the customer first.

Ambrose Bierce had it correct about 100 years ago:
Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.

Are we still talking about the discontinuation of PDF sales, here? Do you really think that, or anything else WotC has done, rises to this level? We're talking about a hobby.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

Krensky
well I'd argue that the mayhem in recent years argues against you
THe problem is, that as the execs entrench themselves, they demanded stock options...and that they deserved more of the company profits (as wages) because they say they made the company more money (wich is what they are PAID for, they don't work making things, you know).

This lead to a spiral of insane wage increases, and suicidal business decisions for short term mega profit, as they reaped rewards of increased share prices...and many other such things.
It is absolutely Kafka-esque and mad!
well laddy-da!, it's everyone in the company who adds (or subtracts) to the profits at the end of the day, actually. All deserve penalty or reward for success or failure, not just the ones at the top!

So, we need rid of corporations, I don't know how, but we need shot of them, PDQ.
Corporations have ruined many games, never mind anything else.
See Electronic Arts, they drove Westwood and Bullfrog Studios into the destruction, two of the greatest, most innovative PC game studios, ever.
Why?
'Cause corporate "suits" have no souls, only profit margins.

In a nutshell: you can have D&D, or WOTC, not both. Corporate management is inherently parastic and destructive as they live in lala land!

Now, if only we could get a hold of the Tardis, zip back 30 odd years, slip Gary Gyax a couple of million and some tips....

 

[kenmarable]

I think Azgulor has it spot on. "Trying to hit this quarter's numbers" has been the death of more healthy companies than I care to think of. Subsidiaries are especially at the mercy of this because those numbers are often handed down to them, or at best made in "consultation" with corporate. Coupled with the expectation that healthy companies always grow (maintaining your current profit levels isn't good enough), many, many companies are left struggling to meet unrealistic expectations.

The one time I was laid off was when a profitable company had to start laying off wave after wave of staff because corporate was dictating x% lay-offs from all subsidiaries (profitable or not), and then had revenue expectations set so high that local management starting making blatantly stupid decisions in the hopes of a Hail Mary hitting those numbers. We accepted terrible contracts and projects because we "couldn't afford not to". End result - company closed and all contracts sold to a competitor.

Blaming this on Hasbro running D&D, or lawyers dictating business decisions is absurd. Any bad business decisions rest solely with WotC and most likely with their struggling to meet unrealistic numbers*, because that's simply how corporate America is typically run.

* Although I guess there can be some blame on Hasbro for most likely setting unrealistic numbers. But really it's up to WotC to find a reasonable way to meet them, or say No. But that word isn't often in the vocabulary of corporate-speak, especially to corporate masters.

 

[Rechan]

Perhaps I am immune to sarcasm but...

It was hyperbole meant facetiously to counter the post above it.

 

[Krensky]

Krensky
well I'd argue that the mayhem in recent years argues against you

THe problem is, that as the execs entrench themselves, they demanded stock options...and that they deserved more of the company profits (as wages) because they say they made the company more money (wich is what they are PAID for, they don't work making things, you know).

This lead to a spiral of insane wage increases, and suicidal business decisions for short term mega profit, as they reaped rewards of increased share prices...and many other such things.
It is absolutely Kafka-esque and mad!
well laddy-da!, it's everyone in the company who adds (or subtracts) to the profits at the end of the day, actually. All deserve penalty or reward for success or failure, not just the ones at the top!

So, we need rid of corporations, I don't know how, but we need shot of them, PDQ.
Corporations have ruined many games, never mind anything else.
See Electronic Arts, they drove Westwood and Bullfrog Studios into the destruction, two of the greatest, most innovative PC game studios, ever.
Why?
'Cause corporate "suits" have no souls, only profit margins.

In a nutshell: you can have D&D, or WOTC, not both. Corporate management is inherently parastic and destructive as they live in lala land!

Now, if only we could get a hold of the Tardis, zip back 30 odd years, slip Gary Gyax a couple of million and some tips....

A few bad actors does not equate to corporations being evil. Unless you already decided that they are due to political and ideological grounds unrelated to the current problems, in which case this discussion will likely go no where.

The problem is not the concept or legal fiction of a corporation (well, other then the wackiness deriving from Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company here in the US), it has to do with the systematic (and cyclic) stripping away of regulations on their practices on the (repeatedly proven wrong) belief that the market can regulate itself. This combined with the insane amount of security speculation brought about by day trading and the explosion of the 401(k).

Limitations on executive compensation, restoring much of the regulation that was stripped away since the 1980s with adjustments and additions to reflect the modern world, and a return of some measure of personal responsibility for corporate executives and governors would do wonders. Things would also be helped far more if shareholders actually took an interest in and invested keeping morality and ethics in mind and voted their shares appropriately. Part of this is applying common sense and realizing that no business can provide higher and higher profits an ever increasing rate forever and trying to do so is a recipe for disaster for the corporation and society.

The problem isn't corporations. The small business supermarket I shop at is owned by a corporation consisting of the grocer, his sons, and his father. The point of a corporation is so that owners and employees of a corporation are not personally liable for the business' debts. The problem is with people working at corporations. There are a number of examples of good people running corporations, like a CEO on New Jersey who make a gift of $1000 to each of his employees out of a deferred bonus from two years ago.

Corporations can not be evil. They are not people. Corporations are amoral, not immoral. They do not and can not possess morality. The people who run them can be evil. Because they're people.