I'm going to talk about what it's like to work for Wizards of the Coast. Like any company Wizards of the Coast has a Glassdoor and even though they are a sub-company of Hasbro, the Glassdoor is separate to Wizards of the Coast. I decided to discuss this from an employer stance, so I employ people for my company and whenever you have employees they only go to Glassdoor when they want to write typically something bad about you. Very similar to Yelp right but here we go. Many of these Glassdoor reviews show that Wizards of the Coasts' management is exactly what Orion D. Black (a Non-Binary African American Freelancer who previously worked for Wizards of the Coast on Dungeons & Dragons) said where people shout, they yell, the management smiles at you, and doesn't listen to your ideas, they don't give you many projects, they just want to have you as almost a token If you're a minority, a woman, or a person of color. Now where does this culture stem from and how does this relate to Magic: the Gathering in general? Well If you look at the reviews they were largely positive until recently. So I've included all the reviews including the positive ones over the past few years but you can see that their rankings have since dropped.
Wizards of the Coast is trying to get away with underpaying its staff, that's why it's developers and MTGO are so bad is they're forcing people who love this game to work at below market prices as you can look at their salaries and that doesn't make any sense except that they love this game. So because they love MTG and they want to be part of something like this they're willing to take a lesser salary to do the same work but when you go out in the talent poll, you're probably not recruiting A level talent, you're probably stuck with B or C or even D level talent and that's a big problem for the game. I can take a look at Play Design. Play Design is just friends and families of the people at Wizards of the Coast. Did you realize that? I'm being totally serious Play Design / Research & Development are literally friends and families' members of Wizards of the Coast employees who then get hired. So I'm going to read you something which should make you know somewhat sense to you. It's called "nepotism". I'm going to read you the definition of it and you let me know If this is exactly what's happening with Wizards of the Coast.
So nepotism, favoritism, is an appointment to a job based on kinship. Nepotism has papal origins during papacy granting many special favors to members of the Pope in particular particularly the persons' nephews, the practice of papaya favoritism was carried on by the Pope's successors and in 1667 was the subject of Gregeria Letty's book two nepotism the roman title being the history of the Pope's nephews. Shortly after the book's appearance, nepotism began to be used in English for showing of special favor or unfair preference to any relative by someone in any position of power and so on. So when we talk about what's going on with Wizards of the Coast it kind of makes sense that not only their kinship, their family members, their friends of a friend, they're just going to hire people with the same political beliefs as them and that's a very dangerous thing to have as a company because when you surround yourself with a bunch of Yes Men even the worst ideas, the answer is "Yes" because no one has a different opinion and sometimes Yes Men actually believe what they're saying because they're so integrated into saying, "Yes" that even a bad idea sounds like a good idea.
So that's the main problem of Wizards of the Coast is you look at Lee Sharpe and Gavin Verhey, they've been there for too long. So there's a lot of turnover at the lower management or the individual levels but there's not turnover Mark Rosewater (MaRo) has been in the company for how long again? A lot of these people have been at this company and that's not to say it's bad right? But they're not quitting anytime soon. So you have to imagine that there is no other company that would ever hire them based on their skill set and because of that fact they're being grossly overpaid in my opinion. Look at Research & Development, I mean think about what Standard would look like If we got rid of all these bans and then they won't have Companions all at the same time. Not like the Companions we know of today but the Companions that were much too powerful right? Look what they did with Terese Nielsen which their company publicly basically defamed her and look what they did with banning cards or certain artworks or titles even like "Crusade" which is an historical event actually. When you think about fantasy, I don't think Crusade is offensive and the term of fantasy is a fantasy element.
So currently we have a company run by individuals who aren't the most talented people and Lee Sharpe said it best when specifically trying to hire a certain gender indentification. So he's not hiring the most talented MTG Arena developer, he's specifically trying to hire based not on talent and that's what Orion D. Black felt was he was only there because or they were only there because they wanted to kind of trot them out as a token which again is not respect and he says that many times that "You do not respect me". That's a really crazy thing to say right? "You don't respect me as a human being." I think it's pretty interesting, it's not a topic that normally we get to discuss very much and I know Double Masters and VIP Masters, that can be discussed by other YouTube Channels but as an employer like this is the worst case scenario is to have people like Noah Bradley to promote more people like him and they're destroying lives. I don't know what's wrong with this company but they specifically don't want background checks.
It's so crazy to me that they don't want background checks AT ANY COST because they're afraid of what may happen and I would be afraid too. Former Dungeons & Dragons Freelancer Orion D. Black posted an open letter accusing Dungeons & Dragons' parents' company Wizards of the Coast of exploiting African Americans. Not only does this African American accuse the company of exploiting African Americans but he also claims that Wizards of the Coast only pays lip service to diversity and attempts to silence anyone who criticizes them. So that's spot on. Remember when they banned everyone from Travis Woo's Facebook Group for a stupid Internet Meme and other controversial MTG YouTube Content Creators? Orion also goes to explain in a tweet why he took a job to work on Dungeons & Dragons at Wizards of the Coast. He took the job for two reasons: the first was the dream. That's what they sell you on. It's almost like a multi-level marketing scam to get you to work for less value than you're actually worth.
I like him a lot as I think he'd be a good fit for my company because that's what you need, you need people that are blocked in accusing Wizards of the Coast hiring them as a diversity hire. Orion firmly believes he was a diversity hire, there was no expectation for him to do anything, much of anything. He probably disrupted them by being vocal and following up. Isn't this like positive things like, "Hey we have a problem in our company, this dude is telling us we have a problem with our company, maybe we should try to publicly address it". Orion also follows up with having worked at another Start Up and the reason that most Start Ups (like Kickstarter and Indiegogo) fail is because people don't care enough. It's always more work to do it's always more things to do and let me just be completely frank with you there's always more things to do. It's very easy to kind of hide in the shadows or view a job as a paycheck but you're not going to last very long at my Start Up at least because we're so small. It's kind of hard to hide away. So you have what I think is the ideal employee for Wizards of the Coast, someone who actually has opinions, whose critical, and cares enough.
Orion elaborated that people generally proposed him as an option and it was accepted because it would look like a radical positive change, it would help quiet vocal outrage, and because he had to stay silent it was a safe bet. Wizards of the Coast was going to start talking about how they were going to treat the staff better, retaining contractors, actually answering questions, how much they were invested in diversity and change even though they hired two Caucasian dudes into two big leadership positions. So until the top with Mark Rosewater (MaRo), Lee Sharpe, and Gavin Verhey, until these people are replaced there will be no change because change comes from the top. He then goes and makes an accusation saying, "If I found out some of my work was stolen which destroyed me, it lined up with a project they were going to do and I sent it to someone in leadership a while ago." This is just a terrible environment to work in. I don't know how it became this bad, I'm sure they had good intentions of course but just until leadership changes, until Mark Rosewater steps down, or is gone nothing is going to change.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
I'm sure he actually doesn't want any part of the mess they have made. Being a free-lance consultant/designer (like he was for Dominaria) is about all we could expect. But a person can dream.
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Copy/pasted my reply to your same topic on Nexus, where previous replies had laid out the poor quality of this article in more detail:
Hard to read. Skimmed as best I could. Poor writing, poorly thought out arguments.
A few gripes: workers are paid below market value, but stay to work for a game they love - then quit, go get paid the market value, and recognize that we can't all work at the thing we love while at the same time complaining about our pay. If Wizards indeed pays below market value, maybe if their employees leave for other jobs then the market will dictate to them that they should increase their salaries.
Title of thread says MaRo must go, body of article discusses primarily contains complaints of business decisions (salary, nepotism, deceptive hiring practices, tone deaf leadership) - but isn't MaRo the head DESIGNER? If I had a complaint about how Wizards designs their products, like so many people do, aim those complaints at MaRo. But if you have complaints about Wizards' business dealings, it's pretty deceptive to aim the article at MaRo.
So aside from the screw up that is companion, its more about diversity hiring and treatment of employees (which Mark has little control over) than its actually about actual game direction. Next.
I'm sure he actually doesn't want any part of the mess they have made. Being a free-lance consultant/designer (like he was for Dominaria) is about all we could expect. But a person can dream.
I believe he willing "left" MtG long before now to be an independent game designer. IIRC he likes to start up games but then lets others take the reins and moves onto other stuff, as he still making new games nearly yearly.
“There are no weak Jews. I am descended from those who wrestle angels and kill giants. We were chosen by God. You were chosen by a pathetic little man who can't seem to grow a full mustache"
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
Sounds to me as though Wizards of the Coast are mostly taking heat for Hasbro corporate's mistakes where Wizards of the Coast are just following orders while their parent company Hasbro are the ones calling all the controversial shots that makes their business partner look terrible as a company. It's really a tactic that companies use to avoid bad publicity by shifting blame on others in order to make themselves look innocent to the public eye. The irony is that before Hasbro bought out Wizards of the Coast in 1998 they had none of these problems back when the only Social Media outlets we had were message board forums such as the one we're using now.
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America Bless Christ Jesus
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
Sounds to me as though Wizards of the Coast are mostly taking heat for Hasbro corporate's mistakes where Wizards of the Coast are just following orders while their parent company Hasbro are the ones calling all the controversial shots that makes their business partner look terrible as a company.
Corporate policies wouldn't dictate some of this behavior, the descriptions of the work environment paint a picture of *****ty management, not harsh corporate policy. Yelling, treating employees like they don't matter, disrespect, and tokenism are very much issues with management within WotC since they would be in charge of the tone of the work environment.
Hasbro may be increasing pressure or things along those lines, but that doesn't mean they are responsible for the work environment, that's on WotC leads. I've seen it countless times (I think most people who've been in the workforce for any length of time has likely experienced or heard of some version of this), people in leadership roles or positions of power for reasons other than their leadership skills who create toxic work environments through their failures of leadership. That's not on corporate, not really, it's on the managers of the toxic environment.
The irony is that before Hasbro bought out Wizards of the Coast in 1998 they had none of these problems back when the only Social Media outlets we had were message board forums such as the one we're using now.
Well, I'm not sure we can really draw that conclusion. Social media has exposed a lot of poor behavior and bad business practices in many industries, gaming very much included. More often than not, those behaviors predate social media. In some cases bad work environments take time to develop, which may be the case here. And sometimes the environment doesn't change, but social standards and who is getting hired does so newer team members are seeing what the veterans considered the norm and thought nothing of. A work environment of tokenism, disrespect, devaluing of heterodox perspectives, etc may not be as noticed if the team is overwhelmingly from a very specific demographic, after all.
So did the work culture at WotC sour recently and they had none of these problems before? Maybe, I'm not sure we're going to really know for sure. That said, however, we're seeing that in a lot of cases of exposing bad work environments that complaints are being heard is new, but the culture and work environments have issues going much farther back.
well i think that was obvious after the 5 year plan paid off. it brought magic back into popularity like it had never seen before. he spoke on it constantly, and then... nothing.
no new plan.
no cohesive strategy to maintain it. no goals for the future. we ended up with set after set that's been messy. broken cards that need bannings out the wazoo. poor reprint choices. product saturation. more rarities (alt arts/borderless). an ever changing block structure that's just been absolutely abysmal to play with as almost nothing is actually explored mechanically now all while changing near constantly. stagnant and downright toxic standard seasons. poor storytelling. drama after drama that should've been dealt with, firmly, years ago.
its obvious they've been throwing ideas at the wall with zero real plan other than turn a profit for the past 5 years at the very least.
all while cutting corners and making the gambling aspects of booster sales more apparent than ever in the games 25+ year history.
i think they've also sold us on the idea that the heart is healthy but the mind isn't. that is to say that they're at the whims of their hasbro overlords but wotc aims are in the right place... and honestly i'm not entirely sold on that idea. hasbro just wants to see profit, doesn't matter how you get there. i have major doubts someone from hasbro is coming down and being like print this not that, take this approach to boosters not that one, oko is okay he just makes elks! yet, the overwhelming majority of us seem to believe its all hasbro's fault. we forget that wotc has leadership too, as does magic: the gathering.
i think they've also sold us on the idea that the heart is healthy but the mind isn't. that is to say that they're at the whims of their hasbro overlords but wotc aims are in the right place... and honestly i'm not entirely sold on that idea. hasbro just wants to see profit, doesn't matter how you get there. i have major doubts someone from hasbro is coming down and being like print this not that, take this approach to boosters not that one, oko is okay he just makes elks! yet, the overwhelming majority of us seem to believe its all hasbro's fault. we forget that wotc has leadership too, as does magic: the gathering.
