TheRPGSite

An old blog post from Joethelawyer linked to the glassdoor page for Wizards of the Coast (http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Wizards-of-the-Coast-Reviews-E4718.htm).

My favorite quote?

Quote from: Anonymous WotC ex-employee over at glassdoorMarketing is a joke, they have no idea what they are trying to sell and won't learn.

No shit.

Anyway, the bad reviews (not all, but definitely in the majority) are disappointing. This is the company that prints D&D, for fuck's sake. It should be every game designer's dream job.

Quote from: The Butcher;814344An old blog post from Joethelawyer linked to the glassdoor page for Wizards of the Coast (http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Wizards-of-the-Coast-Reviews-E4718.htm).

My favorite quote?



No shit.

Anyway, the bad reviews (not all, but definitely in the majority) are disappointing. This is the company that prints D&D, for fuck's sake. It should be every game designer's dream job.

Quote from: Same anonymous WotC employee over at Glassdoor2 trick pony. Magic and D&D. If it isn't named that it's not going to fly. Don't get your hopes up about a new game you made. Even if they like it, and say they want to do it, it won't get published. But they will own your idea from then on.

That is one of the reasons why I have never wanted to sell anything to WotC. The contract they want you to sign gives them the rights to your work in perpetuity, if they pay for it then it is theirs to do with as they please.

I'll say the same thing I said on Joe's G+ post of this.

If most of the negative reviews can be summed up as either:

* Man, why won't they just listen my MY great ideas!  Idiots.
* My boss is mean/incompetent and I have to kiss their ass
* Everybody hates me and I'm gonna eat some worms.


Then chances are it's just bitter ex employees who probably aren't the best representation of the company.

I've supervised and/or managed people for over 2 decades, whether it was in the military, coaching, or corporate environment.  80/20 rule.  You'll always have 20% of the staff take up 80% of your time because they are lazy, selfish, incompetent, or all three.  Give them a keyboard, and this is what you get.

This isn't to say there isn't legitimate complaints, but I'd take a site like this with a HUGE grain of salt.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;814356I've supervised and/or managed people for over 2 decades, whether it was in the military, coaching, or corporate environment.  80/20 rule.  You'll always have 20% of the staff take up 80% of your time because they are lazy, selfish, incompetent, or all three.  Give them a keyboard, and this is what you get.

I've been supervised and/or worked under people for over 2 decades and I'd say the split from my end isn't as complimentary... lazy, selfish, incompetent AND delusional about their own capabilities and value to the company seems to run strong in the management I've dealt with. There's a contingent of folks who just KNOW they should be in charge of others despite all signs to the contrary.
Not all or most... but too many.

Quote from: Simlasa;814359I've been supervised and/or worked under people for over 2 decades and I'd say the split from my end isn't as complimentary... lazy, selfish, incompetent AND delusional about their own capabilities and value to the company seems to run strong in the management I've dealt with. There's a contingent of folks who just KNOW they should be in charge of others despite all signs to the contrary.
Not all or most... but too many.

I'm sure you, and everyone else who has had to work with large groups of other people, know exactly what I'm talking about.  Those coworkers who do just enough to not get fired, but are always somehow at the center of every negative thing that ever comes up, and you're constantly covering up for their poor work.

As a manager, that was the #1 issue I had with the job.  Rather than be able to give as much time as I want helping those employees who are really good, and getting them the tools they need to succeed, you're spending most of your time in HR writing up yet another perpetual warning for someone who is a less than ideal employee.  And that's not fair to the majority of employees who are actually pretty good.

I used to work in research & development myself and strangely enough, any ideas i had while at the company became the company's, not mine, even if it wasn't related to my current brief! (strange that)

That people think this shouldn't be the case i find hilarious. Too many hobbyists think it's not a business. It is a business, not a hobby, once you start taking the salary.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;814360Those coworkers who do just enough to not get fired, but are always somehow at the center of every negative thing that ever comes up, and you're constantly covering up for their poor work.

I've had a few co-workers like that, sure... especially at the crappy jobs I had early on... I probably was one of them at times... but I've also worked places where no one fit that description except the boss/manager.

I think certain businesses attract young folks, both because they pay shit and young people are nervous and inexperienced and will go for it, and because 'dream job' makes for people you can jerk around.

But the thing is, young inexperienced workers often have no fucking clue what 'working at a job' entails, so many of these comments are slanted toward growing up.

So I'm torn -- it wouldn't surprise me if it wasn't a great place to work, but I take the complaints with a lot of salt.

Quote from: One Horse Town;814362I used to work in research & development myself and strangely enough, any ideas i had while at the company became the company's, not mine, even if it wasn't related to my current brief! (strange that)

That people think this shouldn't be the case i find hilarious. Too many hobbyists think it's not a business. It is a business, not a hobby, once you start taking the salary.

That is why you read the contract to find out what your obligations are expected to be before collecting that paycheck.

Is Glassdoor sort of like Yelp, in that you're mainly motivated to post a review there if you've got some sort of grievance?

If it is like Yelp, then the things you want to look for are a very strong tilt to the reviews, and if certain issues get brought up over and over and over again. Then you might have something. But take the reviews at face value? Nahhhh.

But I'm unfamiliar with Glassdoor and how reliable its reviewing culture is.

Quote from: One Horse Town;814362I used to work in research & development myself and strangely enough, any ideas i had while at the company became the company's, not mine, even if it wasn't related to my current brief! (strange that)

That people think this shouldn't be the case i find hilarious. Too many hobbyists think it's not a business. It is a business, not a hobby, once you start taking the salary.

My brother does concept art for a video game company in England. He's very careful not to display his personal work in any way that could be linked to his identity or on-the-job time in case the company tries to nab it.

I had a chat with a Magic the Gathering artist who apparently was in the habit of doing a piece as requested, deciding it was too good to give to WotC, hiding it, and then dashing out an inferior work to meet his obligation.

Quote from: Simlasa;814359I've been supervised and/or worked under people for over 2 decades and I'd say the split from my end isn't as complimentary... lazy, selfish, incompetent AND delusional about their own capabilities and value to the company seems to run strong in the management I've dealt with. There's a contingent of folks who just KNOW they should be in charge of others despite all signs to the contrary.
Not all or most... but too many.

I agree. I've worked in a variety of places and while I've seen poor employees the really bad stuff starts with incompetent managers who can't run the place. I had one manager, of a Walgreens, who aside from being incompetent couldn't form a straight sentence, I rarely had any clue to what he was talking about. I once told one of the assistants that I considered her the real manager of the store. She understood exactly what I was talking about. I had another manager who was a strict by-the-book a-hole who loved writing everyone up for every tiny infraction they made. I had an assistant manager who wanted me to join him on a "cant lose" plan to head to Las Vegas and win in the casinos.

I swear, 80% of the problems I've seen in places come from the managers. If you've been lied to half as much as I've been, if you've seen half of what I've seen, you'd agree.

I don't think too much of Glassdoor. It tends to attract people with grievances. Case in point, at the company I'm working for right now we have this terrible review on Glassdoor from a whiny employee who is complaining that we have too many cat .gifs in our official company email. We all laughed, and proceeded to email twice the amount of cat .gifs.

The things I look for is a consistency of poor reviews. Compare WoTC with Amazon. Here in Seattle Amazon has a turnover rate of about 98% in the first year. It hires kids out of school, works them like dogs, then chucks them aside after a few months. Ugly stuff.  

That WoTC review? Just a bunch of nerdy kids who can't grasp that they're in a corporate environment. Which can suck, but not uniquely.

Quote from: JonWake;814391I don't think too much of Glassdoor. It tends to attract people with grievances. Case in point, at the company I'm working for right now we have this terrible review on Glassdoor from a whiny employee who is complaining that we have too many cat .gifs in our official company email. We all laughed, and proceeded to email twice the amount of cat .gifs.

The things I look for is a consistency of poor reviews. Compare WoTC with Amazon. Here in Seattle Amazon has a turnover rate of about 98% in the first year. It hires kids out of school, works them like dogs, then chucks them aside after a few months. Ugly stuff.  

That WoTC review? Just a bunch of nerdy kids who can't grasp that they're in a corporate environment. Which can suck, but not uniquely.

Agreed.  I looked up my company, and most of the 1 star ratings were from people who were upset they had to do things that were core to the job function.  Don't like cross-selling?  Don't work in retail banking and work in some other part of the bank.  Doesn't make sense to put a 1 star review for a company that consistently ranks very high by companies like Gallup.

This same discussion came up prior to Christmas when forums hit the Glassdoor entry for Fantasy Flight games, which is if anything even more hilarious. I have no trouble believing that these companies are poorly run, because more often than not, the 'upper management' those reviews complain about? Chances are, that the managers were either parachuted - and so have no clue about the product they're selling, or how to sell it (Greg Leeds) - or are grassroots gamers who've 'risen in the ranks', and so more often than not may not have gone through the rigorous management experience other industries use to sort the wheat from the chaff. I don't take these reviews at face value, but I certainly don't jump to the opposite conclusion either, and write it all off as cognitive dissonance across the board.

