WotC Greg Tito On Leaving WotC: 'It feels good to do something that doesn't just line the pockets of *****'

We reported earlier that WotC's communications director Greg Tito had left his 9-year stint managing the Dungeons & Dragons brand for a political appointment as Deputy Director of External Affairs for the Washington secretary of state's office.

Greg Tito Leaves Wizards of the Coast

Greg Tito, formerly the communications manager in charge of overseeing messaging for the Dungeons & Dragons brand, is departing Wizards of the Coast for a career in the public sector. Tito announced that he would be joining the Washington secretary of state's office starting this week, ending an...

www.enworld.org

In a surprising turn of events, Tito criticized his former employers, saying "It feels good to do something that doesn't just line the pockets of a**holes." He later went on to clarify "Sorry. I meant "shareholders".

Tito is now Deputy Director of External Affairs for the Washington Secretary of State office in Olympia, WA.

 

[Oofta]

The funny part is, the longer you continue to bring up that you think they 'considered' something, the longer people will be reminded of what they had every intent in doing regarding the OGL.

For someone who seemingly doesnt enjoy it being brought up, you seem to bring it up, a lot.

There is no expiration date on that complaint, it doesn't matter if I bring it up or not.

 

[Scribe]

There is no expiration date on that complaint, it doesn't matter if I bring it up or not.

Sure it does. All you do is reset the clock the sooner you stop trying to downplay it, the sooner you dont have to see people call it out.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

Dont bad mouth your employer is one thing, but dont bad mouth how corporations work? Please. We let corporations get away with a lot of BS in America and now I see how.

Did I ever say or even hint at the fact that I think there are multiple issues with the way things work?

Personally I wouldn't badmouth a previous employer or the way corporations work on a public forum.

You kind of did @Oofta! Your intent is not what @Shardstone is implying though.

@Shardstone , you're right that corporations do get away with a lot that they shouldn't.

 

[Umbran]

For someone who seemingly doesnt enjoy it being brought up, you seem to bring it up, a lot.

DON'T
MAKE
IT
PERSONAL.

 

[zedturtle]

This is a super weird post. Someone who went to college for a chosen profession... was into parties... as a result makes them into micro-managers, squeezing something out of a turnip. Which also somehow translates into not respecting the work of those they are managing. What are you talking about? Reading that post was like listening to someone's psychotropic mushroom 'experience'.

I'm guessing what you're saying, in your own special way, is that there were not the best hires at the management positions at WotC? Like some sort of 'financial bros', who are destroying the designers' work... for reasons? Why, because they're nerds? Or because they don't see the potential of the work the designers are doing and the effect of carrying out the work results in some sort of financial black mark against the numbers of said financial bros? I suppose that's possible. What would be the motivation though? Please explain in terms that make sense of both the potential intent of both the designers and the financial bros. When an explanation of a situation only explains the motivations of one side, it's called a 'conspiracy theory'.

I think what he's getting at is that in most cases, the best thing a manager can do is make sure you have the right workers, make sure those workers have what they need, and then get out of their way until something requires intervention. This, of course, varies somewhat between professions, but in most cases the workers know their stuff better than the manager does.

But you get some managers who don't subscribe to that idea. They're managers, so their job is to manage, goddammit. So they go examine workflows, apply some theories to them that may or may not have any connection to reality, and try to fix things that aren't broken. In some cases, they may get more production out of their ideas based on some metric, but in many jobs such metrics aren't really helpful (lines of code per hour is a classic). So the end result is an "increase" in production that doesn't matter, at the cost of annoying staff and lowering quality.

Staffan did a good job of representing my thoughts. For certain managers, the deliverables are all that matters, and I could easily imagine that someone who went to business school and learned that "if you want to make more money selling widgets, you need to either increase the widget's price, decrease the widget's cost, or make more widgets per hour" would see WotC as a widget producer and try to implement strategies that they had learned in school. That might well mean a misguided attempt at trying to keep creatives on task (micromanaging, e.g. "no more b.s. sessions, just sit at your desk and write"), or to test the waters on AI content, or to see an open license as enabling competition instead of supporting their own products.

And, yeah, I am probably being unfair to some of the management at WotC and Hasbro. I am sure some of them are working hard to help folks make great stuff. But it does not feel like it used to, with third-party folk being a valued piece of the pie.

 

[Shardstone]

Did I ever say or even hint at the fact that I think there are multiple issues with the way things work? That's not a discussion that's appropriate for this forum. It also has little to do with what I was responding to concerning the assumption bad management because "WotC bad".

Yes, you said you would not bad mouth how companies work. I guess if you are talking specific and not general, it makes more sense.

 

[Umbran]

Yes, you said you would not bad mouth how companies work. I guess if you are talking specific and not general, it makes more sense.

Pardon my rephrasing - it is for purposes of demonstrating the point...

"Do not post anti-corporate screed where your corporate employer or potential employer can see it," makes plenty of sense. If you depend on them to pay the rent and put food on the table, saying you hate them (specifically or generally) where they can see it puts your rent/food at risk.

You may not care about that risk, for any number of reasons. But "I don't care" is not equivalent to, "that makes no sense."

 

[Umbran]

And, yeah, I am probably being unfair to some of the management at WotC and Hasbro.

A little, for some. Because you've missed the actually valuable thing that management does: Make sure you are making the right widgets!

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

Staffan did a good job of representing my thoughts. For certain managers, the deliverables are all that matters, and I could easily imagine that someone who went to business school and learned that "if you want to make more money selling widgets, you need to either increase the widget's price, decrease the widget's cost, or make more widgets per hour" would see WotC as a widget producer and try to implement strategies that they had learned in school. That might well mean a misguided attempt at trying to keep creatives on task (micromanaging, e.g. "no more b.s. sessions, just sit at your desk and write"), or to test the waters on AI content, or to see an open license as enabling competition instead of supporting their own products.

And, yeah, I am probably being unfair to some of the management at WotC and Hasbro. I am sure some of them are working hard to help folks make great stuff. But it does not feel like it used to, with third-party folk being a valued piece of the pie.

It's entirely possible that this is what has been/is happening. It's one possibility. Cogent analysis, well done.

What gets up my nose is when the 'analysis' consists of viewing the situation through a microscope whose lens is built from one's 'certainties'/preconceptions/misconceptions/hatreds/fears. Creating Us and Them, when none is warranted... it's tiring, tiresome and unnecessary.

 

[Hussar]

Heh, perception is a funny thing.

The OGL debacle was brought up no less than 6 times in this thread alone before @Oofta said a single thing about it.

Yet, he gets taken to task for "bringing it up all the time".

Gets right back to what I was saying about people being pretty fast and loose with "facts" every time there's anything to do with WotC and it's actions over the years. Six separate posters talked about the OGL debacle in this thread (myself being one of them). Yet, that's completely glossed over.