I don't think Hasbro is actually meddling in what they print, but I do think they are putting pressure on WotC to keep costs down and revenues up to an aggressive degree. A lot of Hasbro's other divisions aren't doing well, and Magic is selling more than ever. Sometimes when that happens, a company will lean harder on the successful division to make up for poor performance elsewhere, the simple logic being that you are most likely to make more money quickly by focusing on what you do well rather than what you are struggling with. Unfortunately, is sales targets are too aggressive and cost cutting too deep, you end up with something that resembles what we are seeing in Magic right now: too few employees being paid too little to do too much, and trying to hit unrealistic sales targets. The tried and true method of selling packs is to push cards, but its always risky and with a system undermined by cost cutting its more likely to result in broken cards that need bannings. But not only that, mistakes get through that aren't a result of cards being too pushed on their own, but from the environment not being balance. Cards like Felidar Guardian and Reflector Mage would have never been banned in the past, but also would not have been as much of an issue in the past because it is unlikely the environments that made them problematic would have been allowed to exist in the first place. Guardian for instance would have never seen print alongside Saheeli, and if they even appeared in the same Standard one would have been printed in the spring or summer set before the other rotated out, so it would be a short period of a combo deck doing something. Its cheaper to simply ban cards more aggressively after they become problems than to prevent them from becoming problems with tweaks in design or changing the environment around them.
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The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
While I do not agree with the details, I do agree that WOTC doesn't put their money where their mouth is. And also that they currently mismanaging Magic quite a bit...
To have a new Lead Designer might not be a bad idea. Change something, try something new, reinvent yourself.
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Drop your knees to the floor
Hands to the sky
Give a round of applause
For the great Miss Y!
Everyone loves Mark Rose Water. Your title and post don't match up. It really seems like this is drama stirring thread. Maro is friendly, listens to the player base and answers questions constantly on blogatog. He gave you zendidar 3. Ravnica 3. Theros 2. He's giving you everything you want.
It's still a business. You don't have to buy the product. For most people $4 for a pack of paper cards is crazy when you can buy a normal deck of playing cards for about $5 and use them for forever. He gave you Jumpstart and M2021 which had a huge amount of high end re-prints. He's doing an amazing job.
#Maro is awesome.
He even brought back Dominaria! That's 2 years of being an amazing game designer!
There is a power creep problem in the creatures but they can power that stuff down by doing heavy creature type effect cards which they are already doing. Rin and Seri, Inseparable Never thought there would be dog and cat lords. But there will be a lot more creature type lords you have never heard of. Turtles Aegis Turtle, badgers Charging Badger etc.
Oh, hi Mark
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The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
If Mark Rosewater listens to the playerbase and answers questions constantly on blogatog then why is Standard such a mess right now? He's been working with Wizards of the Coast for so long that he's completely out of touch with what makes MTG good or bad. Would it kill him as head designer to lower the power level of Standard so that tournament grinders have a reason to play MTG again instead of having to sit through someone comboing off on Arena constantly? Nobody likes going up against non-interactive decks with very few answers available to deal with them within the current Standard card pool but of course Mark doesn't like interaction the same way Konami has made Yu-Gi-Oh! non-interactive. You'd think he knows how to design fun and fair cards but a lot of times they end up getting banned throughout every Standard season or Wizards of the Coast just waits it out via rotation. If there's one thing to remember about Mark Rosewater is that he's historically taken game mechanics that were just fine and made them completely worse by making them completely broken. It's a complete insult to the way R&D / Play Design at Wizards of the Coast used to operate.
Mark Rosewater is the same person who thought Companions in Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths were perfectly fine and a fair automatic eighth card and half of a combo and your deck was ready set to go in a non-interactive zone (looking at Planeswalker Emblems), I mean there's clearly nothing wrong with that! When it's been 27 years and you're THAT dense then you need to go. I mean look at the Storm Scale, it's a list of all the mechanics in the history of the game. Almost every single one from seven and up which means they're never bringing it back into Standard ever again were his creation. He doesn't know how to do math or limit things or promote fun gameplay users like, "POWER! POWER! WE WANT MORE POWER!" "PEOPLE LOVE POWER CARDS! POWER CARDS SELL!!!", and he drives out everything else and then because he doesn't want his pet cards to be stopped he then cuts all interaction to make sure there's no way to interact or stop them. Mark's done this for the last 10+ years, so now you kind of get the idea of why his influence as head designer has been problematic for the health of MTG.
A lot of these broken game mechanics are really about his ego cause If a game mechanic on the Storm Scale got an eight or nine because it was so hated by the MTG Community with so not acceptable gameplay, he wants to swing back around and take an extra shot at it so that he can say, "Well yeah I was a little rough the first time but we fixed it the second time. My mechanic that I created was great!" As much as I hate to admit this, Mark Rosewater is the Donald Trump of MTG where he's all about his ego and reputation and really doesn't give a crap about much else. As for his preferences for the game like doubling things and big giant splashy creatures? Yeah that's what goes now because he wants to, he doesn't care what you want when he wants what he wants. MTG now has the Yu-Gi-Oh! equivalent of the Extra Deck where you can grab just about anything you want and put it onto the battlefield for free potentially with the way Sideboards work nowadays instead of swapping cards from the Main Deck and Sideboard. Also Wizards of the Coast needs to move away from directly impacting deck construction which is something that works in EDH / Commander but not in Standard or Modern.
MaRo has been getting away with designing toxic infinite combos in Standard for the last four years that breaks a basic tenant of the game letting a card like Hostage Taker infinitely combo with itself because he's too dense to realize it. Don't let something infinitely combo with itself! In regards to Companions, don't let people start with eight cards in their opening hand! Don't let Standard have a Commander that also basically was a Companion. There's so many basic examples of breaking basic rules of the game and pushing power levels so high that it's something that Wizards of the Coast never would've done for balanced reasons. We almost have one example of this per Standard legal set. Perhaps Mark Rosewater should take the time to reflect on the mistakes he's made as a head designer for MTG that's been really detrimental on a competitive level more so than on a casual level. If a game mechanic players feel on the Storm Scale is more balanced than something that's 10 out of 10, that's better than players complaining, "I'm not going to play Standard until this bull crap rotates out".
It's one thing that MaRo should focus on because the game loses a buttload of money and that's what effects people in the most negative possible way. All we're asking for is the game to function on a fair and basic level instead of Mark always printing cards that are too game breaking. Because of how he's restructured Play Design and Card Design, there's now less people at Wizards of the Coast to tell him "No" and now we have Companion and all these other broken ideas. They make the game less functional and more digital to fit within the context of Arena as they're much harder to track. What we really need are more MTG playtesters and designers to tell Mark "No" or just let him leave the company and have somebody else do his job for him because nobody at Wizards of the Coast could do his job as head designer of MTG worse except for Aaron Forsythe as the buck stops with him when it comes to MTG design. So him and Mark need to go. When you look at declining MTG sales numbers and that Wizards of the Coast is releasing Double Masters to make up for all the financial losses in Standard, they can only stall and fudge the numbers to make the math look good for awhile until somebody catches on and they're like, "How's our core product doing?"
In the last Hasbro Stock Earnings Report, Wizards of the Coast had to take MTG and Monopoly by putting them into the same category to not make it look like MTG was losing mountains of money at the time it was. In other words Wizards of the Coast is lying and fudging their reports on MTG to Hasbro and they don't care as long as their bottom line is like, "Oh look we made money", which is why they've been getting away with greedier and greedier bull crap as they break Standard worse and worse and are driving competitive players away in droves in favor of casual players who play EDH / Commander and now unfortunately they have COVID-19 to hide behind as they could use that as any excuse for anything for any amount of time. Rightfully so, but at the same time Standard is at the worst place it's ever been. So If Hasbro were to really take a closer look at Wizards of the Coasts' business operations, customer satisfaction, and other factors they're all are about to go off a cliff. If they stop doing greedy crap to make up for all the money they're losing then they would make some changes. Papa Hasbro would step in and start handing out pink slips.
They'd be like, "Wait a minute, did we just hear that you don't hire any African Americans even as contracted artists and then at the same time the head of the Judge Program said that they don't want more Caucasian males and they're not welcome to the Judge Program?" "Pardon me, what? Whose running this company into the ground or straight into an iceberg?", Hasbro needs to hear the truth. Apparently Wizards of the Coast CEO Chris Cocks was behind all the greedy selfish "Cut the Local Game Store (LGS) for Secret Lair". They may have also brought in somebody saying, "Hey make more money, maximize this, you're not doing well enough" and then a bunch of their pushed power level stuff was a direct result of Hasbro saying, "Make more money" and then giving Wizards of the Coast really poor advice on how to do it because nobody in management doesn't seem to know how to run a Trading Card Game / Collectible Card Game. So the whole, "Why aren't we selling more high powered Standard cards to EDH / Commander players or Modern players?" Their answer is "Up the power level." So it's either basically Hasbro's fault or they're completely ignorant of it and Wizards of the Coasts' management is sweeping it under the rug and not letting them know what's really going on by just making the numbers for their shareholders and stock brokers look pretty.
