D&D 5e has failed

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Wiseman
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Post by Wiseman »

It's really a shame that there's so little content and it actually pisses me off a little. It's not all that hard to make some content to produce, considering the vast well of D&D material you could update to 5e. *Sneak peak* I'm working on a rewrite of true dragons for the monsters thread. I got the vast majority of the work done in a couple hours, and only stopped to go out to dinner. And that was for the fun of it. If someone were actually being paid to produce this content, you'd think they'd be able to get a lot more made frequently.
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Post by MGuy »

Well I'm willing to believe they are spending their time developing their own projects or someone else's project(s) perhaps.
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Post by momothefiddler »

Wiseman wrote:If someone were actually being paid to produce this content, you'd think they'd be able to get a lot more made frequently.
They're clearly not getting paid to produce this content. They're getting paid regardless of whether content is produced. None of this discussion accounts for how very easy it is to fuck around in an office and waste time if there's no actual reason to work. Sure, maybe they work on their own projects. Or maybe they just hang out playing facebook games. "Nothing" is a completely plausible answer to "What do they do all day?"
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Post by Neon Sequitur »

Omegonthesane wrote:1. The D&D brand has been the most recognisable TTRPG of them all for some years. Its commercial failure by all past standards is a damning indictment of the current design team and a direct cause of the shrinkage of the hobby.
Unsupported assertion in bold text.

What shrinkage?
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Post by Dogbert »

Neon Sequitur wrote:What shrinkage?
The self-inflicted tragedy called 4E shrunk d&d's player base from 6 milions to 1. In addition, 4E's advent came at a time where the global economy was already suffering the consequences of 8 years of Dubya in the White House. By this time, both FASA and White Wolf were long dead, so it's fair to say the roleplaying industry crashed, a crash the hobby has yet to recover from considering how indies nowadays call it a win if they sell 300 copies of a game.

Having said this, correlation doesn't equal causation. 4E's fiasco isn't more guilty of the Roleplaying Crash than Detroit's housing crisis.
Last edited by Dogbert on Sun Nov 27, 2016 4:54 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Neon Sequitur »

Dogbert wrote:
Neon Sequitur wrote:What shrinkage?
The self-inflicted tragedy called 4E shrunk d&d's player base from 6 milions to 1. In addition, 4E's advent came at a time where the global economy was already suffering the consequences of 8 years of Dubya in the White House. By this time, both FASA and White Wolf were long dead, so it's fair to say the roleplaying industry crashed, a crash the hobby has yet to recover from considering how indies nowadays call it a win if they sell 300 copies of a game.

Having said this, correlation doesn't equal causation. 4E's fiasco isn't more guilty of the Roleplaying Crash than Detroit's housing crisis.
None of this has anything to do with D&D 5E.

Are we done here yet?
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Post by virgil »

Neon Sequitur wrote:What shrinkage?
You haven't been reading this thread, have you?
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Post by Voss »

Neon Sequitur wrote:
Dogbert wrote:
Neon Sequitur wrote:What shrinkage?
The self-inflicted tragedy called 4E shrunk d&d's player base from 6 milions to 1. In addition, 4E's advent came at a time where the global economy was already suffering the consequences of 8 years of Dubya in the White House. By this time, both FASA and White Wolf were long dead, so it's fair to say the roleplaying industry crashed, a crash the hobby has yet to recover from considering how indies nowadays call it a win if they sell 300 copies of a game.

Having said this, correlation doesn't equal causation. 4E's fiasco isn't more guilty of the Roleplaying Crash than Detroit's housing crisis.
None of this has anything to do with D&D 5E.

Are we done here yet?
It has a lot to do with it. The rpg market crashed hard, largely from being filled with utter shit. 5e, being slightly less rancid shit, failed to help it recover. No one and nothing has stepped up to fill the gaping hole.
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Post by Username17 »

Neon Sequitur (Grady Elliott) is a drive by troll who comes here from time to time to tell us we are all fools. I don't believe he has contributed anything of any real content to this board ever. So asking him to not be a disingenuous asshat in this conversation is like asking a scorpion to not sting.

Literally every single thing he has ever posted is passive aggressive trolling about how he's a real game design pro (based on his ability to write small amounts of Star Hero shit you've never heard of) and we are all just haters or some fucking thing. I have no idea why Mr. Grady Elliott bothers to post here at all.

