I think the layoffs - especially during Hanukkah and right before Christmas - is a pretty heartless move.
Maybe Wizards was dealing with corporate bloat.. That seems like something you can reasonably speculate, though it is speculation as there is no "firm evidence" for it. SO it's speculation, just like me speculating that this will be a change that harms the quality of Wotzy's books, Youtube vids, and general products and that it'll likely be a negative change over all.
I dunno why Cocks, Williams, and others make millions yet they're firing these people. Seems cruel.
It might turn out to be a good change.
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Maybe Wizards was dealing with corporate bloat.. That seems like something you can reasonably speculate, though it is speculation as there is no "firm evidence" for it. SO it's speculation, just like me speculating that this will be a change that harms the quality of Wotzy's books, Youtube vids, and general products and that it'll likely be a negative change over all.
Glassdoor reviews are full of complaints about how overly-top-heavy Wizards is, and how those in supervisory positions are mired in their ways. Jeremy Crawford has said in interviews that some of their mistakes in D&D design stemmed from having too many entrenched individuals like him, and not enough fresh blood and perspectives.
I think there is plenty of tangible evidence from plenty of different sources to conclude Wizards had a middle and upper management problem. Might that conclusion be wrong? Perhaps—but what sets a conclusion apart from speculation is not whether something is correct or not; it is about whether something is based on tangible evidence which supports the position, without requiring hypothetical leaps or assumptions.
Maybe Wizards was dealing with corporate bloat.. That seems like something you can reasonably speculate, though it is speculation as there is no "firm evidence" for it. SO it's speculation, just like me speculating that this will be a change that harms the quality of Wotzy's books, Youtube vids, and general products and that it'll likely be a negative change over all.
Glassdoor reviews are full of complaints about how overly-top-heavy Wizards is, and how those in supervisory positions are mired in their ways. Jeremy Crawford has said in interviews that some of their mistakes in D&D design stemmed from having too many entrenched individuals like him, and not enough fresh blood and perspectives.
I think there is plenty of tangible evidence from plenty of different sources to conclude Wizards had a middle and upper management problem. Might that conclusion be wrong? Perhaps—but what sets a conclusion apart from speculation is not whether something is correct or not; it is about whether something is based on tangible evidence which supports the position, without requiring hypothetical leaps or assumptions.
And I think there's tangible evidence that it'll be a negative change. Yet tangible and firm evidence are different in my eyes.
Are these Glassdoor reviews from verified employees and how trustworthy is the site's system for that? Random untrustworthy reviewers aren't really solid evidence in my eyes, though I don't really understand how the site works. Additionally, this was a massive move by Hasbro and Wizards seemed to just be one division that was potentially required to cut people. I dunno if Wizards having a corporate bloat problem would cause them to partake in this company wide movement, which doesn't seem to be strictly tied to them having this issue.
Fundamentally though, the thing that isn't concrete for me is that while there's an argument to be made on Wotzy's "corporate bloat", I see zero evidence that it inspired this change - not something else - other than the fact that it's one of many potential issues Wizards (the important subdivision of Hasbro here lol) may have. So yeah, I don't think this is wild speculation, but I don't view firm evidence to support this other than the fact that it makes some sense as an explanation here but maybe I'm just a doofus lol.
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In WotC's view, I think it's pretty much a given that's what they're doing. They think they don't need them and they're not providing value for money (which is to say they're not providing enough profit to justify their wages versus other methods of investment, or payoffs). The question is whether they're clipping the cat's claws to a reasonable level...or cutting and damaging the claw itself. No one here knows which way it's going and it's all speculation. Even WotC isn't 100% sure and is gambling (albeit they're in a better position than us to judge...but it's still gambling to an extent).
We'll only know in a few years when there's a track record showing how those cuts have affected the products...and ironically, we'll almost certainly have forgotten about this episode and so will never connect the dots.
I dunno why Cocks, Williams, and others make millions yet they're firing these people. Seems cruel.
To be blunt, WotC exists to make money. Not just money in general, but money for a specific group of people. People who are a lot closer to CEOs etc than the people actually creating the product. Contrary to the reactionary claims of some, that doesn't make them evil, it's just how things are and it informs their motivations and goals.
People generally don't fire themselves or their near peers to save money...they look further down the line to trim the fat. Usually, it's from the bottom up - if they don't get enough fat to trim from the bottom, they move up, until they find it.
They could look at the massive salaries at the top. Generally though, for multiple reasons (good and bad), they'll look lower down first.
It might turn out to be a good change.
Indeed it could.
I've seen enough decision making to realise that many decisions aren't made from a logical, rational and thought out place. They're driven by motives and agendas (no, I'm not implying nefarious intents there - it's a fact that we all have these agendas and motives that drive our decisions, often more than we realise), and so often the wrong decisions are made and to the detriment of others - and in cases of large companies, a lot of others.
