WotC Penny Arcade and the layoffs.

[Blue]

I just think it's funny that everybody thinks they know better than the people with the information that are making the decisions. And then they try to present their obviously biased personal opinions as some type of journalism.

Well, from the OGL moves before the end of the year ("sweetheart deal OGL royalties with NDA"), anticipating the public response to the OGL, and the tone-deaf inflamed-it-more initial response to the public backlash that they modified hours after they put up (but still didn't fix), we can tell that there is NO ONE with relevant information making decisions. And actively not soliciting/not listening to advice from people who do know based on some of the reports that came from it.

Random chance, or a wild sow and a ouija board, both seem to be more likely to luck on a right answer than the management team that made those calls, so yeah -- I'll back croudsourced wisdom over the proven-clueless management.

 

[kigmatzomat]

I just think it's funny that everybody thinks they know better than the people with the information that are making the decisions. And then they try to present their obviously biased personal opinions as some type of journalism.

You are aware that Penny Arcade has collaborated with WotC, right? You heard of Acquisition Incorporated? It's in print and D&D Beyond? It's a product of Tycho & Gabe of Penny Arcade (plus a bunch of other people like Chris Perkins of WotC which is actually my point). Plus Gabe has done art for a couple MtG cards and I think Tycho may have come up with a few creatures or at least the flavor text. There are also several merchandise tie-ins on both sides. Which means they have been actually working professionaly with a variety of Wotc product teams since 4e was released.

And oh yeah, they have a series of game conventions that have happened on 5, maybe 6, continents. They are called PAX (Penny Arcade eXpo). WotC sends folks to a lot of those conventions and oddly, I suspect the PA guys talk games with the WotC folks.

Lastly, they live in the Seattle area, same as WotC. I think they are roughly a half hour away. Hence being able to game with Chris Perkins on a regular basis.

So between being personally and professionally acquainted with WotC staff on multiple product teams across two editions for well over a decade and having active business deals ongoing with WotC between AcqInc to MtG to Pax, I see no reason to disbelieve their assertion they have direct and personal knowledge of who is impacted inside the D&D-specific work force,that they are knowledgeable about what those people's roles actually were and were likely involved in preliminary discussions on 5.5e collaborations to be able to make inferences on impact to future products.

Most of the time they do opine on things with no first hand knowledge but this, this particular thing, this is something they are probably better informed than most WotC employees.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

The people making those decisions aren't experts though.

That was part of my point, yes.

 

[LordEntrails]

Most of the time they do opine on things with no first hand knowledge but this, this particular thing, this is something they are probably better informed than most WotC employees.

Agreed. Yet it is very unlikely the know the whole story. Most WotC employees do not know the whole story. And from my experience with corporate lay-offs, almost no one who is laid off, knows the full details either. Heck, rarely do even the decisionmakers know the full story.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

Has anyone read Friday's comic/article?

Isolator - Penny Arcade

Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.

www.penny-arcade.com

 

[Scribe]

But like the OGL modifications, I suspect this tumult presages a more digital future for the product. I don't see how it couldn't. Magic makes money hand over fist, but Dungeons & Dragons has always been a sticky wicket outside of pure licensing. Imagine if you could buy one hamburger, and then you and your friends could eat that hamburger for thirty years. D&D is, for lack of a better term than I have used previously, a culture. Serving that culture is such an honor. Does such a culture survive, truly survive, lodged within a pair of digital, aggressively monetized parentheses?

This is why in a world where the SRD is a thing, and 'the numbers must always go up', D&D can never be what they want it to be.

If they put 5.5 into CC, I'm just laughing. I dont believe they will.

 

[darjr]

Has anyone read Friday's comic/article?

Isolator - Penny Arcade

Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.

www.penny-arcade.com

Oof

 

[Zardnaar]

Oof

Lol Wizard of the Coast.

Think people are being a bit hyperbolic. The team size is still bigger than 2014 so they have enough staff to release product.
.
I'm guessing they've more or less completed the art for core books 2024 and likely most of the writing.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I just think it's funny that everybody thinks they know better than the people with the information that are making the decisions. And then they try to present their obviously biased personal opinions as some type of journalism.

You have to be joking.

Anyone who has worked in a corporate environment, especially a large one, knows that an awful lot of major factors get completely ignored when you do stuff like cut "20% of headcount". You want to imagine this is careful trimming. It never, ever, is when it's on this large a scale. Never. It's a fantasy to think it is.

Further, this is being presented as opinion. It's a lot more informed, than say, your opinion (or mine, I suspect), and you seem to trying to engage in some sort odd sniping at it by intentionally misrepresenting it? Very strange and unhelpful, frankly.

I just think it's funny you think the people running these companies always know what they're doing.

Yeah this is wild to me. Having worked in this kind of environment, they're absolutely full of good people and good intentions, but when the axe swings, yeah some people who were underperforming or were technically unnecessary will go, for sure (I've been one of the latter, before), but in big cuts like these, you tend to lose a lot of good people too, often people you actually need, but someone whose job is to make big cuts doesn't go around and elaborately survey people at the level you'd need to in order to work that out. They've got their metrics, and maybe there are people on that list who "need to go", and some who are "protected" but it's mostly going to be numbers.

However, one big problem with layoffs historically is that the decision makers do not, either.

Unfortutanely, almost everyone that has worked in Corporate America has either been laid off, or has survived a lay off and fought through the chaos afterwards. They are rarely well planned - and instead come down to dictates of, "just get rid of 30% of them".

Well said.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Lol Wizard of the Coast.

Think people are being a bit hyperbolic. The team size is still bigger than 2014 so they have enough staff to release product.
.
I'm guessing they've more or less completed the art for core books 2024 and likely most of the writing.

I don't think people are being hyperbolic.

I think few doubt the 2024 material will come out, and probably be in a reasonable condition (though I doubt as good as it would otherwise have been, given they're still working on it despite an apparently confirmed mid-2024 release).

But after that? The 2014 team was the size it was because D&D was seen as "non-essential" and was being reprieved from execution. Before 4E, Hasbro had decided that if D&D didn't make $50m/year they'd just kill it off, 4E was an attempt to avoid that - one that did not succeed. Hasbro/WotC spared them anyway, probably thanks to a pitch from Mearls and others, that this lower-cost approach to D&D would be worth it. And thanks to cultural factors (and 5E's accessibility, sure), they were proven very right. But that doesn't mean the 2014 team size or a little larger is the "right" size for D&D now, especially not during the release of an effective new edition (I mean, we quibble on the terminology, but it's clearly a big deal - bigger than 3.5E was - and timed like a new edition).

Is it premature to write off D&D? Yeah, it is. It's survived worse, far worse. But that doesn't make what Hasbro are doing remotely a good idea.

The icing on the cake here would be some ill-worded, fake-grovelling apologia from Kyle Brink or worse, someone else who has suddenly replaced him as Executive Producer of D&D (it's happened twice, okay! Let's not pretend that's not how they roll), that somehow manages to deeply insult the community in the name of "addressing concerns". Hopefully they can avoid that.

EDIT - The biggest question for me is, where art thou, 3D VTT. If the 3D VTT isn't losing many people, or even, as recent hiring ads seem to suggest, still gaining them, then we're looking at a genuinely major shift in focus, and part of the reason certain people are being fired from TT D&D is probably because people are being hired for 3D VTT D&D. Ironically that would be less random at least, but more scary for the long-term future of D&D. Perhaps the worst possible scenario would be that the 3D VTT is seen as the future, and it failing causes D&D, as an IP, to get "vaulted" in the way other Hasbro products have been. But the long-range foresight of the OGL and now the CCBY version may continue to save it as a game people play, at least.