10 ms·

A bit more context: * Wizards of the Coast (WoTC) has been tasked by Hasbro (which owns WoTC) to drastically increase profits over a few years. * WoTC has bee

A bit more context: * Wizards of the Coast (WoTC) has been tasked by Hasbro (which owns WoTC) to drastically increase profits over a few years. * WoTC has been aggressively increasing prices on Magic the Gathering (MTG) and drastically increased the diversity of products. This overwhelmed even people who follow and produce MTG news. Wallet fatique is rampant and people are disgruntled. * WoTC releases the 30th aniversary edition for MTG, which is 60 random cards for 1000 $ which are officially marked as non-tournament legal. The MTG community is furious and for once people from all corners of the community come together to boycott this product. The rage is great and enduring. * WoTC fails to meet expectations and the stock prices plummet * To do damage control, WoTC/Hasbro annouces a "fireside chat" for their shareholders where they try to explain the situation but basically just say "we did nothing wrong and we are trying to extract a lot of money from Dungeons and Dragons next" * Unlike the MTG community, the DnD community is very good at organizing a unified response and the shitstorm came swiftly and took WoTC by surprise. (Don't mess with Dungeon Masters who know how to call together a group of people) The real problem is the managers at WoTC that don't really care about the games. They only care about money. I expect more bad things in the future.