In the other hand, we don't see even a fraction of the information necessary to see why these cuts were made (there's been a ton of speculation on this thread, but speculation is cheap). I could easily see this being a positive step forward that could even be moving to fix some of the problems that have made some of the people on these boards so cynical towards WotC.
We'll see. I'm hoping for the best, that this turns a corner and the company improves. The cynic in me says that's not certain and that this could easily head south. The realist in me says that no one knows and we'll find out over the next few years.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
As a note, it is a bad faith argument to imply or assert, without tangible evidence, that WotC may have incorporated AI art intentionally when they have explicitly stated that they did not.
A good faith argumentaccepts the premise that they did it by without knowing, were shocked, and apologized for it, and then publicly reaffirmed their commitment to not using AI art.
But was Wizards shocked by it? I think they were surprised, but I highly doubt it was shocking to see a company that hires countless artists have one that utilized AI?
Also. I don't recall them apologizing.. Merely explaining they didn't know of this and that generative AI in their books was disallowed in future.
And I think it's baseless and dumb to assume Wizards knew about this and is lying and was testing the waters and blah blah blah blah. But your version of events is false and people can make arguments in good faith that are baseless or without tangible evidence.
They did indeed apologize. they even noted that they were unaware the artist in question had used AI as a basis and then came up with guidelines for it (ergo, shocked).
Nor did I say that people could not make arguments in good faith without evidence -- I was very specific in my explanation.
Thus, my version of events was not false, and I did not say what you accused me of saying.
But we do both agree that it is silly to think that wizards did this on purpose, lol.
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I think the layoffs - especially during Hanukkah and right before Christmas - is a pretty heartless move.
If they are getting rid of big names, the timing is less important than the fact that they are getting rid of people who can signficantly impact business. These people can take care of themselves, and I highly doubt they do not have some kind of severance package that will keep them comfortable for a while.
For employees lower down the rung though, then yeah, it does suck.
I dunno why Cocks, Williams, and others make millions yet they're firing these people. Seems cruel.
Probably cheaper to pay executives more and lay more people off than to pay executives less and lay less people off.
If you lay off 3,000 workers who makes $50,000 per year each while still maintaining similar levels of revenue, that is saving $150,000,000 per year. Throwing five executives an extra $10,000,000 each in bonus will still save you $100,000,000 per year.
They are letting a lot of important people go though, so I really hope Hasbro knows what it is doing. I mean, Beyond is still doing fine right now under Wizards/Hasbro, so I am not worried about the Wizards failing or anything like that. However, there is a clear difference in atmosphere and tone at Beyond between when Beyond's founders were still at the helm, when there was period of leadership limbo, and when Hasbro finally fully took over. There are clear improvements to Beyond over time (inventory, physical-digital bundles, third party content, maps/VTT), so changing leadership/ownership is not going to stop that, on the other hand, there are some stuff that clearly went down hill (communication and transparency). So yeah, while I am not worried about Beyond being shut down, I am a little concerned about the operations of the business and the level or service it can provide.
A lot of us are still waiting for RAW stuff like spell points, epic boons, and temporary effects. Other than RAW, off the top of my mind, we also want more granular control over content available in each campaign, more expansive and easier to use homebrew tools, implement character folders, and AL compatibility. And more than just Beyond, we also want Wizards to improve their shipping/handling on their physical-digital bundles, more translations to other languages and support in other countries, better quality/quantity of content in books, and so on. For me, I cannot say I am optimistic on these issues when I hear Wizards is letting so many big names go.
Are you arguing with me or a straw man? My point is that GPT-4 is monstrously expensive in monetary terms and in computational terms, and that in the near future we're not likely to see the kind of advances that make it less computationally intensive, or more feasible to use for, frankly, as petty a purpose as AI DMing. I'm in no way arguing for short-termism.
"In the long run we're all dead" reads like a short-termism stance to me, and a dismissive one to boot. Like attracts like.
It's a well-known quote by a famous economist. In no way is it dismissive or sarcastic.
I know where the quote originally came from. That doesn't mean I have to agree with its use in this (or any) context.
To wit: the intersection between AI and not just gaming, but *all* creative endeavors, is exactly the kind of invention where we should be prizing long-term thinking and steady development. Recognizing that is not a personal attack against you.
I think the layoffs - especially during Hanukkah and right before Christmas - is a pretty heartless move.
Maybe Wizards was dealing with corporate bloat.. That seems like something you can reasonably speculate, though it is speculation as there is no "firm evidence" for it. SO it's speculation, just like me speculating that this will be a change that harms the quality of Wotzy's books, Youtube vids, and general products and that it'll likely be a negative change over all.
