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[ Line of Sight ]
DATE: July 3, 2002

More Wacky Wizards Hijinks

Okay, let me start by saying that those of you tired of my armchair quarterbacking Wizards of the Coast should probably click on another link on the left (the Ptolus story is interesting this week), because I'm doing it again. You might think, "Oh, it's just because he left the company, now he sits back and second-guesses them," but you'd be wrong -- I did it all the time while I worked there, too. And I doubt strongly that I won't do it some more in the coming months, because I'll be surprised if this is the last major change that happens at Wizards this year. Very surprised.

And speaking of surprises, the Chainmail announcement does not come as a surprise to me in any shape or form. (For those of you who haven't heard, Wizards has cancelled the Chainmail miniatures game line.) Chainmail was, for some crazy reason, expected to be a huge hit right out of the gate. It was supposed to (chortle) unseat Games Workshop. Like my column of a couple weeks back indicated, though, Wizards doesn't know how to handle a game that isn't a huge hit. Magic was a huge hit, and Pokémon was a huge hit. Wizards is really good at the care and feeding of huge hits. The company carefully and masterfully fostered both of these runaway successes into even bigger (and more importantly) long-term successes.

But give Wizards some middle-of-the-road product, and they don't know what to do with it. From Amazing Stories magazine to Alternity. From (remember this?) C-23 to (dare I say it) D&D. And now Chainmail.

These products, many touted as the "next big thing," are all doomed to fail in Wizards' eyes because they aim way too high. It's like a gambler, never satisfied with a modest paycheck, who blows it all in a casino looking for the big jackpot instead. Wizards is addicted to success. And not just "I paid all my bills and did a good job today" success, but "make the cover of national magazines" success. Not content to make hundreds of millions, Wizards wants billions. Maybe that's as should be. Gotta be good to the stockholders, the conventional wisdom goes. Except that sensible people realize that the way to succeed in life is to work hard, do a good job, and earn your keep the slow, steady way. Not blow it all on lottery tickets and hope for the best. You've got to plan ahead. Assume that you'll start modestly and work your way up. Pokémon's not a business model, it's a fluke. You can't plan on Pokémons.

There are dangers in Wizards' strategy of aiming high. Some are small. For example, we 3rd Edition designers weren't allowed to put a mass combat system in the core rulebooks, even though we wanted to, because the powers that be decided that Chainmail would be that mass combat system. Now, this is back when the plan was for Chainmail to be the biggest thing since sliced bread and D&D would be just sort of a "support product" for those who got really into the game. Oh, please. I'd like to think that all three of us working on 3rd Edition knew that wouldn't happen, but we were good employees and just nodded to the execs with stars in their eyes (or were they dollar signs?). So now, Chainmail -- the finished product of which was never a mass combat game anyway -- is gone and D&D is still around but with no mass combat system.

Some of the strategy's dangers are big, and I talked about those two weeks ago. In short, if you don't want to go back and look, the dangers are that you focus only on big products, like forty-dollar D&D books, and you ignore needed, smaller, less profitable books. This makes money in the short term, but in the long term it cuts out the layers of support for the game as a whole.

I probably shouldn't go without mentioning the other big Wizards to-do: the company's decision to sell off the periodicals department. This is also pretty understandable and fits the current profile. Magazines are the hardest thing in the world (practically) to make money on. Of course Wizards wants nothing to do with them. Let's all just be thankful that someone wanted to buy and support them. I do see a bright future for the magazines, though. I think, for example, that Dragon's in good hands with editor Jesse Decker at the helm. I support what he's doing with the magazine. In fact, I just agreed to do a new monthly Dungeoncraft column for him that should start soon. But more on that later...

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