Is our game doomed?

Kevin Goddard got canned and He is the brand manager for mechwarrior?

I am worried.....:noid:

on the wizkids site that even Vairdic is also "re-organized" - who is left taking care of mech???

Umm... Kelly and Vic are still there....

Actually... just Kelly... Vic just posted that he too was laid off....

BUT...

vic is working on something so much better

SUPREME COMMANDER
the greatest game in the history of the world. its Total Annihilation for a new era, with maps so big it'll make you cry, and FULL SCALE NUKES!


so yeah. and like i said in a rambling post in another thread, they will undoubetly go on to bigger and better things.

Probably send out the ninjas to shanghi the people who complained the loudest and put them in charge, then if there isn't a 200% gross margin increase it's a quick one way trip into the Pacific wearing the new Converse 'cement shoes' tm.

Um ...buh?

We haven't gotten word yet on a new Brand Manager (or even if there is a "Brand Manager" position anymore - with a company reorg like that, there quite possibly isn't one anymore), so I can't answer your question... but I would like to point out that Kevin (and the others) were laid-off, not "canned." Being "canned" usually means that the person was fired, not laid-off. There is a big difference between the two terms. Firing someone is generally for cause, and means they did something wrong to deserve to have their employment terminated. Being laid-off is generally not because the person did something wrong, but because financial concerns for the company meant they felt the need to eliminate positions to cut payroll (since payroll is the largest budget item in any company with more than a handful of people).

It would be best to use the proper terminology so as to not imply a false situation.

Dear mechjok,

I've been playing miniatures games for over 35 years, and I have questions about the viability of the Mechwarrior model as well. Now, MtG and the infinite number of spin-offs would seem to indicate that a decent collectable game should easily make money, reams of it in fact. So why not in plastic if it works in little cards?

One problem, which WK may not have considered, is storage space. This seems like it should be a small issue until you get to about your third case, when suddenly you have plastic piled to the ceiling. What do you do then? 'Give away', or sell very cheap, pieces that you don't need. Except, that undercuts WK's sales....

Second problem. Compared to MTG and other CCG's, Mechwarrior is CHEAP. Championship armies can usually be put together for $100 or less, except around tournament time. MTG a championship deck will run you $10,000; only fair since you can go on the pro tour and earn $50,000 at some events. This would work to hold down overall sales. Note that WK has not been able to tap into the secondary market for its figures. A booster goes for $5-10. But, rare singles are $30 a pop. Would WK be better off selling rare figures individually?

On the other hand, compared to other 'Topps' products, Mechwarrior is expensive! Topps could count on Baseball card collectors buying entire series of the cards, maybe even a couple of series as collector items for the future, one for each child maybe. Hard to afford, and again, to store that much plastic, with Mechwarrior. So, this is a product outside of Topps usual experience. Speaking of experience, why would Topps ever think of marketing a 'collectable' baseball game where you couldn't buy the product in 'teams'????

Third, the game is stuck marketing figures; and you don't need many figures to play. Compare Mechwarrior to the Games Workshop games. Now my GW Space Marines are almost 12 years old, but they are all still usuable on the table top (no retirement even). Games Workshop gets its money from me by selling me terrain, rules, army lists, scenario books, a magazine, paints, brushes, even their own brand of super glue. They also charge $50 to enter a tournament, or hold conventions at $30 a ticket; conventions dedicated to their product lines.

Problem 4. Marketing strategy. GW-owns their own well lit stores in major shopping centers with gaming tables, also sells products in major chain hobby stores. Mechwarrior-sells product in tiny comic book stores often without room to set up tables for tournaments. I can hold a demo for Mechwarrior at my local mall, then try to explain to parents how to get to the little baseball card store 5 miles away where they might be able to buy a booster. GW-no advertised discounts. Mechwarrior-40% discount freely available over the internet. GW-recalls obsolete products. Mechwarrior-leaves 'retired' product on shelves of retailers gathering dust. Heroclix (American Rev. vs. Dragons-yeech)-starter sets sold at TOYS R US, WALMART, KMART. If you want them to play you got to suck them in. Mechwarrior-back to the hole in the wall store. Oh, and the matter of set retirement. MTG has all kinds of tournament formats so that players can use older/newer cards. GW-tournaments set up around specific missions, requiring large well rounded forces. WK fixated on 'constructed tournament unretired' play in one format-and can't even tolerate the variety of strategy and tactics of abrupt elevated terrain with its +1 modifier....

Staff and personel costs-well, they've just had the layoffs. Most wargames today are the work of free lance designers, and playtesters work for free. WK apparently employed quite the full time team; I wonder if they had a $500,000 payroll expense. Hard to justify that when the buyer of a new set is just goint to cherry pick a few units, and tell younger players not to buy boosters because most of the figures aren't 'competitive'.

So, I worry about the game as well. But it wouldn't really be bad if they just started selling the toys at $7.50 in Walmart, stopped producing new sets, and left the tournaments to the Boardgame Players Association.....

$500,000 in payroll expenses is not a whole lot of people. If GW doesn't have at least that, I'd be highly surprised. Of course, one thing you might not have taken into account in your choice of number is that payroll expenses also include benefits and payroll taxes, which don't necessarily show up on your paystub. Oftentimes, the benefits for the employee cost more than their wages/salary (assuming a full-time employee who gets benefits). And before anyone claims that they pay for their health insurance - unless you're paying something on the order of $300/person per month, your health insurance is being subsidized by your employer - which is a payroll expense.