I dunno why Cocks, Williams, and others make millions yet they're firing these people. Seems cruel.
It might turn out to be a good change.
I'm a bit conflicted on the timing. If you're going to terminate a bunch of people, perhaps waiting until after the holiday is less cruel... or maybe it's more cruel since they would have gone traveling or made lavish purchases or even filed their taxes not realizing what was about to happen. Knowing what they know now, they have more time to plan their next move, can declare a life event on their upcoming returns etc.
I would of course have preferred no layoffs at all (ESPECIALLY no WotC layoffs) - but assuming that wasn't an option, this might have been the lesser evil. (But as any alignment scholar will tell you, a lesser evil is still evil).
Fully agreed. What do you think about AI-DM's? If the growth of the game is no longer bottle-necked by the number of available DM's, that could potentially do wonders for the number of users. I wonder if their recent statement completely excludes all forms of AI, not limited just art and writing for final products, and they're nipping it in the bud early.
<SNIPPED> The main thing to really consider is why do people choose to play D&D rather than a digital RPG? To me it comes down to two things: 1) the human connection - D&D is a community, you play it with your friends and may make new friends by playing it. 2) the creative freedom - there are no invisible walls in D&D, no pre-programmed move set that are the only things your character can do.
AI DMs destroy #1 to a large extent, and would either have to limit #2 or would be easily broken / driven insane. But I fully acknowledge other people want other things out of the game, but IMO most of those people are the combat-focused power-gamers - who just want to make that character that can do 10,000 damage on turn 1, because big numbers make them happy. For those people, I'd be happy for them to have an AI to beat up with their OP builds.
Something like a "D&D Arena" where you can pit your character (or a party of character you design) against a random set of monsters on a random map, where the enemies are controlled by AI would be doable and I suspect relatively viable financially. The quality of the AI will be limited and I'm certain players would find ways to exploit it, but the kind of player it would appeal to are the kind that would find figuring out how to exploit it fun and empowering.
I fully agree that human DMs will be better than AI DMs for the foreseeable future. The market that an A.I. DM would appeal to would be people who find person-to-person interaction bothersome, inconvenient (scheduling is certainly a major headache for live games), and/or are for more concerned with the player-to-player experience even if it means there is no human DM.
People are already testing robot boyfriends and robot girlfriends, with many others already working on the VR equivalent. There is already a market for people who want A.I. romantic relationships. Yes, we can argue that the roles played by robotic companions is far more limited than that played by a human lover, but a similar argument can be made for an AI DM vs. a human DM.
If Hasbro (or whoever buys out Hasbro in the next 10 years) can streamline RPG gaming functions enough to strip away the more difficult-to-program options that players might take but preserve enough to provide some semblance to a human-DMed D&D game, that will be enough for many people. So what I dread is not that AI will replace the most bothersome, time-consuming aspects of DMing, but that the market for AI-DMing grows large enough that game developers will strip away the more creative aspects of current RPGs (such as illusion magic, wild-shaping, unconventional uses for common items, unconventional magic items) to streamline the hobby such that game becomes far less interesting for people like me, who mostly plays live face-to-face games because there is so much more room for improvising situations and solutions. If the Polymorph spell can be simplified so that the player only gets 3 options, that makes it so much easier to program but also forces every player who uses that set of game rules into a smaller creative box. In the long run, this aspect of geek culture becomes more homogenized, with unpleasant implications for larger society as well.
They did indeed apologize. they even noted that they were unaware the artist in question had used AI as a basis and then came up with guidelines for it (ergo, shocked).
Nor did I say that people could not make arguments in good faith without evidence -- I was very specific in my explanation.
Thus, my version of events was not false, and I did not say what you accused me of saying.
Huh I searched for an apology when I made that post and couldn't find one. It's possible Wargamer is wrong but I probably just missed it tbh.
As for the good faith/bad faith arguments, I thought you were talking about whether or not an argument meant someone was arguing in good/bad faith and opposed that because I don't think you can easily tell whether or not someone's being disingenuous just because they have an idiotic or accurate stance. But it seems I misunderstood you lol so I dunno what you were saying.
And to be clear, I do think Wizards was surprised by this I just thought saying they were shocked given that artists using AI art is something it seems obvious to expect... But maybe they were shocked I just doubt it was too unexpected for them or for anyone with knowledge of all this AI and the sheer amount of art in D&D books.