I'm sure just about any company that has multiple shifts you'd have complaints from each shift about how they do the bulk of the work and the other shifts are a bunch of slackers who always leave a mess and unfinished work.

My wife worked at Amazon.

Ugh

What was Amazon like? Those are one of the places I've interviewed for before. Their work/life balance is supposedly terrible.

Their work/life balance is terrible. ;)

My wife got an interview there ~10 years ago, and some other recruiter caught wind and also lined up an interview at Microsoft. At the time we REALLY wanted to move cross-country (we were in central PA).

Amazon... everyone there was frazzled, distracted. Interviewers would pause to check or answer emails during interviews. Ugh. Microsoft looked cool, and that's where she went, instead.

Fast forward, about a year ago she was getting fed up with MS, went to Amazon. The immediate situation was kind of messed up, but they promised 'just as soon as BLAH happens, we'll move you to this other group and you get to do fun stuff.' And, well. Delay delay delay.
And everyone is stressed.

That's in the business managing sorta end. The ground level stuff is, from what I understand, about 100x worse.

(She then got a job offer at Facebook and she's REALLY digging that, though it's long distance until kids' school year is up and we move)

Quote from: Simlasa;814359I've been supervised and/or worked under people for over 2 decades and I'd say the split from my end isn't as complimentary... lazy, selfish, incompetent AND delusional about their own capabilities and value to the company seems to run strong in the management I've dealt with. There's a contingent of folks who just KNOW they should be in charge of others despite all signs to the contrary.
Not all or most... but too many.

Not to mention Harvard Business School studies showing that over 90% of employee "discipline" problems are caused by employees being unable to do their jobs because they lack information, tools, materials, or training.  But it's easier for bosses to berate than train.

And people who say working for the government is an easy job should do it.  The US Census was pathetic; I shit better management than that.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;814416What was Amazon like? Those are one of the places I've interviewed for before. Their work/life balance is supposedly terrible.

They work people to death over there. You get hired without any clear job description, they promise all kinds of bonuses and new opportunities for people who are 'team player' and put in 60 hour work weeks, but those opportunities are usually vague and best and lies at worst.

Quote from: Will;814420Their work/life balance is terrible. ;)

My wife got an interview there ~10 years ago, and some other recruiter caught wind and also lined up an interview at Microsoft. At the time we REALLY wanted to move cross-country (we were in central PA).

Amazon... everyone there was frazzled, distracted. Interviewers would pause to check or answer emails during interviews. Ugh. Microsoft looked cool, and that's where she went, instead.

Fast forward, about a year ago she was getting fed up with MS, went to Amazon. The immediate situation was kind of messed up, but they promised 'just as soon as BLAH happens, we'll move you to this other group and you get to do fun stuff.' And, well. Delay delay delay.
And everyone is stressed.

That's in the business managing sorta end. The ground level stuff is, from what I understand, about 100x worse.

(She then got a job offer at Facebook and she's REALLY digging that, though it's long distance until kids' school year is up and we move)

Quote from: JonWake;814434They work people to death over there. You get hired without any clear job description, they promise all kinds of bonuses and new opportunities for people who are 'team player' and put in 60 hour work weeks, but those opportunities are usually vague and best and lies at worst.

I wonder if Apple or Google is better. Anyone else know anything about those?

I always considered Facebook as a potential place to work but wasn't sure how much staying power it had...

Facebook, so far, is great. Fun campus, a lot of good vibes, smart if a little disorganized corporate culture.

It's also expanding rapidly.

my wife knows a few people who moved from Microsoft to Facebook and are very happy.

I do not understand what relevance WotC's employment practices have on my rpg consumption choices.

Frankly, I figure anyone who choses to go into the rpg industry as a career choice is making a serious mistake.

Quote from: Old One Eye;814440I do not understand what relevance WotC's employment practices have on my rpg consumption choices.

Frankly, I figure anyone who choses to go into the rpg industry as a career choice is making a serious mistake.

If nobody wants to work there, the company will be filled with incompetents who don't care about their job and they'll put out bad products.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;814441If nobody wants to work there, the company will be filled with incompetents who don't care about their job and they'll put out bad products.

Then you just don't buy them?  :huhsign::idunno:

Quote from: jeff37923;814443Then you just don't buy them?  :huhsign::idunno:

Which I care about, because consequently there won't be cool new D&D products I want to buy.

Is the flow of this really that weird?

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;814436I wonder if Apple or Google is better. Anyone else know anything about those?

Apple sucked when I worked there...

I lasted 3-4 months as a senior line technician. Production Line quality control was horrendous, and that wasn't coming from the folks on the line. It was mainly created by engineers creating badly designed circuit boards. It seemed to me like the Engineers there were putting their fingers in their ears and would just recite "La-la-la-la-la" mantras all day long when they weren't actually blowing millions of dollars on faulty outsourced circuit board design. I went to them multiple times to see about getting production line defects corrected only to be turned away. Rudely.

I also managed to get a reprimand for writing a complete troubleshooting manual teaching other techs how to actually test and fix iMac PC motherboards.

At the time, they were more interested at Apple in the Japanese slave worker Kanban mentality than producing quality PCs. It almost killed them as a company. Then Steve Jobs came back, but I was already happily gone, and never looked back.

When Steve Jobs got back he fired most of the Engineers, let the line workers go, closed all the US manufacturing plants, and outsourced all Apple hardware production to Chinese slave labor, Yes, FoxConn, I'm looking at you!

The iOS operating system also sucked. I had to use a network analyzer on known good motherboards and literally figured out how the motherboards were put together and operated, and it wasn't pretty. They made Microsoft look good!

If anything, they have just gotten worse. Year before last, I had to disassemble an iPod just to change out the battery. The battery was actually soldered in, basically the unit was not designed for repair or even to quick change the battery. It was designed to be thrown away if it failed, and that was a deliberate design choice. My wife still ran to Apple like a camp follower ranting "take my money" when the new iPhones came out.

Ah chinese slave workers.  The last place where you make your shitty products because lets face it if you actually made good products you wouldn't need cheap labor to sell your goods.

Yes I know Apple sells like hot cakes, but that is due to the branding and nothing else.  Pretty sure if you remove the branding and just gave the phones to people they would ditch it within weeks for far better phones.

Too bad trying to boycott Foxconn would basically take you back to the 1970s tech wise. Fuckers make everything.

Maybe Foxconn almost makes everything. Dell and Asus don't buy from them as far as I know though, and I can still get detailed engineering tech manuals with circuit board diagrams and parts lists for any Dell motherboard.

Apple and Foxconn won't release that information, even for authorized Apple service technicians... I'm pretty sure they make them go-go boys hot swap the boards and then ship them back to China, or simply throw them away completely replacing the motherboard. It's eminently profitable to trash the environment with toxic waste, plastics, and heavy metals that are loaded into about every circuit board manufactured.

Asus makes their own motherboards, but they don't make tech and engineering manuals available for technicans except for their own in-house techs.

IBM still custom designs Hybrid and Computer Circuit Boards in Albany, Austin, Yorktown Heights, Poughkeepsie, Essex Junction Vermont, and in the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina.

There are still plenty of U.S. based Circuit Board designers. I actually learned how to etch custom designed circuit boards about twenty-five years ago, but any homemade design pale in comparison to the nano-scale multi-layer etching used in advanced modern PCB manufacturing these days.

Some U.S. circuit board and PCB manufacturers

Littlefuse
DCS
Intel
Fairchild Semiconductor
Pike Corporation
Raytheon
Apple - (All that remains are in Santa Clara now)
Northrop-Grumann
Jabil
SpaceX
Microsoft
L-3 Communications
Encore-Semi
Qualcom in San Diego


NCR still designs boards too, all their board design facilities are in India though now.

I would be surprised if anyone on this board didn't have at least one thing (and more than likely many many more) manufactured by Foxconn. They are everywhere.

Every game current game console (and the entire last generation as well), large percentages of phones (not just Apple, Nokia, Huawei, Motorola and more), tons and tons of computer parts (I have an Asus laptop, but I'll make a bet that at least one component in it is Foxconn manufactured). Televisions (Sony, Sharp, and Vizio I believe are manufactured by Foxconn).

Seriously, they are everywhere.

Funny thing about most job descriptions that people seem to utterly overlook before they take a job - that last line item under "Duties and Responsibilities":

Other duties as assigned.

Yup, you might sign on as a Content Creative, or Quality Assurance Manager, or Lord High Muck-a-Muck, but they can still make you clean the toilets, or clean out your desk.

.....

Anyone remember when we were "employees", or "personnel", instead of "resources"?

I do, but only just.

Quote from: Werekoala;814456Yup, you might sign on as a Content Creative, or Quality Assurance Manager, or Lord High Muck-a-Muck, but they can still make you clean the toilets, or clean out your desk.

So?

At a certain level of professionalism, you do what's required to make your team successful.  And if the most useful thing you can do is clean the toilets, then clean the damn toilets.  "That's not my job" is about the crappiest thing an employee can say.

If that *is* the most useful thing you can do, though, it doesn't say much for you.  The way to not do menial crap isn't a contract saying you don't have to do it.  It's being useful enough that the company doesn't want to waste your time with menial crap.

