[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]

All this dickering over semantics is really dragging discussion away from the point I hoped to make. OK, let's say I formulated my thoughts badly. What I should have typed was "The second decision that hamstrings D&D now, as it has for two decades, is the stubborn insistence not to have an online store where the publisher sells the latest editions of the game books direct to consumers." I thought that was clear from context, but it's apparent I was wrong.

Steve

One of the reasons larger companies do not have direct sales is because of the deals they strike with outlets. IE: Barnes & Noble buys 10,000 copies in exchange for Wizards not selling direct, etc. Smaller publishers (Paizo included) can't strike these deals with distributors and outlets. I mean when the Monster Manual came out every Barnes and Noble I went into had 7+ copies on the shelves and a couple out front in the new releases section.

Small companies sell direct simply because they don't have a large enough market to warrant producing a million books to send 100 copies to 10,000 stores.

I think you'd be hard pressed to find a major company that sells direct, and also has deals with major retailers across the country/world.

 

[Alphastream]

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.

No, I don't think anyone would say that. But, we don't know by how much Wizards "needs" the market to increase. We do know that Gen Con more than doubled in attendance since 2005, PAX doubled in attendance almost every year... basically until it couldn't grow and now they just add more conventions in other cities. Most of us seem to see it very clear that 5E is selling beyond expectations in the same year that Paizo had its strongest year ever, and while we at the same time likely had the strongest year for Kickstarters and indie games. We see the ICv2 report on a growing hobby industry and possibly (finally) a growing RPG market. We see Hasbro's report. I'm having trouble adopting your pessimism about Wizard's growth prospects.

But, 5E being a success as an RPG isn't likely the issue, which is why competition within the industry isn't a primary concern and why Wizards doesn't need to somehow beat out the RPG competition. Wizards likely needs instead to build a strong RPG core to establish brand presence and launch far more lucrative ventures. That sounds all cold and business-like, but its the same reason why Paizo launches an MMO, why FFG is purchased, etc. This industry has a serious problem, even with the growth. Even with 5E doing great, it is highly likely that it can't produce the numbers an RPG company should want. That's why it isn't about beating out other RPG competitors - doing so (even if you could) doesn't change anything. If Wizards were to acquire all the other RPGs other than Paizo, for free, it still wouldn't change the problems they face with the industry. I'm not sure Wizards and Paizo combining revenues would fundamentally change anything either. The industry is still there, with its same problems that lead to layoffs.

 

[Alphastream]

Something I have never really understood (perhaps someone can help clarify), why does WotC put so much emphasis on making products for tournament and gaming-store play rather than straight-up modules and sourcebooks? Does the tournament/store material actually bring in money?

As others have said, this is widely done. There are now so many organized play programs that good active stores have several events running nearly every day (often for different programs). A store might have Friday Night Magic, Wednesday Adventurers League, Pathfinder Society, Attack Wing through WizKids, FFG events, 13th Age, etc. Many of the programs are more expensive to run than small RPG companies make! In the 90's (I forget the year) the RPGA said it needed $2 million to run well.

It is advertising, and it can be effective. There haven't been 'scientific' studies done publicly, but I know of one private one during the Living Greyhawk days that seemed to suggest a huge correlation between sales and organized play. I also tend to think that the success of the Dark Sun line (as the best selling setting for 4E, beating out FR handily) was tied to an almost perfectly planned organized play program (and the absolute least of that was Ashes of Athas).

Friday Night Magic is the model every company can look to. With Wizards support, that program alone carries tons of stores that would otherwise not be profitable. It literally keeps the doors open and feeds tremendous revenue back to Wizards. Every RPG company would like to figure out how to mine that model for RPGs and go beyond advertising and solidly into generating revenue.

Exclusivity sounds bad, especially to those that don't take the steps (or can't) to get the exclusive thing, but it is a huge motivator for many. Exclusivity can be fantastic for driving interest.

Every organized play program tries to balance different factors: exclusivity (Adventurers League's Wednesday Encounters program now uses the same adventure stores sell on shelves, but Expeditions requires a commitment to run a game in public), advertising and direct revenue (often tying organized play to new releases), accessibility/flexibility (home vs convention vs store), etc.

confirmed that Expeditions are not available for home play, only public play. There was discussion of what constitutes public play in an earlier thread, and it was basically in-store, at a convention, special event, etc., as long as it's public.

You are correct. Expeditions adventures (such as Defiance in Phlan) require that you contact Wizards through the support page and tell them the public location where you will run them (instructions are on the AL web site). It can be a store, a library, a school, but it has to be public. The point of the program is to grow the player base. If you want to just play through 20 levels of D&D with your friends at home, you can run the official published adventure and still be part of the Adventurers League. Encounters uses the very same published adventure, but it is run in phases each Wednesday at a store. This allows anyone to go to the Wizards site and use the Locator to find a store running the program and jump into a D&D game. It keeps support strong for the stores.

 

[Alphastream]

The second decision that hamstrings D&D now, as it has for two decades, is the stubborn insistence not to have an online store where the publisher sells the latest editions of the game books direct to consumers.

