[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.

 

[Sunseeker]

Yup. Second time for him.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Fool me twice...three times a lady.

Especially in this situation this feels appropriate.

 

[Alphastream]

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.

I won't speculate on the speculations, but on the above, I've been surprised many times by the size of the market in terms of players... as opposed to $. For example, when I played Living Greyhawk it was very clearly the most successful organized play campaign ever, and it felt like it. It felt like a huge extended family, and you felt like you knew everyone, if only by screen name or face at a con. When I moved to the Portland area it wasn't hard to find the local crowd and get to know them. There were about 80 frequent players, as it was a fairly quiet city in terms of gaming. Or, so I thought. LG ends and I start helping to organize D&D Encounters. In many ways, it felt like a far less successful program. People weren't active on forums, it didn't feel like there was that much excitement, and it wasn't at all like a big family... more like a little one.

And yet, when I organized the second season of Encounters we drew more than 300 different players in just a few months! Of those players, only something like 5 of them were LG players! It was insane. I had no idea the city had that many people interested, even casually, in D&D. This is just at one store. There were about 6 other stores in the city running Encounters at that time. Play is even bigger now, for what that's worth.

Now, what is really interesting is that these weren't 300 customers. The majority of these people didn't give any dime to the store or to Wizards. Many had a PH, but most didn't. For the Dark Sun season that I oversaw many did buy the campaign book, because the world was different and interesting enough to fuel that purchase. But many of the 300 came in, tried it out, came a couple of more times, and faded away.

This all reinforces the problem with the industry, but it also shows how enormous the market could be. Encounters is bigger today - are more of those people becoming customers and staying customers? I think so. I'm seeing far more stores that charge money for just playing, which sends a message. I'm seeing far more players sit down at my tables with product they just finished purchasing. And, I'm hearing stores say that 5E Encounters is very good for business. So, yeah, I do buy that Wizards can focus on new players, still retain old players, and not focus on competitors.

(It's also worth mentioning that I see lots of new and potential players at PAX and other non-typical events. The vast majority of PAX attendees are video gamers, but thousands of them come to try D&D each year and leave enthusiastic. Our local museum had a game night and tons of new players had the same experience. On the Neverwinter MMO the chat often has actual (positive) discussion of the 5E edition, which suggests a nice gateway.)

 

[Alphastream]

Which is fine with me to be honest. I don't approach a RPG like a CCG where you need to keep buying boosters or anything like that. For me there is enough in the 3 core books to game until the cows come home.

It is probably more than most gamers buy. So, maybe that is the right approach... especially if the real money is licensing to MMOs, MMOs, and the like. I want my D&D TV series!

 

[DaveDash]

Seems the opposite here (Aus). I can't find players for an online 5e game. When 3.5 was out it seemed a lot easier to snap up players.

Ultimately though there could be multiple reasons for that, but it feels much harder trying to get a group together for 5e.

 

[Plaguescarred]

That's never good news. Best wishes Chris and Jennifer.

 

[Zaran]

You know, I tweeted Simms some well wishes this morning, and as I was doing so a thought occurred to me.

Recent WotC releases have NOT (IMO) been very well edited. Not by any means saying that any individual is responsible--far from it--but if mearls (or the vp) decided there was a workflow-level problem with their current editing practices, it does make sense that D&D editing jobs were cut in favor of some other solution.

This is pure speculation, of course.

I disagree. I think all three core books are well edited. The layout of the DMG might be bad that I don't know if that's really their job. Plus it seemed like they hadn't even started to work on the DMG until after the MM was made. When I look at books like Shadowrun's last core book I am happy that D&D's books are as well made as they are.

 

[Charles Wright]

Out of curiosity. How hard would it be for them to have their books in PDF formats ready for download on Drivethru RPG? Would they need to hire someone or could they potentially do it with what they sent to the printers?

I'm asking cause if it is not a WotC/Hasbro policy to not have difital books, well it seems like bad allocation of resources. The revenue from PDFs could pay the salary of some employees. I guess. Maybe. If enough people care.

Two to three hours work per book, tops. And most of that would be bookmarking.

 

[Charles Wright]

There is, indeed, money in our tiny industry.

I would like to see more of it.

 

[Sadras]

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Fool me twice...three times a lady.

The above aphorism is incorrect in so far that it is archaic and was publicly modernised succinctly and eloquently by George Bush (junior)

"There's an old saying in Tennessee," (followed by a few awkward pauses), "I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee that says, Fool me once, shame on ... shame on you. Fool me... You can't get fooled again!"

 

[Mark CMG]

So, yeah, I do buy that Wizards can focus on new players, still retain old players, and not focus on competitors.

See, that's you seemingly arguing with my point by acting as if what you are arguing against is actually what I said, and yet it's not. Perhaps it is just that you aren't quite following what I am posting. Everyone agrees WotC should and can recruit new players and retain old ones and, in all fairness, draw from other companies' market share if they can. The point is that there is no way that they have done as much of that as it would have taken to be where they were when the wheels came off, let alone be better off.

Hypothetically, with no new customers, they would have had to bring back everyone who left to play PF. We know for a fact that did not happen because people still play PF in huge numbers (maybe more than originally did, judging by Paizo growth). So, once again, hypothetically, just to pick a fraction to get one's head around (could be a little smaller or not), if WotC lost half their market share to PF and needed to replace all of them with totally new RPG customers just to get back to where they were, the overall market would have to double. That's the overall market doubling to allow for WotC's halved share to double just to get back to where they were.

All right, those are just the extreme case scenarios for how it would have had to happen. We know it didn't. People still play PF. The overall market did not double. No way possible the market doubled without everyone (not just you) finding out about it. No one with any sense would try to make that argument. Would someone like to see the RPG market double? Gods, yes! Everyone would love that. New players for all. New customers for publishers. It would be fantastic. But it hasn't happened.

Where does that leave WotC? To get back to where they were, just where they were not better than they were, they need to get folks from somewhere. They need to come from somewhere other than Paizo, judging by PF success. They need to come from more than just overall market growth, since we know that hasn't covered things even if it has grown a little.

Is it possible that WotC's market share in the 3.XE period wasn't the majority of the RPG market? Some might argue that but I would not. But, hypothetically, let's say WotC had a 50% share, lost 25% to PF that they haven't gotten back and the market didn't grow. To get back to where they were they'd have had to take over half of the entire rest of the market. Again, another extreme scenario just to understand the outside parameters of the problem.

But we know other RPG companies are doing quite well. Green Ronin hasn't shuttered its windows. Did companies that no longer exist or do less with RPGs even have half of the rest of the market to fill in the hole in WotC share? Did all other RPG publishers go away and their combined share fill the hole? I don't believe that has happened nor do I think anyone else does. For that to have happened we would have had to see an extensive collapse for the non-Wotc / non-Paizo RPG market such that half the companies who weren't Paizo or WotC withered and died.

So, here we are. The extremes of how to regain that market share have been defined. Despite the cries of some who like to squelch any speculation that might trouble them, we don't actually need hard numbers to get some sense of how things have been going for WotC since walking away from the OGL. No one with a lick of sense could believe they've cobbled together the the kind of numbers they would need to make up for the huge loss they experienced (PF growing, the rest of the market doing well, overall market growth relatively good but not crazy good).

I'm pretty sure that even you, Alphastream, can see what WotC was up against and how impossible it would have been for them to come back from that without absolutely EVERYONE (not just you) being able to see it and unable to refute it. But it didn't happen. I wish it had. It would have been the success story of the decade and GREAT for the RPG industry.