Quote from: GameDaddy;814447At the time, they were more interested at Apple in the Japanese slave worker Kanban mentality than producing quality PCs. It almost killed them as a company. Then Steve Jobs came back, but I was already happily gone, and never looked back.

The irony there is that Japanese companies made great, reliable products when they did listen and respond to feedback from the floor.

Quote from: robiswrong;814457So?

At a certain level of professionalism, you do what's required to make your team successful.  And if the most useful thing you can do is clean the toilets, then clean the damn toilets.  "That's not my job" is about the crappiest thing an employee can say.

If that *is* the most useful thing you can do, though, it doesn't say much for you.  The way to not do menial crap isn't a contract saying you don't have to do it.  It's being useful enough that the company doesn't want to waste your time with menial crap.

I agree completely - I wasn't personally complaining, I was just pointing out how people tend to miss that important bit.

Quote from: robiswrong;814457At a certain level of professionalism, you do what's required to make your team successful.  And if the most useful thing you can do is clean the toilets, then clean the damn toilets.  "That's not my job" is about the crappiest thing an employee can say.

There are a lot of people incapable of understanding the value of a team except as a temporary springboard to personal aggrandizement.

Work is a two way street. You are agreeing to show up and work a certain job that you've agreed on, and they agree to pay you.

If you are a coder and someone is asking to clean toilets, 'that's not my job' is nicer than saying 'what the fuck is wrong with you, you psycho shithead. YOU clean it.'


Again, it's one thing if it somewhat fits in your purview, and yeah, you help out the team (we're going to fill balloons for Ed's birthday, you in?), but, again, if the boss has time to tell you to clean the toilets, why isn't the boss doing it?

Bullshit, maaan.

Quote from: robiswrong;814457So?
At a certain level of professionalism, you do what's required to make your team successful.  And if the most useful thing you can do is clean the toilets, then clean the damn toilets.  "That's not my job" is about the crappiest thing an employee can say.

Quote from: LynnThere are a lot of people incapable of understanding the value of a team except as a temporary springboard to personal aggrandizement.

Ahh, that brings back memories of my disastrous stint in the indie film industry.

Also, Team Fortress 2...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8KxC74h-X0

Gotta love a "team" where everyone thinks, secretly or out loud, that they are the true diva being held back by the peons and losers.

Also, it's kind of fucked up for a business to expect you to really round things out, be a team player, etc... because when push comes to shove, if things get tight you're hitting the bricks.

There's a razor thin line between team player and being a chump.

Quote from: Lynn;814458The irony there is that Japanese companies made great, reliable products when they did listen and respond to feedback from the floor.

We had the KanBan meetings... That seemed to be a brown-nosing festival at its very best.

The issue wasn't in-house quality control. The assembly folks working on the surface mount machines had exactly zero electronics repair or test skills. They did have a certified NASA soldering course, and a in-house training in keeping the SMT machines properly stocked and running well. They did their jobs very well, It was extremely rare for me to get more than ten bad boards in a batch because some surface mount machine had run out of components to place. ...and those were easy fixes taking just a few minutes each.

The board test guys had good training too, and could usually flag a board that was missing a cap or resistor or IC or other component with few problem, and I would have about a 2 minute repair job for that.

We were all ISO certed and knew what we were doing. As the senior tech on the line I would fix anything that no one else on the line could fix.

The real quality control  problems came with the motherboards and PCBs that were sourced out of house. If its missing one lead trace, the circuit don't work. The trace has to be laid by hand. If it's missing a grommet, that requires the board test guy (or me) to replace the grommet too, and any component that may be attached to the grommet probably needs to be resoldered or replaced as well.

 When a board comes with 200 missing grommets because it was shipped from the outsourced PCB manufacturer that way, that's at least a 4 hour repair job for one board. We would build anywhere between 500 and 1,000 PCs on one assembly line in a 12 hour shift. We had 18 build lines in our plant.

With properly specced and well built motherboards,  I would end up with one to three dozen PCs during my shift to repair. I could handle that, would fix ten to thirty a shift, usually ended up scrapping one or two that was too badly damaged to invest repair time in, and leave four or five motherboards for the next shift lead tech to work on.

if I didn't have anything to do, I could spend time improving my test and troubleshooting skills by experimenting on scrapped boards, or check out the engineering and tech manuals on the next gen motherboards that we would be seeing more of a bit later on. Or I could develop new more efficient board test and repair procedures for PCs we were currently building.

There were nights when they ran defective PCBs and I would get 500-800 fails... After working there for six weeks I simply shut down my entire line if there were more than 50 bad boards in a single shift because something was wrong.

That's about the time I started tangling, ...unfavorably, I would add, with the engineers and design teams. They wanted production numbers, and we had shipping quotas to hit, and they were delivering inherently defective designed PCBs to accomplish this with.

Quote from: GameDaddy;814466We had the KanBan meetings... That seemed to be a brown-nosing festival at its very best.

Those processes worked brilliantly in Japan because Japanese culture is all about harmony and perpetuation of the group. What's funny is that many of those processes originated outside of Japan and were then successfully adapted to Japanese culture. Business culture is still culture; it sits on top of the societal culture.

A Japanese manufacturer (of that era) would not have allowed known defective parts in the door; Japanese suppliers wouldn't have knowingly provided them either. The sword of humiliation always falls on the neck of the CEO in the end.

Quote from: JonWake;814434They work people to death over there. You get hired without any clear job description, they promise all kinds of bonuses and new opportunities for people who are 'team player' and put in 60 hour work weeks, but those opportunities are usually vague and best and lies at worst.

Sounds like the old Arthur Anderson Consulting.  They used to recruit heavily from freshly-minted MBAs.  Yeah, it was a job, but in two years they'll throw your shriveled husk away.

How does anyone even run those businesses if everyone gets canned after two years.

Quote from: Lynn;814472Those processes worked brilliantly in Japan because Japanese culture is all about harmony and perpetuation of the group. What's funny is that many of those processes originated outside of Japan and were then successfully adapted to Japanese culture. Business culture is still culture; it sits on top of the societal culture.

A Japanese manufacturer (of that era) would not have allowed known defective parts in the door; Japanese suppliers wouldn't have knowingly provided them either. The sword of humiliation always falls on the neck of the CEO in the end.

Well, THERE's the difference from American business culture right there.

JG

WotC? Gaming?

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;814478How does anyone even run those businesses if everyone gets canned after two years.

Its the equivalent of the edition treadmil. Games Workshop ran and probably still runs on it. Lure them in, work them like animals and then throw them into the gutter. Easily replaced and no one is likely to believe the former employees.

Its worse though in places where you cannot just quit and go elsewhere.

Quote from: One Horse Town;814485WotC? Gaming?

From what I've been told by former employees and from watching things unfold. WOTC is notorious for botching advertising and marketing of any sideline games that arent top priority.

Also that Hasbro learned to keep WOTC on a tight budgetary leash for a reason. This is a company that threw product into landfills and incinerators rather than try to sell it because it was secondary product. Mismanagement plagued them early on.

Hasbro isnt much of a better place to try and work for. Ive talked to a few folk who worked for them before and some of the reports were all rosy. But some were pretty bad. Up to and including having their games stolen and never seeing a dime. Never heard of that on the WOTC end. But I have heard and seen that working with them, things like collaborations can be a study in frustration and failure.

Very YMMV from all accounts.

Quote from: Omega;814494From what I've been told by former employees and from watching things unfold. WOTC is notorious for botching advertising and marketing of any sideline games that arent top priority.

They don't seem to do great when it comes to marketing their priorities (D&D and Magic) either. I get the impression these properties coast by on the backs of long-established fan bases.

Quote from: The Butcher;814503They don't seem to do great when it comes to marketing their priorities (D&D and Magic) either. I get the impression these properties coast by on the backs of long-established fan bases.

That's not my perception of Magic. It may not be the pinnacle of modern marketing presentation, but it seems about right, and I see curious newcomers getting drawn in regularly.

That definitely is my perception of D&D though. It has gotten better, but it's still limping. I have to be proactive about recruiting, and a very common reaction is "Whoa, that still exists?"

Quote from: The Butcher;814503They don't seem to do great when it comes to marketing their priorities (D&D and Magic) either. I get the impression these properties coast by on the backs of long-established fan bases.

In D&Ds case they literally cant. Solomon and SweetPea are apparently still blockading any movies, TV shows, etc. Possibly with Warner in on the gag too now. But they did maintain a presence via word of mouth through the playtest, and the comics.

They actually did much the same with Magic. A comic book presence but little that I ever saw in actual TV ads.

Whereas Kaijudo got a cartoon series.

D&D needs an update of the cartoon series.

But really what I think Hasbro should do, long term, is put together a boxed set, minimal rules (but no "level cap 1-5 introductory" crippleware BS, a whole game, in the 80s plenty of games manage to do this in 40 pages or less), dice, all you need to play, family-friendly art and extremely clear game-manual-like explanations,and get that boxed set out on the same shelves as Monopoly and the Game of Life. Just have it be a standard game anyone can pick up at a Toys R Us or Kmart.

