Obective look at WotC's history with D&D

[Alzrius]

I personally blame Hasbro for the current state of WotC, and by extension D&D.

I used to think that Hasbro was only peripherally aware of D&D's existence, and had a very "hands off" policy in how WotC was run - in other words, that WotC was solely to blame for their current position.

According to what Ryan Dancey has said, however, it's not quite that simple.

Hasbro gave various "brands" annual goals of $50 million, and preferably $100 million, per year. Had WotC been left as a single entity trying to meet those goals, it could have done so on the strength of Magic: the Gathering alone, allowing D&D to continue at a pace that wasn't quite so profit-driven.

Because D&D is targeted as a separate brand, however, it has to meet those goals alone. This it cannot do, even with the aggressive marketing and cross-marketing we've seen, and is why we have WotC trying to pump up short-term sales so aggressively, and in the process doing things that have left most gamers scratching their heads in bewilderment.

In all honesty, D&D seems to have done best when handled by a smaller, more hobby-focused company - TSR when it was run by Gary, WotC when it was run by Peter; these were when D&D was at its healthiest (they may not have been the years when the greatest material was produced, but they were when the game was at its most solvent, and motivated more by quality than by money).

That's my objective look at D&D's history. I leave the rest of it to the guys who were actually there.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

In all honesty, D&D seems to have done best when handled by a smaller, more hobby-focused company - TSR when it was run by Gary, WotC when it was run by Peter; these were when D&D was at its healthiest (they may not have been the years when the greatest material was produced...

On the contrary, I think TSR-run-by-Gary produced the majority of the most definitive and greatest D&D material. Decades later, WotC is *STILL* milking those classic adventures and sites with Yet Another Returning Expedition to [Fill-in-the-blank-with-a-Gary-Era-Classic].

 

[tomBitonti]

On the contrary, I think TSR-run-by-Gary produced the majority of the most definitive and greatest D&D material. Decades later, WotC is *STILL* milking those classic adventures and sites with Yet Another Returning Expedition to [Fill-in-the-blank-with-a-Gary-Era-Classic].

I'll agree that the company management immediately post Gary was poor.

That doesn't show that the company would have been run better by Gary. During his era, a large amount of classic material was produced, true. But, producing content is only a part of the challenge of running a growing company. At scale, whole new skill sets are needed, and new folks with those skills.

TomB

 

[DaveMage]

TSR "mismanagement" was ultimately bad for TSR but it was NOT bad for the consumer. They were putting out so much that the consumer had a wonderful array of choices and at pretty low prices. Yes, they split their market (bad for them) but they gave us end users full lines of variety like Planescape, Lankhmar, Dark Sun, Ravenloft, Spelljammer, etc.

 

[delericho]

I don't know how objective I could be about the history of WotC with D&D, even if I had all of the facts. Without them, it's even harder.

In my opinion, the history from 1998 (?) when they purchased the brand up to about 2006 was pretty much glorious - they revitalised the game, they ushered in the OGL, they licensed out the magazines to Paizo (bringing about a new Golden Age, IMO), and they produced some of the best supplements I've seen. (Shame about the generally poor adventures.) Even the 3.5e update was, IMO, a net win - sure, it could have been handled better, but I believe it resulting what was, on balance, a much stronger game. Plus, weeding out some of the lesser players in the d20 market hurt them, but it probably helped the marketplace.

Unfortunately, since about 2006 things have been going gradually downhill. With the polymorph revisions, they took what I consider a really bad misstep (where they started treating the game as software to be patched, rather than as books that must be revised periodically). Bringing all the licenses back in-house was absolutely their right... but I don't think the results have been beneficial. The 4e rollout was handled remarkably poorly, as was the GSL. (Again, with the GSL they were absolutely within their rights. I just don't think it was handled at all well.)

For me, the great tragedy of the DDI is not what it is, but the missed potential that it represents. The product they described to us was awesome. Unfortunately, it was just beyond their ability to deliver. A real shame, not least because had it been what it could have been, I believe it would have succeeded far beyond its current level... and in succeeding would have secured the future of D&D in the long-term.

And now, 5e. Which could, I suppose, be a glorious new dawn. I would like to hope for that.

But my deep fear is that D&D is, quite simply, a tens-of-millions brand in the hands of a company that only cares about hundreds-of-millions dollar brands. And Hasbro have a tendency, when things get tough, to cut back to focus only on their "big guns", killing everything else. So, next time there's a financial blip, D&D looks to be for the chop. And they've had their chance to try to join the big leagues (the DDI), and it didn't pay off, so...

Sadly, I don't think WotC saved D&D. I think they just gave it a stay of execution.

 

[billd91]

I think it's important to remember that the WotC that saved D&D from TSR no longer exists.

That WotC was run by Peter Adkison and was its own company.

The WotC of today is a subsidiary of Hasbro.

The WotC run by Peter Adkison gets kudos, but the subsidiary of Hasbro has become a very, very poor custodian of the brand (as evidenced by the OP). Had Hasbro not taken over, I think WotC today would look very similar to how Paizo has turned out to be.

I don't think D&D will ever thrive again (as it once did) under the auspices of Hasbro. It will take a smaller company where D&D is special, not just another brand that needs to make huge profits to justify its existence.

