4 ms·

As a long term Wizards player / purchaser, I think their product quality has been dropping over the last few years. In D&D, take the Planescape box set - it wa

As a long term Wizards player / purchaser, I think their product quality has been dropping over the last few years. In D&D, take the Planescape box set - it was a really empty world lacking in the imagination that the original second ed Planescape had. All the D&D content just seems like filler to me. In MTG, they are releasing so many sets that it would cost a fortune to keep up, and the cards are all like 'meh'. They are doing Dr Who and Lord of the Rings - so of course they are easy sells, but the quality is really average. I guess the equation is - people keep buying, we have market dominance, so who cares about the quality?

Waterluvian 3y ago
I think this hypothesis is a good example of an opinion I’m developing that any average executive team can follow the spreadsheet. But what makes a team truly exceptional is the ability and wisdom to identify and act on the subjective and immeasurable qualities of the business. If quality falls but sales rise, did quality not matter? Will it not matter? Maybe we’re not measuring the right things. Maybe we have the wrong models. Maybe there is no model and you just have a general intuition that this is probably important regardless.
- zmgsabst 3y ago
  I actually think measurement is the source of “artificial stupidity”. We tend to measure what’s readily quantifiable. But these tend to be the most basic facts of a situation. And when we make decisions solely based on those metrics, we ignore significant higher order effects — which are difficult to measure. So we make reductive decisions. Which is where humanity had previously evolved tribal knowledge, parables, etc — because generationally, we can learn those effects. But we threw all of that data out of our models, which are based purely on numerics. However, the effect can be years to decades to manifest — much like modeling a farm as only basic inputs and outputs, then destroying the soil over years. (To reference another article today.)
  - AmericanOP 3y ago
    It would be like trying to measure the GDP of the renaissance, then predict which artists to invest in.
- solatic 3y ago
  > any average executive team can follow the spreadsheet. But what makes a team truly exceptional is the ability and wisdom to identify and act on the subjective and immeasurable qualities of the business. This precisely. The spreadsheet explains your limitations, not your potential. No spreadsheet can truly predict demand. The best example is in marketing - you can give a marketing department $50 million to light on fire, or the right person in the right place at the right time can do the right thing and set word-of-mouth ablaze without spending a dime. Having a $50 million marketing budget doesn't allow you to control the outcome, it merely limits you to spending no more than $50 million in coming up with your own approach. It's not the same thing.
speeder 3y ago
I saw someone pointing out they are doing exact same things comic companies did leading to their crash. The comic companies started to sell a ton of variants, foils, collector editions. They also started to do attention grabbing but bad quality storylines. And also they started to try to cut middlemen and sell more directly to the consumer. The end result was that readers eventually noticed quality was crap, with comics being poor products as story medium. And collectors noticed that they had a problem of no readers to buy their stuff, and that x-men #1 os worthless since it had millions of copies, unlike for example action comics #1. This led to stores losing losing money and then going belly up, then suddenly the comics companies themselves were losing money.
- busterarm 3y ago
  It may not have worked in the comic book industry but the same tactic has proved an enormous boon to the sports card industry in the last decade and that's absolutely booming.
  - grogenaut 3y ago
    Is it still booming or is it coming down like many other things post pandemic free cash flow and ability to do things with people again?
  - isk517 3y ago
    It works in the sports card industry because owning the rare card is the entire point of the hobby. The vast majority of people buying comic books plan to read them and the majority of the people buying WotC products want to be able to use them to play some sort of game.
    - busterarm 3y ago
      Except not true. Every trading card game where the cards are just game pieces and there's no secondary market around the game has died hard. The mystique and value in the cards is necessary to keep the game alive. I say this to you as somebody with hundreds of thousands of dollars in MtG cards in his collection and I still consider myself a player first. Comics are a complicated mess but in the 90s it was largely gimmick variants that nobody wanted -- the industry has done better in recent years with variant covers by desirable artists but in general nobody is reading comics anymore and the trade paperbacks are doing even worse. Marvel and DC just aren't connecting with their customers anymore and imported & translated manga is eating their lunch.
thaumasiotes 3y ago
> In D&D, take the Planescape box set - it was a really empty world lacking in the imagination that the original second ed Planescape had. All the D&D content just seems like filler to me. The other problem is that 5e supplements might be better described as pamphlets. The box set you mention advertises itself as containing three sourcebooks: 1. A campaign setting (96 pages). 2. A prefab adventure for levels 3-10. 3. A monster manual (64 pages). The second edition Planescape supplement lists 224 pages of campaign setting + monster manual, of which the monster manual is 32 pages. The 3e Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting is 320 pages. ----- Here's something that bothers me about WotC's modern quest to sell their cards at every conceivable price point: The concept is, obviously, market segmentation. If some people have more willingness to pay, you charge them more, and you get more money! Instead of having some consumer surplus and some producer surplus, you have lots of producer surplus and almost zero consumer surplus. The problem I see with attempting to drive consumer surplus to zero is that -- staying entirely within the realm of theory -- you end up with a customer base consisting mostly of people who are almost completely indifferent as to whether they buy your product or not. This is not a good way to build goodwill. And, if you ever even slightly misjudge the value of your own product, suddenly you see people abandoning it in droves, because the barely-noticeable dip in value was still larger than the gap between how much everyone liked your stuff vs how much they liked the money it was costing them. Brandon Sanderson has started writing about how much he likes WotC's model of selling the cards at every conceivable price point, and how it's inspired him to try to sell his books the same way. But I think he's overlooking the fact that, as a millionaire many times over, WotC's highest offered price point is still insignificant to him. Things look different when you're part of the finely-segmented customer base.
synthos 3y ago
It's a perfect time for Matt Colville's MCDM RPG to be announced. It's on backerkit and people are clearly eager for something different. The crowdfunding is at 4x funding and climbing