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Post by Neon Sequitur »

FrankTrollman wrote:Neon Sequitur (Grady Elliott) is a drive by troll who comes here from time to time to tell us we are all fools. I don't believe he has contributed anything of any real content to this board ever. So asking him to not be a disingenuous asshat in this conversation is like asking a scorpion to not sting.

Literally every single thing he has ever posted is passive aggressive trolling about how he's a real game design pro (based on his ability to write small amounts of Star Hero shit you've never heard of) and we are all just haters or some fucking thing. I have no idea why Mr. Grady Elliott bothers to post here at all.

-Username17
There's far more truth here than Frank wants to admit.

I asked how 5E is "shrinking the hobby" and no one here has any hard evidence that it's doing so.

Don't worry, I won't bother you again, Frank. This forum is indeed nothing more than echo chamber.
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Post by MGuy »

Actually you asked about shrinkage in the hobby. Please read your own posts.
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Post by Mask_De_H »

Neon Sequitur wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:Neon Sequitur (Grady Elliott) is a drive by troll who comes here from time to time to tell us we are all fools. I don't believe he has contributed anything of any real content to this board ever. So asking him to not be a disingenuous asshat in this conversation is like asking a scorpion to not sting.

Literally every single thing he has ever posted is passive aggressive trolling about how he's a real game design pro (based on his ability to write small amounts of Star Hero shit you've never heard of) and we are all just haters or some fucking thing. I have no idea why Mr. Grady Elliott bothers to post here at all.

-Username17
There's far more truth here than Frank wants to admit.

I asked how 5E is "shrinking the hobby" and no one here has any hard evidence that it's doing so.

Don't worry, I won't bother you again, Frank. This forum is indeed nothing more than echo chamber.
Most of that post is calling you a disingenuous trolling asshat; what is there left to admit? That you think we're fools and haters? That your contributions to the hobby are rather small and to here are nonexistent? Is that your big fucking gotcha?

Here's your reply, I guess? Take it with you as a souvenir when you get the fuck out.
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Post by Chamomile »

Identifying Neon Sequitir by a specific name makes me think he's some kind of actual, specific person in the industry, but Google is turning up a North Carolina optometrist, a Pennsylvania optometrist with a different middle initial (what're the odds?), six different LinkedIn profiles none of which are RPG related, and an obituary. Who is Grady Elliott and why do we care enough to identify him by name?
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Post by Leress »

Chamomile wrote: Who is Grady Elliott
http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=358643 ... ht=#358643
and why do we care enough to identify him by name?
Only Frank gives a shit, and really Neon was moving goal posts so I just stop paying attention.
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Post by Kaelik »

Chamomile wrote:Identifying Neon Sequitir by a specific name makes me think he's some kind of actual, specific person in the industry, but Google is turning up a North Carolina optometrist, a Pennsylvania optometrist with a different middle initial (what're the odds?), six different LinkedIn profiles none of which are RPG related, and an obituary. Who is Grady Elliott and why do we care enough to identify him by name?
It's not that we care, it's that he likes to criticize us for not being real designers so our opinions on 5e don't count, so that fact that he is himself a no name with less credits to his name than many TGD posters is an extension of the joke.

Not sure how specifically Frank knows who he is, so I may be someone critical of "doxxing" but he might have bragged about it in some past thread, in which case, well, you reap what you sow.
Last edited by Kaelik on Mon Nov 28, 2016 4:03 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Grek »

He posted in a previous thread about his writing career, yeah.
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Post by Impulsive »

What I find most strange, and i'm sure there's already been speculation as to why in this threat, is the lack of content that has been released so far.

The usual core books are there of course but apart form the various adventure modules released, Volo's Guide to Monsters and the Swordcoast guide what else has there been? Very little to my eye.

I can't help but feel maybe given the disaster that was 4e in terms of sales that Hasbro no longer has, whatever little it had anyway, confidence in d&d anymore and views the creation and publication of supplemental material as not being cost effective.
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Post by Username17 »

The lack of content is pretty weird. The setup they made was that they pretty much made no content "in house" and instead outsourced book production to various fly-by-night outfits created on the spot by various former WotC employees. There's no particular reason that content train should ever stop because there's no brakes on it. People can call Mike Mearls at any time and get a new book greenlighted just by agreeing to the licensing terms, and Mike Mearls has already shown that he gives zero fucks about the quality of the writing in these books and no one seems to be editing them for rules and there isn't any world building to screw up. And get this: Mike Mearls has the authority to make contracts with people that have already been fired by WotC. We know this because he's already fucking done that.