Practically everyone in the industry keeps saying the physical store and physical shelf is vital and the key to the industry. I don't know, but that's what we keep hearing from everyone. I've heard stores say how critical this is for them in order to keep backing and pushing RPGs.

There is probably some balance there, and I suspect Paizo has found it - having their own store and still working hard to put product physically in stores in a way that pleases those stores - even if they too have so far failed at their digital tabletop plans. But, Paizo isn't just about digital distribution. The printing portion seems to still be critical.

I also think that D&D has continued to have very large plans about what they would like to do... and that leads them to then back off of digital delivery for the latest core rules. I think fear of piracy is a factor, but the biggest issue has been sever missteps around their big plans. Maybe one day the big plans will happen. DDI's dream of every adventure being delivered into an online tabletop and creating a hugely popular online gaming space with digital collectible miniatures and digital for-pay organized play adventures didn't come close to becoming real. It was a massive failure.

D&D 5E was headed towards digital core books, but the deal with the third party provider fell through. My guess, easily wrong, is that the particulars were too close to "and anyone can do whatever they want, and we the provider can make all the money off of what people create and you won't and your DnDClassics won't be that awesome anymore." Wizard probably wants, and should want, a different model. Creating a sound model hasn't been easy, despite several attempts.

 

[Mark CMG]

Most of us seem to see it very clear that 5E is selling beyond expectations in the same year that Paizo had its strongest year ever, and while we at the same time likely had the strongest year for Kickstarters and indie games.

I'm afraid you've dropped a couple of turds in an otherwise fine punch bowl of ideas. First off, D&D can't sell beyond expectations and if selling well isn't expected by the employees and us fans of D&D then the brand is in a ton more trouble than we've suspected. Second, "most of us seem to see it very clear" is a false qualifier unless you're living in a bubble since most RPGers don't even play D&D as their primary RPG or follow how it is doing. It's absolutely silly for you to ruin an insightful post with that sort of thing. You have some great stuff to say about a way forward for WotC that looks more honestly at their current predicament but it's these sort of empty phrases that just crap all over the rest of what you are saying. Dude, we all want to see WotC do well but slipping this sort of double talk into the conversation makes it seem like you think your readers are idiots. It's also a large part of the problem WotC has with its PR, like Mike Mearls tap dancing around a question from Morrus the other day on the difference between "planned" and "announced." When people spot this sort of disingenuousness it harpoons anything else you might be saying of real value.

Wizards likely needs instead to build a strong RPG core to establish brand presence and launch far more lucrative ventures.

You're right. The stronger the brand overall, the better the novels do. I wonder how much it does for the board games but it must be helpful for crossover sales. They also need to get the movie right back.

 

[mflayermonk]

Reading through some of these posts, as a business, I think it is time to bring in some new people with new ideas and cut ties with more current employees.

 

[dd.stevenson]

I disagree. I think all three core books are well edited.

I wasn't talking about the three core books, primarily. I'm talking about the subsequent releases--these were very much in need of further developmental editing, and were almost certainly pilot runs of what is to come. Yes, these editing problems were probably for reasons beyond the individuals' control. But that's my point: wotc may have (had) a workflow problem.

Again, I'm speculating.

 

[Mistwell]

This is pretty far off on a tangent and probably going to just wind up arguing semantics of what it means for a business to "have" a site, but this:

http://www.dndclassics.com/product/17267/Planescape-Campaign-Setting-2e?it=1

and this:

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/17267/Planescape-Campaign-Setting-2e?it=1

and this:

http://www.rpgnow.com/product/17267/Planescape-Campaign-Setting-2e?it=1

are all the same business. In fact it is the exact same database, same product IDs, and looking at the page source, same exact code, just referencing "themes/dnd/" "themes/dtrpg/" and "themes/rpgnow/".

And? 95% if all online commerce sites are using someone else's proprietary back end. My company for instance uses OsCommerce. The branding is D&D, the control is with WOTC, there is no functional difference to the consumer between calling this WOTC's online commerce site and it being on their actual website, other than the url.

 

[Umbran]

I'm afraid you've dropped a couple of turds in an otherwise fine punch bowl of ideas.

Mark, can we avoid the scatological style, please? Thanks.

First off, D&D can't sell beyond expectations..

How is that? The only ways for it to be unable to sell beyond them is for the expectation be infinite (or, well, I suppose the human population of the planet Earth, or slightly higher if they figure they can teach chimps or dolphins to read) or if they have no expectations. WotC is too successful to try a major business endeavor without any expectations, and not quite so foolish as to set them at infinity. So, well, I think this statement is just plain wrong - which is ironic, given what you said in the first line of the post.

Now, I don't know of any quote by a WotC employee that sales have been beyond expectations, so I'd agree that we do not currently know the status in that sense. But it isn't impossible.

 

[Mark CMG]

Mark, can we avoid the scatological style, please? Thanks.

Sure. I was trying to coin a new phrase that isn't in common usage and made a mess of it.

How is that? The only ways for it to be unable to sell beyond them is for the expectation be infinite (. . .)

Sure. That's the only way I can think of as well.