As for WoTC's treatement of their employees...its a corporation. I wouldn't expect anything better than being an employee t McDonald's or Walmart. Doesn't mean they don't have an endless stream of geeks willing to submit themselves to it. ust goes back to my opinion that the roleplaying hobby doesn't need the roleplaying industry. Even if I didnt create my own games at this point, I could easily game for the rest of my life just on the material produced by independent other gamers, most of which they're perfectly happy to put online for free jut out of love for the hobby. D&D is a gateway drug, sure, but it doesn't match up with actual gamers introducing other people to gaming. The hobby could do just fine without it.

Quote from: Lynn;814472Those processes worked brilliantly in Japan because Japanese culture is all about harmony and perpetuation of the group. What's funny is that many of those processes originated outside of Japan and were then successfully adapted to Japanese culture. Business culture is still culture; it sits on top of the societal culture.

A Japanese manufacturer (of that era) would not have allowed known defective parts in the door; Japanese suppliers wouldn't have knowingly provided them either. The sword of humiliation always falls on the neck of the CEO in the end.

...and so it did.

The entire plant was closed within two months after Steve Jobs returned to Apple. I heard some of the manufacturing people were offered jobs in Santa Clara and with Apple overseas in the (I want to say) ...Taiwan or the Philippines, but the vast majority were simply let go. I had already been gone for six months. Shown the door after one too many confrontations with my Engineering superiors.

That was the last Fortune 500 tech company I ever worked for. After that, I have chosen to work for tech start-ups and small to mid-sized technology companies where stupid and incompetent engineers have a much harder time gaining any positions of lasting authority.

Apple looked like this in 1997:
It’s difficult to remember how far Apple had fallen. Just a few months away from bankruptcy, the company had a dwindling 4 percent share of the PC market and annual losses exceeding $1 billion. Three CEOs had come and gone in a decade including the one that had opened the plant where I worked, Gil Amelio; board members had tried to sell the company but found no takers. Two months after Apple’s deal with Microsoft, Michael Dell told a tech industry symposium that if he ran Apple, he’d “shut it down and give the money back to shareholders.”

Would that Apple had not made it. They have, and continue to do... tremendous damage to the American technology Industries as a whole promoting closed technology and DRM where they were once the champions of innovation and creativity. If they had faced the same commercial market barriers they routinely throw up for other tech companies now, they would be long dead.

To get back on topic, There was a time I would have been honored to work for TSR or WOTC making RPGs, however the last time I seriously considered that was 2003. Once WOTC was sold to Hasbro, I no longer considered creating RPGs and games a viable career. Hasbro has had a hate-on for TSR since TSR experienced tremendous commercial success in the late 70's and early 80's taking considerable portion of a whole generation of youngsters with them like. At first everyone ignored TSR. Then they tried to kill it. When they failed with both those strategies, they bought it. They still can't kill it without incurring some considerable backlash from gamers, so they keep WOTC employees on a supertight leash and starve out any true hope of growth and innovation by regularly trimming the talent employed there.

This has had an interesting side effect in that newly released talent kicks off the shackles of corporate servitude and almost routinely spins off and starts up a very small, but great gaming companies. It's been an enlightening renaissance.

Look, dip-shit, no-one gives a fuck about apple.

Yes, i too can edit my posts to make it look like i was on-topic. Look WotC!

Quote from: One Horse Town;814524Look, dip-shit, no-one gives a fuck about apple.

The same can be said for Apple about the American people. Just yesterday, I had the misfortune of having to help a young lady who wanted to download a song she had bought from the Apple iTunes store to a PC. She couldn't download it it, because the DRM was making it extremely difficult to  download her song to her 2nd pc (she already had it on her first pc).

I ended up getting her song from somewhere else and putting it on her pc for her, but the whole thing took almost thirty minutes. That's my thirty minutes, that I'll never ever get back.

Oh my fucking god take the fucking hint


the -rpg- site

Quote from: Will;814527Oh my fucking god take the fucking hint

I had already changed the subject back to Wotc, he wanted me to talk about Apple some more.

Bugger off.

...Actually, no wait. You think it's a good idea for any company to add DRM to it's offering and include severe restrictions on content as part of that sale? Inquiring minds are keen to know.

On the topic of gaming companies ... doing freelance is a big ball of suck, too.

You have to work your ass off to get jobs, to get PAID, and then half the time decide whether it's worth sending someone to small claims court.

There's the famous case of Chaosium, which printed folks' stuff and didn't pay them for a decade or two.

I worked for one company where the contract specifically said 'we pay you X amount once we decide your stuff is good, and if we have a problem, each of us has a chance to fix it or cancel the deal.'

I submitted it, then it took 4 months to get paid (because, as it turns out, they were using the wrong address, which I could never get a line with them to work out... just emails I'd send in, answered a month later).
And then the pay was $100 short. WTH?

Yeah. They said 'oh, we only used X amount of your stuff, so paid you based on that.'
Ex-fucking-cuse me? That's not what the contract stipulates.
'It's standard practice in the industry.'
Like fuck it is. And, again, NOT WHAT THE CONTRACT SAID.

But I wasn't about to sue folks cross-country over $100, just... never worked with them again.

Fuckers.


Oh, and the capper on all of this is that RPG writing pays SHIT. Granted, fiction/short writing generally pays shit.

Here's the 'drive RPG writers to drink' factoid:
Generally you can expect 2-5 cents a word (assuming you get paid).

In the 1920s, unadjusted for anything, Amazing Stories and similar writers could get only 2-5 cents a word.

...

...

Yeah. Which is why you can't make a living on writing nowadays unless you get a magazine gig or are fantastically lucky.

Yep, professional rpg writing looks like a terrible career from the outside looking in.  Presumably, WotC at least offers health insurance, paid time off, and a 401K option.  Is there any other player in the industry who can afford that for their employees?  Maybe Paizo?

Quote from: GameDaddy;814520Would that Apple had not made it. They have, and continue to do... tremendous damage to the American technology Industries as a whole promoting closed technology and DRM where they were once the champions of innovation and creativity. If they had faced the same commercial market barriers they routinely throw up for other tech companies now, they would be long dead.

I was very involved in the Mac market at that time (still am in several ways) too. Apple is not a computer company now, but a consumer electronics company that also makes computer devices - the "digital hub" strategy.

But bringing this back...TSR > WotC > Hasbro. The new parent companies had different mandates for the subsumed business than the previous one (though Apple Computer > Apple, Inc does come to mind as similar).

It was obvious that Hasbro's situation would be completely different than WotC - compartmentalized but also extremely vertical.

Quote from: Will;814530On the topic of gaming companies ... doing freelance is a big ball of suck, too.

Was that Chaosium or White Wolf?

Guardians of Order pulled simmilar stunts near the end.
I knew two artists with a particular hate on for Steve Jackson after they got ripped off on payments for art.
I've got a huge file of stories from former Palladium writers.
and more. Unfortunately.

TSR was surprisingly the one that heard the least about for trouble.

Quote from: Will;814527Oh my fucking god take the fucking hint


the -rpg- site

Pot. Kettle. Black. (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=31578)

Quote from: Omega;814538Was that Chaosium or White Wolf?

Guardians of Order pulled simmilar stunts near the end.
I knew two artists with a particular hate on for Steve Jackson after they got ripped off on payments for art.
I've got a huge file of stories from former Palladium writers.
and more. Unfortunately.

TSR was surprisingly the one that heard the least about for trouble.

I just dipped my toe into this 10 year or so ago, and that experience was enough to turn me off anything else (and that was a mostly-neutral one, now that I have others to compare against). Any future TRPG work I do, I do for myself.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;814547I just dipped my toe into this 10 year or so ago, and that experience was enough to turn me off anything else (and that was a mostly-neutral one, now that I have others to compare against). Any future TRPG work I do, I do for myself.

A lot of very small companies will take the hit to their reputation and get by as a kind of zombie company, and do whatever they can to get healthy. The reason is simple - its owner run (and / or family run) - they won't just bail out like corporate employees do when the ship is sinking. But they will do anything to keep from being driven into bankruptcy (except when they are ready).

Now that less product goes through complicated channels -> small resellers (and the financing and payment foot dragging involved with that), if people aren't getting paid sooner, than say, 10 years ago.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;814547I just dipped my toe into this 10 year or so ago, and that experience was enough to turn me off anything else (and that was a mostly-neutral one, now that I have others to compare against). Any future TRPG work I do, I do for myself.

Atlas games by chance? Then wasnt just you.

Thats another one on the list of screw-overs.

Quote from: Lynn;814553Now that less product goes through complicated channels -> small resellers (and the financing and payment foot dragging involved with that), if people aren't getting paid sooner, than say, 10 years ago.

We recently had a publisher scam a designer by claiming that they did not have to pay him for any of the sales of the game via their kickstarter campaign because it was not sold through the store and thus not part of his contract.

Another mid level one purchased a designers game for a nice royalty fee. Then locked the game up as they just didnt want the game competing with one of their own. Apparently thats happened a few times.

I am ever surprised at the amount of fuck-overs that happen in the mid level publishers.

Le plus ca change, le plus c'est la meme chose.

I was lucky; working for Dave Arneson was wonderful, not horrible, because Adventure Games was a small company of eight or ten people.