I mean, if SKR or Mouseferatu or whatever the fuck wanted to write another 5th edition book they could just do that. The only reason they wouldn't is if licensing the ability to write official 5th edition books just wasn't financially viable. Which means at the very least the 5th edition books have been selling so far below expectations that those contracts aren't worth signing.

But think about that for a moment. People will pay two hundred dollars to get their name into a fucking Onyx Path pdf. Getting your name into a "totally for real" D&D book is worth a lot of nerd cred for the rest of your life. A lot of people are simply willing to take a bath on a D&D license if it means getting their personal characters into canon somehow. A 5th edition D&D license doesn't have to be financially worthwhile for there to be people willing to do it. And people still aren't doing it. Which strongly suggests that there is also a problem on the WotC end.

Mike Mearls isn't just signing his friends who used to work for WotC to make D&D products, he's only signing his friends. Random fanboys who would like to become professional D&D writers aren't being let in to the clubhouse even if they are willing and able to produce the licensing fees and the piles of text. And then on top of that, his friends aren't taking the bait any more and now there's no one making official or licensed semi-official books at all.

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Post by Impulsive »

Its a fucking travesty how low our hobby has sunk.
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Post by Mask_De_H »

I haven't been keeping up with the back end of 5e overmuch, but I thought the "Random fanboys making grindhouse product" side went entirely to the DM's Guild.

Is that taking a bath?
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Post by Username17 »

Mask_De_H wrote:I haven't been keeping up with the back end of 5e overmuch, but I thought the "Random fanboys making grindhouse product" side went entirely to the DM's Guild.

Is that taking a bath?
There is the DM's Guild. That is a thing. And if you want to get random stuff from the old D&D Wikis for a dollar, you can in fact do that. I genuinely have no idea if that's doing well or not and have no way to check. It obviously has no presence in physical stores and will never generate any.

The issue here is that when it comes to actual books. Hoard fo the Dragon Queen was "outsourced" to Kobold Press through former WotC employee Steve Winter. Steve Winter left the company in 2011 and in 2014 he was writing their official introductory adventure to the new edition as a consultant. There is no practical limit to how many such books they could outsource to people with RPG writing credits, but it is factually true that the number they are actually managing to get produced is extremely small. And it definitely isn't because they insist on the quality being terribly high, as we can see from Hoard of the Dragon Queen, which is hot garbage.

Which leaves us to other answers. Have the products so far released been financial failures for the people who did them? Has Mike Mearls run out of friends he wants to provide patronage to? Both?

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Post by Wiseman »

So I did some looking around, and came across this.

https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Wizar ... -E4718.htm

There are tons of reviews, and so many negative ones. Highlights.
Vertical movement is nearly impossible through personal merit alone, while fairly easy with little merit and good connections. Pay is below industry standard for area. Take other highly rated reviews with a grain of salt. Management made a push for current employees to leave good reviews on Glassdoor.
Cons

Sub-standard compensation.
Poisonous work environment.

The wild financial success of Magic has allowed Wizards to become complacent in every department, and that's lead to a stagnation at the director level and above. Rather than rewarding success, Wizards rewards the obsequious, the ruthlessly political, and those willing to obfuscate real, practical status to placate the management class. It's only due to Magic's profitability that an organization so unhealthy is able to survive, and it's shocking how failure at the director level is continuously rewarded.
Good employees, bad management, terrible place to work wrote:
Pros

Lots of great employees and access to games

Cons

Be cautious of the recent good reviews since management has "encouraged" leadership employees to add good reviews since they have trouble finding people who will work there.

Very little gets done. Ask people running Magic tournaments what they think about the Wizards IT systems and how long they have been asking for the same things to get fixed.
Wizards has the worst leadership and is the least professional company I have ever seen. Some of the new leaders are OK but there is a group of inept managers and directors who have been there for a long time and they can do anything they want (or almost nothing) without getting in any trouble.
I have been working at Wizards of the Coast full-time (More than 3 years)

Pros

If you want a job where you don’t have to work that lets you spend most of the day on Facebook, Reddit or whatever website you want, look no further. Your performance will be measured against a handful of silly goals that you set for yourself. Wizards is ideal for people who just want to stall out career-wise. There is no reward for hard work, so don’t bother trying to get your job satisfaction out of making meaningful contributions. Instead, take advantage of the perks you’ll find at Wizards that you won’t find at any other employer on the planet that actually makes money: take two- to three-hour lunches, two to three times a week… conduct all of your personal business during working hours… “work” from home to care for a sick child… book a conference room on the third floor for a few hours and catch up on Netflix… find a way to use FMLA and take a couple of months off of work entirely… set up a MTGO trading side job to make money from stuff you never paid for!

