Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="WizarDru" data-source="post: 4125440" data-attributes="member: 151">I think there's a lot of hyperbole flying about, here.Has D&D thrived under gamers?  Yes, it certainly has.  Has it thrived under non-gamers?  Define 'non-gamer'.  Greenwood started with WotC in 1996.  More than once, the company has exceeded financial annual goals.  Does that make him good or bad?  Why can't a company have both kinds of Greenwoods, Eds and Lorens?The contention is made that when Gary was at the helm, D&D thrived and that when the Blumes and Lorraine were at the wheel, the car wiped out.  Yet that's not necessarily a straight-forward argument.  How did the Blumes get in the door?  Gary invited them, because first he didn't want to wait for the capital from C&R and then later because he didn't want to actually run a business day-to-day.  Once D&D took off, so did Gary, heading out to California to try and drum up licenses for the brand.  That left the Blumes to run the business entirely on their own with virtually no oversight, nearly killing the company.  The Blumes, as noted, were hardly stellar businessmen themselves....but people seem also to forget <a href="http://cgi.ebay.com/Panzer-Warfare-TSR-1975-Blume_W0QQitemZ180225966014QQihZ008QQcategoryZ44112QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem" target="_blank"> how Gary knew them</a>....THEY WERE GAMERS, TOO.  So the idea that having gamers in charge is a boon to the company is demonstrably false.  It isn't necessarily a detriment, but it certainly hasn't shown itself to be any added benefit.It's also widely assumed that Lorraine Williams nearly deep-sixed the company...but it's not a given that it was done because she didn't understand the business or gamers nearly so much as she made some bad decisions.  Under her direction, the fiction department grew and the company was able to support a LOT of different products.  There are anecdotal notes about her from several former employees...some good and some bad.  There's no question that she made some bad calls and nearly destroyed the company...but her being a gamer had nothing to do with it.  Her desire to put for her grandfather's legacy, her bad call on CCGs and her belief that they could cover bad lines with good ones all did their part.  However, it's also clear that TSR under Gary did no more market research than the Blumes or Lorraine Williams, so we'll never know how D&D would have proceeded.  Gary himself went on to New Infinites, where his lack of business acumen again led to loss for himself and other investors.All of which doesn't reflect on Mr. Leeds, of course, as NONE OF THESE PEOPLE HAD MBAs.  Even if we were to accept as a fact that MBAs running game companies are a problem, which many of use DON'T, the fact remains that no one with an MBA got involved with the D&D brand until it had nearly gone out of business THREE TIMES aleady.  When the MBAs got involved, WotC managed to survived at least two rounds of layoffs without products slipping or failing to make their financial commitments.The mark of a good business isn't avoiding a downturn so much as SURVIVING one.  WotC has rolled with a lot of industry changes and managed to come up swinging more than once.  CCGs fading?  Still on their feet.  Pokemon license lost?  Still on their feet.  Paper costs skyrocketing?  Still on their feet.  WotC both independently and with Hasbro has managed to put out a lot of products that weren't successful and not put the company in mortal danger.  I'd hazard that a lot of folks severely underestimate how much of WotC's success is owed to non-gamers in the infrastructure, like the guys who order paper and printing services, the guys who manage the distribution networks or the folks who make sure that their books are balanced.  It's good to have gamers in the structure, but being a gamer is neither an indicator of success OR failure for the company as a whole.</blockquote>

Verification