Wednesday, April 15, 2009 5:58 PM
From: "Paul L. Ming"
To: greytalk@canonfire.com
Hiya.
I may be going out on a limb here, but I honestly saw this coming about a year ago. As soon as I heard that they had a new guy coming in to "drive the ship"...re:
"
Wizards of the Coast announces new President
Posted 2008-03-14 06:26:02 by JoyceGreenholdt
Joyce Greenholdt Reports: Wizards of the Coast Inc., subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. and leader in trading-card games, role-playing games, and shared-world fantasy fiction, today announced Greg Leeds as the new President of Wizards of the Coast.
Leeds is moving to Renton, Wash., following seven years at Hasbro where he headed up International Marketing and helped to develop Hasbro’s global brand management methodology. Prior to that he led Hasbro’s Boys group and had extensive experience in marketing, operations, and sales at both Samsonite and Procter & Gamble.
“Wizards is a fantastic game company with great opportunities to expand and enhance player communities around the world,” said Leeds. “I feel privileged to join the team and carry-on our culture of captivating gamers everywhere they want to play.”
After a distinguished 12-year career at Wizards of the Coast, Loren Greenwood is stepping down as President and CEO and leaving the company effective March 21."
...so...I figured "This guy doesn't sound like he 'gets' the RPG fans. He'll treat it like all the other products he's been marketing, not really understanding that an old module like, say X1: The Isle of Dread that was produced back in 1980, can be opened up and used in 4e without any serious problems.". In effect, RPG'ers main ability is their generally 'higher than average' IQ and imagination, as well as the nature of RPG's (that is, "Create your own stuff") pretty much does NOT support the huge business model that big companies like Hasbro use and expect.
In short, I see RPG's like art: you don't go into it expecting to get rich...you do it because you love it and it's who you are...if you can make a living on it, you should be damn proud. Hasbro was expecting D&D to "make oodles of cash", when all they really should have been thinking of is "As long as we can pay for our expenses, and give our employees a small raise, or catered staff party every year, we're golden." I think WotC/Hasbro are starting to see the light; that they can't really make 'oodles' of cash off RPG's like they can off Magic:The Gathering, or expansions to Cranium or theme-based Monopoly board games.
Heres an interesting link with Greg Leeds attempting to explain, to some degree, the decision to nix PDF's: http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/14726.html Sounds like he's trying to play the part of the gallant knight, protecting 'the poor, defenseless masses' from the Evil Pirate Horde. Awwww...how selfless and thoughtful of him. ;)
^_^
Paul L. Ming
Stefan Beate wrote:
I don´t think this is Hasbros doing - my guess would be that Hasbro sets the goals, and WotC strives to reach them. Reaching these goals will be hard, especially at the moment, and so the nervousness in WotCs management rises. A cornered animal lashes out blindly.
