Wizards' Online Presence - a personal view

[CharlesRyan]

Have you ever worked for a corporation? Have you ever read Dilbert or seen Office Space? Do you think those are some sort of quaint, inside joke?

resscane is completely correct. Why, during the 6 years I worked there, they made me stop gaming. I wasn't allowed to watch TV, even at home in my own time, because I might get into that "Buffy" show. And I had to renounce all my gaming friends! Stupid management.

Oh. Wait. I was management. And now that I think about it, none of that was true. Heck, I seem to recall running a game during Thursday lunch hours for years. And my buddy ran a Saturday D&D campaign that included, among the players, two WotC VPs.

But I'm still pretty sure WotC is evil. It is, after all, a corporation.

 

[MojoGM]

then casually brush aside the destruction of one of our institutions. And no amount of feel good PR is going to change that.

Okay, I added the emphasis, but this is WAY overstating the case...

And just to go on the record, I bought both Dragon and Dungeon magazine but am very happy about this new online direction. It's about time. Paper magazines are dead. Let them rest in peace.

Thank you people of WotC for stopping by and sharing your thoughts with us. You may be an "evil corporation" but your gamers, so that makes you good people in my opinion

 

[Holy Bovine]

Have you ever worked for a corporation? A big one with billions in sales every year? Where they outsource all their labor from Rhode Island to China? They outsourced in the 1970''s. Have you ever read Dilbert or seen Office Space? Do you think those are some sort of quaint, inside joke? Those real human dorks can and will be fired, and an Ice Princess straight from the Barbie Line will come in and wipe the floor with the rest.

Maybe I am over the top in my prognostications, just a wee bit. I've been told that before. I just get a bad feeling from any group that can claim any kinship with the rest of the Dorks of the world, and then casually brush aside the destruction of one of our institutions. And no amount of feel good PR is going to change that.

And the mustache twirling, damsel tying villains return...

You really need some help. I work for a multi-billion dollar corporation. They donate millions every year to help poverty stricken people (not just in the third world but right here in North America too) get eyeglasses. Do they do that for the tax break only? If they do they are the greatest actors in the world as video footage of people doing this in Africa is heart-wrenchingly beautiful. All corporations and not created equal and to say otherwise is demonstrate a starling lack of understanding. Oh yeah using Dilbert and Office Space to 'back up' you arguement is possibly the most asinine thing I have ever witnessed.

 

[w_earle_wheeler]

Working for an RPG publisher and posting on a RPG message board must be a tight balancing act. You have to be professional so that you don't offend some lonely dork on the internet -- but at the same time, you have to be casual so that you don't spark a rebellious ire from yet another subset of dork.

 

[gizmo33]

Working for an RPG publisher and posting on a RPG message board must be a tight balancing act. You have to be professional so that you don't offend some lonely dork on the internet -- but at the same time, you have to be casual so that you don't spark a rebellious ire from yet another subset of dork.

And that's assuming that your behavior even is responsible for how the dorks on the internet act. Frankly, I don't need some well meaning WotC employee to say something wrong. All I need is a freakish opinion, a keyboard, and 2 minutes of free time and my paranoid rantings get printed in the same sized font as someone else who took time to think about what they were writing. Plus, I don't even have to be accountable for anything that I write. Check this out: Gnomes are sexy! WotC employees have an alignment requirement of lawful evil! People during the Middle Ages watched too much television! I think I hear an alignment thread calling...

 

[crazy_monkey1956]

In terms of corporations automatically being evil...

I worked as a cashier for a large (huge) home improvement retail chain. The corporation has a program where the company matches any donation an employee makes to a charity. That's the impersonal part. They also match any donations made by employees to help out a fellow employee who is in financial distress, has a medical emergency, is the victim of a natural disaster, has an unexpected death in the family...a whole bunch of stuff. Anyway, I was the recipient of such generosity at one point.

You can come up with a thousand different reasons for why the "heartless corporation" would do such a thing...to improve its PR or worker productivity or whatever...but a real person came up with the idea to begin with and it was real people who helped me out.

