frankthedm
First Post
In this season of making holiday purchases, I think this thread can be a useful reminder of WOTCs practices.
Perhaps I was wrong, but I was under the assumption that working for the biggest games company was a sort of cream of the crop job. That if you could get a job doing anything related to game design with WotC, then you could probably land a job at other places, too.
Is this sort of behavior actually unique to WoTC or game design in general?
I don't believe it is unique to any industry. I have seen it's like elsewhere.
If it were related to the life of projects, you would see the layoffs at random times of the year, as the projects finished. That it happens the same time in several years suggests it is a policy tied to the fiscal year, and the yearly budgeting process, rather than specific projects.
Given that the layoffs have happened regularly in the past, regardless of the many year-to-year variables (good vs. bad economy, late vs. early lifecycle of an edition, heavy vs. light release schedule, etc.), I don't know that these developments alter the picture much. The layoffs aren't a special case that happens only when D&D is "in trouble", they happen every year like clockwork (and they always suck).Methinks that things are probably pretty 'interesting' there these days based on these recent developments: