WotC: Goodbye, Loren Greenwood, hello Greg Leeds

[Moon-Lancer]

I know its long shot but is it possible that the gsl delay is tied to the new president? (be it that he is ether the fix or a cause.)

 

[Relique du Madde]

I know its long shot but is it possible that the gsl delay is tied to the new president? (be it that he is ether the fix or a cause.)

I don't doubt it. Hell at this point I won't be surprised if decided to kill GSL because he felt that it would be giving DnD's competitors an "edge in the game" so to speak.

 

[Imperialus]

Moreover, if the GamingReport article is correct, Leeds used to work for P&G. Guys who come from that company are generally very solid and competent, so WoTC is likely in good hands (I was an IT intern in P&G for a summer before I decided to go into Marketing for another company instead. But I still consider P&G as the benchmark other corporations should follow in terms of how well they took care of their regular employees and their customers)

Excellent. They worship the devil too. Good to keep it in the family.

 

[Darrin Drader]

I don't doubt it. Hell at this point I won't be surprised if decided to kill GSL because he felt that it would be giving DnD's competitors an "edge in the game" so to speak.

At this point I wouldn't be surprised if they decided to kill the GSL anyway. We're getting too close to release with no sign of it. Makes me nervous.

 

[DaveMage]

At this point I wouldn't be surprised if they decided to kill the GSL anyway. We're getting too close to release with no sign of it. Makes me nervous.

Don't get my hopes up....

 

[Joshua Randall]

It has been my experience that management types (and those hired by management types) are often picked because of *who* they know, not *what* they know.

The "Old Boy" network is alive and well in the US of A. I've seen it again and again.

Cynical much?

Please enlighten us as to the criteria you believe are appropriate for a CEO of a gaming company. We already know that, according to you and your vast experience, the person cannot have an MBA and must be a gamer, so you can skip those attributes and just tell us the rest.

 

[Tetsubo]

Cynical much?

Please enlighten us as to the criteria you believe are appropriate for a CEO of a gaming company. We already know that, according to you and your vast experience, the person cannot have an MBA and must be a gamer, so you can skip those attributes and just tell us the rest.

My opinion is based on watching and dealing with management types for twenty-four years.

If your experience is different I would love to hear it. Mine has shown that a company succeeds in spite of its management, not because of it. That the people who do things actually handle the running of the place. Management a pretty much just figureheads. Highly paid figureheads mind you. But figureheads.

 

[WayneLigon]

At this point I wouldn't be surprised if they decided to kill the GSL anyway. We're getting too close to release with no sign of it. Makes me nervous.

Eh, somehow D&D and everyone else got along without such a thing for 25 years before. Nothing would be substancially different if it didn't exist now.

 

[Darrin Drader]

Eh, somehow D&D and everyone else got along without such a thing for 25 years before. Nothing would be substancially different if it didn't exist now.

I'd like to think you're right, however, after the release of 3rd edition and the OGL, we saw a lot of unique game systems and manufacturers of such games fold. Personally I think what we'd see is a backlash where a lot of companies would take the Pathfinder route and use some altered form of 3rd edition, very possibly Pathfinder as the default.

 

[Sanguinemetaldawn]

The initial blush of D&D's sucess had absolutely zero to do with any sort of business acumen on the part of anyone involved; they were surprised at the level of sucess it enjoyed. First via word-of-mouth through the college network and then the nationwide free advertising that came with the Egbert case. D&D was a sucess but not from 'gamers being in charge'.

Similarly, WoTC was an also-ran company until they stumbled into sucess with Magic and then Pokemon. The fact a gamer was in charge had nothing to do with their sucess and in fact probably contributed to their inability to control costs that led to the embarassing rounds of firing highly sucessful designers, etc. Remember those? Yay! You saved D&D with a new edition that cleaned up all the old problems and brought tons of gamers back into the fold! Oh, and here's your pink slip.

Stumbling into sucess is a nice thing to happen but don't confuse it with being a good manager or businessman, or with making good decisions.

In case you think WoTC was some sort of gamer paradise back in the day, here's a little look-see into what a company run by gamers is like.

Well, then the success of the company oddly correlates to gamers in charge. Such as the mid-80s when Gygax convinced the lender to give him control of the campany, it did so, then he turned the company around from near bankruptcy to financial success.

And while the company may have come about via luck, serendipity, whatever you want to call it, it was also an unbroken success for years running. Gary started a company in his basement, recognized a market, risked capital on products he sold to the market, building a company from his basement into one with dozens of employees. Most people define that as business success.


See, I am trying to understand your position. And if D&D wasn't a success when Gary or Peter was in charge, then either you are saying D&D was a success under Lorraine and Hasbro, or you are saying that D&D was never a bona fide success. Since Lorraine Williams drove the company into bankruptcy, and we have 3 editions in 9 years with Hasbro, I just can't see the first.

So the alternative is that D&D was never a genuine success.

I am interested in hearing your definition of success. Does there have to be a written business plan that a bank or other 3rd party agrees to finance? Does it have to be a market one was not personally involved in before? Does it have to involve taking shares in a pre-existing market, not recognizing a whole new market?



It also seems as if you are conflating financial success of the company with employee satisfaction. The waves of layoffs are forgotten by no-one, I am sure, but my original argument was regarding the business, bottom-line success of the company, not employee satisfaction.

Its true that I am assuming some correlation between success of the company and "success of the game", however you choose to define it, because financial success generally comes from sales. Sales translate to increased visibility, increased marketshare and audience, or at the very least, increased valuation.

Generally, I don't see the business failure of a game as success for the game in broader terms.


Anyway, given the history of success and failure, if I had to choose between a gamer running the company and a non-gamer, I would choose the gamer, assuming he/she wasn't some fool.