layoffs?
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Yeah, see the class action lawsuit Music buyers vs Big Record label makers.
The price fixing done there was about the same stuff, but with a DVD the movie made the movie for the IP creators when the movie was in the theatre. They now are trying to get added sales to pad their profits with the DVDs, not get their money back for the movie on it. This excuse about marketing departments is also frail as nobody really goes off of any marketing. An in-store poster saying Sweeny Todd coming Dec 15th is all that is needed so people will know when to buy it. Don't think it is the consumers job to pay for one of the stupidest things in the world which is marketing.
There is too much advertising and marketing in the world as it is, so don't really get me started on that.
Just the fact it still does not cost that much to make a DVD or run of 100,000 of them to need to charge more than $20 ever. None of the money goes to the people doing the real work. You know, those 20 people moving the DVDs around and stuffing each one in a case and inserting the cover flap into the window. Those people make minimum wage, so so can all the artist photographers etc that made the fancy IP such as the cover flap and disc cover. You know those sitting in nice clean and safe rooms doing work versus those that have to wear masks in unsafe conditions to physically make the discs so as not to suffocate from the fumes of the stamped discs, or the silk screening of their labels, etc.
[/derail][rerail]
Layoffs do not always mean "YOU'RE FIRED!"
When you get fired its your fault. When you get laid off its usually your employers fault (poor business execution/planning, unable to cope with the recession, etc...). Don't get me wrong. It still sucks, but I'd much rather be laid off than fired. At least then I know that I wasn't let go for performance reasons. Which clearly was the case for most of those people at Wizards.
When you get fired its your fault. When you get laid off its usually your employers fault (poor business execution/planning, unable to cope with the recession, etc...). Don't get me wrong. It still sucks, but I'd much rather be laid off than fired. At least then I know that I wasn't let go for performance reasons. Which clearly was the case for most of those people at Wizards.
doctorhook
Legend
Wait... are you saying that they were laid off for (personal) performance reasons?
Phaezen
First Post
No, he is saying they were layed off, therefor dismissed for company reasons, not fired, which would be for personal (performance), reasons.
Phaezen
Re Chicago School:
Read the article, and you'll find this quote: "The University of Chicago department, widely considered one of the world’s foremost economics departments, has fielded more Nobel Prize winners and John Bates Clark medalists in economics than any other university."
They're neoclassical- meaning generally they favor a hands off approach to economic policy. IOW, not truly politicized. That kind of theoretical approach would also not impact the empirical sales data that pops up in the majority of RW studies.
Whether you like it or not, believe in its necessity or dispute the amount needed, advertising is part of a product's real and legal cost. If you don't want to pay for that cost, don't buy the product, or at least don't buy it until it is on sale. Pirating isn't a legal or ethical option.
I, for one, am disgusted by the % of many modern pharmacology products' cost that is attributable to marketing (part of my job experience is in health care). I'm not entitled to express that dislike through theft. I can, however, purchase generics and competitors' products that may be cheaper.
Re Naomi Klein
This makes me laugh- historically, Chilean, Iraqi and Russian economic practices have virtually ZERO to do with free market capitalism in the Chicago School style. Those systems are riddled with cronyism and corruption, which even UC doesn't support as desirable in a free market capitalistic system. Indeed, such practices are as undesirable as gov't interference in the market.
Read the article, and you'll find this quote: "The University of Chicago department, widely considered one of the world’s foremost economics departments, has fielded more Nobel Prize winners and John Bates Clark medalists in economics than any other university."
They're neoclassical- meaning generally they favor a hands off approach to economic policy. IOW, not truly politicized. That kind of theoretical approach would also not impact the empirical sales data that pops up in the majority of RW studies.
Whether you like it or not, believe in its necessity or dispute the amount needed, advertising is part of a product's real and legal cost. If you don't want to pay for that cost, don't buy the product, or at least don't buy it until it is on sale. Pirating isn't a legal or ethical option.
I, for one, am disgusted by the % of many modern pharmacology products' cost that is attributable to marketing (part of my job experience is in health care). I'm not entitled to express that dislike through theft. I can, however, purchase generics and competitors' products that may be cheaper.
Re Naomi Klein
This makes me laugh- historically, Chilean, Iraqi and Russian economic practices have virtually ZERO to do with free market capitalism in the Chicago School style. Those systems are riddled with cronyism and corruption, which even UC doesn't support as desirable in a free market capitalistic system. Indeed, such practices are as undesirable as gov't interference in the market.