If XP weren't shut off again, I'd XP this. That said, there were strong reasons to sell out to Hasbro. Very strong ones indeed and I can't blame them for doing so. In fact, I'm pretty sure the sell out to Hasbro helped generate the investment that brought us Paizo.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Unfortunately, since about 2006 things have been going gradually downhill. With the polymorph revisions, they took what I consider a really bad misstep (where they started treating the game as software to be patched, rather than as books that must be revised periodically). Bringing all the licenses back in-house was absolutely their right... but I don't think the results have been beneficial. The 4e rollout was handled remarkably poorly, as was the GSL. (Again, with the GSL they were absolutely within their rights. I just don't think it was handled at all well.)

While I don't think it has been as bad as you seem to, I generally agree with this paragraph.

While 4Ed will never be D&D to me, I think it's a pretty good FRPG in it's own right. This gives me confidence that the people WotC hires for game design actually have a clue, which, in turn, keeps me optimistic for the future.

 

[billd91]

Honestly, how many D&D players even know about these layoffs? And how many of those care enough to be bothered by them? This one strikes me as an Internet sensation - something a few thousand folks know about, but having pretty much zero impact on the D&D brand among WOTC's vast customer base.

I don't think it has to be widely known as a layoff to have an effect. There are players who follow designers around from product to product. WotC's system of hiring and layoffs suggests that they hive off more expensive and established designers in favor of picking up cheaper ones. That may make some sense for the bottom line but it also means they're getting rid of the designers, who they will have invested in to develop their skills, and most likely to have a player following, and putting them into a position where they will compete with WotC.

 

[billd91]

I don't buy this argument. The D&D brand always had value, even if TSR as a company did not. Some company would have bought D&D. It just happened to be WotC, for better or worse. There was never any chance of D&D disappearing.

But there was definitely a chance of D&D being tied up for years in litigation following a dissolution of TSR. WotC's move to buy TSR settled that.

 

[Alzrius]

If XP weren't shut off again, I'd XP this. That said, there were strong reasons to sell out to Hasbro. Very strong ones indeed and I can't blame them for doing so. In fact, I'm pretty sure the sell out to Hasbro helped generate the investment that brought us Paizo.

Insofar as I'm aware, the creation of Paizo had nothing to do with any sort of "investment" being generated by WotC's sale to Paizo (unless you want to say that being sold to Hasbro was a motivating factor for WotC's initial decision to drop their periodicals, which set things into motion).

The decision to create Paizo Publishing to print, distribute, and sell WotC's magazines was initially reached by Lisa Stevens (who had just been laid off from WotC), Vic Wertz (who had also left his job), and Johnny Wilson (who was Group Publisher for WotC's Periodicals division, which had just made the decision to drop the magazines; hence, Johnny left WotC for Paizo when it was founded).

You can read more about this on Paizo's own blog.

In regards to why WotC was sold to Hasbro in the first place, Rick Marshall (who was at WotC at the time, I believe) talks about it over on this post at Grognardia (scroll down to find it, and other very insightful posts):

There are two main reasons.

First, the truth is that the company was thriving, but the principals weren't. Everyone went deeply into debt to launch Wizards, and further to try to survive through the lean times of the lawsuit. Magic: The Gathering almost didn't happen at all. Friends and family teamed up to help people make rent and car payments to they wouldn't go bankrupt before the game could be released. We thought Magic was a blast to play, and the art for it looked gorgeous, so we hoped everyone would like it, but we didn't really know. It was an enormous gamble, and everyone put everything on the line.

When Magic hit it big, it was an exhilarating roller coaster and hugely gratifying, but we were all still broke. We got into this weird state where the company was thriving but the principals weren't. The new employees were fine, because they were being paid and weren't trying to dig out of deep personal debt, but the principals were drowning.

Wizards tried to address this problem by doing a stock buy-back some time before the Hasbro deal, and it did help a great deal, but mainly it put most of us back on track with where we would have been if we had normal paying careers and hadn't bet everything on Wizards. Most of the principals were still carrying some debt.

In the end, the principals were tired of being broke.

Second, and this was a critique I discussed repeatedly with some of the principals at the time long before things reached the breaking point, Wizards began with a startup culture of working long, hard hours, sacrificing like crazy to try to get things moving and to do a good job on them. As anyone who's been through a startup knows, this is both exciting and exhausting. At some point a company needs to transition out of the startup mode to avoid burning out its employees.

Wizards never did.

Several of us saw this problem coming. Everyone worked so hard for so long that they were burning themselves out even while they were having a blast. Houses fell into disrepair, people put on lots of weight and got sick a lot, marriages fell apart, and more, all while Wizards itself was thriving and everyone was having a blast working on something they loved.

Workaholism was epidemic at Wizards. Wizards invested in an exercise room, classes, great offices, and everything they could to make it a blast to work there, but that only made people not want to go home to the lives they'd been neglecting. The problem with working for your favorite company in the world is that you never go home. At least one person stopped going home and had to be told he wasn't allowed to live at work. More than anyone else, the principals were happy but exhausted and needed to stop trying to go go go at 110% all the time unless they wanted to die young.

In the end, the broke and burned out principals pretty much all needed the sale in order to get their lives back into order and stop being broke.

After leaving Wizards, more than one of the principals lost a bunch of weight and got their health back. Some rescued marriages while others moved on to new relationships. Some sold off neglected houses at a loss and bought new ones they committed to taking care of properly. The money itself spread far and wide, used to start new, more sustainable game companies; for healthcare and college funds for family members; and into retirement funds for parents and grandparents whose early loans made the company's survival possible during the lean times. A couple spent everything they made just getting back to break even. There are a few small piles of money here and there, but over half of it has gone back into the community that made it all possible.

In short, they had to sell the company to survive as individuals.

You can find more from Rick on the early days of WotC over on his blog.