Unfortunately, history has now shown that Dave started up AG just as the D&D bubble burst and took most of the money in gaming with it.

And yeah, freelance game writing sucks Jabba the Hutt's dick; the reason I haven't written any game shit isn't that I can't, but I have much better things to do with my time, like build railroad models.

You can get a penny to a penny and a half a word from Textbroker for writing web ads for diet supplements and boner pills.

Quote from: Omega;814563We recently had a publisher scam a designer by claiming that they did not have to pay him for any of the sales of the game via their kickstarter campaign because it was not sold through the store and thus not part of his contract.

I wouldn't venture an opinion without seeing the contract.

If that was a part of his contract, then it isn't a scam as he agreed to it.

If something doesn't look right in a contract, and you have to ask "What does that mean?", then you listen to the answer and then get THAT added to the contract.

If you are a freelancer, you wear all the hats: creator, accountant, negotiator. You can't be bad at any of them.

Quote from: Omega;814563Another mid level one purchased a designers game for a nice royalty fee. Then locked the game up as they just didnt want the game competing with one of their own. Apparently thats happened a few times.

Ive seen that in the tech industry a lot. Once you really sell your baby, you have no control over it.

Quote from: Old Geezer;814565And yeah, freelance game writing sucks Jabba the Hutt's dick; the reason I haven't written any game shit isn't that I can't, but I have much better things to do with my time, like build railroad models.

^^^^ This right here. 4c a word means a 10,000 word short story is $400

No point at all in writing RPG stuff when i can get a minimum of $350 a day plus expenses and even more doing fun tech stuff instead. If I'm writing my own mobile apps I get to keep the lions share of the net sales revenue, so I can end up making several thousand dollars on 10,000 words in an app. Which would you rather work for?

I do like to write new RPG adventures, and campaign stuff, and extra material for my games, that's just for self-satisfaction though these days.

Quote from: Omega;814561Atlas games by chance? Then wasnt just you.

That's another one on the list of screw-overs.

I contributed to Uncommon Character from Atlas and Relics & Rituals II from Sword & Sorcery Studios. (Also had an unattributed contribution to The Shop, from AEG.)

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;814436I wonder if Apple or Google is better. Anyone else know anything about those?

I'm currently working a temp contract at Google. It's a sad revolving door situation where they bring in batches of temps, work them for two years, and then chuck them out. It's not hideous, but it is that kind of yukky atmosphere where I know I'm likely to leave in a few months, so why bother caring past that...

Quote from: TristramEvans;814508ust goes back to my opinion that the roleplaying hobby doesn't need the roleplaying industry. Even if I didnt create my own games at this point, I could easily game for the rest of my life just on the material produced by independent other gamers, most of which they're perfectly happy to put online for free jut out of love for the hobby. D&D is a gateway drug, sure, but it doesn't match up with actual gamers introducing other people to gaming. The hobby could do just fine without it.

I agree. We get a few big fish like WOTC or GW on the wargaming side, but the only thing stopping me from playing 2nd edition, or Dungeon Crawl Classics is my ability to persuade my group. :D
I think there's an event horizon coming where a tipping point of people re-discover that they don't need to play Dungeons & Dragons(tm) to role-play. The OSR seems to be the tip of that iceberg.

If big companies want to stay relevant in the hobby, they're probably going to have to pay attention to the online presense, find out what people are sharing, copy it and put some polish on the product.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;814579I think there's an event horizon coming where a tipping point of people re-discover that they don't need to play Dungeons & Dragons(tm) to role-play. The OSR seems to be the tip of that iceberg.

Have we explored this idea in its own thread? Because that could be an interesting thread. I feel we've talked about things similar to this idea, but not this idea directly.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;814579I think there's an event horizon coming where a tipping point of people re-discover that they don't need to play Dungeons & Dragons(tm) to role-play. The OSR seems to be the tip of that iceberg

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;814591Have we explored this idea in its own thread? Because that could be an interesting thread. I feel we've talked about things similar to this idea, but not this idea directly.

So wait, now the OSR is about why we don't need to play D&D?  Man, things really have come full circle!  

It's like the beer of the month club morphing into a 12-step program.

Here's a good article about how Wizards went down the toilet: http://www.salon.com/2001/03/23/wizards/

Quote from: EOTB;814596So wait, now the OSR is about why we don't need to play D&D?  Man, things really have come full circle!  

It's like the beer of the month club morphing into a 12-step program.

It makes a perverse sort of sense though in that [paraphrasing from memory here, I'll try and find a source online in a minute] Gygax originally intended for D&D just to show people how role-playing was done and then he thought they'd pick that up and run with it, as a sort of philosophy of gaming. He was surprised with the constant requests in the initial years for more rules and official write-ups. OF course once he discovered this is what the audience wanted and was willing to pay for, everything changed. But I think that "going back to old school" play eventually will lead anyone to these same conclusions.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;814591Have we explored this idea in its own thread? Because that could be an interesting thread. I feel we've talked about things similar to this idea, but not this idea directly.

I'm game; I'll start one in a bit if no one else has.

Quote from: Omega;814563Another mid level one purchased a designers game for a nice royalty fee. Then locked the game up as they just didnt want the game competing with one of their own. Apparently thats happened a few times.

That's not that unusual in any business.

In the 80s and early 90s in Germany circulated the rumour that Schmidt Spiele did exactly this with the translation of RuneQuest so that it wouldn't compete with Das Schwarze Auge.
I never found proof of it. Quite the contrary - Schmidt licensed and helped Midgard getting big box mainstream distribution, and Midgard was system and setting wise a more direct competitor to DSA.
(And RQ was eventually published by Welt der Spiele.)

QuoteI am ever surprised at the amount of fuck-overs that happen in the mid level publishers.

I'd even guess that the bigger the company the more you'll find that line of thinking, up to outright buying and closing down competitors.
Remember TSR burying DragonQuest and later Danjerous Journeys?

Quote from: Lynn;814572I wouldn't venture an opinion without seeing the contract.

If that was a part of his contract, then it isn't a scam as he agreed to it.

From the description it was a new designer and the publisher sprung this on the designer after the KS when he asked why he was not being payed for the KS sales.

Cant find the thread but it went something like this.

"The Publisher will pay the Designer a royalty of X% of the actual sale price of each copy of the Game sold by the Publisher."

And then claimed that the KS copies sold did not count as sold by the publisher. Or sold at all according to KS TOU.

Most places suck to work at when you answer to someone else. This is news somehow?

They were fortunate to work there at all.

I must have missed it: why am I supposed to give a shit how much fun it is to work at Wizards of the Coast?

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;814618That's not that unusual in any business.

That's why when you are selling the IP outright, you need to get a sufficient upfront payment to justify the sale. Royalties or other downstream payments should be upside not the main portion of the value. And if you are licensing the IP get an upfront and include diligence obligations or annual fees so that you ensure that you can terminate the license if the licensee just sits on the IP.

Quote from: Matt;814643I must have missed it: why am I supposed to give a shit how much fun it is to work at Wizards of the Coast?

Employment environment drives employee happiness which drives fun and engaging product which drives more stuff we might want to buy and more fun products to help encourage people to enter/remain in the hobby.

It's a bunch of degrees of separation, but it does somewhat matter to many of us.

Quote from: Will;814652Employment environment drives employee happiness which drives fun and engaging product which drives more stuff we might want to buy and more fun products to help encourage people to enter/remain in the hobby.

It's a bunch of degrees of separation, but it does somewhat matter to many of us.

Except that it only matters to those that want to buy certain product from a specific publisher, cult of the corporation. You can't say that there are not alternatives out there that can't be used or substituted.

Quote from: Omega;814627"The Publisher will pay the Designer a royalty of X% of the actual sale price of each copy of the Game sold by the Publisher."

And then claimed that the KS copies sold did not count as sold by the publisher. Or sold at all according to KS TOU.

I'm not a lawyer, but sadly those terms seem non-specific enough to give the publisher ammunition.

The KS terms of Use are just an added bonus for the publisher.

I am an ex-headhunter so quality of work environment issues were something I've dealt with a great deal.

Ideally, every company would realize that happy employees are the best option, not just for productivity, but for longevity and word-of-mouth advertising.

Sadly, this is not the case with most employers. In general, I have noted that the more desirable the job - if it is a middle level job (40k-80k base salary) - the less the employer cares about employee happiness. Just the opportunity to work in the field or in that company is believed to be enough. You see this in Hollywood and video game companies to a depressing extent.

Of course, that works in the short term and if you don't mind a constant turnover and loss of experienced employees, then its a model a company can make money with. Churn, burn, rinse, repeat does work.

The end result however is such companies create their own competition as the most ambitious employees leave and start their own shops, or the industry gets shaken up when an employers who does value employee happiness hits the scene and gobbles up top talent.

If you want a really miserable job, try working for Disney. If you are a hardcore Disneyana fan, even their working conditions will not phase you - for a while, maybe never, depending on your love of Disney. I've heard similiar tales around town about Marvel and Activision, but oddly not about Blizzard.

Based on my conversations with Blizzard programmers and execs, the Blizzard method is to create a great work environment and hire people who are happy to live at work in the Blizzard cocoon.

