Let's not forget the Anti-Monitor Power point Leak.
Where it clearly showed that they (Tuttle) Made the Box with 2 generics so that people would buy 2 or even 3 boxes to get those really useful generics.
I once emailed him directly on a way to solve the glue creep. Never a response. Not even a brush off email back. That just soured me to the end. So now I just don't like the man, and prey to god that Bill Gates trolls the realms and fires his butt.

LOL. Not this time I'm afraid. Believe me though, I've been trying for months. He works for Sony now, and Sony won't take my calls... yet...

-The Le

Hey all--

I don't hate the guy. I don't like the guy. Never met him, don't think I'll ever get the chance. Based on nothing more than hearsay and various ravings....no opinion at all.

If I do meet him, though, I do have exactly one question for him: How's Hawkeye, and the rest of the Crabapple Cove community?

Muskie

Of course there is no lingering animosity that could still be slightly coloring your response!

But I think Karl is right regarding "changes" and what I'd term the "trust" factor. My opinion is it all had to do with his job's purpose at the time - which I suspect had almost everything to do with building up the short-term "bottom-line."
Now in that respect he was a success. In other areas, and other initiatives we can disagree over the wisdom and/or success - Alpha and "Action-clix," new and larger and better looking booster design, new collation, new AP system, collaboration with Marvel/DC over incorporating story arcs into Clix releases, etc...

Some winners, some losers IMO.
I think the biggest thing we CAN agree on is that in our experience he wasn't a "people-person." Which is too bad. I personally don't think TOPPS was looking for a "people person."

I think he was BM when we got some good stuff and some stuff that was so bad I almost quit as a Judge! (for me it was the many AP changes and lack of communication)

But was he "the Devil?"

Nope. Did some good things, made the company some money and moved on. As I noted at the time, if he weren't effective (in very specific, measurable ways) there is no way that SONY would have scooped him up.
But we seem to live in an age of irrational hatred - from Clinton haters to Bush haters and unfortunately we'll probably have Obama haters before long. I don't personally think it's healthy for the hater or the community.

But, hey, that's just MY opinion!

My personal opinion of the man doesn't really come into play. My first three points have been well documented. My last is my take on the current 'set up' of the game... Which I state is an opinion.


And I had forgotten about cardboard as LE prizes. and that was just one cost cutting measure he put into place. Tuttle was all about how much money HC could generate and never about producing a quality product or experience.

I agree with the majority here ... Tuttle, came across as a real jerk when he addressed the public .... the not bribing the player base to play remark sticks in my memory as one such foot in mouth missive of his.

Personally do i translate that to hating the guy, heck no ... but i sure do have an intense dislike for him.

and you have your right to have it.

but you must accept that someone (like me) might be mad at him case he treated the players for idiots.

he told me (and you and everybody else) a lot of things that were NOT true, he didnt care at all for quality and i have SR figs with a paint job that my 3 years old kid could do better, sculpts that made a dog residue a masterpiece in comparison... and he got the price up for all that garbage...
8 / 9 weeks events? man thats a killer, for the community and for the judges.

he did bad for the clixes, maybe good money in the short term, but just read how many guys stopped buyying 2 or 3 cases for only 1 brick and the rest in the secondary market... and lets not stop in the simple "but the production was all sold!" cause we all know how many booster were sold only in events he forced.
I have players that stopped coming to events cause they only paid to get more dupes they could not trade or sell cause EVERYBODY allready have them.
I even have one player that opened a booster in one event and won the first place with it and 1 week later he opened another booster (both in front of me, so there is no "somebody told me" here) exactly the same as the one he opened 1 weel before, he won that event too...

anonym0use hit all the high points I think. I may not agree with all of the issues listed, but they seem to be the hot buttons.

For me it was a seemingly complete and utter disdain for the customer base's opinions. In marketing it's important to know when to listen to the customers and when not to, but he seemed to favor the latter over the former.

-He wanted opening boosters to "feel like Christmas", hence a lack of previews and other useful information that many customers actually used to determine their purchases. Nevermind that many of us really don't like surprises about what we're buying, and that many of us receive discounts from out FLGS for turning our pre-orders in early (so a lack of information COST US MONEY). Lame.

