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Hasbro laying off Wizards of the Coast staff is baffling

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Re: Hasbro laying off Wizards of the Coast staff is baffling

#21

Post by runnr_az »

el-dude-arino wrote: post #14
jmcgough wrote: post #8

A layoff gives managers the opportunity to fire people who they've wanted to fire for a while. The firings within WotC were likely opportunistic and not about trying to change the direction or strength of the company. Doing it as part of larger layoffs gives an excuse for it and in theory mitigates drama.

Ah you beat me to it. Layoffs like this mitigate the drama for sure, but also mitigates legal liability, which just goes to show you; you're a fool to remain loyal to the company. A lot of the people fired were rated highly in their performance reviews, I'm sure. But if you're too ambitious or criticized the boss for making a mistake or just looked at him wrong... you're gone. My advice: - Always be interviewing - Ne…

You’re likely mistaken about the value they’re contributing. Corporate America can be a heartless place, for sure, but you’d be surprised how hard it is to straight up fire underperforming white collar workers.

Re: Hasbro laying off Wizards of the Coast staff is baffling

#22

Post by fullshark »

kderbyma wrote: post #19

A bit of a hot take, but video games need a change. they have stagnated as their profit have soared but like most things....profits are a lagging indicator and like Disney marvel.....were on the slide down. this doesn't mean video game industry is dead....just that it needs to shed it's skin and remove the profit hungry leeches.... the big names will lose lots of money and will do all they can to consolidate anything…

I unironically blame the consumer. I guess also some parents/game companies for exploitative practices on children. There's a mountain of games out there that aren't garbage but they keep shoveling money towards the games that are pretty much explicitly anti-user.

Re: Hasbro laying off Wizards of the Coast staff is baffling

#23

Post by somestag »

fullshark wrote: post #22
kderbyma wrote: post #19

A bit of a hot take, but video games need a change. they have stagnated as their profit have soared but like most things....profits are a lagging indicator and like Disney marvel.....were on the slide down. this doesn't mean video game industry is dead....just that it needs to shed it's skin and remove the profit hungry leeches.... the big names will lose lots of money and will do all they can to consolidate anything…

I unironically blame the consumer. I guess also some parents/game companies for exploitative practices on children. There's a mountain of games out there that aren't garbage but they keep shoveling money towards the games that are pretty much explicitly anti-user.

There is no "the consumer."

Re: Hasbro laying off Wizards of the Coast staff is baffling

#24

Post by zmgsabst »

Waterluvian wrote: post #10
getwiththeprog wrote: post #7

As a long term Wizards player / purchaser, I think their product quality has been dropping over the last few years. In D&D, take the Planescape box set - it was a really empty world lacking in the imagination that the original second ed Planescape had. All the D&D content just seems like filler to me. In MTG, they are releasing so many sets that it would cost a fortune to keep up, and the cards are all like 'meh'. Th…

I think this hypothesis is a good example of an opinion I’m developing that any average executive team can follow the spreadsheet. But what makes a team truly exceptional is the ability and wisdom to identify and act on the subjective and immeasurable qualities of the business. If quality falls but sales rise, did quality not matter? Will it not matter? Maybe we’re not measuring the right things. Maybe we have the wr…

I actually think measurement is the source of “artificial stupidity”.

We tend to measure what’s readily quantifiable. But these tend to be the most basic facts of a situation. And when we make decisions solely based on those metrics, we ignore significant higher order effects — which are difficult to measure.

So we make reductive decisions.

Which is where humanity had previously evolved tribal knowledge, parables, etc — because generationally, we can learn those effects. But we threw all of that data out of our models, which are based purely on numerics.

However, the effect can be years to decades to manifest — much like modeling a farm as only basic inputs and outputs, then destroying the soil over years. (To reference another article today.)

Re: Hasbro laying off Wizards of the Coast staff is baffling

#25

Post by Loughla »

runnr_az wrote: post #21
el-dude-arino wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah you beat me to it. Layoffs like this mitigate the drama for sure, but also mitigates legal liability, which just goes to show you; you're a fool to remain loyal to the company. A lot of the people fired were rated highly in their performance reviews, I'm sure. But if you're too ambitious or criticized the boss for making a mistake or just looked at him wrong... you're gone. My advice: - Always be interviewing - Ne…

You’re likely mistaken about the value they’re contributing. Corporate America can be a heartless place, for sure, but you’d be surprised how hard it is to straight up fire underperforming white collar workers.

The difficulty in firing is directly related to how risk averse (lawsuit averse) HR is.

Re: Hasbro laying off Wizards of the Coast staff is baffling

#26

Post by Loughla »

getwiththeprog wrote: post #9
throw0101b wrote: post #5

Penny Arcade comic on the situation, "Isolator": * https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2023/12/15/isolator

"D&D is, for lack of a better term than I have used previously, a culture. Serving that culture is such an honor. Does such a culture survive, truly survive, lodged within a pair of digital, aggressively monetized parentheses?" (Penny Arcade) D&D is the ony common RPG available these days is most of Australia - it certainly has the largest market share. As cultures go, RPG can easily rebuild itself from a fan-base. I…

That's interesting. In the states there are an absolute abundance of rpg's available. Many rule sets, many settings. It's an actual renaissance of the field, I would argue.

Re: Hasbro laying off Wizards of the Coast staff is baffling

#27

Post by thatguy0900 »

somestag wrote: post #23
fullshark wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I unironically blame the consumer. I guess also some parents/game companies for exploitative practices on children. There's a mountain of games out there that aren't garbage but they keep shoveling money towards the games that are pretty much explicitly anti-user.

There is no "the consumer."

Well someone is preordering all these games that are almost garunteed to be unfinished, at best. What shod we call them?

Re: Hasbro laying off Wizards of the Coast staff is baffling

#28

Post by rqtwteye »

jmcgough wrote: post #8

A layoff gives managers the opportunity to fire people who they've wanted to fire for a while. The firings within WotC were likely opportunistic and not about trying to change the direction or strength of the company. Doing it as part of larger layoffs gives an excuse for it and in theory mitigates drama.

"A layoff gives managers the opportunity to fire people who they've wanted to fire for a while"

This may be true sometimes but I have seen plenty of layoffs where whole projects/departments got axed based on not very good information. A lot of C*O people make these decisions based on very flimsy information.

Re: Hasbro laying off Wizards of the Coast staff is baffling

#29

Post by chii »

kderbyma wrote: post #19

A bit of a hot take, but video games need a change. they have stagnated as their profit have soared but like most things....profits are a lagging indicator and like Disney marvel.....were on the slide down. this doesn't mean video game industry is dead....just that it needs to shed it's skin and remove the profit hungry leeches.... the big names will lose lots of money and will do all they can to consolidate anything…

> a fresh empire of creators

there's so many indie games out there that i have not even considered buying from a corp made game for many years.

As for mobile games, it's a blight on the landscape, best left alone. Dont feed that industry, except to buy indie games that you want to support.

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