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Like clockwork, Wizards of the Coast has laid off a bunch of people just in time for the holidays. It is NO FUN to be in fear for your job and career every single year, but that's the way it was over there when I worked for the company, and that's apparently the way it is now.
I've seen a list of some of the folks who lost their jobs today floating around the internet, and it's possible to draw some conclusions from it.
First, blood continues to be spilled over the sub-fantastic DDI and "Gleemax" debacle. It's difficult to say at this point if it's a matter of incompetence being shown the door or a general house cleaning, but either way all is definitely not well on the digital front over in Renton.
I'm extremely surprised to see Jonathan Tweet and Andrew Finch on the layoff list (assuming the list I've seen is accurate). Both are among the sharpest minds not just at Wizards of the Coast, but in the gaming business in general. It's difficult not to see their loss as a significant blow to WotC's ability to innovate. More to the point, the idea of either of these guys getting laid off 4 years ago or even 2 years ago would have been unthinkable. They were as close to untouchable as you could get. Clearly, something's changed over there.
On the D&D front, I'm very sad to see the names Dave Noonan and Julia Martin on the list of layoffs. Dave is one of the better writers working on D&D. He started shortly after I did back in 1999 or so, and I always appreciated his point of view and (especially) his writing. Dave's contributions to Dungeon and Dragon when I was involved with the magazines remain some of my favorites. Julia is one of the strongest editors working on the game, and her nurturing of the Forgotten Realms in particular will get her a place in Toril's Heaven forever. I'm not sure what she was working on these days, but it's too bad to see her go like this.
A lot of times these annual (or even more than annual) lists get posted to EN World and I think "Yeah, I can see that" or "I have never even heard of this guy," but this time I recognize almost every name on the list. Some of those names bewilder me, and I wonder if we might hear about more folks who lost their jobs today in the next few days.
Best wishes to the folks who got culled today. It's a terrible time to lose your job, and I wish these folks the best of luck.
.
December 3 2008, 08:24:39 UTC 3 years ago
December 3 2008, 12:54:41 UTC 3 years ago
I've fired people before and it's never easy and always a source of stress. Stress leading up to the actual termination meeting, the meeting itself, and then weeks of stress as guilt makes you think "What could I have done to salvage the situation?"
December 3 2008, 13:16:48 UTC 3 years ago
December 3 2008, 15:04:48 UTC 3 years ago
December 3 2008, 20:00:33 UTC 3 years ago
In the hobby/adventure gaming industry, where everyone gets downsized sometime, I recall mostly summer layoffs, but no time was "safe". The constant churn is what convinced me to get the Hell out, as a matter of fact.
The routine December firings actually tell me that WotC is less integrated into Hasbro's corporate culture than I had been lead to believe by WotC's flaks. It's a fiefdom, rather than a part of the parent company's demesne. The direct Hasbro employees I've met over the years tend to move around within the company, like Microsoft employees, rather than be shown the door when their project's life-cycle ends. There was a layoff of manufacturing staff in January of this year, however, and everyone remembers the December massacre of Hasbro Interactive (nee MicroProse) back in '99. That latter was actually an early part of a much larger restructuring in which some 850 jobs were lost, again mostly in manufacturing. The announcement of the closure of Hasbro's Cincinnati, Napa, and San Francisco plants (where most of those job cuts came) hit the presses in October of 2000. Prior to restructuring, Hasbro was facing annual losses of ~$180M.
I think it's just generally true of entertainment that the number of people who want to entertain for a living vastly exceeds the number of people who want to pay to be entertained. Even most of the really good entertainers seem to be constantly on the edge of financial destruction -- most writers I know live on a partner's day job, the only affluent toy designers I've met are actually engineers, and I'm reasonably convinced that actors are so damn horny because they can consistently afford no other vices.
December 3 2008, 12:05:23 UTC 3 years ago
Insider & Gleemax are...I'm honestly not up on the controversy. When they killed Dragon & Dungeon & said the content would be online, & pay-per, I didn't VOW I would never pay for it but said I couldn't see myself adopting an obsolete online business model. & I still can't. All the Insider has done is devalue the Wizard's page; I used to click through I'd say 1000% more? Now I scroll past the links in my RSS reader, figuring all the good articles are locked. & Gleemax, if it ever appears? I don't want to game online. If I wanted to game online, I'd use one of the already established online gaming engines. One with a better name than Gleemax!
December 3 2008, 15:04:06 UTC 3 years ago
Poorly planned?
Disaster?
A bad, bad idea?
All of the above.
December 3 2008, 15:09:06 UTC 3 years ago
December 3 2008, 20:03:47 UTC 3 years ago
December 3 2008, 18:45:45 UTC 3 years ago
This is my experience as well. I'm not going to pay for insider, seeing as it's still apparently in Beta. Maybe not in name, but still a lot of unfulfilled promises and limited functionality.
December 3 2008, 13:44:21 UTC 3 years ago
It has heartened me to see some of the discarded talent turn up at Paizo. Smart. You guys are very smart...
December 3 2008, 15:10:23 UTC 3 years ago
December 3 2008, 14:26:25 UTC 3 years ago
What are they doing? Culling all the pre-4e talent? I'm speechless...
December 3 2008, 16:35:22 UTC 3 years ago
December 3 2008, 18:17:49 UTC 3 years ago
December 3 2008, 20:11:09 UTC 3 years ago
December 3 2008, 17:36:17 UTC 3 years ago
December 3 2008, 18:49:31 UTC 3 years ago
Sure WoTC probably saved D&D, and a lot of the gaming market, back when it acquired TSR, etc. but I think it's time that D&D was set free from its ties to card games, a board game corporation, and allowed to exist on it's own.
Pipe dream(s) I'm sure, but one can hope. Of course I'm a total outside who just plays the games, and has no clue as to the real underlying business but that's my non-informed wish anyway.
Best of luck to those that were laid off. Gotta love a company laying off at the holidays -- lovely employee-centric view there. Going through the same here with the wife, who works for one of the big three auto manufacturers. I'm pretty sure she's safe but yet again more friends of hers are facing the axe. They're operating at under 50% of the required staff as it is in her area (engineer) and it's just going to get worse.
December 3 2008, 19:25:08 UTC 3 years ago
Or so goes my working theory.
December 3 2008, 20:24:30 UTC 3 years ago
December 3 2008, 20:34:52 UTC 3 years ago
Well, a salary dump and punishment for the lackluster Gleemax disaster.
December 3 2008, 20:40:53 UTC 3 years ago
I also think that, perhaps only on a subconscious level, there are reasons why a manager would get rid of the employees that have been around longer. Frankly, the newer and more inexperienced your employees are, the more easily controlled they are, without any of the old guard--who remember management's past screw-ups, among other things--around to cause trouble.
December 3 2008, 21:06:20 UTC 3 years ago
December 3 2008, 19:37:57 UTC 3 years ago
I didn't want Dragon & Dungeon to go online and wasn't that impressed with the Insider previews (a lot of it is PC-only for a start) but I think the current package (Dragon, Dungeon and the compendium) is great value for money.
December 6 2008, 06:57:23 UTC 3 years ago