TigeriusKirk 4y ago
There's only so much water in the well, though, and they might well be close to that limit. It's not an infinitely growable market, it's a niche product. True, the niche has gotten quite large in recent years, but at this point it's at least as likely to shrink as to grow.
- jachee 4y ago
  > It's not an infinitely growable market This needs to be said more often about more markets.
  - saghm 4y ago
    One would think that it would be true of pretty much _any _ market. I know it's not being meant literally, but even so, there are only so many people in the world, and people only have so much money. Even something that's essential for everyone like food is going to be limited by that; eventually you'd need to wait for there to be more people if you want to be able to sell more.
boomboomsubban 4y ago
>WoTC releases the 30th aniversary edition for MTG, which is 60 random cards for 1000 $ which are officially marked as non-tournament legal. The MTG community is furious and for once people from all corners of the community come together to boycott this product. The rage is great and enduring. Yet somehow the product completely sold out in under an hour. I really don't understand the outrage on that decision, would you prefer that everyone can buy their useless commutative coins?
- roenxi 4y ago
  Also - why are people upset over a product (that doesn't affect the game) being sold to people others? I feel like important context is missing here over why anyone would be upset by this.
  - harimau777 4y ago
    My guess is the feeling that if the product is successful, then the corporation might create similar products that are less optional. Or they may neglect or discontinue their less customer hostile products. It's also probably reasonable to be upset that they are pricing a significant portion of their community out of a product that ostensibly celebrates the success of the community.
  - qazwse_ 4y ago
    I think that there was a sense that WotC was going to do something special for Magic's 30th anniversary - something for the community at large. Instead, they released a mediocre, $1000 product.
  - lbotos 4y ago
    Imagine a game with 30 years of history, genre defining, that has die hard fans and then take some cards, make effectively "fake" versions (not tournament legal) and charge $1000 for 60 of them. They could have done a LOT more cooler things and passionate lovers of the game wish that they did.
    - 4y ago
chongli 4y ago
I’d say the real problem is that WoTC is a lifestyle business that should not be owned by Hasbro.
- Macha 4y ago
  WoTC (and really, Magic The Gathering specifically) is actually the profitable bit of Hasbro. They were hoping to get similar levels out of Dungeons and Dragons.
  - chongli 4y ago
    This is the company that once sold an ancient Roman weapon of war (plumbata) as children’s toy. At least one child died when hit by the dart. The company should be shut down and its valuable brands spun off!
    - gedy 4y ago
      Unrelated to DnD, but I still have a 2002 email from Alan Hassenfeld the former CEO of Hasbro (HASsenfeld BROthers) in reply to my sending my protest of them moving factories to China. (I know, kind of quaint/futile in hindsight)
      - wolverine876 4y ago
        > I know, kind of quaint/futile in hindsight It's not at all quaint and futile; don't believe that crap, meant to shut you up. It's awesome you sent that email. It's futile if your standard is that, as just one person, you will achieve 100% success. Then everything in the world is futile, because nobody ever accomplishes anything significant alone (really - name anyone doing anything) or 100%. (Let's realize also that it would be wrong if one person had that much power. There are others with legitimate, conflicting interests, who should have a 'vote' too.) But you are part of a larger community, and I promise Hasbro listens to the signals. If they switched manufacturing to China and there was silence, that would be a powerful signal. If all they heard was their shareholders or Wall Street analysts, that would be a powerful signal. It's not all or nothing, the same goes for most other issues (such as elections). People shift positions based on the response. Maybe less work was shifted to China, then or on a future date; maybe they decided to keep customer service in the US or make the investment more flexible or short term. Maybe they mentioned at Davos, 'wow, we sure heard a lot of complaints about moving the manufacturing', and others heard it and shifted their positions. Keep talking; the people who say it's futile are the people who want you to shut up.
godelski 4y ago
> The real problem is the managers at WoTC that don't really care about the games. They only care about money. I expect more bad things in the future. The same seems to be true with Games Workshop and I've never understood this. The products from both companies have huge markups (painted cards and pieces of plastic) and I'd assume that they could actually have a far larger market and profit by concentrating on scale rather than treating their products as luxury items. There's a clear reason that a lot of people are printing miniatures (pirating) from both franchises. I wouldn't be surprised if open sourced alternatives to these games soon spike in popularity as more people get fed up. I think a lot of people have had the following conversation (in either direction) Alice: Do you play Warhammer 40k? Bob: No, I play MTG. I'd love to play 40k but I can only afford one addiction. This just doesn't seem like it makes for a sustainable business practice. Even if we might consider that the total cost of entertainment isn't that extreme (there is low diversity for these games compared to a videogame or sports habit), people have a hard time justifying those prices for playing cards and plastic models because they intuitively understand that there is a huge markup.
- pdonis 4y ago
  > I'd assume that they could actually have a far larger market and profit by concentrating on scale rather than treating their products as luxury items I'm not sure that's true. The actual bottleneck with these games is not money but time and interest: you have to have a group of people who all like the same game, and you have to be able to get the group together regularly to play it. There are plenty of people who are interested, but I suspect that the vast majority of them are already players of whatever game they favor (if they haven't switched to something like World of Warcraft--see below), so I don't know that there's a lot of untapped market share. As for getting the group together to play, when all of the players are teenagers in school or college, that's relatively easy. It gets a lot harder when people are adults and have to work, pay mortgages, deal with various curve balls that adult life always throws at you, etc. And if you know you're not going to be able to devote the time to it that you used to as a kid when you learned the games (I started playing D&D in eighth grade, and spent far more hours playing it between then and graduating from high school than I have in all the years since--and my 40 year high school reunion is this year), it gets a lot harder to justify spending money on game materials. Another factor is the availability of online games like World of Warcraft, which I mentioned above. These games solve the time and interest problem in a way that can't help scaling much better than in person tabletop play: you can play from your computer at home and there are always other people online playing. There are also limitations, of course: for example, you can't make up your own adventures and you can't have house rules, which were both features of every D&D campaign I have ever encountered. But it's another factor that I think tends to limit the size of the available market for games like D&D. All of the above factors seem to me to indicate that there is a natural limit to the size of the market for games like the ones WoTC is producing, and the actual active market is close to that limiting size. If that's true, then the option of trying to make more money by scaling instead of markup simply isn't available to them.
hinkley 4y ago
Just turn the tap until blood comes out. > Don't mess with Dungeon Masters who know how to call together a group of people Don't mess with Dungeon Masters who have converted their campaign into 2 seasons on Amazon Prime. Just sit back and collect the checks for the free advertising.
- musicale 4y ago
  Killing the goose to try to get more golden eggs is what idiotic companies do.
- HWR_14 4y ago
  I actually think the attempted changes were because WoTC didn't get a cut of the Amazon money.
  - hinkley 4y ago
    That’s just bad accountants. CR sells a book through WotC’s publisher. That’s bank. CR is sponsored by D&D Beyond. THEY USE IT ON THE SHOW. That’s subscriptions. Every book or miniature that people buy because they were inspired to want to play is money Hasbro earns off of their success. It’s all advertising. Promo codes usually give money to the person shilling the code as a fraction of the promo derived sales. If the company is paying you for advertising, like on YouTube channels, that’s how it’s usually done. But people with established advertising channels can run that the other direction: we’ll promote your stuff and you give us 5% of the gross. I think WotC could be promoting Dwarven Forge without cannibalizing their own sales, for instance. They make different kinds of miniatures.
- __david__ 4y ago
  > Don't mess with Dungeon Masters who have converted their campaign into 2 seasons on Amazon Prime. I’m out of the loop. What does this refer to?
  - mixedCase 4y ago
    Critical Role, a web D&D show that has had its stories turned into animations. The one that has been released is named The Legend of Vox Machina, after their first campaign's troupe.
alasdair_ 4y ago
>The real problem is the managers at WoTC that don't really care about the games. They only care about money. I expect more bad things in the future. WOTC is notorious for paying around 50% of the market rate and giving a bunch of free product to employees and generally convincing them that working for poor wages is worth it because of the games. I think senior management doesn't give a shit but middle management and below definitely cares about the games, they just lack the power/ ability to make major decisions.
wnevets 4y ago
> Wizards of the Coast (WoTC) has been tasked by Hasbro (which owns WoTC) to drastically increase profits over a few years. Why can't things just exist and be profitable enough to continue? Why must EVERYTHING be ruined by the drive for high but short-term profits?
- nextos 4y ago
  Overoptimization, especially on a single or a few metrics, leads to fragility. If they started teaching this to MBAs, the world would be a much better place.
- gnramires 4y ago
  In keeping with the wizard theme, it's definitely Moloch :) "What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? Moloch!" "Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments! Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!" https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
- hypertele-Xii 4y ago
  Getting more money now rather than later allows you to reinvest it sooner, amplifying the compond interests of all your investments. It's about rate of return of investment. The problem occurs when a business is successful because it moves slow, a critical aspect of modular products. Squeezing blood out of a modular product by manufacturing an inferior run may return investments faster, but it also kills the company.
Alex3917 4y ago
For context, selling toys to kids is no longer profitable, so Hasbro is going all in on making and selling toys for adults. This is a massive pivot for the company, and lots of the existing staff will ultimately be laid off. That’s why everyone there is behaving erratically.
- hakfoo 4y ago
  Why would selling toys to kids be unprofitable? Since much of your market is actually parents, you're in a more secure place than a lot of other businesses: people are going to be more willing to pay for a trusted brand. There's always going to be various FUD of "off-brand toys might be unsafe". There's probably a risk factor-- you may not have THIS YEAR'S HOT TOY,--but I'd think the exact same problem applies to an adult audience, who is probably even more fickle because they don't have to get Mom and Dad to gatekeep their purchase decisions.
Yhippa 4y ago
Never understood why players are up in arms about this. Just print proxies if you want a particular card.
- vaylian 4y ago
  That only works if other players accept that you play with proxies. I personally am completely fine with proxies, but I know that not everyone is. And game shops that allow people to play with proxies can get in trouble with WoTC.
nottorp 4y ago
Interesting how people describing MTG are basically also describing free to play video games.
PaulHoule 4y ago
Myself I have never been a fan of D&D, particularly I can't stand running a D&D game, character progress so far that it gets in the way of meaningful storytelling. I much prefer the next generation of games such as Paranoia or Call of Cthulhu because you really can kill players off. Either that or games that are very simple to run like Toon. In D&D I think the game dynamics get in the way of the improvisational acting aspect that Gygax encouraged.