There's absolutely no accountability for mistakes at Wizards of the Coast as it was 100% verified by former employees of Wizards of the Coast on Glassdoor. So If you've been working there for 10 years you can make all the mistakes you want, nobody's allowed to call you out on it, If you do you're fired and giant mistakes by Mark Rosewater, Aaron Forsythe, or CEO Chris Cocks, upper management are never addressed, they're not brought up in meetings about how they can avoid doing this before. It's basically that you're kept quiet about it or you lose your job. That's literally hundreds of former employees at Wizards of the Coast that say how the company operates. They don't behave like a normal company would. They're such egotistical stuck-up jerks who never want to be reminded of the mistakes they make, they think they can do absolutely nothing wrong, they're the perfect person for the job, and that they know everything and nobody's smarter than them which "Welcome to Seattle". That's the attitude over there. Because of that nothing in MTG ever gets fixed. Nothing gets changed. The same mistakes get made over and over. The same anti-consumer crap keeps happening, they keep losing players and it never gets addressed or fixed.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
He even brought back Dominaria! That's 2 years of being an amazing game designer!
There is a power creep problem in the creatures but they can power that stuff down by doing heavy creature type effect cards which they are already doing. Rin and Seri, Inseparable Never thought there would be dog and cat lords. But there will be a lot more creature type lords you have never heard of. Turtles Aegis Turtle, badgers Charging Badger etc.
And he pushed for Companions which is one of the most hated mechanics ever printed. Honestly in my opinion only Ante is worse.
Don't make it seem as that this man can do no fault.
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Drop your knees to the floor
Hands to the sky
Give a round of applause
For the great Miss Y!
Op imho I think you (either justified or not) just hate Mark and just looking for reasons to air those feeling. And while your allows to not like Mark I think you really need to reach into what he actually does at wizards since it appears that you really don't.
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“There are no weak Jews. I am descended from those who wrestle angels and kill giants. We were chosen by God. You were chosen by a pathetic little man who can't seem to grow a full mustache"
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
Mark is at his best when he is editing other people's ideas, and at his worst when he is pressing for his own ideas. He's been responsible for a lot of design mistakes that came from him pushing things that her personally likes or chasing a challenge, but he's also been responsible for a lot of really well designed sets and was instrumental in defining the color pie and contributing a lot to the foundation that design is built on. His record has been a mixed bag, but I think he does the "Lead" part of his lead designer job well, and should step back more from the designer part, or let others have more veto power over his pet ideas. At least his mistakes come partially from genuine passion for the game, and aren't entirely just pushing power to sell packs short term.
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The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
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"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
I'm sure he actually doesn't want any part of the mess they have made. Being a free-lance consultant/designer (like he was for Dominaria) is about all we could expect. But a person can dream.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Hard to read. Skimmed as best I could. Poor writing, poorly thought out arguments.
A few gripes: workers are paid below market value, but stay to work for a game they love - then quit, go get paid the market value, and recognize that we can't all work at the thing we love while at the same time complaining about our pay. If Wizards indeed pays below market value, maybe if their employees leave for other jobs then the market will dictate to them that they should increase their salaries.
Title of thread says MaRo must go, body of article discusses primarily contains complaints of business decisions (salary, nepotism, deceptive hiring practices, tone deaf leadership) - but isn't MaRo the head DESIGNER? If I had a complaint about how Wizards designs their products, like so many people do, aim those complaints at MaRo. But if you have complaints about Wizards' business dealings, it's pretty deceptive to aim the article at MaRo.
Currently Playing:
Multiplayer EDH Lists (click italics for a link to the thread!)
[Primer] Lord of Tresserhorn - Don't Tell Me What I Can't Do[Primer] Roon of the Hidden Realm - Rhino Blink
5 Color Tribal Guide (Slivers, Atogs, Allies, Spirits)
Also Playing (most decklists can be found on my profile)
MarathGeistKamahlGrenzoBolasThassaGitrog
PiratesZurVial Smasher&ThrasiosYennettJhoira(cEDH)Strix(Pauper)
Legacy: Maverick
Modern:
Melira PodRIP 1/19/15GWHatebearsI believe he willing "left" MtG long before now to be an independent game designer. IIRC he likes to start up games but then lets others take the reins and moves onto other stuff, as he still making new games nearly yearly.
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
Art is life itself.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
Corporate policies wouldn't dictate some of this behavior, the descriptions of the work environment paint a picture of *****ty management, not harsh corporate policy. Yelling, treating employees like they don't matter, disrespect, and tokenism are very much issues with management within WotC since they would be in charge of the tone of the work environment.
