[Layoffs] What's going on at Wizards?

[Bardo]

What the shit?

I just found out Randy Buehler (http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Archive.aspx?author=Randy%20Buehler)(WotC VP of Digital Games) is getting the axe (http://thegamerdome.com/wizards-of-the-coast-layoffs-2/) along with a whole bunch of staff from Wizards' Digital Initiatives thing.

A couple of months ago, Devin Low (after Forsythe), their last Head Developer also got the axe (http://www.linkedin.com/pub/1/089/b65). Look at that desk (http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/mm/16&page=4)(2nd picture), what kind of self-respecting game developer would have a desk like that?

Does anyone have any info on this? It doesn't speak well for WotC. Is it the economy? Does this whole "restructuring" that MaRo has been alluding to for the past 6-months suggest MtG is on life-support? Or, just par for course (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/l/layoffs_and_job_reductions/index.html?scp=1-spot&sq=layoffs&st=cse) in this economy, with no grander implications?

Intelligent speculation welcome. Actual knowledge preferred. Idle "OMG, MtG is coming to an end" comments not wanted.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Hasbro is run by incompetent fucks that have no connection to the fantasy-game industry, no background for it, don't understand their audience or product, and substitute wise decision making for corporate jingoisms and bold, if pointless and idiotic, new business plans designed to make themselves look good?

There's a reason that people hate huge corporations.

This has been going on for a while now, though.

[Aggro_zombies]

Intelligent speculation in these parts has concluded that it's not so much Wizards' problem as it is Hasbro's problem. There is some (somewhat supported) belief that Hasbro has been riding Wizards to make their other games profitable (the ones they do other than Magic. Coincidentally, these games never have a player base of more than five people) and focus less on Magic - basically, to diversify. The problem is that Magic is far and away the most profitable thing Wizards has ever done, so focusing solely on that and cutting support for the Bottomless Money Pit of Crappy Games would go a long way towards milking more money for the parent company. As it is, Wizards is trying to streamline things so as to devote the minimum required resources to Magic that it can while perhaps finding something else it can make money off of. (An aside: it seems this strategy is failing, at least in my eyes - the game took a turn for the worse after Time Spiral block, and has yet to get out of the Pit of Mediocrity and Rehashed Themes it's stuck in. If the block after Alara is multicolor or tribal, I swear I will stop buying new cards.)

This is what I've overheard, anyway.

[TheDarkshineKnight]

From what I understand, the failure of Gleemax and how unbelievably behind WotC is in terms of their Dungeons and Dragons digital initiative has seriously pissed off Hasbro, prompting them to cut away essentially anyone associated with Gleemax or DDI.

[Afro]

I see this as nothing more than falling in line with the rest of the economy. Magic is a luxury item and in a recession like this people buy less luxury items. This is happening everywhere you look, it is no surprise to me to see it happen at Wizards because Hasbro wants to take it in a new direction or cut its losses and start anew when things turn around.

[frogboy]

Magic is a luxury item and in a recession like this people buy less luxury items.

Depends; some entertainment items and diversions are countercyclical.

[Mijorre]

Time to play more L5R.
That is about it.

[Lifeless]

Buehler's title implies that he was involved in the massive cock-up that is MtGO v3. I think that alone would be pretty good ground for termination.

[DeathwingZERO]

I see this as nothing more than falling in line with the rest of the economy. Magic is a luxury item and in a recession like this people buy less luxury items. This is happening everywhere you look, it is no surprise to me to see it happen at Wizards because Hasbro wants to take it in a new direction or cut its losses and start anew when things turn around.

Entertainment is an escapism when reality sets a bad picture. The video game industry is seeing record breaking profits (WotLK is now the best selling PC game of all time, and Blizzard can't keep up with releasing their prepaid game cards with the demand this holiday season), while single card sales of Alara, for example, are putting online Magic sellers on life support. It's not that Magic is a luxury, as much as (recent) Magic releases in the secondary market are failing on epic proportions.

I see this as a continuation of the restructuring, though I'm honestly concerned. At the rate we are losing developers and R&D genius, where exactly will it end? I'm pretty certain these choices are ones that Hasbro made, and not WotC. Though at this point, I'd really like to see what Hasbro has planned for WotC, as Magic and D&D are pretty much all they have going for them now.

[Tanarin]

From what I understand, the failure of Gleemax and how unbelievably behind WotC is in terms of their Dungeons and Dragons digital initiative has seriously pissed off Hasbro, prompting them to cut away essentially anyone associated with Gleemax or DDI.

Yeah, it seems from the looks off all the layoffs that got leaked that this was over Gleemax and DDI, as he two designers were big into the DDI project and Randy hasn't been involved in any hardcore development with the Magic brand in a while. Sadly, this is how the world works, you screw up too many times and you get the axe. They probably just happened to have another excuse in this case with the bad economy.

[Dan Turner]

From personal Experience (I was let go yesterday from my job as a supervisor for a meat processor) It is more cost effective to hire 2 kids straight from collage or even high school to do my job part time than it was to pay me, with my benefits and stuff to do it full time.


That and in this economy with the downturn of the dollar. The cost of magic overseas has stayed the same while the profitability in US dollars has gone down. I remember when a Canadian $ was like $.75 US now its like $1.25 US so their same $100 bill buys more magic. And Wizards makes less money unless the base there prices on the $US.

So if a company is making less money they can't afford the same amount of staff. So it comes down to who can be safely cut without diminishing the products too much.

I personally think they cut their own throat by bringing out way to many different products in too short of a time period. I MEAN COME ON SERIOUSLY A FREAKING HORSE TRADING CARD GAME WTF. However came up with that one should have been drawn and quartered. They tried to diversify too quickly and the market can't absorb that much new product that quickly.

And by the way Magic sales are up from a year ago but like I said earlier about the $ the profits are being eaten away at.


Sorry about my Rant I am just really tired ATM and kinda worried about my family.

[URABAHN]

Buehler's title implies that he was involved in the massive cock-up that is MtGO v3. I think that alone would be pretty good ground for termination.

Everytime I see Lifeless,he's saying something good. You are absolutely right, as the owner of our local Legacy shop told us, they got a bunch of gamers to program MtGO 3.0 instead of getting competent people who can write code. Earlier this year didn't WotC cut a bunch of games including scaling back on their publishing department to focus on D&D and Magic? I can't find the article, maybe someone here can help me with that. So there's that, the mess that is (was) D&Di, Gleemax, and MtGO 3.0. I guess Hasbro's doing well overall, though (http://www.pbn.com/stories/36633.htm).

[Nihil Credo]

That and in this economy with the downturn of the dollar. The cost of magic overseas has stayed the same while the profitability in US dollars has gone down. I remember when a Canadian $ was like $.75 US now its like $1.25 US so their same $100 bill buys more magic. And Wizards makes less money unless the base there prices on the $US.
It's actually the opposite. If the currency where you make a product (USD in this case) loses value compared to the one where you sell the product (CAD in this case) you profit, because you can sell at the same price and get more money. That's why a weak currency helps your economy - by making your firms more competitive on the global market - but hurts your lifestyle - by making lots of import goods more expensive.

*If* WotC has any currency-related economic woes, they'd have to be related to the steadily decreasing dollars-to-euros rate (possibly dollars-to-yen too, I'm too lazy to go check them).

[Afro]

It's actually the opposite. If the currency where you make a product (USD in this case) loses value compared to the one where you sell the product (CAD in this case) you profit, because you can sell at the same price and get more money. That's why a weak currency helps your economy - by making your firms more competitive on the global market - but hurts your lifestyle - by making lots of import goods more expensive.

This is why Europe has owned Ebay for the past 3-5 years. The Euro was trading at something like 3:2 against the dollar.

[Atwa]

This is why Europe has owned Ebay for the past 3-5 years. The Euro was trading at something like 3:2 against the dollar.

And the only reason why we did that, was because European prices didn't drop at the same rate the dollar did (compared to the Euro).

If I can get almost the half more in boosters (with singles it gets even worse) than a year before overseas and the toy stores raise the prices on boosters instead of dropping them, no way I'm still buying cards in the stores here.

Which resulted in more and more shops closing and/or removing Magic from their shelves. If only wizards lowered their prices along with the dollar for European stores, there would be a lot more retailers and stores to sell their product. I guess they destroyed their own markets over here.

They even tried to limit this from happening by forbidding certain online stores to ship boxes (or even boosters) to Europe, which resulted in me not buying any boosters any more and simply buying only singles. I think they really failed from a business aspect.

Edit: For those of you who don't know how most of the European singles market works: You take the MOTL price of a certain card. Add 20-30% and put a Euro sign before it. Which resulted in a double price (after converting currencies) sometimes. Can you really blame us for buying out most of e-bay?

[cdr]

Everytime I see Lifeless,he's saying something good. You are absolutely right, as the owner of our local Legacy shop told us, they got a bunch of gamers to program MtGO 3.0 instead of getting competent people who can write code.

