Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="CharlesRyan" data-source="post: 3356693" data-attributes="member: 5265">OK. I'm the guy who made that statement, and was subsequently laid off. Let me throw a few points into the mix to help shed a little light on things. (Or, who knows, perhaps just muddy things further.)When I used the term "biggest year ever" back in 2005, I refered to the fact that the D&D RPG appeared to be as strong as it ever had been--particularly in contrast to the early 80s, which people always seemed to assume was the brilliant heights to which D&D could never again aspire to acheive. But in fact, by pretty much every metric we had access to or could guess at, D&D seemed to be as big as or bigger in 2005 than it was in the 80s. Sales, number of players, brand recognition, and so on. I'm sure if you search these boards you'll find many posts by me from that era, talking about D&D's state at the time.And yes, there is a difference between the RPG and the brand. At the time, I made it clear I was talking about the RPG.Please note that I am not directly endorsing any statements by WotC in the last year or so--I don't work there, and I don't know what they're basing their statements on. But I will say that I know the people who uttered those statements pretty darn well, and I can vouch for the fact that they're not hollow marketteers spewing baseless spin. If they said 2006 was the best year ever, they almost certainly had a good, honest basis for saying that.While I'm at it, can I address a couple of other points?First, don't read too much into the absence of the words "Dungeons & Dragons" in Hasbro reporting. Like most big companies, Hasbro tends to restrict its specific reporting to what it has identified as key brands. Key brands aren't always those brands that make the most money or that grow the fastest--sometimes they're the brands that are icons of the company, resonate with stockholders, are seen as critical to future growth, and so on. Most likely, D&D is lumped into the publishing category--so the fact that that category has been called out probably says something about how D&D is doing.Second, please don't quote my layoff as a sign of the health of D&D. When a big company reorganizes, the sad truth is that nobody is immune--the company seeks to make itself more efficient, and sometimes that means pruning good people. It's ironic (believe me, nobody senses that irony more than I), but I lost my job in spite of, not because of, the brand's performance.One last note, just because I want to be really clear on this. I don't work at WotC anymore, and I'm not an insider. Furthermore, everything I've said here is stuff I said in public (including here on ENworld) back when I ran the brand--which means both that it contains no company secrets, and that it's well out of date. Take it as you will.</blockquote>

Verification