Hasbro may be increasing pressure or things along those lines, but that doesn't mean they are responsible for the work environment, that's on WotC leads. I've seen it countless times (I think most people who've been in the workforce for any length of time has likely experienced or heard of some version of this), people in leadership roles or positions of power for reasons other than their leadership skills who create toxic work environments through their failures of leadership. That's not on corporate, not really, it's on the managers of the toxic environment.
Well, I'm not sure we can really draw that conclusion. Social media has exposed a lot of poor behavior and bad business practices in many industries, gaming very much included. More often than not, those behaviors predate social media. In some cases bad work environments take time to develop, which may be the case here. And sometimes the environment doesn't change, but social standards and who is getting hired does so newer team members are seeing what the veterans considered the norm and thought nothing of. A work environment of tokenism, disrespect, devaluing of heterodox perspectives, etc may not be as noticed if the team is overwhelmingly from a very specific demographic, after all.
So did the work culture at WotC sour recently and they had none of these problems before? Maybe, I'm not sure we're going to really know for sure. That said, however, we're seeing that in a lot of cases of exposing bad work environments that complaints are being heard is new, but the culture and work environments have issues going much farther back.
Archatmos
Excellion
Fracture: Israfiel (WBR), Wujal (URG), Valedon (GUB), Amduat (BGW), Paladris (RWU)
Collision (Set Two of the Fracture Block)
Quest for the Forsaken (Set Two of the Excellion Block)
Katingal: Plane of Chains
no new plan.
no cohesive strategy to maintain it. no goals for the future. we ended up with set after set that's been messy. broken cards that need bannings out the wazoo. poor reprint choices. product saturation. more rarities (alt arts/borderless). an ever changing block structure that's just been absolutely abysmal to play with as almost nothing is actually explored mechanically now all while changing near constantly. stagnant and downright toxic standard seasons. poor storytelling. drama after drama that should've been dealt with, firmly, years ago.
its obvious they've been throwing ideas at the wall with zero real plan other than turn a profit for the past 5 years at the very least.
all while cutting corners and making the gambling aspects of booster sales more apparent than ever in the games 25+ year history.
i think they've also sold us on the idea that the heart is healthy but the mind isn't. that is to say that they're at the whims of their hasbro overlords but wotc aims are in the right place... and honestly i'm not entirely sold on that idea. hasbro just wants to see profit, doesn't matter how you get there. i have major doubts someone from hasbro is coming down and being like print this not that, take this approach to boosters not that one, oko is okay he just makes elks! yet, the overwhelming majority of us seem to believe its all hasbro's fault. we forget that wotc has leadership too, as does magic: the gathering.
I don't think Hasbro is actually meddling in what they print, but I do think they are putting pressure on WotC to keep costs down and revenues up to an aggressive degree. A lot of Hasbro's other divisions aren't doing well, and Magic is selling more than ever. Sometimes when that happens, a company will lean harder on the successful division to make up for poor performance elsewhere, the simple logic being that you are most likely to make more money quickly by focusing on what you do well rather than what you are struggling with. Unfortunately, is sales targets are too aggressive and cost cutting too deep, you end up with something that resembles what we are seeing in Magic right now: too few employees being paid too little to do too much, and trying to hit unrealistic sales targets. The tried and true method of selling packs is to push cards, but its always risky and with a system undermined by cost cutting its more likely to result in broken cards that need bannings. But not only that, mistakes get through that aren't a result of cards being too pushed on their own, but from the environment not being balance. Cards like Felidar Guardian and Reflector Mage would have never been banned in the past, but also would not have been as much of an issue in the past because it is unlikely the environments that made them problematic would have been allowed to exist in the first place. Guardian for instance would have never seen print alongside Saheeli, and if they even appeared in the same Standard one would have been printed in the spring or summer set before the other rotated out, so it would be a short period of a combo deck doing something. Its cheaper to simply ban cards more aggressively after they become problems than to prevent them from becoming problems with tweaks in design or changing the environment around them.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
To have a new Lead Designer might not be a bad idea. Change something, try something new, reinvent yourself.
Hands to the sky
Give a round of applause
For the great Miss Y!