TigeriusKirk 4y ago

There's only so much water in the well, though, and they might well be close to that limit. It's not an infinitely growable market, it's a niche product. True, the niche has gotten quite large in recent years, but at this point it's at least as likely to shrink as to grow.

jachee 4y ago
> It's not an infinitely growable market This needs to be said more often about more markets.
- saghm 4y ago
  One would think that it would be true of pretty much _any _ market. I know it's not being meant literally, but even so, there are only so many people in the world, and people only have so much money. Even something that's essential for everyone like food is going to be limited by that; eventually you'd need to wait for there to be more people if you want to be able to sell more.

boomboomsubban 4y ago

>WoTC releases the 30th aniversary edition for MTG, which is 60 random cards for 1000 $ which are officially marked as non-tournament legal. The MTG community is furious and for once people from all corners of the community come together to boycott this product. The rage is great and enduring. Yet somehow the product completely sold out in under an hour. I really don't understand the outrage on that decision, would you prefer that everyone can buy their useless commutative coins?

roenxi 4y ago
Also - why are people upset over a product (that doesn't affect the game) being sold to people others? I feel like important context is missing here over why anyone would be upset by this.
- harimau777 4y ago
  My guess is the feeling that if the product is successful, then the corporation might create similar products that are less optional. Or they may neglect or discontinue their less customer hostile products. It's also probably reasonable to be upset that they are pricing a significant portion of their community out of a product that ostensibly celebrates the success of the community.
- qazwse_ 4y ago
  I think that there was a sense that WotC was going to do something special for Magic's 30th anniversary - something for the community at large. Instead, they released a mediocre, $1000 product.
- lbotos 4y ago
  Imagine a game with 30 years of history, genre defining, that has die hard fans and then take some cards, make effectively "fake" versions (not tournament legal) and charge $1000 for 60 of them. They could have done a LOT more cooler things and passionate lovers of the game wish that they did.
  - 4y ago

chongli 4y ago

I’d say the real problem is that WoTC is a lifestyle business that should not be owned by Hasbro.