The good news is that you’ll never be fired because Hasbro’s HR and risk management staff is so afraid of getting sued for wrongful termination that you’d basically have to be caught stealing Magic cards to get fired, and not know the right people who can help you cover up a situation like that.
Cons

The unfortunate part is that the majority of workers hate coming to work. Hardworking, smart, talented people move on to other companies, leaving behind the people who either can’t get a job anywhere else or are too lazy or depressed to try. There are a few exceptions, of course, but HR will see to it that they don’t stay around too long. They’ll have them apply for “consideration” of a title change or pay increase, withholding all assistance during that process – even for individuals worth retaining – ensuring that the success rate stays somewhere below 3%. Whatever you do, don’t complain about anyone who is never working – you’ll be ostracized, because the majority of workers are never working.

Advice to Management

Hire carefully. Stop promoting people into positions just because they’re the ones who stuck around long enough. Stop making people managers just because they have the most institutional knowledge.

Fire quickly. If you want to fire someone, fire them. You know the ones that need to go. Tell HR you’re willing to accept the risk of firing someone who hasn’t done a PIP. Why do you let them make business decisions for you? We spend stupid amounts of money on "marketing" that drives zero business, but we aren't willing to spend a little on severance to get rid of some seriously toxic/lazy/unqualified employees?

Firing a few people would help to restore the work ethic in people who are basically good but have just gotten complacent and know they won’t be fired
.


Perfect for Ambitious, Politically Savvy Men wrote:I worked at Wizards of the Coast full-time (More than 5 years)

Pros

Stroke the ego of your local VP and you get anything you want! You too can become a Director by jumping multiple rungs of the ladder (but only if you are a man).

Cons

HR is a joke. What do they really do all day?
Data driven decisions? What does that mean?
Actually managing people to high standards. Not really.

*** Compensation ***

Salary is well below industry standards. Benefits are ridiculously poor, to the point where most employees take the bare minimum while cringing and complaining at the huge expense (nothing is done to address this).

*** Management ***

Extremely conservative company with rigid and inefficient infrastructure. Zero career pathing for employees. Advancement very rare, most jobs turn into dead end grinds. Many managers in key areas have found themselves in positions they are unqualified to perform, but fly under the radar because work generally goes unchecked as long as the company continues to make money. The company avoids change and risk (change and risk are basically the same thing for WotC) at all costs for fear of disrupting the Magic: The Gathering profit machine.

*** Communication and meetings ***

Internal communication within the company is embarrassingly poor. More e-mails are sent regarding team lunches and last minute emergencies than all project planning and progress report e-mails combined.

Instead of properly utilizing e-mail, there's a strong meeting culture within most departments where managers hop from meeting to meeting every hour of the day, every day of the week. This is viewed as very productive work time in the eyes of upper management. Weekly held two-hour meetings are common. Nobody in the building has training on how to actually run a meeting, so they are almost always unstructured and overly conversational.

If a decision within a meeting is somehow reached, it's because time is up and the continuation of a project depends on it. Because of the lack of communication, unpleasant surprises are a regular occurrence which are happily solved with even more meetings.

Often times, an event or project will go poorly, but will be presented in post as a moderate success in order to save face in front of executive management. The company has no idea how to rate the success of its own projects unless they are sales related.

If a failure is somehow spotted by executive management, there's usually a lot of buck passing until managing staff are no longer to blame and the problem is forgotten about. With a constant flow of products and game updates, the next big freak out is only days away and very little time is allowed for any real managerial upkeep.

*** Work environment ***

While the lobby is nicely decorated, the look and feel of the office space remains dingy. The carpets are old and stained. The only free snacks are terrible Seattle's Best drip coffee and microwave popcorn. Office furniture is years old and is never replaced, only shuffled around from cube to cube. The technology side is even worse.

*** Digital ***

Any Magic Online player or frequent website visitor can tell you Wizards is horrible at anything and everything digital. Internally they refer to themselves as a modern digital company, but they then pay programmers next to nothing and expect long work hours when something breaks. They insist on doing nearly all digital development in-house under these circumstances, dumping the occasional money injection into specific areas (not salary raises) that are in critical condition. Sort of like an old dying car that costs hundreds of dollars to repair every few months just to keep the wheels turning.