So, consider this: If employees make the rather low salary (especially in the Seattle area) of $25,000/year, once you add in benefits and such, they cost the company around $50,000/year. So, to get a total payroll of $500,000/year, you're employing all of 10 people.
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if WizKids' payroll expense is even more than that, actually. Even after the layoffs.

Freelance designers do cut down on those expenses a bit, since they aren't given benefits, and they aren't full-time employees - but they don't work for free. Plus, every gaming company maintains at least one full-time lead designer (sometimes one per game line) in order to manage the freelancers, and keep everything in line with the company's ideas for the direction of the game.

Since the Games Workshops stores have come up, I'll point out that those are a fairly big expense for the company as well - the payroll for the cashiers at those stores alone is probably larger than WizKids' entire payroll budget (even though the cashiers would all be part-time workers with no benefits, there sure are a lot of GW shops out there...) And that doesn't even include the costs of rent, utilities, etc for the stores themselves.

Oh, and incidentally, just like for Games Workshop, playtesters for WizKids are volunteers who don't get paid.

Didn't mean that their entire payroll was 500k, but I bet they save 500k. Don't mean to be disagreeable, but I don't think that GMT, or SPI has a single lead game designer, nor the company that does Memoire 44. There are different business models in use for gaming companies. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that Topps decides that only the card games like Pirates/Rocketmen/Battlestar Galactica are viable.....

I have to disagree with a lot of what you wrote here.
GW certainly does "retire" figures (though they don't call it that... but when one has to have "what you see is what you get" figures in tournament play, and GW puts out a new edition or Codex, one has to buy a new army). Sure, you can still play your Space Marines, but probably not in a Rogue Trader tournament. The same is true of MW... I play with someone who has thousands and thousands of figures (BAW). Despite that, he has to buy new MW figures to stay competitive in the tourney scene. He's only able to use most of his figures in Unrestricted games, most older 40K figures are only usable in friendly games.
I think it's unfortunate that the only places that sell WK games are "hole-in-the-wall stores". In my area, MW and other games are sold in brightly-lit, large gaming/hobby stores in well-travelled strip malls. Every place that sells GW product in my area (that I know of) also sells MW or other WK product. GW isn't exactly hitting us with a marketing blitz either. GW product sells by word of mouth. If mistakes were made by WK, I think the main one is not deciding what audience they wanted to appeal to. If it was kids or teenagers, they had to be embraced more fully. If it was the hardcore Battletech folks... well, the game should have been more complex. MW ended up somewhere in the middle, unfortunately.
Sure, WK made a lot of money. That was actually a problem. They grew too fast, and their infrastructure couldn't keep up. They expected to be a niche company making a niche product that would appeal to kids and casual gamers. Instead, we grognards demanded that they keep up with us when that wasn't their intention. But, what're they going to do... not sell product? GW didn't become the behemoth it is now overnight. WK did, and now it seems to be dying... though I don't think it is. I'm hoping that the company is finally getting to the right size and the correct infrastructure... though I wish people weren't losing their jobs. It's really too bad... I think post-Wolf Strike, MW and WK would be on the right track. I'm not so sure now.
Now, you're _defending_ GW's "let's choke out the local gaming store" strategy? I've heard plenty of horror stories about GW's marketing department helping boost sales in large stores to build up a clientele only to plop down a GW-branded store nearby to steal all the business. Secondary market? That was the worst thing to ever happen to MW and WK. It's the availability of the "killer" metagame pieces (Arrow IV tank) that ruined the game for a lot of people. GW certainly should not be held up as a "player-friendly" company. Sure, they make lots of money, but so does WK.

I'll eat the warning because I have to double-post here.
I just wrote "...unfortunate that the only places that sell..." What I meant was "...unfortunate that the only places that sell..." in henry's area.

I do feel this was a problem. WizKids got over this a while ago. Shortly after I got deeply into WizKids games (shortly after Mage Knight Dungeons was released) things started going downhill. Response times to Envoys & Venues by email took months. People were calling into WizKids to get problems solved, which was slowing everything else down because it was less efficient to handle than by email (plus, I understand one employee was compounding problem, but that's 3rd hand).

Also, after a while WizKids realized that their prize system wasn't sustainable. They needed to cutback or else we probably wouldn't have a WizKids now. Players complained loudly at the first cuts. Second place prizes were gone, envoys weren't gettting cases of product (often for running many events where no one was showing up to play). Plus, with communications at a low, the information as to why wasn't getting out, compounded by the fact that many of the fan leaders were cynical and didn't believe the cuts were needed.

WizKids has pretty much been past that point for a while. WizKids has filled staff, let go staff, built up staff again and now, let go staff again. They've tweaked programs to make sure they were bringing in the money they needed to sustain a line. Sure, things are constantly being tweaked for the right mix, but things were reasonably stable.

I seriously doubt that Topps makes that sort of decision. They likely told the top people at WizKids that they have to cut "X" salary and let them make the decision.

They don't know games, and wouldn't tread on that area. They might suggest they try certain games (we want a sports oriented games can you do that?). Specifying certain lines for cuts isn't somethng they'd be qualified to do, and I doubt they want to make those sorts of decisions.

Yeah...how'd that work out for WK? :rolleyes: