cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/12955133
Wizards Of The Coast President Cynthia Williams Steps Down
Meh. Fuck Isengard.
Over the years, I’ve had many friends work for WotC in various tiers, including exec level, and all of them have stories that run in a similar vein: the corp leadership would have very little against being the white tower that sells the whole of its warded domain to the highest bidder, if the price is right. Hell, even the execs in the 00s joked about calling the main hub “The White Tower”.
Fuck WotC into the mud and leave it to drown in the puddle.
“AI, what’s the good picture for news about corproate CEO stepping down?” “Sexy knight dommy mommy that will step on my bad robot programming.” “I’m deeply concerned about you, AI”
What does that thumbnail have ANYTHING to do with the article?
Now, history has taught me that whoever they bring in next will be worse in a myriad of new and depressing ways, but a kernel of irrational hope remains that the pendulum may swing in another direction and they’ll see if, instead of viewing their playerbase as untapped piggybacks, they focus on delivering good products at reasonable rates and see where that takes them. A pipe dream, I know.
I’m not particularly clued into the industry but I’m not shocked. From what I’ve seen, Cynthia Williams believed the most profitable direction for D&D was to monetise game game at a very granular level like microtransactions, as we saw in the OGL debacle, plus her focus on the VTT was likely going to manifest in a similar way.
I’d say the explosive success of Baldur’s Gate and the surge in WotC talking to practically all games companies possible, it’s clear they’ve set their sights on a hopeful path to continued revenue growth that does not offend any fans.
My assumption is that Cynthia simply centered her leadership on a path that is no longer the direction the company has deviated from.
I’m guessing she got the job because Hasbro approved of those plans for profitability, though. It all seemed standard corporate affair. Hopefully they learned from their mistake, but I think this means they’ll just find a CEO to squeeze money out of pumping bad video games or some shit. Companies always learn the wrong lessons from their success.
In fact, they already learned the OGL lesson before, so it’s dumb they had to learn it again. They’ll probably have to repeat another one of these lessons in 10 years or so. Hopefully until then, the company is slightly better, but we’ll see who steps up.
2-3 years of pumping shit video games is 2-3 years that they aren’t fucking with the core product, which is the only part I don’t want ruined. The can make bad games, bad merch, bad brand tie-ins or anything else for all I care as long as they don’t harm the game.