Friday, August 15, 2008
Footsteps In the Hall
A day for potentially dire information leaking from WizKids. Several elements remain speculative, but it's difficult to put a positive spin on this.
We recently (July 23rd) had the release of Secret Invasion, which was still a nicely-designed set (both in terms of character selection and dials) but had some rough elements in the area of production -- some issues with sculpts but mostly with paint. Some odd and even unfortunate choices made, too, but I've already talked about the set in a previous post.
We'd already known that Seth Johnson, the designer for the past several years, left a little while back, but that he designed everything through this fall's Arkham Asylum set, and had a shepherding hand on Hammer of Thor, which will be the next Marvel set (February '09), though Kelly Bonilla was actually the one to do the designs (stats, keywords, etc.) for that set. Kelly seemed to have Seth's full confidence, and I expect that in those respects at least the set will be solid.
Today, however, was the next big layoff date for WizKids staff. A fairly reliable, if admittedly biased, source ran a post this afternoon, which I'll reprint below.
Just to be sure everyone is on the same page, remember that Topps currently owns WizKids. Okay, here's Hair10's post. (Link is to the HCRealms thread.) I'll resume on the far side of it.
My initial reactions weren't positive.
It seems amazing that they could so misjudge things. Am I the only one who is getting weird echoes of some bad decisions made in the history of the comics industry, as when some people decided that storytelling was relatively unimportant?
A completely inexperienced designer with little comics knowledge in charge of a game based on comics characters, and their sculptors let go..? Someone, somewhere up the chain apparently made the decision that these sets will sell on their own - just print anything with the comics connection and emphasize that it's going to be produced in limited numbers, and people will buy it. Yeah, it at least seems that whatever wasn't crushed under the boot of "Industry Standard" WotC approaches will be wiped out by the Topps "collectible" steamroller.
Some of the immediate speculation is that Topps may be making all of these immense trims so that the next two quarters come out as staggeringly profitable, and are intending to shop Wizkids to a new buyer. (Wizards of the Coast is the top postential buyer most are rushing towards.) All of that is strongly in the Speculation column.
I know I'm not about to just jump ship this early -- it at least appears we'll have some good things coming in Arkham Asylum and Hammer of Thor, so I'll deal with each as it comes and chart the course for the rest of '09 as information dictates. Worst case? This time next year I won't be spending any more money on clix, but I'll still have a huge collection covering the vast majority of the characters and plenty of extras to modify into characters that remained unmade.
Heroclix appears to continue to be a money-maker for the company, though, so I'm not expecting them to simply shut it down. What's more likely is that they'll push through what will essentially be more quality drops and increase the aggravation factor as concerns the true collectibility of the game.
As stated earlier, much of the info isn't heartening, but not all of it is immediately damning. None of it is immediately encouraging either, but I'm trying to step back from it and take a second look. It isn't as if we don't have time.
I'll be curious to see if any of the creative staff being let go will still be offered contract work. This wouldn't be the first operation that decided to cut its immediate overhead to the bone and then outsource most of it to people they have no long-term obligations to, including any benefits. However, if much of this is to be done post-HoT, they'll have to start dishing that work out soon. Hopefully WizKids' NDAs won't prevent the sculptors from saying something about it in advance -- even if it's just to say how many characters they have them working on -- and WizKids itself will start giving out heartening information about such things... though I guess they won't be likely to do that for at least a while, with two sets in the pipeline ahead of any such sets, which we've been given little to no info on.
Irking me a little is knowing that on some level the success of the next two sets will (likely) reflect positively back on those who remain, despite their having little to nothing to do with any of the aspects that matter. I shudder to think what little marketing tweaks might be coming from these muddled middle management types, especially if they're kowtowing to Topps' execs with their harder to get = more "exciting"/more collectible" mentality.
A day for potentially dire information leaking from WizKids. Several elements remain speculative, but it's difficult to put a positive spin on this.
We recently (July 23rd) had the release of Secret Invasion, which was still a nicely-designed set (both in terms of character selection and dials) but had some rough elements in the area of production -- some issues with sculpts but mostly with paint. Some odd and even unfortunate choices made, too, but I've already talked about the set in a previous post.
