[Updated] Chris Sims & Jennifer Clarke Wilkes Let Go From WotC

The details are unclear, but D&D editor Chris Sims has reported that he is now in need of a job, and is willing to relocate. He was hired by WotC in 2005 after working for them as a freelance editor. Part of the D&D 5E launch, he was one of the editors for the Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide, and was responsible for stat block development in the Monster Manual. The reasons have not been revealed, nor is it clear whether he left or was laid off.

Whether this is an isolated thing or part of more layoffs if unclear right now. More if I hear anything! In the meantime, if you can hire an excellent writer and editor, please do!

For more on ex-WotC employees, please check my list here!

UPDATE: Jennifer Clarke Wilkes is also in the same boat. She has worked on both D&D as an editor and on Magic: the Gathering, and has been working for WotC for many years.

UPDATE 2: Chris Sims confirms here that he and Jennifer were both laid off.

 

[billd91]

Good news! A couple just hit the market looking for work!

If if Paizo does pick them up (did I see correctly that with Chris Sims that would be a re-pick up?), you'll see what I mean about WotC being a farm team for the industry.

 

[Mark CMG]

The data points we have, they tell a story of each edition outselling the previous one, in terms of core book sales.

Nope. That seems to be based on your assumptions.

Wizards doesn't need to convert a Pathfinder person over to 5E. (. . .) What they need is to consistently bring in new players as customers and to grow the overall hobby.

They need to do both. By all accounts, they lost a huge chunk of the market to PF. They need to recover at least some of that to rival how well things were in 3.XE times, market share wise. They are also the company in the best position to grow the market. If they don't do it, they cannot count on anyone else being able to do it so significantly that WotC will benefit.


This isn't tough to figure out. If WotC had, let's say, 80% of the RPG market as customers (not necessarily customers who eschewed all others) and lost half of that to Paizo / PF, the overall market will have to have grown market with new customers by what percentage to make up for that loss and have 4E be more successful than 3.XE? No one, anywhere, is saying the market has grown that much overall. The RPG market is doing well but it hasn't grown by 100% overall or anywhere near that for a former 40% RPG market share to be the same in hard numbers as what a former 80% market share would have been. To be clear, if you lose half your market share, the market needs to double in size for you to have the same number of customers at your adjusted percentage of share. Even if everyone joining the market is a new customer for WotC, the market would need to grow by 40% to match your adjusted share. That's a secret no one could keep. We'd know if that had happened.

Now imagine WotC lost some folks over the course of 4E, or even stayed even, or even grew a little bit. So, are we now saying that, if 4E did not, 5E has brought back everyone who left to PF or a like number of new customers? Naw, even you aren't saying that. Are there new players? Sure. I could believe someone who estimated the market has grown overall by a couple / few percent. I might even be convinced it is somewhere north of that by a bit with the right argument. But the market growing by as much as it would have needed to grow for anything after 3.XE to have as many folks playing as then would be impossible to not see.

 

[Sailor Moon]

SM, you know both PF and 5e can do well simultaneously, right? One does not have to do poorly for the other to do well. Nobody is arguing 5e is doing well and therefore PF must not be doing well. And if there is any question about my thoughts on that topic, I will say outright both appear to be doing quite well right now.

And all this seems a bit unseemly in light of the fact this is a thread that's supposed to be about two people who just lost their jobs. I created another thread about the recent news that Hasbro mentioned D&D as a net revenue gain for Hasbro - perhaps this discussion of "how well are they selling" best belongs there?

I don't think you are getting my post.

Paizo does a massive amount of business on their website. Someone posted Amazon rankings for Pathfinder and I hinted that lots of people bought directly from Paizo instead of Amazon. That is why you see PF's rankings a lot lower.

 

[Mark CMG]

I can't remember where, but I'm certain I saw a quote from Mike Mearls to the effect that the first 4e PHB print run was bigger than the first 3.5e one, which in turn was bigger than the first 3e one.

This was before 5e was a thing, so there's no telling how the numbers for that one compare. But it's also worth noting that Chris Perkins was quoted on this site that they've gone through "a few printings so far" and "There isn't a New York publisher that wouldn't pass out if you told them the number - it's impressive."

I heard and read a lot of things during the run up to, the release, and the run of 4E. I think even the most hardcore of 4E fans would agree that much of the press / hype regarding how well 4E was doing is obviously untrue. As posted elsewhere, you cannot lose half your market share then claim you're doing better than before unless you more than double your own market share again or the overall market happens to double and more in size. Since neither of those things happened, the only conclusion is that the information of the success is incorrect. No one needs exact numbers to understand this reality.

The evidence really does suggest that 5e has launched very, very well. What is less clear is whether it will continue to do well, or if it's a spike followed by silence.

