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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

#141

Post by solardev »

Yhippa wrote: post #137
gymbeaux wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They're in a tough spot because they have to keep several audiences happy: collectors and players. Players generally want the cheapest set pieces while collectors want the value of their collection to grow. I think WotC has done a decent job trying to satisfy both groups and are at least trying different things. As an investor, you should be happy about that. Whether or not this sea change of releases over the pandem…

I wish playing with third-party "proxy" cards were more accepted (like https://mtg-print.com/set/fallout or https://proxyking.biz/), where you can get any card custom-printed for a dollar or so. Maybe I just have to find a group where nobody cares about collecting.

If WotC did that first-party, I'd buy a shit ton from them even if they had zero resale value. But I guess that would eat into their collectibles and gacha pack market.

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

#142

Post by Yhippa »

Supermancho wrote: post #124
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #64

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 mone…

The enshittification already happened. The most recent incorporation of other IPs, like the upcoming Dr Who, is a series of last gasps. While sales have followed along the aging income growth of existing players, the inverse pressure of exiting players is past sustainable levels. Other forms of gamba have eroded the MTG gamba allure. Re: Youtube - Tolarian Community College - which is very good at capturing the state…

What is inherently wrong with co-branded product? Do you have any data to back up "exiting players"? I don't think we really have a good read on that. The MagicCons I've been to have been increasingly packed with people.

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

#143

Post by sklargh »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #114
rtkwe wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also their recent move to 3-book + DM screen sets is really annoying. They did it first with Spelljammer's rerelease into 5e and I think the oceanic thirst for Spelljammer content might have sent them the wrong signal about the popularity of the actual content which was pretty thin for the amount you paid for it with notable missing rules like long range travel... for the space setting.

OMG they rereleased spelljammer? Brb, gotta go buy some DND books. Which is to say, I am clearly part of the problem here.

Oh man it was super-disappointing and the end of my willingness to buy WoTC 5E. You'd be better off with the originals from DriveThru.

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

#144

Post by el-dude-arino »

aardvark179 wrote: post #131
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…

This feels like a self fulfilling thing. You get laid off, so you start following these rules and you are even more likely to get laid off. I can honestly say I not only don’t follow these rules, I think I follow almost their direct opposite, and despite many around me being laid off I never have been even when voluntary redundancy was being offered and applying for it, I have more than enough money to walk away from…

I'm glad you've found fulfilling places to work, but I think you might have a bit of survivorship-bias.

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

#145

Post by dragontamer »

solardev wrote: post #136
dragontamer wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It wasn't super clear to me from that article, but does this mean everyone drafts from the same cube (like you combine cards and then everyone draws from them)? Or does everyone make their own cubes? A cube is 360 (total) cards that you tell all your friends about. Some of these cards are repeats (ex: 4x Elite Vanguards). You bring those cards, you shuffle them up, deal out 15-to-each-person, and then start draftin…

> Then keep to the same cube. The "owner" of the Cube is responsible for "balance patches" (Hmmm... Red is too strong. I'll replace some of these powerful Red cards with weaker ones). So its not completely static. But the general plan is to build a set that your group can "recycle" and grow to become experts in. Thanks for explaining this! I actually really like this. I will suggest it to our Magic group next time :)…

https://dr4ft.info/

https://ponymtg.github.io/cockatrice1.html

> Does the software include estimated rarity, such that if you practice drafting a few times, you're as unlikely to get the rares as in the real card version?

Yes, of course. Rarity is important to drafting strategy.

-------

You ain't gonna beat a top level player who has practiced drafting a set dozens of times before the release, lol.

But grow to the skill level you're comfortable with. A bit of practice goes a long way.

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

#146

Post by morelisp »

prakhar897 wrote: post #120

thinly related but i could really use some advice. There's a board game called "quoridor" that I've been playing a lot lately. I found 2 platforms where u can play this online, major one being BGA (boardgamearena). It was kinda sad to see a game on par with chess in terms of simplicity and strategy, being lumped into the same group as kids games. So, I started building a platform for it myself in my free time. Still…

BGA is... not for kids games. I mean, there are kids games there, but there's also RftG, TtA, T&E...

Quoridor is nice but I would not even put it in the top 10 modern abstracts, let alone on par with chess.

Legality aside, it is a bit of a dick move to reimplement a modern abstract that people can play for free, or even make themselves for a low cost, just because you don't like the (free) site it's on.

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

#147

Post by solardev »

dragontamer wrote: post #145
solardev wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then keep to the same cube. The "owner" of the Cube is responsible for "balance patches" (Hmmm... Red is too strong. I'll replace some of these powerful Red cards with weaker ones). So its not completely static. But the general plan is to build a set that your group can "recycle" and grow to become experts in. Thanks for explaining this! I actually really like this. I will suggest it to our Magic group next time :)…

https://dr4ft.info/ https://ponymtg.github.io/cockatrice1.html > Does the software include estimated rarity, such that if you practice drafting a few times, you're as unlikely to get the rares as in the real card version? Yes, of course. Rarity is important to drafting strategy. ------- You ain't gonna beat a top level player who has practiced drafting a set dozens of times before the release, lol. But grow to the sk…

Thanks!

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

#148

Post by sublinear »

solardev wrote: post #109
DonHopkins wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like Oracle buying Sun. We just need to move on from Java to other languages at this point.

If you ever want another huge, ancient labyrinth of a language that also kinda sorta runs everywhere, the Javascript world welcomes you with open tentaces! Here we're controlled by an evil older than Oracle itself (Microsoft and Typescript), with upgrades and crossgrades and cross compilers that deliver astounding 15% improvements in performance in exchange for a mere few animal sacrifices and a lifetime of misery. I…

> controlled by an evil older than Oracle itself (Microsoft and Typescript)

Who still uses typescript? It's not the mid-2010s anymore. Plain javascript is everywhere and I'd argue using a framework implies an immature project or team.

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

#149

Post by bart_spoon »

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…

There’s only two camps, investors and gamers. I think that anyone who wants to “have cards that have relative value” are investors, whether they realize it or not. Its one thing to collect because you like something inherent about the cards themselves (I recall a recent Reddit post where the user was trying to collect every single Magic card that depicted an owl in any way). But if your concern is about the monetary value of the cards in your collection, you are an investor, of some kind.

I personally think cards should be for playing, and am pretty opposed to cards being valuable if that means that playing the actual game becomes prohibitively expensive. Standard decks costing hundreds of dollars is not a good thing.

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

#150

Post by phpisthebest »

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?

Simple. Did the management meet the various internal targets outlined by the board.. Those could be anything from profitability, to total cost structure, to anything really
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