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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

#41
post #2

The market seems to disagree with the piece. The stock was in free fall from early October and recovered a bit after the layoff announcement. Anyone have an idea why?

The market is more focused on next quarter's profits than next years - if layoffs help the balance sheet next quarter, they don't care if game quality suffers and there's less profit in the years to come. Well, it's not that the market doesn't care about next year's profit, but they'll expect the company to figure it out by next year.

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

#42

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…

Your hot take on video games seems unrelated to the topic of WOTC, which makes tabletop games.

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

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, et…

It would be like trying to measure the GDP of the renaissance, then predict which artists to invest in.

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

#45
This comes after this year selling the rights to the Transformers movie series, an arguably larger hit to their ability to have mainstream impact. It seems very unlikely they wouldn't be looking for a buyer for WotC as well, and trimming down to just the IP may be making it a better sale.

The company is struggling and likely pulling out all the stops the avoid bankruptcy, when you need liquidity this could very much include cuts to otherwise profitable segments.

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

#47

If I was one of the excellent artists at Wizards of the Coast, I would be worried about Stable Diffusion.

AFAIK, MtG art is all gig work. Art is part of the product and to the extent that AI gets involved it would be about elevating the value rather than cutting costs.

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

#48
I really miss 2016 MtG. I remember when full art lands and full art promos were RARE and with money for no reason other than their collectability. I really liked when cards were rare because of the fact that they were good and uncommon and maybe because they were the same as the regular card but foil, not because they were arbitrarily a different type of shiny, or like when that one card from Kamigawa had a different color neon border that made it spike to 3k for a while, let alone the new serialized cards.

I wish we could go back to that, because I was so excited about collecting cards back then. Nowadays I feel like unless I open a pack with a crazy reprint or a REALLY lucky list card, there are essentially no cards worth anything. I remember pulling some shock lands and even when they were only 8 bucks it felt really great, like it was gambling. Now, I only ever get packs of remastered sets, and standard sets are wholly uninteresting. I do a $40 draft and get $3 worth of cards, and it is to be seen if these EVER go up in value.

I still love the game, and I play it more than ever. But there are three groups of people: investors, people that realize it is a TCG, and people that think all cards should be worthless. The first is greedy, the middle is realistic, and the latter is idealistic. But I am solidly in the middle, and there is so much pushing on both sides that the middle group is demonized for wanting to play a game and have cards have relative value too.

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

#49

I really miss 2016 MtG. I remember when full art lands and full art promos were RARE and with money for no reason other than their collectability. I really liked when cards were rare because of the fact that they were good and uncommon and maybe because they were the same as the regular card but foil, not because they were arbitrarily a different type of shiny, or like when that one card from Kamigawa had a different…

I prefer having cheap cards. You are paying for the experience not the cards when you draft.

What I don’t like is wotc printing new powerful cards in non-standard sets. Modern horizons, commander sets, etc print absolutely must play busted cards but the sets are limited print quantity and artificially scarce.

If it was up to me all new cards would be printed in standard sets and supplemental sets are reprints only.

2016 magic was nice because you could play reserved list cards without having to sell a kidney…

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

#50
post #2

The market seems to disagree with the piece. The stock was in free fall from early October and recovered a bit after the layoff announcement. Anyone have an idea why?

Because layoffs provide profitability, rough as it is. However! What Hasbro is doing to WOTC is tremendously short term thinking. You do not prune the organizations that are providing all of your liquidity in a time of crisis for fear of pruning the wrong branch and diminishing the growth by sending a message to key people that it’s time to go, which is always possible and arguably likely when you cut. I believe that…

Short term thinking also doesn't matter to investors. They can drop the stock like a hot potato any time they want. There are no incentives built in for long term holding.
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