I don't see the asses in seats I should be seeing at conventions and gamedays to surmise that 5E has yet regained much, if any, market share nor that the overall market has grown significantly enough to warrant such a conclusion. I do think it is doing well, and think it can continue to do well. Very, very well? Not yet, not without a lot more support, and not convincingly unless we see much more action in the visible meat-space community.

 

[Gecko85]

I don't think you are getting my post.

Paizo does a massive amount of business on their website. Someone posted Amazon rankings for Pathfinder and I hinted that lots of people bought directly from Paizo instead of Amazon. That is why you see PF's rankings a lot lower.

As the someone who posted the amazon rankings, I don't think you got my post. It was a direct response to a post with an anecdote from a store owner about how PF was outselling 5e, therefore 5e launch hasn't been successful. My point was, that's not the case everywhere. It's great that Paizo sells a lot from their own website. That doesn't change the fact that WotC has sold a ton of books on Amazon over the past several months. If the core books had popped up on the rankings for a week then dropped off, it wouldn't mean much. But to stay in the top rankings for months does. It means they've sold a lot of books.

 

[Mark CMG]

It was a direct response to a post with an anecdote from a store owner about how PF was outselling 5e, therefore 5e launch hasn't been successful.

Um, nope. As the person who posted what you (also?) already misunderstood, I've explained that the showing of anecdotal evidence was by way of saying the no one's anecdotal evidence is necessarily valid. My post was about the actual events listings evidence that anyone can gather or see by visiting any number of convention, gameday, and events organizing websites.

 

[billd91]

Um, nope. As the person who posted what you (also?) already misunderstood, I've explained that the showing of anecdotal evidence was by way of saying the no one's anecdotal evidence is necessarily valid. My post was about the actual events listings evidence that anyone can gather or see by visiting any number of convention, gameday, and events organizing websites.

...which is an anecdote comparing events for a fledgling edition of a game with a game on the market for 5 years and building a network of organized play that whole time. Which would you expect to have more events on the schedule? Perhaps we should revisit this anecdotal evidence in another 6 months to a year?

 

[Mark CMG]

...which is an anecdote comparing events for a fledgling edition of a game with a game on the market for 5 years and building a network of organized play that whole time. Which would you expect to have more events on the schedule? Perhaps we should revisit this anecdotal evidence in another 6 months to a year?

Oh, PF should have lots more, based on your expectations. I'm not saying 5E should have more, I am using PF events as a yardstick for what is possible for a second tier game company like Paizo. Granted, WotC has huge amounts of money compared to Paizo, so don't think I am comparing the potential of 5E to be as limited as PF is. PF just happens to be a convenient also-ran, second tier company that hasn't yet been beaten by the top company in the RPG industry in regard to organized play. Top by many orders of magnitude (pop pop). Sorry, if using them as a yardstick caused any confusion. I don't personally care who does better. I will be looking every month at this evidence when I write up my convention and gameday round up. You should do the same and revisit it any time you like.

 

[Dausuul]

I think what we are seeing here is the fate 4E was trying to avoid. By Ryan Dancey's account*, Hasbro presented WotC with an ultimatum: The D&D brand must be brought up to the $50 million mark with a path toward $100M, or else we're going to cut most of the staff and "mothball" the brand. The D&D team gave it a hard try. DDI and the virtual tabletop, combined with a rules system engineered to mesh well with electronic tools, were supposed to bring the game up to Hasbro's demands by creating an MMO-style subscriber base.

As we know, it failed. Whatever you may think of 4E the rules system, 4E the digital offering was a disaster. They weren't ready for launch, the VTT never happened, and the few digital tools they finally cobbled together were clunky and barely functional**. So (I'm guessing now, obviously) Hasbro brought down the axe. That's why the D&D team has shrunk so radically, and why it's still shrinking even now in the wake of 5E's successful launch. That's why WotC is relying on partnerships with other companies to write their adventures, create their e-tools, and so forth. That's why their release schedule is so sparse. Hasbro has cut their budget down to almost nothing, and so they have to rely on outside partnerships to do the things they no longer have the money to do in-house.

If this is correct, we can expect D&D to remain pretty lean for some time to come. On the plus side, it means we can hope for a pretty generous OGL. It's the only way for Wizards to generate enough product to drive sales of the core books.

[SIZE=-2]*I hate having to lean so heavily on Ryan Dancey for these things, but he's just about the only firsthand source we've got on the internal workings of WotC.

**Silverlight, for God's sake![/SIZE]

 

[Nergal Pendragon]

Nope. Everything about 5E shows a healthy respect for previous editions. Nearly all staff have experience across several editions and their best freelancers go way back.

Ah! Okay!

Thank you for assuaging that fear.