Macha 4y ago
WoTC (and really, Magic The Gathering specifically) is actually the profitable bit of Hasbro. They were hoping to get similar levels out of Dungeons and Dragons.
- chongli 4y ago
  This is the company that once sold an ancient Roman weapon of war (plumbata) as children’s toy. At least one child died when hit by the dart. The company should be shut down and its valuable brands spun off!
  - gedy 4y ago
    Unrelated to DnD, but I still have a 2002 email from Alan Hassenfeld the former CEO of Hasbro (HASsenfeld BROthers) in reply to my sending my protest of them moving factories to China. (I know, kind of quaint/futile in hindsight)
    - wolverine876 4y ago
      > I know, kind of quaint/futile in hindsight It's not at all quaint and futile; don't believe that crap, meant to shut you up. It's awesome you sent that email. It's futile if your standard is that, as just one person, you will achieve 100% success. Then everything in the world is futile, because nobody ever accomplishes anything significant alone (really - name anyone doing anything) or 100%. (Let's realize also that it would be wrong if one person had that much power. There are others with legitimate, conflicting interests, who should have a 'vote' too.) But you are part of a larger community, and I promise Hasbro listens to the signals. If they switched manufacturing to China and there was silence, that would be a powerful signal. If all they heard was their shareholders or Wall Street analysts, that would be a powerful signal. It's not all or nothing, the same goes for most other issues (such as elections). People shift positions based on the response. Maybe less work was shifted to China, then or on a future date; maybe they decided to keep customer service in the US or make the investment more flexible or short term. Maybe they mentioned at Davos, 'wow, we sure heard a lot of complaints about moving the manufacturing', and others heard it and shifted their positions. Keep talking; the people who say it's futile are the people who want you to shut up.

godelski 4y ago

> The real problem is the managers at WoTC that don't really care about the games. They only care about money. I expect more bad things in the future. The same seems to be true with Games Workshop and I've never understood this. The products from both companies have huge markups (painted cards and pieces of plastic) and I'd assume that they could actually have a far larger market and profit by concentrating on scale rather than treating their products as luxury items. There's a clear reason that a lot of people are printing miniatures (pirating) from both franchises. I wouldn't be surprised if open sourced alternatives to these games soon spike in popularity as more people get fed up. I think a lot of people have had the following conversation (in either direction) Alice: Do you play Warhammer 40k? Bob: No, I play MTG. I'd love to play 40k but I can only afford one addiction. This just doesn't seem like it makes for a sustainable business practice. Even if we might consider that the total cost of entertainment isn't that extreme (there is low diversity for these games compared to a videogame or sports habit), people have a hard time justifying those prices for playing cards and plastic models because they intuitively understand that there is a huge markup.

pdonis 4y ago
> I'd assume that they could actually have a far larger market and profit by concentrating on scale rather than treating their products as luxury items I'm not sure that's true. The actual bottleneck with these games is not money but time and interest: you have to have a group of people who all like the same game, and you have to be able to get the group together regularly to play it. There are plenty of people who are interested, but I suspect that the vast majority of them are already players of whatever game they favor (if they haven't switched to something like World of Warcraft--see below), so I don't know that there's a lot of untapped market share. As for getting the group together to play, when all of the players are teenagers in school or college, that's relatively easy. It gets a lot harder when people are adults and have to work, pay mortgages, deal with various curve balls that adult life always throws at you, etc. And if you know you're not going to be able to devote the time to it that you used to as a kid when you learned the games (I started playing D&D in eighth grade, and spent far more hours playing it between then and graduating from high school than I have in all the years since--and my 40 year high school reunion is this year), it gets a lot harder to justify spending money on game materials. Another factor is the availability of online games like World of Warcraft, which I mentioned above. These games solve the time and interest problem in a way that can't help scaling much better than in person tabletop play: you can play from your computer at home and there are always other people online playing. There are also limitations, of course: for example, you can't make up your own adventures and you can't have house rules, which were both features of every D&D campaign I have ever encountered. But it's another factor that I think tends to limit the size of the available market for games like D&D. All of the above factors seem to me to indicate that there is a natural limit to the size of the market for games like the ones WoTC is producing, and the actual active market is close to that limiting size. If that's true, then the option of trying to make more money by scaling instead of markup simply isn't available to them.