--
Glad I was able to clarify all this lol. I honestly think my stance is rather similar to most people here and definitely not the polar opposite of Caerwyn's. But I just suck at communicating and have a different interpretation and view on what I call relatively informed speculation (the word disconnect makes sense to me here). But maybe that's the wrong word for it lol. Anyways, good night all and I'm glad I finallymanaged to help steer this conversation away from a goofy aaa debate on the future of AI and stuff. ::
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I'm not against AI art, or AI being part of a creative process. Covid dovetailed into my retirement, so I've had the time to plough into learning AI and actual "old-school" image editing (GIMP/photoshop). I cannot draw, it's a super tool and a super combo. If I could draw, I'd be using all 3 - but I'm very clear where I do (but, I'm just some dude). Will it mean WOTC... do stuff... stuff that we may/may not like? Probably. I'm not optimistic there, but... meh.
On paper the layoffs - without knowing the terms of severance, it's really hard to judge. However, it'd be nice to bisect AI from Layoffs in another thread. However, just to chip another point into the AI argument, this might be leaning into the new (and probably more thereof) Third Party content - where realisticly, the onus will be on the Third Party and not WOTC. I'd guess hope that's with some foresight on WOTC part to stop the inevitable PR disaster, so maybe the statement's a "good thing"?
For what it's worth, there was a Bamf podcast with two of the game design folks caught in the layoffs, Dan Dillon game designer and Eytan Bernstein lead editor. Both had nothing but good things to say about the game and the company, and the people they were working with. Both said, they’re not going to try and tell people what to do, but don’t boycott on their behalf. If you do, it will hurt the WotC employees that are still there more than the corporate folks that actually made the decisions. And if you want to do something, it’s better to look for ways to support those who were laid off than to try and punish the company.
They didn’t think it was, as layoffs go, anything was unusually mean. And as far as it happening in mid-December, there’s really no good time to be laid off. And they are getting a severance package, though they can’t talk about it.
Unrelated to the layoffs, both seem pretty excited about the 2024 books. The community playtest feedback is actually something they pay attention to. And they do actually read every comment, so please don’t be a jerk.
They talk a bit about their time there and themselves. The whole thing runs a little over an hour, but it’s really pretty interesting.
I have nothing against AI art inherently. I do personally believe (albeit with little evidence) that most current AI art platforms were trained on art they didn't have permission to use, and that that training data should be disclosed and the relevant artists compensated in some way. But if WotC trained an AI using the piles upon piles of art that they do own across all their IP (the amount of art they own from Magic alone is staggering to contemplate) and then used that AI to make more art in a similar style, that would be within their rights as an IP-holder. But they probably shouldn't do that until AI regulations are more concrete.
I use Ai art for my groups but, if i were going to publish the stuff i write i would have to look in the public domain or go with no art. I can't draw to save my life unless i am making a map. I am not fan ripping off artists for personal gain. Also yes getting laid off around christmas time sucks been there done it. However there are slightly less worse times to be laid off memorial day or labor day where a person might not be as worried about heating their home severance only goes so far
Probably cheaper to pay executives more and lay more people off than to pay executives less and lay less people off.
If you lay off 3,000 workers who makes $50,000 per year each while still maintaining similar levels of revenue, that is saving $150,000,000 per year. Throwing five executives an extra $10,000,000 each in bonus will still save you $100,000,000 per year.
Except increasing or decreasing CEO salary doesn't change your productivity at all. You can still make product at the same rate. Laying off 20% of your workforce probably results in more than a 20% drop in productivity.
Probably cheaper to pay executives more and lay more people off than to pay executives less and lay less people off.
If you lay off 3,000 workers who makes $50,000 per year each while still maintaining similar levels of revenue, that is saving $150,000,000 per year. Throwing five executives an extra $10,000,000 each in bonus will still save you $100,000,000 per year.
Except increasing or decreasing CEO salary doesn't change your productivity at all. You can still make product at the same rate. Laying off 20% of your workforce probably results in more than a 20% drop in productivity.
i wonder what's the ROI for increasing CEO pay? not that we could trust the answer since it would be coming from a CEO with interest in remaining relevant. like listening to a coyote standing in the hen house doorway explaining why fewer daily eggs is likely a factor of market conditions and nothing to do with the coyote's management style nor rumors of recently vacated positions and really chickens in general just don't want to work anymore.
Probably cheaper to pay executives more and lay more people off than to pay executives less and lay less people off.
If you lay off 3,000 workers who makes $50,000 per year each while still maintaining similar levels of revenue, that is saving $150,000,000 per year. Throwing five executives an extra $10,000,000 each in bonus will still save you $100,000,000 per year.
Except increasing or decreasing CEO salary doesn't change your productivity at all. You can still make product at the same rate. Laying off 20% of your workforce probably results in more than a 20% drop in productivity.