This is patently false. They didn't have (enough) competent people, period. Gamers or not is pretty irrelevant - Wizards is pretty much always going to hire gamers, it would be dumb not to. They later hired competent people (who were also gamers), but the damage had already been done.

The big problem with MTGOv3 was that it was developed internally, and Wizards just didn't have the staff to develop it properly internally. MTGO was initially developed by an external company (Leaping Lizard) and then Wizards just maintained it.

The server code was the problematic part of MTGOv2, but they decided to redo the client also with v3, and they overestimated *a little* what they were capable of doing with the client. The server code of v3 is pretty good, all told - the number of server crashes is way down, the number of simultaneous players way up, etc. You can see how redoing the client worked out.

I see Buehler walking around at Worlds just like normal, so I'm not sure what's going on with that. I'm sure his Worlds plans had already been finalized for awhile before the cuts, I guess.

[Silverdragon]

My first thought when I heard this was "wtf, this is Randy Buehler goddamn! THE face WotC has right now." But then I remembered the whole Gleemax thing and thought "well, he definitely screwed up that one..."
Anyway this means he can compete in sanctioned events again next year and thanks to his HoF status he is even qualified for all the Pro Tours right away. Maybe he stepped back voluntarily and just didn't say anything.
Hope all of those guys get good jobs again soon.

[Ectoplasm]

What is this Gleemax thing people are talking about?

[Aggro_zombies]

What is this Gleemax thing people are talking about?
IIRC, Gleemax was designed as a one-stop online portal to all sorts of various card and role-playing games. It was supposed to act as a giant online gaming community that all of the various Wizards forums would get rolled into, eventually. It failed because it was a huge project that didn't get the kind of attention and work put into it that huge projects generally require to succeed, so Wizards is phasing out the use of the components it already has in place.

Also, Gleemax is a Legendary Artifact that costs a million mana and lets you choose targets for everything everyone controls.

[Ectoplasm]

I know, it's in Unhinged :)
Thanks for explaining.

[Roman Candle]

Out of blatant curiosity, could this have anything to do with the Conflux leak? I'd imagine they would be pretty upset with that.

[Bardo]

Out of blatant curiosity, could this have anything to do with the Conflux leak? I'd imagine they would be pretty upset with that.

I doubt it, since the biggest hit was in digital initiatives (D&D, mainly, I think). The thing with Conflux is that one of the English-Japanese translators loaded the English card names to his website. I don't think one has anything to do with other.

[atv]

My first thought when I heard this was "wtf, this is Randy Buehler goddamn! THE face WotC has right now." But then I remembered the whole Gleemax thing and thought "well, he definitely screwed up that one..."
Anyway this means he can compete in sanctioned events again next year and thanks to his HoF status he is even qualified for all the Pro Tours right away. Maybe he stepped back voluntarily and just didn't say anything.
Hope all of those guys get good jobs again soon.

Hopefully Buehler can find a new place elsewhere in the company, back to designing cards perhaps? Then again, he has certainly expressed interest in playing on the Tour agan.. so who knows.

In any case, hopefully everyone will find work again soon.

[Seriously]

so is he still working for wotc or was he completely laid off from the company ? who else from wotc has been laid off in the last year of any importance ?

[Mordel]

I dunno, but it would be so cool if Buehler came back to pro magic. Same with Zvi, but I dunno if they are going to get left behind by the new big players.

The game has changed quite a bit since guys like Buehler and Mowshowitz played in PT's.

[Aggro_zombies]

I dunno, but it would be so cool if Buehler came back to pro magic. Same with Zvi, but I dunno if they are going to get left behind by the new big players.

The game has changed quite a bit since guys like Buehler and Mowshowitz played in PT's.
The game changing is rather irrelevant given the fact that the core structural components of the game are still intact. Any player as good as those two can adapt after a while to just about anything - it's not so much the individual mechanics or formats as it is the ability to think strategically and play well.

[freakish777]

Also, it's not like they can't play with older cards at GP Chicago or anything...

[Bardo]

so is he still working for wotc or was he completely laid off from the company ? who else from wotc has been laid off in the last year of any importance ?

The other serious lay off was Devin Low, their former Lead Developer for Magic. Remember when they had that rotating Latest Developments column (the Friday slot) for like 3 months, before LaPille took over writing? That was part of Low getting the axe.

As for Buehler, he still does the "sports-casting" (or whatever you'd call it) with BDM on the Pro Tour. Maybe he gets stipend from Organize Play? I have no idea, but imagine he's still on WotC's payroll -- just not for digital games.