And I've seen the opposite, where an Alzheimer's care company was offering a terrible job with terrible conditions and they knew that. So instead, they really did everything to promote work/life balance and support for their employees. Instead of a corporate grind, they somehow created a family team which hung tight against their very difficult tasks.

So...wanna hate your job making RPGs or love your job wiping poop off crazy old people?

Quote from: Spinachcat;814920So...wanna hate your job making RPGs or love your job wiping poop off crazy old people?

Yeah.

Of course, if the other parts of the Alzheimer's job are good enough, you can feel good about the fact that the crazy old lady is somebody's Gramma.

"Whatsoever ye do unto the least of these my brothers and sisters..."

Usually, though, the companies in such cases are absolute hell and wiping the poop off crazy old people IS the good part of the job, because the employee cares about people.  Kudos to that company you describe.

Quote from: Spinachcat;814920I am an ex-headhunter so quality of work environment issues were something I've dealt with a great deal.

Ideally, every company would realize that happy employees are the best option, not just for productivity, but for longevity and word-of-mouth advertising.

Sadly, this is not the case with most employers. In general, I have noted that the more desirable the job - if it is a middle level job (40k-80k base salary) - the less the employer cares about employee happiness. Just the opportunity to work in the field or in that company is believed to be enough. You see this in Hollywood and video game companies to a depressing extent.

Of course, that works in the short term and if you don't mind a constant turnover and loss of experienced employees, then its a model a company can make money with. Churn, burn, rinse, repeat does work.

The end result however is such companies create their own competition as the most ambitious employees leave and start their own shops, or the industry gets shaken up when an employers who does value employee happiness hits the scene and gobbles up top talent.

If you want a really miserable job, try working for Disney. If you are a hardcore Disneyana fan, even their working conditions will not phase you - for a while, maybe never, depending on your love of Disney. I've heard similiar tales around town about Marvel and Activision, but oddly not about Blizzard.

Based on my conversations with Blizzard programmers and execs, the Blizzard method is to create a great work environment and hire people who are happy to live at work in the Blizzard cocoon.

And I've seen the opposite, where an Alzheimer's care company was offering a terrible job with terrible conditions and they knew that. So instead, they really did everything to promote work/life balance and support for their employees. Instead of a corporate grind, they somehow created a family team which hung tight against their very difficult tasks.

So...wanna hate your job making RPGs or love your job wiping poop off crazy old people?

Interesting information!! I've heard similar before but not so specific. What has always been fascinating to me is that even badly run companies can do surprisingly well in the long run, just due to luck, accident of fate, good market position, inertia of some kind etc.

Badly run company <> Not Profitable.

Quote from: Iron_Rain;816472Interesting information!! I've heard similar before but not so specific. What has always been fascinating to me is that even badly run companies can do surprisingly well in the long run, just due to luck, accident of fate, good market position, inertia of some kind etc.

Badly run company <> Not Profitable.

True, but absent anticompetitive forces, a badly run company will eventually be out competed by a better run company. Which will either make the badly run company unprofitable or get management in place who will run the company better.

Also worth noting that

Happy employees <> Profitable Company.

Quote from: Bren;816476True, but absent anticompetitive forces, a badly run company will eventually be out competed by a better run company. Which will either make the badly run company unprofitable or get management in place who will run the company better.

Also worth noting that

Happy employees <> Profitable Company.

I completely agree. My sister was working for a start up in Victoria BC - she was hired as a secretary/assistant and said it was the best atmosphere she'd ever seen. Then she came to work one day and there were chains on the door, with a note that everyone was fired.

Turns out that management had been spending their investor's money like drunken sailors on all sorts of stupid things. My sister was asked to purchase a painting that after doing some research, cost $200,000, her boss said, "Buy it!"

At the time she didn't think much of it, because she thought everything was going really well in the programming/engineering department. Problem was after 2 years they still didn't have a product to sell, so the investor pulled the plug.

I do agree that Marketing is one area where WotC have serious problems still; but you have to admit they've been improving of late.

It's a bit embarrassing that a phone game like Game of War can get highly placed adverts with some production values, and D&D... bupkis.

Game of War almost certainly has income of an order of magnitude greater than D&D.

Quote from: Will;816736It's a bit embarrassing that a phone game like Game of War can get highly placed adverts with some production values, and D&D... bupkis.

Hasbro had/has WOTC on a tight budget leash. And areas where Hasbro wants to spend alot on. Movies. Are being blockaded. the open playtesting was a godsend of advertising for them.

Quote from: Will;816736It's a bit embarrassing that a phone game like Game of War can get highly placed adverts with some production values, and D&D... bupkis.

Don't kid yourself that anything in our hobby even touches the sales of  phone games.

Quote from: robiswrong;816753Game of War almost certainly has income of an order of magnitude greater than D&D.

Also, Kate Upton is an order of magnitude greater than D&D. :D

JG

Quote from: robiswrong;816753Game of War almost certainly has income of an order of magnitude greater than D&D.

$600 million in revenues (http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/07/16/newest-hit-game-maker-machine-zone-nears-3-billion-valuation/) apparently, with a valuation of $3 Billion.

Quote from: TristramEvans;816784Don't kid yourself that anything in our hobby even touches the sales of  phone games.

Yep.  Over at Purple Nurple, Paul Chapman, marketing director for Steve Jackson Games, estimated circa 2006 that RPGs were "about a $50M a year industry."

Considering that model trains are a half billion a year industry, RPGs are a REAL niche.

Meanwhile, World of Warcraft claims 7.5 million subscribers 3rd quarter 2014.  Let's say they're lying and it's actually one third of that... 2.5 M.

2.5 M x 15 bucks x 12 months = 450M per year.

Honestly, I'm surprised Hasbro hasn't dumped D&D years ago.

Quote from: Old Geezer;816994Yep.  Over at Purple Nurple, Paul Chapman, marketing director for Steve Jackson Games, estimated circa 2006 that RPGs were "about a $50M a year industry."

Considering that model trains are a half billion a year industry, RPGs are a REAL niche.

Meanwhile, World of Warcraft claims 7.5 million subscribers 3rd quarter 2014.  Let's say they're lying and it's actually one third of that... 2.5 M.

2.5 M x 15 bucks x 12 months = 450M per year.

Honestly, I'm surprised Hasbro hasn't dumped D&D years ago.

Obviously, we have to dumb down tabletop RPGs to the point where Liberal Arts students can understand them in order to become profitable again....

Quote from: Old Geezer;816994Yep.  Over at Purple Nurple, Paul Chapman, marketing director for Steve Jackson Games, estimated circa 2006 that RPGs were "about a $50M a year industry."

Considering that model trains are a half billion a year industry, RPGs are a REAL niche.

Meanwhile, World of Warcraft claims 7.5 million subscribers 3rd quarter 2014.  Let's say they're lying and it's actually one third of that... 2.5 M.

2.5 M x 15 bucks x 12 months = 450M per year.

Honestly, I'm surprised Hasbro hasn't dumped D&D years ago.

Hasbro is a black hole of IP. Once it's sucked in, it can never escape. If D&D somehow where to ever be unprofitable, Hasbro would just shelve the property for about ten to twenty years, then try again. Rinse and repeat.

There's also a principle that 'you have to spend money to make money.'

I think you could do a quite cheap, but exciting, commercial if you actually stress the relationships and fun of actual playing over half-naked stuff you'll never see in the game.

Of course, I have no idea what the base cost of airing commercials is... anyone have a clue? (Since that's the hard limit)

Quote from: Will;817025There's also a principle that 'you have to spend money to make money.'

I think you could do a quite cheap, but exciting, commercial if you actually stress the relationships and fun of actual playing over half-naked stuff you'll never see in the game.

Of course, I have no idea what the base cost of airing commercials is... anyone have a clue? (Since that's the hard limit)

They tried that for 4e. That went over sooooooo well. I hope to whatever gods may apply that that one commercial never was aired on TV!

As is though Solomon was trying to blockade even commercials and Hasbro has withdrawn 99% of their movie deals now and the whole Unit-E line.

Quote from: Will;816736It's a bit embarrassing that a phone game like Game of War can get highly placed adverts with some production values, and D&D... bupkis.

There is a much bigger market for phone games than table top role playing games.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;817028There is a much bigger market for phone games than table top role playing games.

If only because the group interested in doing something while on the toilet is significantly larger than group of people interested in geeky social activity.

Quote from: Omega;817027As is though Solomon was trying to blockade even commercials and Hasbro has withdrawn 99% of their movie deals now and the whole Unit-E line.

I'm sorry, could you explain this further?  I have no idea what you're talking about.

Quote from: Old Geezer;817127I'm sorry, could you explain this further?  I have no idea what you're talking about.

Jeebus what a mess.

Here goes.

Remember the D&D movie. By Courtney Solomon? The one that was and wasnt much D&D to it? Well turns out that Solomon is related to... drumroll please... Loraine Williams. And she gave him UNLIMITED EXCLUSIVE rights to make moves based on the D&D game.

This means that Hasbro and WOTC cannot make D&D movies and apparently Solomon reads that to extend to TV shows as well. Possibly further. It gets really convoluted. Somehow also Warner got some rights to D&D as well. From Solomon? I dont know.

