Why Wizards Has Lost Touch w/ Its Base

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Crothian said:
I imagine it is less that they have loss touch with their customer base as people around here realizing they are just no longer part of that customer base anymore.

It's like watching a board when Warhammer announces a new edition of either the fantasy of 40K game. "They've lost touch!" And hey, game turns out pretty successful.

Don't know if that'll happen with WoTC but I can definatly say I'm not the target audience at the moment but still finding some good use out of various products.
 

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I think it's innacurate to attribute this (or any major company decision) to a single person. The brand manager is not a taskmaster that controls every aspect of what happens in the brand. There are numerous other people, other factors, and other plans in the works that bring about a decision. Regardless of how you feel about this situation, you should try to keep that in mind.
 

Steel_Wind said:
Then shame on him.

Relax. He's doing his job. Part of his job relates to direct management. part of it involves working with a hierarchy that has several levels above him and tells him to do things. I've had a poor opinion of WotC decisions from time to time, but y'know what? They're just jobs and people in them do what they're allowed and told to do.
 



I'm very saddened to see Dragon and Dungeon go, but from a business perspective, I can understand why WotC is doing what they're doing.

The magazines provided some good support for WotC, but they weren't directly making WotC money. This online initiative thing will -- or at least they have reason to believe it will. Since they control the Dragon and Dungeon brands, and those brands would be in direct competition with this new product, it makes sense to eliminate the competition. Doing otherwise splits of the D&D market in a manner similar to the D&D/AD&D split of the TSR days.

I don't think WotC is evil or heartless for doing this. They're a corporation, and they need to continue making money to survive. It's sad to see the iconic magazines go, but it's understandable why they went. It's also not in our best interests as gamers to wish failure of the new product; if the experiment does fail, it hurts D&D and the hobby as a whole.
 

Sholari said:
I wonder how many of these "brand managers" have really played Dungeons and Dragons or anything like it?
You say that as if you know none of them are gamers -- and as if that is the most important quality in brand manager. Would you like the guys at your local game store running WotC?
Sholari said:
Besides a few well-known game designers, I see very few people with RPG industry credentials.
How many successful business people have had a career in the RPG industry? Not many.
Sholari said:
Don't get me wrong an MBA and/or corporate experience is a great foundation, but WOTC needs a more diverse mix of industry people contribute to the decision making.
You listed a diverse mix of backgrounds.
 

Crothian said:
I imagine it is less that they have loss touch with their customer base as people around here realizing they are just no longer part of that customer base anymore.

QFT.

And it's genius is in it's utter simplicity.
 

Personally I think it's great that WoTC is trying new avenues to get content into peoples hands and its sad that it comes to killing a couple of publications with a long history and strong fan base. Change is difficult, but it remains to be seen whether this will ultimately benefit the hobby.

My gut tells me though that WoTC better understand that they need to be in it for the long-haul if an electronic initiative is to work. There's been many, many attempts at electronic content delivery that have been miserable failures since the dawn of the web in the early 1990s. Producing something of quality month in and month out will take resources and a committment that most companies can't commit to for years on end.

With a magazine a publisher has a committment to the advertisers to get the issues out and in peoples hands. For a company-sponsored publication though it's easy to get short-sighted on other "important" projects to "starve" the child (the electronic content) from time to time.

Good luck WoTC and good luck Paizo. We're counting on your new initiatives to help grow our hobby.
 

Crothian said:
I imagine it is less that they have loss touch with their customer base as people around here realizing they are just no longer part of that customer base anymore.

So it could actually be EN World that has lost contact with the D&D customer base?

Sounds plausible.

/M
 

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