We'd already known that Seth Johnson, the designer for the past several years, left a little while back, but that he designed everything through this fall's Arkham Asylum set, and had a shepherding hand on Hammer of Thor, which will be the next Marvel set (February '09), though Kelly Bonilla was actually the one to do the designs (stats, keywords, etc.) for that set. Kelly seemed to have Seth's full confidence, and I expect that in those respects at least the set will be solid.
Today, however, was the next big layoff date for WizKids staff. A fairly reliable, if admittedly biased, source ran a post this afternoon, which I'll reprint below.
Just to be sure everyone is on the same page, remember that Topps currently owns WizKids. Okay, here's Hair10's post. (Link is to the HCRealms thread.) I'll resume on the far side of it.
Here’s some more info from the inner workings of WK. I’ve known this for a bit but I promised the person who told me that I would hold on to it until at least the 15th. Why the 15th? As some of you may remember, it’s layoff day at WK.Whew.
As far as I know this information is accurate. I was told the below by a (now?) former WK employee and parts have been confirmed by other sources. But since it isn’t first-hand knowledge on my part I figured it was best placed in the “Rumor Mill” forum. It may be the last look at what goes on inside of WK as any contacts I might have had are now gone.
First, some old news but with some confirmation…
* Seth was let go, he didn’t leave of his own accord. When he was told he was going to be let go he chose his date rather than wait around until Aug. 15.
* Kelly Bonilla was given the helm of HC design. She’s a former MW lead designer and she did some Pirates too.
* Kelly has worked extensively on Hammer of Thor. In fact, the entire set was/is pretty much done by her.
* Kelly’s last day is today (August 15th) as she was also let go.
* There are two rounds of layoffs… August 15th and October 15th.
Now some new info…
* Anyone who may be left over now (after the Aug 15 date) is pretty much out the door on Oct 15. WK has cut something like 95% (guesstimate) of the staff.
* Pretty much the only people left are Jake Theis (HC Brand Manager), Wade and Rollie (Assistant Brand Managers), Justin Ziran (director of brand management), a few admin (such as financial and HR) people, and one other (who I’ll get to in a moment). Pretty much everyone else is gone. [Speculation – based on the Joe Huack article I saw early this month, I would expect the admin functions to be moved to Topps HQ in NY]
* Tiffany O’Brian was let go as well. As some of you know, she’s the Brand Manager for Pirates and Star Wars. [Speculation – both myself and the person I was talking to think that Pirates and Star Wars will be discontinued after whatever releases they have currently in the pipe.]
* All of the Consumer Experience Department is gone.
* All of the Editors are gone.
* All of the Marketing Department is gone.
* Some of those functions may go back to Topps corporate but there are no longer jobs in WK for them.
* Pretty much all of the Art Department is gone. Sculpting is being outsourced to China (we’re already seeing the effects in the SI set of that). Ben Misenar and Brian Dugas work will show up in Arkham and Hammer, but after that it’ll be Chinese sculpting shops. Ben and Brian will do some contract work only, but they are no longer on the WK payroll.
* The lease for the WK office is up in October (it’ll be interesting to see what happens there).
And now the 64 thousand dollar question… with Seth (and then Kelly) gone everyone wants to know who the new HC game designer will be? Well, it’s none other than Eric Engelhard (Caliban17), the current Consumer Experience Rep.
Before I say anything more, a bit of full disclosure… Engelhard is the guy that perma-banned me from the WK forums for “attempting to start an illegal mail campaign” when I posted that people should take their WF brick coupons that were getting returned and send them back to the WK offices to show that we were unhappy with the way it was handled.
I don’t really care about the banning (the WK forum is a joke anyway), but IMO the reasoning itself speaks volumes about the man. He was the person responsible for the CoG and Crisis events and all the screw-ups that went along with them (scheduling, mis-shipped prize support, lack of info, etc). The persons that I got this information from did not have kind things to say about him either (moron and brown-noser were the kinder terms used). A good many of the ex and current (at least until the 15th) employees were “horrified” to hear the news that he was taking over HC design (“horrified” was the exact word used). The kicker is that while he evidently reads a few comics, he barely knows HeroClix and he has no game design experience coming into this
The more I think about it, the more I realize that WK is an odd company. When faced with financial pressures, most companies refocus on their core products in an effort not to lose customers at the very least. If cuts are necessary, it’s middle management that usually takes the hit and not the guys in the trenches who are turning out product for you. But WK works in completely the opposite fashion. They farm out sculpting so the visual quality suffers. They sack the guys doing the work and turn it over to unqualified individuals to pick up the pieces and carry the future of your money makers. And somehow, through all of this, middle management remains.