*** Employee morale ***

There are a few great teams which are a joy to witness. These are the teams that make Magic and D&D the awesome experiences they are. These products succeed despite the terrible planning, marketing, and communication efforts performed by the rest of the company. Thankfully the playerbase is much better at promoting the game than Wizards is.

Upper management caught wind of the low morale roughly two years ago, recognizing that people were unhappy with management practices and low recognition and celebration of their work. An entire year later, after many more quit, they actually decided to do something about it. No, they didn't increase pay or benefits, and no they didn't introduce any training for their team members that could improve their management skills. Instead, they formed multiple internal committees to address specific areas of improvement. This was a very modern concept for Wizards, and was well received because it was the first time upper management seemed to care about their unhappy employees. Unfortunately these committees really only added up to more meetings made up of, you guessed it, mostly middle and upper management.

After a year of these meetings, work was the same as ever with only a few superficial reports of progress gleaned from their efforts. Most employees now realize that the committees themselves were only a weak attempt to appear concerned with the morale problem.

Advice to Management

Stop filling your day with meetings and stop letting those you manage do the same. The meeting culture is destroying the productivity of several teams. Try actually speaking to an employee that's more than one level below you. Book the occasional one-on-one with them and actually find out if your subordinate managers are doing what they're supposed to be doing when you aren't looking. You'll be surprised to find that…

-Lack of empathy in the executive team and very little understanding of technology
-Unprofessional behavior accepted from senior leaders
-Tons of politics and backstabbing
-Office dating all over the place causing tension
-Completely risk averse
-Dire fear of change or losing job or title
-Very little collaboration
-Many of the directors were simply good at "playing the game"
-Lots of win-lose scenarios, blaming and finger pointing
-Managers who intimidate their employees and anyone who disagrees with them (especially in the Magic Online technical group)

Pros

Used to be the people, but with each year, more and more cautious, corporate drones would arrive, at the expense of the passionate, committed people who built the company.

1/2 day Fridays year round. Onsite daycare, and gym. Reasonable benefits.

Cons

Little room for advancement. Salary is a bit on the low side, at least for the same job titles/functions in other companies. Politics reign, starting at the top and filtering down. Being on a manager's good side is imperative to your survival. Many employees fearful for their jobs. Leadership needs to become visionary and inspired, and be able to act upon trends. Far too many meetings, which take up too much time, and accomplish far too little. Labored, committee-based decision-making bogs down processes and is wearying.

Pros

The games and creativity is amazing. The actual product is the only truly enjoyable part of working with this company.

Cons

Territorial, aggressively domineering, "I'm right and you're wrong" mindset from pretty much all executive management (and most mid-level) makes being anything but a desk jockey with this company an exercise in frustration and futility.

Advice to Management

Hire someone to teach you how to communicate and be actual leaders; you're driving people away almost as fast as you hire them.

You will not be challenged in your profession and will soon find your skills becoming outdated.
Wizards doesn't push the bar or take risks of any kind, I eventually found myself needing to leave or else risk become completely obsolete in my craft.
As a tabletop company owned by a giant toy company, Wizards fundamentally doesn't understand the digital space and seems incapable of attracting or retaining the kind of talent that could right the ship.
R&D designs great paper Magic, but is not poised with the talent to design in the digital world.
Magic brand team leadership lacks transformative vision and are generally novice managers who are more interested in ego and empire building than anything else.
The Web Publishing team is a complete disaster, failing to deliver anything of significance technologically and the latest project was a colossal failure by any measure.
The marketing team's culture, established by its leader, is based on masoginistic narcissism and ego-based decision making. Everyone works to satisfy the leadership's constantly changing emotional whims.
Ideas are torn down and constantly refactored so that "proper credit" can be accepted upward.
Everything is blamed on either the Sales team or the Technology team.
HR is powerless because executive bullying is allowed, especially in Marketing and Sales, where Marketing in particular believes they are over-qualified in every discipline.
Magic Online Business team leadership is unqualified
Executive team has only four qualified executives in positions to take the company forward; HR, Finance, Technology, and CEO.

