Unconfirmed: More Layoffs at WotC

[mudbunny]

It's a good, important question. There are sometimes mentions in WotC articles about new hires, but I don't think any one knows if those are exhaustive, or if they focus on more visible positions. Everyone seems content to assume the number of D&D employees is shrinking, though.

For me, there is just not enough data. We are only seeing one side of the equation. Without the other bits of data (number of hires, number of transfers from one part of WotC to the other, increase/decrease in number of freelancers, change in focus from employees to freelancers, ...) we just don't (IMO) have the ability to make any statements that have any sort of factual basis whatsoever. They are as precise as trying to predict who will win the NHL playoffs by looking at the scoring percentage of one player.

 

[Dausuul]

No one claimed that Hasbro is staffed by morons, but by claiming that their business practices are self-destructive, you certainly imply it. And, if you have a problem with the term 'going under' then I point out that you never clarified the difference between 'suicidal' and 'self-destructive.'

"Self-destructive" is generally taken to mean "harmful to oneself," which is not the same as "fatal to oneself." If I unconsciously sabotage my career by picking a fight with my boss every time I'm up for promotion, that's self-destructive. It won't kill me and it may not even kill my career, it'll just keep me from making much if any progress.

It also does not imply that the person engaged in self-destructive behavior is a moron. You can be very smart and still do some stupid things. If you're smart and talented enough, you can do stupid things on a regular basis and still succeed overall.

 

[TerraDave]

We are not posting about a rational indvidual or a small business, but a collection of people inside a collection of people inside a collection of people...

Bad practices certainly can and do persist in an organization, perhaps for many years.

In terms of companies that publish RPGs, you have to think hard to find the good business examples. But the not so good examples--Chaosium, ICE, TSR, Palladium--abound.

And for big companies like Hasbro, whole industries revolve, or devolve, around persistant problems they frequently have, year after year.

 

[Desdichado]

The argument is:
The strategy has stood the test of time. They've used it for many years (even during a major recession), and it it apparently working for them because they have survived. If it wasn't working for them, they would have changed their strategy (this is part of the concept of revealed preference).

While it's not necessarily a "proof" (proving such a thing is very difficult), given many data points it tends to be pretty reliable (many data points could be the same strategy for many years or many companies using the strategy). Of course, with the volatile nature of many industries, what works then may not work now, but there's probably more evidence that the strategy isn't suicidal than evidence that the strategy is suicidal.

Exactly. And, while Hasbro doesn't report the earnings of separate divisions, and even if they did, the only comments that they've made in annual report type documents is that Pokemon and Magic have underperformed in some quarters, we've had plenty of folks in the know confirm that D&D itself has been successful. Often here on these boards.

Since I'm not one of those tinfoil hat conspiracy types who's going to claim that WotC has been lying to us about the success of D&D, I'll take those comments at face value.

 

[Jdvn1]

"Self-destructive" is generally taken to mean "harmful to oneself," which is not the same as "fatal to oneself." If I unconsciously sabotage my career by picking a fight with my boss every time I'm up for promotion, that's self-destructive. It won't kill me and it may not even kill my career, it'll just keep me from making much if any progress.

It also does not imply that the person engaged in self-destructive behavior is a moron. You can be very smart and still do some stupid things. If you're smart and talented enough, you can do stupid things on a regular basis and still succeed overall.

If you participate in self-destructive actions for multiple years, fatality isn't a surprising result. If you sabotage your career for multiple years, you may very likely end your career in that industry ("You've had how many jobs in the past 10 years?"). In a company, "harmful to oneself" like means "suffering loses." Over time, the results are going to be much more obvious, and that is certainly the case for a company that has been around 87 years, like Hasbro.

Also, Mark first used the term 'moron'. I agree that a smart person can do stupid things. This is beside the point, though.

 

[mudbunny]

And for big companies like Hasbro, whole industries revolve, or devolve, around persistant problems they frequently have, year after year.

I believe that this has been happening since before WotC was purchased by Hasbro. Also, from what I recall being mentioned by people here on ENWorld, Hasbro is very much a "hands off" style of owner unless things pear-shaped.

Unless they've not been posting open positions for D&D on the main WotC/Hasbro open positions page, it's been steadily decreasing. For instance the DDI team (again unless they've been doing hiring entirely off the board) is a fraction of its original size (both when outsourced and compared to the subsequent internal dev and testing team).

How often would they hire D&D developers via an open posting as opposed to directly contacting a freelancer that they have experience with and whose work they like? (Not trying to be patronizing or anything. I honestly don't know and would be curious to find out how it is done.)

 

[Jdvn1]

We are not posting about a rational indvidual or a small business, but a collection of people inside a collection of people inside a collection of people...

Bad practices certainly can and do persist in an organization, perhaps for many years.