WotC is showing us that they have "real people" working for the "evil corporation" instead of heartless corporation automatons. Whatever the motivation behind it, having real people to talk to is a thousand times better than corporate spin.

 

[Piratecat]

Maybe I am over the top in my prognostications, just a wee bit. I've been told that before. I just get a bad feeling from any group that can claim any kinship with the rest of the Dorks of the world, and then casually brush aside the destruction of one of our institutions. And no amount of feel good PR is going to change that.

It's too bad you feel this way. One of the remarkable things about this industry is that we have intimate, direct conversations with the people who shape it. If this has taught me anything, it's that they love the game and the hobby as much as I do -- and I love it a helluva lot. I may not agree with every decision, but I have no doubt that the integrity and fun of the game is paramount in the decisions they make. Prioritizing it that way simply makes good business sense, anyways, so it's kind of a no-brainer for them.

Anyways, thanks, industry folks (both WotC and d20/OGL publishers.) This site -- and my game! -- is better for having you around. That's appreciated.

And on a separate note, folks, you may not agree with Resscane... but no personal insults. That rule hasn't, and won't, change. Also, please don't hijack the thread into a discussions of corporations.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Neo]

I agree with everything Merric says about the new world order over on the D&D forums.

I also think it's really great that Keith Baker spends so much time on Wizards of the Coast's Eberron forums, even though he's a freelancer, not a staff member.

Keith posts a fair bit on the Eberron Yahoogroup too, which is nice.

 

[papastebu]

I am sorry you feel that way but I don't think Merric was talking about the company as much as the people.

In many ways Hasbro/WOTC is big company like any other. They have shareholders, a corporate hierarchy, make un-popular decisions, and sometimes fire people.

Work at wotc is fun, maybe the best job I have ever had but like a lot of jobs sometimes it sucks to drag your a$$ out of bed to go deal with office politics etc. More time than not I have a day where someone reminds me that WoTC is not like all companies and is a great place to work.

Today I was forwarded about a dozen emails from US soldiers serving in Iraq. Regardless of how you feel about the war, these men and women have one of the hardest, suckiest jobs in the world and one minute of their jobs makes my worst day look like a walk in the park. The reason we got the emails was to thank us for all the employees from wotc who donated games from their product allowances to Ziggurat con, the first ever game convention in a war zone. Wotc employees collected and donated over $15,000 of personal product to the con and this is being distributed to soldiers all around Iraq.

I am not telling this story to earn any brownie points. I don't have a burning need to create some online kumbaya moment where you think we are nice company. But I do want you to know that the actions of a company do not always reflect on how the employees are themselves. In the case of WotC it is the employees that make the company agreat place to work and personally it' smy co-wrorkers that give me the motivation to get up every morning to go to work. So if you want to be bitter about the corporation, fine but don't harsh out on the people who work there.

AMEN.
I used to work for Wal-Mart. From an insider's perspective, I can honestly say that the rights of the individual have slowly been disappearing in that company, since Mr. Sam died some years ago. I stayed with them for five years because I started in a place where the average rate for my job was higher than other places, to begin with, and then I transferred to a store that gave good raises. The other reason was the people. There were those who liked to make things difficult for others, but the core of decency remained, throughout. Without my coworkers, I more than likely would have left a long time ago.

EDIT: Sorry, PC. Didn't read your post until after I posted.

More on-topic, I feel that only good can come of a stronger presence online from WotC. Even if it's not a corporate mandate of some sort, just seeing that the people who are directly involved with steering the game as it moves forward are actively seeking the opinions and thoughts of the players/consumers is extremely positive. I used to work at a place called Mosko's in Nashville, and they were very successful because they did something that no other businesses actually tried: they asked the opinions of the people who frequented their store. "What would you like to see here?" is a fantastic question to hear, if it's sincerely asked.

 

[carmachu]

And just to go on the record, I bought both Dragon and Dungeon magazine but am very happy about this new online direction. It's about time. Paper magazines are dead. Let them rest in peace.

Oh please. Thats an oversimplifcation. Thats like saying books are dead.