- PMO leadership is unprofessional, adversarial and obstructionist
- Marketing is rewarded by being a bully and destructive
- Majority of the VPs and the CEO are old and have no understanding of technology nor do they support it
- Terrible office location
- Lack of recognition
- If you try to bring to life some of the issues that have existed for a longtime, know that it will be swept under the rug and HR will try to punish you for it
Pros
As others have pointed out, the experience of working at WotC depends greatly on not just the brand you're working on, but on the group and even team you end up in. I was exceedingly fortunate to have been on a team that made my time an absolute pleasure. The people whom I reported to were unfailingly conscientious and genuinely caring, working to make sure I played as much as I worked, even on the clock! I've never worked any other job where my manager gave me a stern talking-to when I wasn't taking enough time to play MTG at the office. I'm NOT kidding.

<snip>

Cons
I've heard horror stories from some others about the teams/groups they had to work in. Some of those ventured into Dilbert-esque in the worst possible sense.

Cons

We call the full time employees "real people." As contractors we talk about not being a "actual human." It is mostly co-workers joking about seeing other co-workers receive benefits while you, doing the same work, get a booster pack sometimes (for "training"). There are many reasons why full time employees receive certain benefits and contractors don't. Most are legitimate. The problem comes when full time employees treat contractors like they're not real people. It may be different in other departments, but in game support your bosses treat you with apathy at best. They pile work on contractors while certain full time employees do next to nothing. If speak up about notoriously lazy co-workers your supervisors will shrug and say that they, "...know and there is nothing they can do..." They may even say that the contractor program is broken and awful, but again nothing can be done.
Cons

Technology is ancient and crumbling. All the digital efforts are massive disappointments with many in denial about competitors like Blizzard. High school level politics and a strong sense of apathy among most of the teams. No real sense of ownership. Very unclear communications. Unethical managers that use and abuse contractors. Issues with theft to the point several employees have their own personal security cameras. Outdated office furniture and environment for many. Meetings that turn into who can talk over who instead of team collaborations. Managers almost always in meetings instead of leading teams. Efforts have been successful at purging the most toxic elements from the work force, however much work remains to turn the highly cynical teams into productive and good work experiences. Purely reactionary environment due to no one feeling comfortable taking ownership and being proactive. Poor support from IT that would rather enforce ancient enterprise standards rather then taking security and productivity seriously. Even Microsoft has moved beyond the 90s, it's time for WoTC to as well.
Cons
Non-compete clauses force creators to keep their head down and work within overly restrictive limits. Corporate cuts always affect R&D funding first, ensuring that middle management survives while creative elements die out. No thought is given to creating or fostering new brands in favor of maintaining a status quo that any outsider can see has a limited shelf-life. No thought is given to creating new games to compete in markets slowly being overtaken by companies with more competitive market strategies. Individual career growth for independent contributors and creative positions is nonexistent. Benefits for full-time employees have been slashed in the last fiscal year. Wages in technology departments are significantly less than average.
Cons

Poor management.

Architecture actively works to keep projects from being successful. Their assumptions are not based on fact, rather on outdated poorly understood interpretation of how modern technology works.

The result is that nothing gets done. As a developer you are forced into doing things the wrong way, and when it does not work you get blamed.

The message from HR is very clear: if you disagree with an architect, expect to be out on probation and then fired at the first opportunity. If something goes wrong, which happens often, expect to be blamed and then fired at the first opportunity. If something goes right and the lead architect does not approve, again expect to be blamed and fired at the first opportunity.

For awhile, the team had some really good architects and things were improving a lot. People liked working here and things were getting a lot better. Then these architects were removed, suddenly, and things went back to normal which just got worse and worse.