Not necessarily. Sometimes you’re over staffed. I’ve been places where we laid people off with no appreciable loss in quality of our work. The business climate changed and we had people sitting around not doing too much. I’d guess many of the layoffs fit in that pattern. Hasbro has been selling fewer toys, stands to reason they don’t need as many people making them. WotC is a different case, where its sales are up and they still had to cut a few people. I’m not trying to say anything bad about those people or the quality of their work. But even with MtG and D&D’s growth, it’s possible they were also over staffed.
Probably cheaper to pay executives more and lay more people off than to pay executives less and lay less people off.
If you lay off 3,000 workers who makes $50,000 per year each while still maintaining similar levels of revenue, that is saving $150,000,000 per year. Throwing five executives an extra $10,000,000 each in bonus will still save you $100,000,000 per year.
Except increasing or decreasing CEO salary doesn't change your productivity at all. You can still make product at the same rate. Laying off 20% of your workforce probably results in more than a 20% drop in productivity.
i wonder what's the ROI for increasing CEO pay? not that we could trust the answer since it would be coming from a CEO with interest in remaining relevant. like listening to a coyote standing in the hen house doorway explaining why fewer daily eggs is likely a factor of market conditions and nothing to do with the coyote's management style nor rumors of recently vacated positions and really chickens in general just don't want to work anymore.
Funny you should say that, lol.
THe standard ROI measure that is used to determine "adequate compensation" typically involves a series of factors that can be narrowly brken down into three broad categories:
Increase in Market Price/total Market Value. (stocks)
Increase in Net Profit.
Debt Reduction.
Strictly speaking, Boards look to those metrics to identify the ROI, but there is one final factor that tends to overwhelm them and that is not a statistical measure, but a purely subjective one:
Reputational value
This one is blown out of context, and is essentially the Ego factor. But it has existed as long as the concept of Corporations (that's roughly 500 CE/AD, for you D&D people), and no one casually tosses away 1500 years of tradition, especially these days when the CEO is one of the shareholders or possibly a founder.
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Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Great podcast featuring two of the more prominent recent laid-off creators, Dan Dillon and Eytan Bernstein, as well as Owen KC Stephens who was laid off from WotC some years prior to provide his more historical perspective on this sort of thing. It's a bit of a long watch but they share just about as direct an eyewitness account of things as we've seen:
To briefly summarize some of the key points for those interested:
1) Obviously they can't talk about the content of the severance packages they received, other than to confirm that they did in fact receive packages.
2) While sad about being laid off from what they saw as a dream job, they are still very optimistic about the quality of the upcoming 2024 books, and plan to continue playing and supporting D&D themselves, as well as supporting their still-employed colleagues and creatives still on the inside. They also want to remind all of us that surviving layoffs is no fun either, survivor's guilt is a real thing, and those who remain deserve our empathy too.
3) They would obviously rather there have been no layoffs at all, but they didn't see anything particularly out of the ordinary with these events or their timing. In particular, they saw the upside e.g. from a tax and benefits perspective for the layoffs to happen late this year as opposed to early next year.
4) Nothing but good to say about Crawford and Perkins and their dedication to improving the game, and requests that no hate is directed at them or any other creative still on the inside. They also both reiterated that yes, every single playtest comment is being read.
5) The most helpful thing we can do is to focus on positivity and support those laid off directly - send them nice words if you can, signal boost any posts they make seeking employment, support them if they have a patreon or any other crowdfunding avenue. Hate, vitriol and death threats do not help, and in fact tend to hurt those still on the inside.
Upward and onward, I hope they have something where they won't pursue antagonizing competition. The community is split enough, don't need them furthering a divide in that.
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TO BRING THINGS BACK ON TOPIC:
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
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HERE.Glassdoor reviews are full of complaints about how overly-top-heavy Wizards is, and how those in supervisory positions are mired in their ways. Jeremy Crawford has said in interviews that some of their mistakes in D&D design stemmed from having too many entrenched individuals like him, and not enough fresh blood and perspectives.
I think there is plenty of tangible evidence from plenty of different sources to conclude Wizards had a middle and upper management problem. Might that conclusion be wrong? Perhaps—but what sets a conclusion apart from speculation is not whether something is correct or not; it is about whether something is based on tangible evidence which supports the position, without requiring hypothetical leaps or assumptions.
And I think there's tangible evidence that it'll be a negative change. Yet tangible and firm evidence are different in my eyes.
Are these Glassdoor reviews from verified employees and how trustworthy is the site's system for that? Random untrustworthy reviewers aren't really solid evidence in my eyes, though I don't really understand how the site works. Additionally, this was a massive move by Hasbro and Wizards seemed to just be one division that was potentially required to cut people. I dunno if Wizards having a corporate bloat problem would cause them to partake in this company wide movement, which doesn't seem to be strictly tied to them having this issue.
