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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

#61

Post by busterarm »

speeder wrote: post #40
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 saw someone pointing out they are doing exact same things comic companies did leading to their crash. The comic companies started to sell a ton of variants, foils, collector editions. They also started to do attention grabbing but bad quality storylines. And also they started to try to cut middlemen and sell more directly to the consumer. The end result was that readers eventually noticed quality was crap, with com…

It may not have worked in the comic book industry but the same tactic has proved an enormous boon to the sports card industry in the last decade and that's absolutely booming.

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

#62

Post by oliwarner »

busterarm wrote: post #60
anuraaga wrote: post #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…

The quality of the IP that they sold off w/ eOne, both on the music side in their 2021 sale and the tv/movie side with this recent one, is staggering. Notably, the entire Death Row Records catalog, Grey's Anatomy, Criminal Minds, international distribution for The Walking Dead, etc.

Those notable titles are pretty old and past development. Same as Transformers.

I guess they don't want to be in the legacy media licensing business.

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

#63

Post by mcpackieh »

oliwarner wrote: post #62
busterarm wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quality of the IP that they sold off w/ eOne, both on the music side in their 2021 sale and the tv/movie side with this recent one, is staggering. Notably, the entire Death Row Records catalog, Grey's Anatomy, Criminal Minds, international distribution for The Walking Dead, etc.

Those notable titles are pretty old and past development. Same as Transformers. I guess they don't want to be in the legacy media licensing business.

> they don't want to be in the legacy media licensing business.

Isn't that business basically free money? The way I see it, no capital investment is needed. You just need to keep a few accountants and lawyers around to handle occasional licensing paperwork. Am I missing something?

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

#64

Post by AndrewKemendo »

Prepare for the enshittification and bedbathandbeyonding of Magic the gathering.

If I had to make a guess as to why, given the fact that the people they laid off were all senior leaders and the numbers are good, it would be preparing for a pump and dump.

if you want to be able to pump and dump a really strong brand then you need to be able to have leaders who don’t mind burning the brands equity in order to make money. My guess is that specifically what intending to do here.

Change the leadership, make new “sticky” products, pump revenue numbers, then spin out a public offering of the magic brand that looks like a great new reboot and refresh.

However the brand is only there to smuggle in the subscription model around new products that have strong margin. Everyone* gets rich cause they slaughtered their fattest pig and yet another cultural staple is killed.

Don’t worry, another band of psychopaths will resurrect it in a few decades like Mattell is doing with the Barbie brand currently.

*Not everyone - very few actually

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

#65

Post by wincy »

29athrowaway wrote: post #32

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

One of the Dungeons and Dragons artists got in trouble for creating an amazing drawing of a giant then using Stable Diffusion to make it really pop. A different Ilya than the one we all know and love got in a bit of hot water [0].

[0] https://decrypt.co/151515/dungeons-dragons-ai-artificial-int...

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

#66

Post by whythre »

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…

…what? Dnd is the market leader but we have the internet, availability shouldn’t be an issue. You can download almost anything from drivethru rpg, and I ran a multi year World of Darkness game with pdfs and online resources.

You might not be able to wander into a store and play with randos, but if you have some open minded friends, just about any tabletop game is an option.

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

#67

Post by dageshi »

mcpackieh wrote: post #63
oliwarner wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those notable titles are pretty old and past development. Same as Transformers. I guess they don't want to be in the legacy media licensing business.

> they don't want to be in the legacy media licensing business. Isn't that business basically free money? The way I see it, no capital investment is needed. You just need to keep a few accountants and lawyers around to handle occasional licensing paperwork. Am I missing something?

It might not be that straightforward when dealing internationally?

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

#68

Post by rco8786 »

jldugger wrote: post #46
apstats wrote: post #43

I don’t think it’s possible to determine if a decision like this is a good one without working at the company. News articles like this are useless.

How does the board of directors evaluate management performance then?

I think it's fair to consider a board of directors as people who "work at the company".

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

#69

Post by gavinray »

dageshi wrote: post #67
mcpackieh wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they don't want to be in the legacy media licensing business. Isn't that business basically free money? The way I see it, no capital investment is needed. You just need to keep a few accountants and lawyers around to handle occasional licensing paperwork. Am I missing something?

It might not be that straightforward when dealing internationally?

But doesn't that mean that at least nationally, it's essentially a money printing machine?

Because this is my layman's conception of how media licensing works, at least.

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

#70

Post by thaumasiotes »

gymbeaux wrote: post #56
THENATHE wrote: post #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…

My theory is that all cards will eventually be under $10, because cards like Mana Crypt are opportunities for WoTC to make money via reprints. I’ve only been playing/buying since March, but I’ve seen so many cards dropping dramatically in price, much more often than seeing a card shoot up in price. Reprints help drive sales and justify the higher prices for booster packs. Cutting staff implies that, perhaps, they ant…

> This month people are losing their minds over the Princess Bride and Dr. Malcolm Secret Lair sets.

Wonderful art on the Princess Bride set.

I can't help but notice that if Inigo Montoya gets into combat with the Man in Black... he'll win.

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