I don't buy stupid overpriced products from people that spend too much money on marketing and then shove that price into the product cost. I won't buy anything where your advertising has had a big impact on the product cost because advertising gimmicks are stupid and for stupid people. Zoom Zoom doesn't tell squat about those vehicles and only makes things look "shiny".
I don't buy something because it is "shiny".
I also never said pirating was legal, just not to use it as the only excuse that copy shops were in poor times and business was falling.
Either a business can whine about not having customers and die while whining, or they can figure out why customers are going elsewhere and find a way to get them back and stay in business.
Customers own no sympathy to any business because the execs and cEOs of those businesses screw up. Those execs and CEOs need to stop taking those private jets and maybe the company would have more money to spend on the things it needs to.
Shareholders worried, need to step in and remove bad execs that get paid the most anyway, not the "little people" that actually get things done!
I don't appreciate being attributed with advocating piracy was the right thing to do in any event!
If that is true, I'm glad for you!
The problem is, many people do. If marketing didn't work, businesses would abandon the practice.
But it does. Remember what I said about pharmaceuticals? Most of the most prescribed drugs in the USA have been beneficiaries of some of the biggest marketing campaigns. Ad-speak like "anti-bacterial" and the Big Pharma advertising campaigns have been major contributors to the overuse and overprescription of antibiotics...and the rise of drug-resistant "superbugs."
(In general, if you're curious as to just how susceptible you really are to marketing, you might want to read the works of Paco Underhill, namely his books Why We Buy and Call of the Mall- they are eye-opening works about the dirty details of the force of marketing and even architecture in capitalism.) [ame=http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Buy-Science-Shopping/dp/0684849143]Amazon.com: Why We Buy: The Science Of Shopping: Paco Underhill: Books[/ame]
[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Call-Mall-Geography-Shopping-Author/dp/0743235924/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b]Amazon.com: Call of the Mall: The Geography of Shopping by the Author of Why We Buy: Paco Underhill: Books[/ame]
I don't appreciate being attributed with advocating piracy was the right thing to do in any event!
Mea culpa- it wasn't my intent to single you out and attribute that mentality to you.
However, in past (locked) threads about piracy, similar assertions were part of arguments supporting just that.
I don't know or recall any of those threads. I was just saying that it shouldn't be attributed to just piracy as the downfall of the "copy shop".
I know advertising works, and it makes me sad. I have to deal with people daily asking me about ads and such and get sick and tired of telling them "I don't care about silly ads. I buy something based on the products merits, not its hype." It gets rather annoying after the 40th time per day, everyday....
To get back tied to the topic itself and off the borderline economics if we haven't already crossed it without intending deeply to do so...
I would have fired the advertising department before skilled writers or PR people. That was why I brought up advertising. You can advertise something you don't have al day long and find people to "sell iceboxes to eskimos", but you better have enough people to make them iceboxes, or that advertiser ain't getting paid because you have no money coming in. The less you spend on advertising a bad product the more you can spend on quality control and let word of mouth do what it does best....advertise for free.
From my perspective, even though I don't care for 4Ed*, D&D itself is one of those products that should virtually sell itself. It has a huge base of invested consumers, and is the 800lb gorilla in its market niche.
To illustrate- in my case, I pre-ordered the Core 3 as soon as I could. However, as I saw the ad/promo campaign roll out, I was cringing.
1) They went 100% digital with their house magazines, generating some ill-will and mistrust.
2) They declined to renew or in some cases just ended certain licenses, again gaining bad PR.
3) They highlighted which sacred cows they were killing (or delaying)- that may have cost them some sales right there. If they had kept quiet about the slaughter of the sacred cows, they'd probably have seen a 15%+ increase in pre-orders.
4) They announced changes in the OGL that would eventually become the GSL...and then didn't have it ready on day 1 of the product rollout. How that was received is well documented.
5) On top of that, WotC's track record with the electronic/programming side of gaming didn't inspire any confidence, so claims about the digital initiative were met with a lot of skepticism.
Its almost like they were trying to fail. It was both bad marketing and PR.
Developers, though, IMOH, should have been kept on.
*Its a well designed product, but its not what I want from D&D.
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