Fundamentally though, the thing that isn't concrete for me is that while there's an argument to be made on Wotzy's "corporate bloat", I see zero evidence that it inspired this change - not something else - other than the fact that it's one of many potential issues Wizards (the important subdivision of Hasbro here lol) may have. So yeah, I don't think this is wild speculation, but I don't view firm evidence to support this other than the fact that it makes some sense as an explanation here but maybe I'm just a doofus lol.
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HERE.In WotC's view, I think it's pretty much a given that's what they're doing. They think they don't need them and they're not providing value for money (which is to say they're not providing enough profit to justify their wages versus other methods of investment, or payoffs). The question is whether they're clipping the cat's claws to a reasonable level...or cutting and damaging the claw itself. No one here knows which way it's going and it's all speculation. Even WotC isn't 100% sure and is gambling (albeit they're in a better position than us to judge...but it's still gambling to an extent).
We'll only know in a few years when there's a track record showing how those cuts have affected the products...and ironically, we'll almost certainly have forgotten about this episode and so will never connect the dots.
To be blunt, WotC exists to make money. Not just money in general, but money for a specific group of people. People who are a lot closer to CEOs etc than the people actually creating the product. Contrary to the reactionary claims of some, that doesn't make them evil, it's just how things are and it informs their motivations and goals.
People generally don't fire themselves or their near peers to save money...they look further down the line to trim the fat. Usually, it's from the bottom up - if they don't get enough fat to trim from the bottom, they move up, until they find it.
They could look at the massive salaries at the top. Generally though, for multiple reasons (good and bad), they'll look lower down first.
Indeed it could.
I've seen enough decision making to realise that many decisions aren't made from a logical, rational and thought out place. They're driven by motives and agendas (no, I'm not implying nefarious intents there - it's a fact that we all have these agendas and motives that drive our decisions, often more than we realise), and so often the wrong decisions are made and to the detriment of others - and in cases of large companies, a lot of others.
In the other hand, we don't see even a fraction of the information necessary to see why these cuts were made (there's been a ton of speculation on this thread, but speculation is cheap). I could easily see this being a positive step forward that could even be moving to fix some of the problems that have made some of the people on these boards so cynical towards WotC.
We'll see. I'm hoping for the best, that this turns a corner and the company improves. The cynic in me says that's not certain and that this could easily head south. The realist in me says that no one knows and we'll find out over the next few years.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
They did indeed apologize. they even noted that they were unaware the artist in question had used AI as a basis and then came up with guidelines for it (ergo, shocked).
Nor did I say that people could not make arguments in good faith without evidence -- I was very specific in my explanation.
Thus, my version of events was not false, and I did not say what you accused me of saying.
But we do both agree that it is silly to think that wizards did this on purpose, lol.
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If they are getting rid of big names, the timing is less important than the fact that they are getting rid of people who can signficantly impact business. These people can take care of themselves, and I highly doubt they do not have some kind of severance package that will keep them comfortable for a while.
For employees lower down the rung though, then yeah, it does suck.
Probably cheaper to pay executives more and lay more people off than to pay executives less and lay less people off.
If you lay off 3,000 workers who makes $50,000 per year each while still maintaining similar levels of revenue, that is saving $150,000,000 per year. Throwing five executives an extra $10,000,000 each in bonus will still save you $100,000,000 per year.
They are letting a lot of important people go though, so I really hope Hasbro knows what it is doing. I mean, Beyond is still doing fine right now under Wizards/Hasbro, so I am not worried about the Wizards failing or anything like that. However, there is a clear difference in atmosphere and tone at Beyond between when Beyond's founders were still at the helm, when there was period of leadership limbo, and when Hasbro finally fully took over. There are clear improvements to Beyond over time (inventory, physical-digital bundles, third party content, maps/VTT), so changing leadership/ownership is not going to stop that, on the other hand, there are some stuff that clearly went down hill (communication and transparency). So yeah, while I am not worried about Beyond being shut down, I am a little concerned about the operations of the business and the level or service it can provide.
A lot of us are still waiting for RAW stuff like spell points, epic boons, and temporary effects. Other than RAW, off the top of my mind, we also want more granular control over content available in each campaign, more expansive and easier to use homebrew tools, implement character folders, and AL compatibility. And more than just Beyond, we also want Wizards to improve their shipping/handling on their physical-digital bundles, more translations to other languages and support in other countries, better quality/quantity of content in books, and so on. For me, I cannot say I am optimistic on these issues when I hear Wizards is letting so many big names go.
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I know where the quote originally came from. That doesn't mean I have to agree with its use in this (or any) context.
