Losing your job sucks. I know this from personal experience. While I am thankfully among the gainfully employed now, I was part of a “Reduction in Force” about two years ago. It had nothing to do with my job performance, or anything else under my control. It was just a case of the corporation having to cut costs.
I have also watched this happen to many close personal friends of mine. Unfortunately, many of my close friends are currently or have recently been unemployed. Not because of their job performance, but because the companies they work for have either needed to cut costs or had to close down completely. It’s becoming a depressingly common story.
So it shouldn’t be a surprise that I felt a great deal of sympathy for the Wizards of the Coast employees who were affected by the recent round of layoffs:
- Randy Buehler (VP of digital gaming)
- Andrew Finch (director of digital games)
- Stacy Longstreet (senior art director)
- Julia Martin (editor)
- William Meyers (creative manager, digital design)
- Dave Noonan (game designer)
- Jennifer Paige (online community manager)
- Jennifer Powers (marketing)
- Jonathan Tweet (game designer)
I recognize several of the names on that list from contributions to the Wizards of the Coast website, the D&D Podcast, and the numerous D&D game books I have purchased over the years. Even those who I haven’t heard of were part of a company that produced games I love.
I just want to express my sympathy for the tough time they are going through and wish them the best of luck on their job search.
3 comments:
Are we to believe from this that 4e isn't doing as well as we were led to believe?
I wouldn't read anymore into that other than the world is in an economic repression and some company is laying off people every day. I think it has nothing to do with 4e sales. If anything, it would be due to the fact that they don't need as many people working on it now that it is actually out and running.
But most likely it is due to the ecominc woes everyone is feeling right now.
Remember that companies like wizards are closely tied to retail sales. Since retail is quite hard hit, and "nonessential goods" are the first thing to suffer, one can extrapolate that providers of such material will be affected as well. Much as I am not a booster of 4e dnd, I imagine that they would have suffered far worse without the product. From a purely line of business viewpoint, 4e was a masterstroke!
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