Advice to Management

Fix or remove your architecture team. Seriously, consider if you even need one. Your company is not so large that one is needed. Let the developers and their leads determine the direction, technology and their solutions. If you do this within a year all of your problems in your digital space will be history.
Horrible managment. Think Office Space x 100. "Um....did you put a cover sheet on your TPS report. Hasbro Policy strictly states that all TPS reports must have 18 coversheets. Yes we know it wastes paper, but we are too worried about holding our horribly designed, insanely un-user-friendly Magic Online software together to worry about updating our policies and procedures to this century."
Overall the majority of the employees appear to be happy at their jobs only because they occasionally get to play the games they create, and they can come to work in a hoddie and flip flops everyday. Most don't believe in the products they create, because those products are becoming so out of touch with what the consumers are actually asking for. Case in point. Magic Online is one of the most horribly designed, broken, ugly pieces of software that ever has existed. And everyone who works there know just how bad it is. Because they fired the original programmers, they are desperately trying to keep the thing running so they can continue to milk addicted Magic players for everything they are worth. They know people hate it, they know it's a pile of junk, but as long as it still runs (if you can call at least one crash a day running), they will keep telling people it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. As for Dungeons & Dragons, players don't want or need a new book every other week. Especially when the reason that they bought the things in the first place was for the quality that went into the design, artwork, and content. Now they've taken all the artwork away, and repackaged old material and dare to call it "New". Really?!?
Reviews and Evaluations are a joke. They are handed down from Hasbro, and you are required to give your input on progress as an employee. The problem lies in the fact that anything you say ultimately is meaningless. If your boss doesn't like you, they can pretty much write whatever they want. HR is a JOKE. Need a question answered about benefits....probably a good chance you'll get a good one. Need some extra training...they can help you out on that too. Need help with a manager, coworker, etc.....well you best just keep that to yourself. HR may get multiple complaints from employees about a situation, and will sit there with a smile on their faces and do absolutely nothing. Shake the tree of Wizards to actually get rid of some bad managment....hmmm...Not gonna happen, ever.
It's a pity that so much of the management sit around in meeting after meeting about meetings they just had and yet are not able to actually accomplish anything except pretendin to look busy and important.

Advice to Management
First: Take a shower. Seriously....log off World of Warcraft now, and take a shower. Use soap while you are at it as well. Oh and a change of clothes would be refreshing. As nice as it is to see you in the same outfit for weeks on end, it's probably time for something new. (and i'm not making this up, some of my coworkers lacked normal personal hygiene routines that all adults should have.)
Second: Listen to your employees, listen to your customers, listen to anything other than the hot air you continue to spew day in and day out to make yourself seem useful to the company. You are not fooling anyone.
This used to be a great place to work I had several managers I truly respected and a team that was inspiring to work with. Truly great leaders surround themselves with people willing to tell them the truth. This creates teams of people willing to take risks and create great products. But, by the time I left that wasn't the case. By the time I left, it appeared that anyone who was brave enough to challenge the CEO and was willing to take a stand for their employees had been replaced by people who must be terrified of losing their jobs. That's the only way I can explain how most of the employees can be treated so poorly by their Senior leaders.

Things take a very long time to move forward. Again, I can only attribute that to leaders being afraid to MAKE a decision until the person in the chain above them approves of the decision. Therefore, many things get left undone.

I feel the worst for the mid-level managers who seem to merely be doing the dirty work of the Directors and VPs above them.

Bad behavior seems to be tolerated and in many cases it seems the loudest bullies get the promotions.

I witnessed someone on the Senior Team rip an employee up one side and down the other for a project that (the Senior Leader) didn't like. The project turned out to be a huge success but no one was brave enough to publicly announce that on a day when the Senior Leader was in the office.

I also witnessed lower-level employees who came up with an innovative, cost-efficient plan, present it to upper level leaders and have it nastily vetoed. All those employees were laid off (or quit) within 6 months. Later, a Senior Leader took the very same idea and was applauded for such an innovative process.

If you do apply for a job there, ask about the turnover rate in the department to which you are applying. Those are the departments with bully leaders.

In my experience, if you are honest, work hard and come up with innovation ideas, you are punished with more work, leaders stealing your ideas, and moved to positions where you're no longer doing what you were hired to do.

I've observed those who seem to do no work, steal other's ideas, and employ bullying behavior rewarded with promotion after promotion.
For the last 5 years (as of 2011) there is a reorg every October.
For the last 9 years there is a layoff every December (occasionally there is an additional layoff in June/July) regardless of the company's reported performance. As a result, morale plummets as the end of the year approaches since people are updating their resumes and hoping they don't get the axe. The layoffs seem to affect random individuals throughout the company (perhaps based on their salaries) which doesn't appear to be driven by lackluster performance. The remaining employees are expected to absorb the increased workload and whatever remains is outsourced (they call it something else such as "contracting" but it's still outsourcing).
Cronyism is considered a valid form of career growth. People with no knowledge of the field for which they apply can still land the job provided they know the right people. Developing one's "social network" is considered crucial to ascendancy as opposed to developing one's skills.
Various wrote: 2 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.
The long term employees protect each other even when it is bad for the company and other workers

- You'd be hard-pressed to find a more poorly managed company
- Better make friends. Managers and above will become petty and retaliatory if they don't like you
- Don't worry about doing a good job. Nothing is based on merit. You'll be judged on who likes you
- Nothing is organized. Nothing is on time. Everything is on fire
- You will work well over 40 hours a week and not be compensated in any way for that

Upper IT leadership is lost and threatened by new ideas and talent.