To wit: the intersection between AI and not just gaming, but *all* creative endeavors, is exactly the kind of invention where we should be prizing long-term thinking and steady development. Recognizing that is not a personal attack against you.
I'm a bit conflicted on the timing. If you're going to terminate a bunch of people, perhaps waiting until after the holiday is less cruel... or maybe it's more cruel since they would have gone traveling or made lavish purchases or even filed their taxes not realizing what was about to happen. Knowing what they know now, they have more time to plan their next move, can declare a life event on their upcoming returns etc.
I would of course have preferred no layoffs at all (ESPECIALLY no WotC layoffs) - but assuming that wasn't an option, this might have been the lesser evil. (But as any alignment scholar will tell you, a lesser evil is still evil).
I fully agree that human DMs will be better than AI DMs for the foreseeable future. The market that an A.I. DM would appeal to would be people who find person-to-person interaction bothersome, inconvenient (scheduling is certainly a major headache for live games), and/or are for more concerned with the player-to-player experience even if it means there is no human DM.
People are already testing robot boyfriends and robot girlfriends, with many others already working on the VR equivalent. There is already a market for people who want A.I. romantic relationships. Yes, we can argue that the roles played by robotic companions is far more limited than that played by a human lover, but a similar argument can be made for an AI DM vs. a human DM.
If Hasbro (or whoever buys out Hasbro in the next 10 years) can streamline RPG gaming functions enough to strip away the more difficult-to-program options that players might take but preserve enough to provide some semblance to a human-DMed D&D game, that will be enough for many people. So what I dread is not that AI will replace the most bothersome, time-consuming aspects of DMing, but that the market for AI-DMing grows large enough that game developers will strip away the more creative aspects of current RPGs (such as illusion magic, wild-shaping, unconventional uses for common items, unconventional magic items) to streamline the hobby such that game becomes far less interesting for people like me, who mostly plays live face-to-face games because there is so much more room for improvising situations and solutions. If the Polymorph spell can be simplified so that the player only gets 3 options, that makes it so much easier to program but also forces every player who uses that set of game rules into a smaller creative box. In the long run, this aspect of geek culture becomes more homogenized, with unpleasant implications for larger society as well.
"But it's really a conspiracy by Tiamat and evil Giant Spiders to test the reaction to the usage of AI art in this dimension!"
Yeah we can agree on that lol.
Huh I searched for an apology when I made that post and couldn't find one. It's possible Wargamer is wrong but I probably just missed it tbh.
As for the good faith/bad faith arguments, I thought you were talking about whether or not an argument meant someone was arguing in good/bad faith and opposed that because I don't think you can easily tell whether or not someone's being disingenuous just because they have an idiotic or accurate stance. But it seems I misunderstood you lol so I dunno what you were saying.
And to be clear, I do think Wizards was surprised by this I just thought saying they were shocked given that artists using AI art is something it seems obvious to expect... But maybe they were shocked I just doubt it was too unexpected for them or for anyone with knowledge of all this AI and the sheer amount of art in D&D books.
--
Glad I was able to clarify all this lol. I honestly think my stance is rather similar to most people here and definitely not the polar opposite of Caerwyn's. But I just suck at communicating and have a different interpretation and view on what I call relatively informed speculation (the word disconnect makes sense to me here). But maybe that's the wrong word for it lol. Anyways, good night all and I'm glad I finally managed to help steer this conversation away from a goofy aaa debate on the future of AI and stuff. ::
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HERE.I'm not against AI art, or AI being part of a creative process. Covid dovetailed into my retirement, so I've had the time to plough into learning AI and actual "old-school" image editing (GIMP/photoshop). I cannot draw, it's a super tool and a super combo. If I could draw, I'd be using all 3 - but I'm very clear where I do (but, I'm just some dude).
Will it mean WOTC... do stuff... stuff that we may/may not like? Probably. I'm not optimistic there, but... meh.
On paper the layoffs - without knowing the terms of severance, it's really hard to judge. However, it'd be nice to bisect AI from Layoffs in another thread. However, just to chip another point into the AI argument, this might be leaning into the new (and probably more thereof) Third Party content - where realisticly, the onus will be on the Third Party and not WOTC. I'd guess hope that's with some foresight on WOTC part to stop the inevitable PR disaster, so maybe the statement's a "good thing"?
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Well i don't know... i mean they we're expecting to get a big amount of money out of this
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For what it's worth, there was a Bamf podcast with two of the game design folks caught in the layoffs, Dan Dillon game designer and Eytan Bernstein lead editor. Both had nothing but good things to say about the game and the company, and the people they were working with. Both said, they’re not going to try and tell people what to do, but don’t boycott on their behalf. If you do, it will hurt the WotC employees that are still there more than the corporate folks that actually made the decisions. And if you want to do something, it’s better to look for ways to support those who were laid off than to try and punish the company.