-He wanted to make generics harder to get, to push up sales (not just with the AM Action Pack, but also with the OMACs, Warskrulls, and a few others who were in boosters but outside of Common slots). Lame.

-He put the Chase figures in. Now, I don't have a problem with Chase figures in particular, but I think the way they were implemented was OTT. Having 4 chase figures which are variants of characters we have and with a rarity of 1/case would have done the same thing (driven sales), but made it easier to actually get a chase figure, and it would have provided an incentive for case purchases. 2 chases with a rarity of 1/5 cases (with some areas like my venue getting more like 1/10) is lame, and it's made even more lame when one of the characters is E-2 Superman. Lame.

He made some good decisions too (like CURSR, though the rarity distribution still needs to be tweaked, and more generics need to be in the common slots to add value to later booster purchases), but they couldn't outweigh his negatives, at least not for me.

And by "before long" I'm sure you really mean "about 3 months ago."


I do have to take exception to this quote from anonymouse:

Does it? Have you really looked at that sculpt closely? (I know, I know...who wants to? Unless you're bulimic and need an easier way to purge...) The detailing is actually quite exquisite. If the spindly proportions were correct, and the head not so massive and the face better done and the torso the right size, it would've been a fantastic sculpt.

I'll actually give Tuttle the benefit of the doubt here; what he promised was the original plan and intent. The trouble was, WizKids was using the same old sculptors plus a new crew of less-talented, uncredited ones to put out a greater number of sculpts, and it seems the plan and intent didn't entirely filter down the line. Thus we end up with a highly detailed but flawed Cap that ends up being approved because it's "only" a Common while the SR old-school Avengers get the green light despite being low quality.

(Actually, that makes me wonder if those Avengers were originally intended to be commons like the Teen Titans in Crisis but a change was made after the sculpts were done.)

Back in the day, I seem to recall that someone from Wizkids mentioned that the various giant characters in Avengers were meant to be SRs but then someone realized it would be too easy to cherry pick the boosters by weight. So the giants got sprinkled through the various rarity levels and other figures were designated as SRs.

This last one should be expanded to also include the quality of playtesting going down as Mark Tuttle sought to keep all playtesting in house so no information was leaked before he wanted it leaked.

I can show you on the clix where he touched me.

LOL, That's just wrong, funny, but wrong

Mostly it was communications issues. Not that every decision could be PR'ed away, but communicating even the "bad" things helps in mitigating it's effects. He simply didn't communicate in a way that went over well with us players.

Getting the line back to profitability wasn't going to make everyone happy as some of the decisions meant we'd have to buy more stuff (on average), or there'd be less quality in some areas, etc. So there's definitely an effect of him getting our anger at necessary corporate decisions directed at him personally. But some of the business decisions (Avengers dials !) were pretty much designated to be "his fault".

For me, the Hair10 incident really got me from years of having Karl as the RA where my interactions with him went well. We all got the whole story (you all know the Hair isn't shy!) and I judged Mark Tuttle's decision to be a poor one. It was an unknown guy (at the time) hurting someone I personally liked.

That all being said, I chatted with Tuttle in person once months later and he was just fine and dandy - excited about the game, knowing what was going on, looking for ways to make players happy, etc.

I fail to see how anyone can totally succeed in a roll such as his. He has to make money for the company, but he has to make the customers happy, but in order to make money corners might need to be cut, promotions might need to done, etc., which in turn some people will not like. Was the CoG and Starro events excessive? Definitely. Was it a good excitement booster and brought money to the company? Yes. It was almost a necessary evil. Did it leave some players with a bad taste? Yes. But there was such a boom in the amount of people playing the game at that time.

I think it is near impossible to find someone who will completely balance the needs of the $$ coming in with the needs of the customer. I hope the new person making these decisions finds that medium between getting the company money, and keeping players happy.

Privateer Press is a company right now that I feel is doing things right. But already there is "rumbling" of people being upset about the amount of sets being released and the current prize system, which is a good system, but there are some LE's that are hard to get. But at the same time they are doing so much right I almost give them a pass for the "errors."

Let's hope that when clix comes back that it is run really well, and let's also hope that all of us can remember that the company is going to slip up in some areas, but as long as the good outweighs the bad it will be great to have clix back.