Now, I realize I come off as a complainer here on these forums but I’ve never been a “THE END IS NEAR!” kind of guy. But I gotta say that it sure seems like Hammer of Thor might be the start of WizKids’ Ragnarok. We get one set designed by Kelly only to have the game handed over to a n00b after that. And IF Pirates and Star Wars are truly zombie game lines then that makes WK a one trick pony. WK appears to be in some pretty dire straights right now. Guess we wait and see what happens, but…
My initial reactions weren't positive.
It seems amazing that they could so misjudge things. Am I the only one who is getting weird echoes of some bad decisions made in the history of the comics industry, as when some people decided that storytelling was relatively unimportant?
A completely inexperienced designer with little comics knowledge in charge of a game based on comics characters, and their sculptors let go..? Someone, somewhere up the chain apparently made the decision that these sets will sell on their own - just print anything with the comics connection and emphasize that it's going to be produced in limited numbers, and people will buy it. Yeah, it at least seems that whatever wasn't crushed under the boot of "Industry Standard" WotC approaches will be wiped out by the Topps "collectible" steamroller.
Some of the immediate speculation is that Topps may be making all of these immense trims so that the next two quarters come out as staggeringly profitable, and are intending to shop Wizkids to a new buyer. (Wizards of the Coast is the top postential buyer most are rushing towards.) All of that is strongly in the Speculation column.
I know I'm not about to just jump ship this early -- it at least appears we'll have some good things coming in Arkham Asylum and Hammer of Thor, so I'll deal with each as it comes and chart the course for the rest of '09 as information dictates. Worst case? This time next year I won't be spending any more money on clix, but I'll still have a huge collection covering the vast majority of the characters and plenty of extras to modify into characters that remained unmade.
Heroclix appears to continue to be a money-maker for the company, though, so I'm not expecting them to simply shut it down. What's more likely is that they'll push through what will essentially be more quality drops and increase the aggravation factor as concerns the true collectibility of the game.
As stated earlier, much of the info isn't heartening, but not all of it is immediately damning. None of it is immediately encouraging either, but I'm trying to step back from it and take a second look. It isn't as if we don't have time.
I'll be curious to see if any of the creative staff being let go will still be offered contract work. This wouldn't be the first operation that decided to cut its immediate overhead to the bone and then outsource most of it to people they have no long-term obligations to, including any benefits. However, if much of this is to be done post-HoT, they'll have to start dishing that work out soon. Hopefully WizKids' NDAs won't prevent the sculptors from saying something about it in advance -- even if it's just to say how many characters they have them working on -- and WizKids itself will start giving out heartening information about such things... though I guess they won't be likely to do that for at least a while, with two sets in the pipeline ahead of any such sets, which we've been given little to no info on.
Irking me a little is knowing that on some level the success of the next two sets will (likely) reflect positively back on those who remain, despite their having little to nothing to do with any of the aspects that matter. I shudder to think what little marketing tweaks might be coming from these muddled middle management types, especially if they're kowtowing to Topps' execs with their harder to get = more "exciting"/more collectible" mentality.
Comments:
<< Home
It is all a bit chilling, once something one enjoys becomes someone else's commodity.
You needn't look much further than eBay for an amateur's take on marketing. "ooak" will yeild you thousands of similarly minded "ojects d'art" (one of the more spit-take unducing items can be found here).
You needn't look much further than eBay for an amateur's take on marketing. "ooak" will yeild you thousands of similarly minded "ojects d'art" (one of the more spit-take unducing items can be found here).
Heh. Well, so far we've gotten no more news, so wise speculation's sputtered to a standstill.
That Barbie (and other items Screaming Scorpio Studios have out) is... something... More interesting that seeing what they came up with is seeing some of the items that have actually sold.
Thanks for pointing out the world of OOAK!
Post a Comment
That Barbie (and other items Screaming Scorpio Studios have out) is... something... More interesting that seeing what they came up with is seeing some of the items that have actually sold.
Thanks for pointing out the world of OOAK!
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]