They didn’t think it was, as layoffs go, anything was unusually mean. And as far as it happening in mid-December, there’s really no good time to be laid off. And they are getting a severance package, though they can’t talk about it.
Unrelated to the layoffs, both seem pretty excited about the 2024 books. The community playtest feedback is actually something they pay attention to. And they do actually read every comment, so please don’t be a jerk.
They talk a bit about their time there and themselves. The whole thing runs a little over an hour, but it’s really pretty interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/live/-SfXA_sSkDo?si=pEi1k7ymKGRviD55
I have nothing against AI art inherently. I do personally believe (albeit with little evidence) that most current AI art platforms were trained on art they didn't have permission to use, and that that training data should be disclosed and the relevant artists compensated in some way. But if WotC trained an AI using the piles upon piles of art that they do own across all their IP (the amount of art they own from Magic alone is staggering to contemplate) and then used that AI to make more art in a similar style, that would be within their rights as an IP-holder. But they probably shouldn't do that until AI regulations are more concrete.
I use Ai art for my groups but, if i were going to publish the stuff i write i would have to look in the public domain or go with no art. I can't draw to save my life unless i am making a map. I am not fan ripping off artists for personal gain. Also yes getting laid off around christmas time sucks been there done it. However there are slightly less worse times to be laid off memorial day or labor day where a person might not be as worried about heating their home severance only goes so far
Except increasing or decreasing CEO salary doesn't change your productivity at all. You can still make product at the same rate. Laying off 20% of your workforce probably results in more than a 20% drop in productivity.
i wonder what's the ROI for increasing CEO pay? not that we could trust the answer since it would be coming from a CEO with interest in remaining relevant. like listening to a coyote standing in the hen house doorway explaining why fewer daily eggs is likely a factor of market conditions and nothing to do with the coyote's management style nor rumors of recently vacated positions and really chickens in general just don't want to work anymore.
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
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Not necessarily. Sometimes you’re over staffed. I’ve been places where we laid people off with no appreciable loss in quality of our work. The business climate changed and we had people sitting around not doing too much.
I’d guess many of the layoffs fit in that pattern. Hasbro has been selling fewer toys, stands to reason they don’t need as many people making them. WotC is a different case, where its sales are up and they still had to cut a few people. I’m not trying to say anything bad about those people or the quality of their work. But even with MtG and D&D’s growth, it’s possible they were also over staffed.
Funny you should say that, lol.
THe standard ROI measure that is used to determine "adequate compensation" typically involves a series of factors that can be narrowly brken down into three broad categories:
Strictly speaking, Boards look to those metrics to identify the ROI, but there is one final factor that tends to overwhelm them and that is not a statistical measure, but a purely subjective one:
This one is blown out of context, and is essentially the Ego factor. But it has existed as long as the concept of Corporations (that's roughly 500 CE/AD, for you D&D people), and no one casually tosses away 1500 years of tradition, especially these days when the CEO is one of the shareholders or possibly a founder.
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Great podcast featuring two of the more prominent recent laid-off creators, Dan Dillon and Eytan Bernstein, as well as Owen KC Stephens who was laid off from WotC some years prior to provide his more historical perspective on this sort of thing. It's a bit of a long watch but they share just about as direct an eyewitness account of things as we've seen:
To briefly summarize some of the key points for those interested:
1) Obviously they can't talk about the content of the severance packages they received, other than to confirm that they did in fact receive packages.
2) While sad about being laid off from what they saw as a dream job, they are still very optimistic about the quality of the upcoming 2024 books, and plan to continue playing and supporting D&D themselves, as well as supporting their still-employed colleagues and creatives still on the inside. They also want to remind all of us that surviving layoffs is no fun either, survivor's guilt is a real thing, and those who remain deserve our empathy too.
3) They would obviously rather there have been no layoffs at all, but they didn't see anything particularly out of the ordinary with these events or their timing. In particular, they saw the upside e.g. from a tax and benefits perspective for the layoffs to happen late this year as opposed to early next year.
4) Nothing but good to say about Crawford and Perkins and their dedication to improving the game, and requests that no hate is directed at them or any other creative still on the inside. They also both reiterated that yes, every single playtest comment is being read.
5) The most helpful thing we can do is to focus on positivity and support those laid off directly - send them nice words if you can, signal boost any posts they make seeking employment, support them if they have a patreon or any other crowdfunding avenue. Hate, vitriol and death threats do not help, and in fact tend to hurt those still on the inside.
Upward and onward, I hope they have something where they won't pursue antagonizing competition. The community is split enough, don't need them furthering a divide in that.