Management ready to throw anyone under the bus to avoid their own inability to motivate and be a part of the team.

Questioning a supervisor in any capacity isn't welcomed, regardless of whether you end up being correct and you'll likely be more penalized for not being 'in line' than your supervisor will be for being wrong.

If your department is not meeting unreasonable expectations set by a parent company that doesn't have a clear understanding of the product or consumer environment, you can expect a harsh, critical work environment that sheds employees with annual or twice-annual layoffs with few emotional or financial rewards.

It feels like middle school sometimes.

New ideas are not encouraged. For a company that lives and dies by its IPs, they are remarkably resistant towards encouraging innovation or new products.

People who do less work but more talk usually get promoted.

If you're a software developer, stay far away. Wizards is not a software company, and its software projects are buggy, slow, bloated, and poorly thought-out. Random changes will come down from marketing or management. Key technical decisions will be made by non-technical staff.

Stop taking credit for the hard work of the people you manage

Someone always gets fired during the Christmas Holidays.

•There are more managers and bosses than actual workers, which causes for the little people (workers) to be buried in work and are taken for granted. (2013)

Cronyism is considered a valid form of career growth. People with no knowledge of the field for which they apply can still land the job provided they know the right people. Developing one's "social network" is considered crucial to ascendancy as opposed to developing one's skills.

I still have nightmares that I am back there with arrogant incompetent managers that are just trying to stay within their precious clicks.

Art Directors are definitely the worst. They just want to get their way regardless of how unproductive or dumb, and will never admit or apologize when they are wrong. It is funny how big they think they are.

There's not a manager there who knows what they're doing.

Lack of balance, Serious attitude and ego issues. LOW moral, inconsistency, lack of communication and commitment, childish behaviors and politics. Those that DO work are OVERWORKED. You get to the point where you have to let got of your love for the product in order to live a personal life.

Wages are some of the worst in the industry. What this means in real life is that often the first, second, and third choices for Director or upper level management positions walk away from the job. The individual hired often works for 35-40% below the Seattle market, has little actual experience in the gaming industry or in any complex IT environment, and often lacks the management or personnel skills needed to address the most egregious issues.
I've tried to avoid repeats for things that didn't need emphasis, though there's so many bad reviews that it's easy to get mixed up.
Last edited by Wiseman on Thu Dec 29, 2016 3:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Keys to the Contract: A crossover between Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Kingdom Hearts.
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RadiantPhoenix wrote:
TheFlatline wrote:Legolas/Robin Hood are myths that have completely unrealistic expectation of "uses a bow".
The D&D wizard is a work of fiction that has a completely unrealistic expectation of "uses a book".
hyzmarca wrote:Well, Mario Mario comes from a blue collar background. He was a carpenter first, working at a construction site. Then a plumber. Then a demolitionist. Also, I'm not sure how strict Mushroom Kingdom's medical licensing requirements are. I don't think his MD is valid in New York.
...You Lost Me
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Post by ...You Lost Me »

Take all of those with some salt. They're written by disgruntled employees pseudo-anonymously, so they're not good metrics for actual issues. I know a company that asked its employees to leave reviews (of any kind) on GlassDoor and they got brigaded by employees claiming they were mandating nice reviews on company time.
DSMatticus wrote:Again, look at this fucking map you moron. Take your finger and trace each country's coast, then trace its claim line. Even you - and I say that as someone who could not think less of your intelligence - should be able to tell that one of these things is not like the other.
Kaelik wrote:I invented saying mean things about Tussock.
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erik
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Post by erik »

You just have to judge if the disgruntlement sounds justified and how consistent the complaints are. There's certainly a running theme, or several of them, throughout the reviews.
Voss
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Post by Voss »

They're also consistent with known issues with Wizards, like the IT and digital projects, which consistently suck and fail, and digital products are legitimately a generation or two behind what they should be, and where competitors products are- compare Magic-whatever-it-is-called-this-year with Hearthstone or even the Elder Scrolls digital card game; or Sword Coast Legends, which is a shittier version of Neverwinter Nights/Baldur's Gate (so actively worse than games 20 years old).

Or, frankly, just go to the D&D products page and note that they missed out completely on the holiday season and have no future products any time soon. Or ever. Who knows?
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