But apparently Dragonlance SAGA was created to get out from under that as the allowance was only to D&D itself and did not extend to Dragonlance or non D&D systems. So they could make a sub-par Dragonlance cartoon with bad CHI mixed with traditional drawn animation. That one is a little dubious. But when 5e was in the works WOTC was pushing for Dragonlance for a while. So there may be credence to it.

Meanwhile Hasbro announced a whole bunch of toy and game related media under a blanket Unit-E title. Movies being GI Joe, Battleship, etc. The movies aside from GI Joe fared poorly because they had little to nothing to do with the games, and the second GI Jow movie was botched and so did poorly too. Hasbro PAYED Universal to end the movie deal contract.

Their Unit-E idea was a sort of Torg-like collission of diffrent franchises Hasborg has acquired or created. About none of which saw light. They handed Battleship Galaxies off to WOTC who promptly strangled it in its crib, theyce sat on the Micronauts/Micro-Man stuff since acquiring it. Possibly so there was no competition with Transformers. Which is hilarious as Transformers ARE Micro-man.

But as of last check Hasbro swas still being stonewalled for D&D movies.

Solomon's done 2 and 1/2 D&D moves. The last was Book of Vile Darkness which also didnt feel much like D&D at all. The middle movie by some other company that got the rights temporarily was actually not bad and had the D&D feel. Gary seemed to like it so theres that.

Quote from: Omega;817131The middle movie by some other company that got the rights temporarily was actually not bad and had the D&D feel. Gary seemed to like it so theres that.

Yeah, Wrath of the Dragon God felt like it was more of a love letter to D&D than anything using that term ever did. It was a pretty good "B" movie.

Quote from: jeff37923;817139Yeah, Wrath of the Dragon God felt like it was more of a love letter to D&D than anything using that term ever did. It was a pretty good "B" movie.

Yep. The number of appropriate D&D references were considerable and good.

Glassdoor looks like a phone site for people with instant-grat issues.

Quote from: Omega;817131Jeebus what a mess.

Here goes.

Remember the D&D movie. By Courtney Solomon? The one that was and wasnt much D&D to it? Well turns out that Solomon is related to... drumroll please... Loraine Williams. And she gave him UNLIMITED EXCLUSIVE rights to make moves based on the D&D game.

This means that Hasbro and WOTC cannot make D&D movies and apparently Solomon reads that to extend to TV shows as well. Possibly further. It gets really convoluted. Somehow also Warner got some rights to D&D as well. From Solomon? I dont know.

But apparently Dragonlance SAGA was created to get out from under that as the allowance was only to D&D itself and did not extend to Dragonlance or non D&D systems. So they could make a sub-par Dragonlance cartoon with bad CHI mixed with traditional drawn animation. That one is a little dubious. But when 5e was in the works WOTC was pushing for Dragonlance for a while. So there may be credence to it.

Meanwhile Hasbro announced a whole bunch of toy and game related media under a blanket Unit-E title. Movies being GI Joe, Battleship, etc. The movies aside from GI Joe fared poorly because they had little to nothing to do with the games, and the second GI Jow movie was botched and so did poorly too. Hasbro PAYED Universal to end the movie deal contract.

Their Unit-E idea was a sort of Torg-like collission of diffrent franchises Hasborg has acquired or created. About none of which saw light. They handed Battleship Galaxies off to WOTC who promptly strangled it in its crib, theyce sat on the Micronauts/Micro-Man stuff since acquiring it. Possibly so there was no competition with Transformers. Which is hilarious as Transformers ARE Micro-man.

But as of last check Hasbro swas still being stonewalled for D&D movies.

Solomon's done 2 and 1/2 D&D moves. The last was Book of Vile Darkness which also didnt feel much like D&D at all. The middle movie by some other company that got the rights temporarily was actually not bad and had the D&D feel. Gary seemed to like it so theres that.

* brain dribbles out of ears onto the floor and whimpers softly *

Quote from: jeff37923;816997Obviously, we have to dumb down tabletop RPGs to the point where Liberal Arts students can understand them in order to become profitable again....

I thought that was 4E. :D

JG

Quote from: Omega;817131Jeebus what a mess.

Here goes.

Remember the D&D movie. By Courtney Solomon? The one that was and wasnt much D&D to it? Well turns out that Solomon is related to... drumroll please... Loraine Williams. And she gave him UNLIMITED EXCLUSIVE rights to make moves based on the D&D game.

This means that Hasbro and WOTC cannot make D&D movies and apparently Solomon reads that to extend to TV shows as well. Possibly further. It gets really convoluted. Somehow also Warner got some rights to D&D as well. From Solomon? I dont know.

But apparently Dragonlance SAGA was created to get out from under that as the allowance was only to D&D itself and did not extend to Dragonlance or non D&D systems. So they could make a sub-par Dragonlance cartoon with bad CHI mixed with traditional drawn animation. That one is a little dubious. But when 5e was in the works WOTC was pushing for Dragonlance for a while. So there may be credence to it.

Meanwhile Hasbro announced a whole bunch of toy and game related media under a blanket Unit-E title. Movies being GI Joe, Battleship, etc. The movies aside from GI Joe fared poorly because they had little to nothing to do with the games, and the second GI Jow movie was botched and so did poorly too. Hasbro PAYED Universal to end the movie deal contract.

Their Unit-E idea was a sort of Torg-like collission of diffrent franchises Hasborg has acquired or created. About none of which saw light. They handed Battleship Galaxies off to WOTC who promptly strangled it in its crib, theyce sat on the Micronauts/Micro-Man stuff since acquiring it. Possibly so there was no competition with Transformers. Which is hilarious as Transformers ARE Micro-man.

But as of last check Hasbro swas still being stonewalled for D&D movies.

Solomon's done 2 and 1/2 D&D moves. The last was Book of Vile Darkness which also didnt feel much like D&D at all. The middle movie by some other company that got the rights temporarily was actually not bad and had the D&D feel. Gary seemed to like it so theres that.

Lorraine Williams... the gift that keeps on giving.

JG

It is a good thing that no DnD movies are on the horizon, they would only cheapen the brand.  Were one to be made, it would be just one more lame fantasy movie like hordes of others that we already have.

The DnD movie that needs to be made will not be regardess of who owns the rights.  It should be pure DnD dungeon crawl without any care for plot.  It should be a party of 4-5 main characters with 4-5 retainers going through tunnels and caves, figuring their way past traps and monsters in their quest for sweet loot.  Action scenes and special effects being important, not plot and character development.  And they should all die in the dungeon ending in TPK and end with the question of who next is brave enough to enter.

A DnD movie should showcase the dungeon as the main 'character' and the only plot to explore it for the loot.  And that movie will never be made.

Quote from: Old One Eye;817392It is a good thing that no DnD movies are on the horizon, they would only cheapen the brand.  Were one to be made, it would be just one more lame fantasy movie like hordes of others that we already have.

The DnD movie that needs to be made will not be regardess of who owns the rights.  It should be pure DnD dungeon crawl without any care for plot.  It should be a party of 4-5 main characters with 4-5 retainers going through tunnels and caves, figuring their way past traps and monsters in their quest for sweet loot.  Action scenes and special effects being important, not plot and character development.  And they should all die in the dungeon ending in TPK and end with the question of who next is brave enough to enter.

A DnD movie should showcase the dungeon as the main 'character' and the only plot to explore it for the loot.  And that movie will never be made.

That sounds like a terrible movie.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;817395That sounds like a terrible movie.

You would be correct. What makes for good gaming makes for a terrible film, movie, comic, or novel.

I think it's possible to make a movie like that work.
I just wouldn't bet much on the likelihood.

I mean, hell, if you squint, the recent movie, Dredd, sort of qualifies. ;)

Quote from: jeff37923;816997Obviously, we have to dumb down tabletop RPGs to the point where Liberal Arts students can understand them in order to become profitable again....

If you really want to bring in the lowest common denominator, I suggest targeting extreme right wing conservatives (shouldn't be hard, as there is plenty of war and religion already in the game).

Quote from: Will;817025Of course, I have no idea what the base cost of airing commercials is... anyone have a clue? (Since that's the hard limit)

According to this article (http://www.adweek.com/news/television/their-prime-broadcast-spot-costs-soar-132805) from Adweek, the cost of a single 30-second spot on a national U.S. broadcast network cost $110,000 in 2011. That's one spot, run once, during one show, and the vast majority of people would never see it. To be effective, it would need to run repeatedly and often over an extended period. It would very quickly cost more to advertise D&D than it makes for Hasbro.

Fair point, I will reverse my grump. ;)

Quote from: cranebump;817487If you really want to bring in the lowest common denominator, I suggest targeting extreme right wing conservatives (shouldn't be hard, as there is plenty of war and religion already in the game).

This site is more interesting to read when morons don't bring in their personal political biases.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;817395That sounds like a terrible movie.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;817476You would be correct. What makes for good gaming makes for a terrible film, movie, comic, or novel.

Very likely the case, but it is what DnD uniquely brings to the entertainment table.  It will, at least, showcase what the brand actually brings to fantasy.  