In terms of companies that publish RPGs, you have to think hard to find the good business examples. But the not so good examples--Chaosium, ICE, TSR, Palladium--abound.

And for big companies like Hasbro, whole industries revolve, or devolve, around persistant problems they frequently have, year after year.

While this is a good point and general true, it's probably less true in a monopolistic market.

 

[Scribble]

Do we even have any sort of evidence that this has anything to do with finances either?

I have a friend who works for 2k sports, and he told me most video companies start phasing people out when they're in their mid-late 30s, because they're starting to get too far away from the target demographic. (And starting to get stuck in the "my generations way of doing it is the only way that's good" mode...)

So, even though he has his dream job of working for a sports video game company, he's still studying to take up a new career, because he knows his time is limited.

It wouldn't surprise me if Wizards had a similar thought.

 

[Jdvn1]

Unless they've not been posting open positions for D&D on the main WotC/Hasbro open positions page, it's been steadily decreasing.

How often would they hire D&D developers via an open posting as opposed to directly contacting a freelancer that they have experience with and whose work they like?

Most companies don't initially post open positions on publically available pages. Once they decide to hire, if they don't already have a person in mind, they'll first post the position internally.

Of course, I don't know how WotC works, specifically, but that's how large companies generally work.

 

[Steel_Wind]

No one claimed that Hasbro is staffed by morons, but by claiming that their business practices are self-destructive, you certainly imply it.

Hey. Stop picking on Mark by having to put words in his mouth. Pick on me. I'll even say the words for you so you don't have to imagine them:

Any company that lays off their creative staff as a standard part of its entrenched firm culture, is a company managed by morons.

Yup. Let me repeat that for you so you can write it down. Take your time, even: MORONS.

The question you see, isn't whether or not Hasbro/WotC management believes the practice to be reasonable. There are all kinds of completely improbable things -- even IMPOSSIBLE things -- that people believe in my friend, I assure you of that.

The question is whether the practice is, in fact, reasonable.

WotC has been doing this for quite a while - since about 2001. It's part of their firm culture. They bulk up on creative design staff when they are tooling up for a new edition -- and let those people go after the edition has been released. They otherwise act like this even during relatively neutral times during their production cycles. The philosophy cuts across other aspects of their business too - up to an including brand managers and business people. It's equal-opportunity bean-counting. A Reign of Terror that cuts across class lines, as it were.

WotC does this because they are managed by a philosophy which appears wholly driven by bean-counting and places almost ZERO value on their own employees' skills and value as a corporate asset.

They treat their workers as if they bring essentially nothing to the table and as if each and every one of them was utterly and completely replaceable at the drop of a hat. If you are in the business of manufacturing and bottling Coca-Cola, that might be a justifiable management style.

But when you are in the creative business of selling words printed on paper -- as if words were of equal value no matter who they are written by -- that's an utterly foolish business practice. IMO, it is a business practice that it not only utterly arrogant, but one which is absolutely certain to result in the utter destruction of their business model if they persist in it.

Why? Because WotC doesn't have the secret recipe to Coca-Cola. The closest they got is a patent on tapping cards during game play that will soon expire. That’s it. The rest is just smoke and mirrors.

No - what they've got is a few trade-marks and little else.

WotC makes games and sells words and artwork on sheets of printed paper. Their vaunted intellectual property is not, in fact, all that special at all. The less they do with it -- the more they confirm that very fact.

Indeed, when it comes to RPGs, WotC owns a trademark for the words Dungeons and Dragons. The ideas that are inherent in that game they gave away for free a decade ago. The other ideas and copyrights they have in the vault are deemed of so limited a value - WotC doesn't even bother to try and sell them anymore.

What WotC is now selling was essentially invented a few years ago by people whose skills they demonstrably place no value upon. If you are a software company and act like WotC does - you might as well just turn out the lights and pass in the keys.

You think the business of selling words on paper is dramatically different than selling Ones and Zeros on DVDs? Nope. Just like a software company, your company's most valuable assets goes home every night and goes to sleep.

The people who create and market the intellectual property that has meaning and value to WotC are the very people that they have let go over a course of years. If those people had no goodwill or name recognition within the marketplace - that might be a defensible practice.

But it's simply not true. These names have credibility and skills to match; moreover, all words are not of equal value. WotC seems to have forgotten that they gave away the keys to others to compete with them – FOR FREE.

So it comes down to this: WotC is rolling the dice that their trademark will protect them and their business model on an evergreen basis over the long-term of the business cycle.

That is not a bet a prudent man would make. What they have, in the end, is a grossly misplaced sense of the value of the trade-mark "Dungeons and Dragons".

Just like TSR - these bozos are going to be crushed by their own hubris and short sightedness. I don't doubt it for a second. May take another decade yet - but with this management style?

That train is coming down the tracks. Count on it.