hinkley 4y ago

Just turn the tap until blood comes out. > Don't mess with Dungeon Masters who know how to call together a group of people Don't mess with Dungeon Masters who have converted their campaign into 2 seasons on Amazon Prime. Just sit back and collect the checks for the free advertising.

musicale 4y ago
Killing the goose to try to get more golden eggs is what idiotic companies do.
HWR_14 4y ago
I actually think the attempted changes were because WoTC didn't get a cut of the Amazon money.
- hinkley 4y ago
  That’s just bad accountants. CR sells a book through WotC’s publisher. That’s bank. CR is sponsored by D&D Beyond. THEY USE IT ON THE SHOW. That’s subscriptions. Every book or miniature that people buy because they were inspired to want to play is money Hasbro earns off of their success. It’s all advertising. Promo codes usually give money to the person shilling the code as a fraction of the promo derived sales. If the company is paying you for advertising, like on YouTube channels, that’s how it’s usually done. But people with established advertising channels can run that the other direction: we’ll promote your stuff and you give us 5% of the gross. I think WotC could be promoting Dwarven Forge without cannibalizing their own sales, for instance. They make different kinds of miniatures.
__david__ 4y ago
> Don't mess with Dungeon Masters who have converted their campaign into 2 seasons on Amazon Prime. I’m out of the loop. What does this refer to?
- mixedCase 4y ago
  Critical Role, a web D&D show that has had its stories turned into animations. The one that has been released is named The Legend of Vox Machina, after their first campaign's troupe.

alasdair_ 4y ago

>The real problem is the managers at WoTC that don't really care about the games. They only care about money. I expect more bad things in the future. WOTC is notorious for paying around 50% of the market rate and giving a bunch of free product to employees and generally convincing them that working for poor wages is worth it because of the games. I think senior management doesn't give a shit but middle management and below definitely cares about the games, they just lack the power/ ability to make major decisions.

wnevets 4y ago

> Wizards of the Coast (WoTC) has been tasked by Hasbro (which owns WoTC) to drastically increase profits over a few years. Why can't things just exist and be profitable enough to continue? Why must EVERYTHING be ruined by the drive for high but short-term profits?

nextos 4y ago
Overoptimization, especially on a single or a few metrics, leads to fragility. If they started teaching this to MBAs, the world would be a much better place.
gnramires 4y ago
In keeping with the wizard theme, it's definitely Moloch :) "What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? Moloch!" "Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments! Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!" https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
hypertele-Xii 4y ago
Getting more money now rather than later allows you to reinvest it sooner, amplifying the compond interests of all your investments. It's about rate of return of investment. The problem occurs when a business is successful because it moves slow, a critical aspect of modular products. Squeezing blood out of a modular product by manufacturing an inferior run may return investments faster, but it also kills the company.

Alex3917 4y ago

For context, selling toys to kids is no longer profitable, so Hasbro is going all in on making and selling toys for adults. This is a massive pivot for the company, and lots of the existing staff will ultimately be laid off. That’s why everyone there is behaving erratically.

hakfoo 4y ago
Why would selling toys to kids be unprofitable? Since much of your market is actually parents, you're in a more secure place than a lot of other businesses: people are going to be more willing to pay for a trusted brand. There's always going to be various FUD of "off-brand toys might be unsafe". There's probably a risk factor-- you may not have THIS YEAR'S HOT TOY,--but I'd think the exact same problem applies to an adult audience, who is probably even more fickle because they don't have to get Mom and Dad to gatekeep their purchase decisions.

Yhippa 4y ago

Never understood why players are up in arms about this. Just print proxies if you want a particular card.

vaylian 4y ago
That only works if other players accept that you play with proxies. I personally am completely fine with proxies, but I know that not everyone is. And game shops that allow people to play with proxies can get in trouble with WoTC.

nottorp 4y ago

Interesting how people describing MTG are basically also describing free to play video games.

PaulHoule 4y ago

Myself I have never been a fan of D&D, particularly I can't stand running a D&D game, character progress so far that it gets in the way of meaningful storytelling. I much prefer the next generation of games such as Paranoia or Call of Cthulhu because you really can kill players off. Either that or games that are very simple to run like Toon. In D&D I think the game dynamics get in the way of the improvisational acting aspect that Gygax encouraged.