Waterluvian 3y ago

I think this hypothesis is a good example of an opinion I’m developing that any average executive team can follow the spreadsheet. But what makes a team truly exceptional is the ability and wisdom to identify and act on the subjective and immeasurable qualities of the business. If quality falls but sales rise, did quality not matter? Will it not matter? Maybe we’re not measuring the right things. Maybe we have the wrong models. Maybe there is no model and you just have a general intuition that this is probably important regardless.

zmgsabst 3y ago
I actually think measurement is the source of “artificial stupidity”. We tend to measure what’s readily quantifiable. But these tend to be the most basic facts of a situation. And when we make decisions solely based on those metrics, we ignore significant higher order effects — which are difficult to measure. So we make reductive decisions. Which is where humanity had previously evolved tribal knowledge, parables, etc — because generationally, we can learn those effects. But we threw all of that data out of our models, which are based purely on numerics. However, the effect can be years to decades to manifest — much like modeling a farm as only basic inputs and outputs, then destroying the soil over years. (To reference another article today.)
- AmericanOP 3y ago
  It would be like trying to measure the GDP of the renaissance, then predict which artists to invest in.
solatic 3y ago
> any average executive team can follow the spreadsheet. But what makes a team truly exceptional is the ability and wisdom to identify and act on the subjective and immeasurable qualities of the business. This precisely. The spreadsheet explains your limitations, not your potential. No spreadsheet can truly predict demand. The best example is in marketing - you can give a marketing department $50 million to light on fire, or the right person in the right place at the right time can do the right thing and set word-of-mouth ablaze without spending a dime. Having a $50 million marketing budget doesn't allow you to control the outcome, it merely limits you to spending no more than $50 million in coming up with your own approach. It's not the same thing.

speeder 3y ago

I saw someone pointing out they are doing exact same things comic companies did leading to their crash. The comic companies started to sell a ton of variants, foils, collector editions. They also started to do attention grabbing but bad quality storylines. And also they started to try to cut middlemen and sell more directly to the consumer. The end result was that readers eventually noticed quality was crap, with comics being poor products as story medium. And collectors noticed that they had a problem of no readers to buy their stuff, and that x-men #1 os worthless since it had millions of copies, unlike for example action comics #1. This led to stores losing losing money and then going belly up, then suddenly the comics companies themselves were losing money.

busterarm 3y ago
It may not have worked in the comic book industry but the same tactic has proved an enormous boon to the sports card industry in the last decade and that's absolutely booming.
- grogenaut 3y ago
  Is it still booming or is it coming down like many other things post pandemic free cash flow and ability to do things with people again?
- isk517 3y ago
  It works in the sports card industry because owning the rare card is the entire point of the hobby. The vast majority of people buying comic books plan to read them and the majority of the people buying WotC products want to be able to use them to play some sort of game.
  - busterarm 3y ago
    Except not true. Every trading card game where the cards are just game pieces and there's no secondary market around the game has died hard. The mystique and value in the cards is necessary to keep the game alive. I say this to you as somebody with hundreds of thousands of dollars in MtG cards in his collection and I still consider myself a player first. Comics are a complicated mess but in the 90s it was largely gimmick variants that nobody wanted -- the industry has done better in recent years with variant covers by desirable artists but in general nobody is reading comics anymore and the trade paperbacks are doing even worse. Marvel and DC just aren't connecting with their customers anymore and imported & translated manga is eating their lunch.

thaumasiotes 3y ago

> In D&D, take the Planescape box set - it was a really empty world lacking in the imagination that the original second ed Planescape had. All the D&D content just seems like filler to me. The other problem is that 5e supplements might be better described as pamphlets. The box set you mention advertises itself as containing three sourcebooks: 1. A campaign setting (96 pages). 2. A prefab adventure for levels 3-10. 3. A monster manual (64 pages). The second edition Planescape supplement lists 224 pages of campaign setting + monster manual, of which the monster manual is 32 pages. The 3e Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting is 320 pages. ----- Here's something that bothers me about WotC's modern quest to sell their cards at every conceivable price point: The concept is, obviously, market segmentation. If some people have more willingness to pay, you charge them more, and you get more money! Instead of having some consumer surplus and some producer surplus, you have lots of producer surplus and almost zero consumer surplus. The problem I see with attempting to drive consumer surplus to zero is that -- staying entirely within the realm of theory -- you end up with a customer base consisting mostly of people who are almost completely indifferent as to whether they buy your product or not. This is not a good way to build goodwill. And, if you ever even slightly misjudge the value of your own product, suddenly you see people abandoning it in droves, because the barely-noticeable dip in value was still larger than the gap between how much everyone liked your stuff vs how much they liked the money it was costing them. Brandon Sanderson has started writing about how much he likes WotC's model of selling the cards at every conceivable price point, and how it's inspired him to try to sell his books the same way. But I think he's overlooking the fact that, as a millionaire many times over, WotC's highest offered price point is still insignificant to him. Things look different when you're part of the finely-segmented customer base.

synthos 3y ago

It's a perfect time for Matt Colville's MCDM RPG to be announced. It's on backerkit and people are clearly eager for something different. The crowdfunding is at 4x funding and climbing