Fantasy flicks have a terrible track record.  For the bare handful of Game of Throneses there are a mountainful of John Carters, and so, odds are another DnD would be the latter.  

And if it is near predestined to be not so good, at least it can give a big screen viewing of the game's central activity.

Quote from: Old One Eye;817499Very likely the case, but it is what DnD uniquely brings to the entertainment table.  It will, at least, showcase what the brand actually brings to fantasy.  

Fantasy flicks have a terrible track record.  For the bare handful of Game of Throneses there are a mountainful of John Carters, and so, odds are another DnD would be the latter.  

And if it is near predestined to be not so good, at least it can give a big screen viewing of the game's central activity.

The problem is that games and movies are entertaining for different reasons. D&D like the way you described is fun because YOU are the characters, YOU are pitting your wits against the dungeon, YOU lost a PC if you fucked up.

In a movie it's just watching a bunch of nobodies die over and over like a bad B grade horror movie.

As a movie it would need a story to captivate the imagination, like a campaign.

Yeah, but Cube was pretty cool.

You need some nifty hooks, good writing...

Quote from: Old One Eye;817392It is a good thing that no DnD movies are on the horizon, they would only cheapen the brand.  Were one to be made, it would be just one more lame fantasy movie like hordes of others that we already have.

The DnD movie that needs to be made will not be regardess of who owns the rights.  It should be pure DnD dungeon crawl without any care for plot.  It should be a party of 4-5 main characters with 4-5 retainers going through tunnels and caves, figuring their way past traps and monsters in their quest for sweet loot.  Action scenes and special effects being important, not plot and character development.  And they should all die in the dungeon ending in TPK and end with the question of who next is brave enough to enter.

A DnD movie should showcase the dungeon as the main 'character' and the only plot to explore it for the loot.  And that movie will never be made.

I'd rather see a film version of the D&D cartoon.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;817395That sounds like a terrible movie.

It really depends. Imagine if the 5 people trapped in the Dungeon were Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Dylon Moran, Bill Bailey, and Tamsin Grieg. And ignore the whole "no character development" BS; thats not even remotely true of any good D&D game. I'd watch the hell out of that.


Or, alternately, Patrick Stewart, Christopher Lee, Christopher Walken, Cate Blanchett, and Mr. T as the dwarf.

Quote from: TristramEvans;817532I'd rather see a film version of the D&D cartoon.

The group that did the live action segment "Choices" that was included with the D&D Cartoon series DVD was working on a live action adaption of Treasure of Tardos. I still have the behind the scenes video. I knew the producer back then as I was lining up funding to help get it done. But things never panned out and he moved on to other projects. Havent heard from him since.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWkFeEmO_i4 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWkFeEmO_i4)

Their choice for Eric was spot on.

Quote from: Omega;817551The group that did the live action segment "Choices" that was included with the D&D Cartoon series DVD was working on a live action adaption of Treasure of Tardos. I still have the behind the scenes video. I knew the producer back then as I was lining up funding to help get it done. But things never panned out and he moved on to other projects. Havent heard from him since.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWkFeEmO_i4 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWkFeEmO_i4)

Their choice for Eric was spot on.

Good stuff. Would be nice to see that project come through

Okay, things I think absolutely have to be in a Dungeons & Dragons movie.  dungeons, dragons, wizards, warriors, elves, dwarves, and orcs of some variety.

If you absolutely can't do the players around the table with a back and forth between the settings or the players being sucked into the fantasy world, you're stuck with doing a straight up map fantasy movie.

I'd suggest the scope be low key and gritty rather than epic.  I would want to see some actual dungeon crawling with traps and monsters and listening at doors and I would want a sense of claustrophobia to it.  Who knew all of Middle Earth's mountains were hollow vacuformed props.  Actually I think I'd go with elemental evil as the thematic villain.  A sense of weight and darkness to the whole thing.  Arcane runes scratched into everything.

So what's the plot?  Well let's take a page from Firefly, a group of misfits with their own agendas.  The dungeon is there, it's been there a long time and occasionally desperate people head into it looking for wealth and occasionally, some of them come back with riches but not as many as don't.

The paladin wants to find out what ancient evil lies beyond the surface ruins to destroy it.  The wizard is looking for ancient knowledge.  The dwarf wants treasure.  The fighter is looking beyond hope to find a lost parent or sibling.  And they go in, and they fight goblins and skeletons and trolls and berserkers and shriekers and ropers and even a dragon without ever glimpsing the source of the evil.  It's a diabolical almost-wonderland down there but at times there are faint echoes of evil laughter and eerie music in the background. And when they return to town with riches and knowledge and glory and the rescued sibling, they soon turn around and go back because it holds them and they can't let it go and as we fade into darkness as our heroes walk back towards the gateway we hear faint evil laughter and a bit of eerie music.

Quote from: Will;817511Yeah, but Cube was pretty cool.

You need some nifty hooks, good writing...

Cube is exactly what has made me want the DnD delve movie for the past decade or however long.

Also, in the back of my head I keep thinking you could draw in some parallels and fear element of Vietnamese Củ Chi tunnels, the underground city of Derinkuyu in Anatolia, the spelunking horror movie The Descent, and so on.

A mix of humor, adventure, and horror... I think you could do something interesting.

I mean, hell, there's a movie out recently about dystopian future shapeshifting mazes... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1790864/

Quote from: Old One Eye;817392A DnD movie should showcase the dungeon as the main 'character' and the only plot to explore it for the loot.  And that movie will never be made.

I never thought DnD makes a good basis for a movie as its a rules system and a handful of formulas like this one. But what about if they were based around published campaigns or classic adventures, and adhered to these DnD specific ones? What about a Tomb of Horrors movie? G/D/Q series?

As Will mentioned, the Cube story line is kind of an inverse dungeon; "escape from X" is nothing new. Also, the "collection of gold diggers get their comeuppance" one is usable.

For something like the classic adventure route, Id rather see something more serialized on TV, with an ensemble cast. Some characters die. Others have to leave for extended training but return later. You could also have episodes that mix dungeon time, training time, and massive story arc stuff.

A TV series based around GDQ could be doable.

I suppose another question is how to distinguish a D&D movie from any other fantasy movie.

Having wizards operate like D&D wizards would be one step -- in most fantasy movies wizard magic doesn't operate anything like D&D. Possibly also the D&D Cleric.

I'd have a bunch of adventurers in a tavern, each telling stories about the horrible things they saw "down there" and the grisly fates their companions met. Feature vignettes with mindflayers, beholders, oozes, lurkers, etc. Finish it up with the one guy who saw a dragon, though no one else believes him. Have one of the first stories be basically a retelling of the Bargle/Aleena adventure from the Red Box.

Bear in mind that a D&D movie can be done properly because it has been done in the form of the Record of Lodoss War animated series in Japan. That is based directly on transcribed BX D&D adventures.

Personally I'd have liked to have seen more D&D movies from the 2nd D&D movie crew as they seemed to have the right grasp that time of what to do. Without WOTC meddling. And part of the first ones failure was WOTC's fault.

Quote from: TristramEvans;817662I'd have a bunch of adventurers in a tavern, each telling stories about the horrible things they saw "down there" and the grisly fates their companions met. Feature vignettes with mindflayers, beholders, oozes, lurkers, etc. Finish it up with the one guy who saw a dragon, though no one else believes him. Have one of the first stories be basically a retelling of the Bargle/Aleena adventure from the Red Box.

You know, with really good actors, script, and director, you could probably pull that off with a very modest budget and make a great movie.

Quote from: TristramEvans;817662I'd have a bunch of adventurers in a tavern, each telling stories about the horrible things they saw "down there" and the grisly fates their companions met. Feature vignettes with mindflayers, beholders, oozes, lurkers, etc. Finish it up with the one guy who saw a dragon, though no one else believes him. Have one of the first stories be basically a retelling of the Bargle/Aleena adventure from the Red Box.

That's actually pretty brilliant, especially with the whole angle of "a bunch of people sitting around a table" as an analog to play. I like that.

With dialog heavy stories, you can't hide behind fancy effects. Which is good, because the effects are unlikely to have been that good.

Quote from: Omega;817665Bear in mind that a D&D movie can be done properly because it has been done in the form of the Record of Lodoss War animated series in Japan. That is based directly on transcribed BX D&D adventures.

For the most part; they did change certain things to make the story better.
For example, in the game, Deedlit wasn't interested in Parn, but in Parn's magic sword. They changed that to a more conventional love story between the characters, since it makes for a better story.

Kind of curious why none of The Gamers movies/series, are getting any kind of love?

Quote from: TristramEvans;817662I'd have a bunch of adventurers in a tavern, each telling stories about the horrible things they saw "down there" and the grisly fates their companions met. Feature vignettes with mindflayers, beholders, oozes, lurkers, etc. Finish it up with the one guy who saw a dragon, though no one else believes him. Have one of the first stories be basically a retelling of the Bargle/Aleena adventure from the Red Box.

Yup, an anthology-style movie would be a good way to go. It's a method that's worked for a long time, as Chaucer reminds us. :)

Quote from: Novastar;817701Kind of curious why none of The Gamers movies/series, are getting any kind of love?

Because they are parodies.