Oh, hi Mark
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Mark Rosewater is the same person who thought Companions in Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths were perfectly fine and a fair automatic eighth card and half of a combo and your deck was ready set to go in a non-interactive zone (looking at Planeswalker Emblems), I mean there's clearly nothing wrong with that! When it's been 27 years and you're THAT dense then you need to go. I mean look at the Storm Scale, it's a list of all the mechanics in the history of the game. Almost every single one from seven and up which means they're never bringing it back into Standard ever again were his creation. He doesn't know how to do math or limit things or promote fun gameplay users like, "POWER! POWER! WE WANT MORE POWER!" "PEOPLE LOVE POWER CARDS! POWER CARDS SELL!!!", and he drives out everything else and then because he doesn't want his pet cards to be stopped he then cuts all interaction to make sure there's no way to interact or stop them. Mark's done this for the last 10+ years, so now you kind of get the idea of why his influence as head designer has been problematic for the health of MTG.
A lot of these broken game mechanics are really about his ego cause If a game mechanic on the Storm Scale got an eight or nine because it was so hated by the MTG Community with so not acceptable gameplay, he wants to swing back around and take an extra shot at it so that he can say, "Well yeah I was a little rough the first time but we fixed it the second time. My mechanic that I created was great!" As much as I hate to admit this, Mark Rosewater is the Donald Trump of MTG where he's all about his ego and reputation and really doesn't give a crap about much else. As for his preferences for the game like doubling things and big giant splashy creatures? Yeah that's what goes now because he wants to, he doesn't care what you want when he wants what he wants. MTG now has the Yu-Gi-Oh! equivalent of the Extra Deck where you can grab just about anything you want and put it onto the battlefield for free potentially with the way Sideboards work nowadays instead of swapping cards from the Main Deck and Sideboard. Also Wizards of the Coast needs to move away from directly impacting deck construction which is something that works in EDH / Commander but not in Standard or Modern.
MaRo has been getting away with designing toxic infinite combos in Standard for the last four years that breaks a basic tenant of the game letting a card like Hostage Taker infinitely combo with itself because he's too dense to realize it. Don't let something infinitely combo with itself! In regards to Companions, don't let people start with eight cards in their opening hand! Don't let Standard have a Commander that also basically was a Companion. There's so many basic examples of breaking basic rules of the game and pushing power levels so high that it's something that Wizards of the Coast never would've done for balanced reasons. We almost have one example of this per Standard legal set. Perhaps Mark Rosewater should take the time to reflect on the mistakes he's made as a head designer for MTG that's been really detrimental on a competitive level more so than on a casual level. If a game mechanic players feel on the Storm Scale is more balanced than something that's 10 out of 10, that's better than players complaining, "I'm not going to play Standard until this bull crap rotates out".
It's one thing that MaRo should focus on because the game loses a buttload of money and that's what effects people in the most negative possible way. All we're asking for is the game to function on a fair and basic level instead of Mark always printing cards that are too game breaking. Because of how he's restructured Play Design and Card Design, there's now less people at Wizards of the Coast to tell him "No" and now we have Companion and all these other broken ideas. They make the game less functional and more digital to fit within the context of Arena as they're much harder to track. What we really need are more MTG playtesters and designers to tell Mark "No" or just let him leave the company and have somebody else do his job for him because nobody at Wizards of the Coast could do his job as head designer of MTG worse except for Aaron Forsythe as the buck stops with him when it comes to MTG design. So him and Mark need to go. When you look at declining MTG sales numbers and that Wizards of the Coast is releasing Double Masters to make up for all the financial losses in Standard, they can only stall and fudge the numbers to make the math look good for awhile until somebody catches on and they're like, "How's our core product doing?"
In the last Hasbro Stock Earnings Report, Wizards of the Coast had to take MTG and Monopoly by putting them into the same category to not make it look like MTG was losing mountains of money at the time it was. In other words Wizards of the Coast is lying and fudging their reports on MTG to Hasbro and they don't care as long as their bottom line is like, "Oh look we made money", which is why they've been getting away with greedier and greedier bull crap as they break Standard worse and worse and are driving competitive players away in droves in favor of casual players who play EDH / Commander and now unfortunately they have COVID-19 to hide behind as they could use that as any excuse for anything for any amount of time. Rightfully so, but at the same time Standard is at the worst place it's ever been. So If Hasbro were to really take a closer look at Wizards of the Coasts' business operations, customer satisfaction, and other factors they're all are about to go off a cliff. If they stop doing greedy crap to make up for all the money they're losing then they would make some changes. Papa Hasbro would step in and start handing out pink slips.
They'd be like, "Wait a minute, did we just hear that you don't hire any African Americans even as contracted artists and then at the same time the head of the Judge Program said that they don't want more Caucasian males and they're not welcome to the Judge Program?" "Pardon me, what? Whose running this company into the ground or straight into an iceberg?", Hasbro needs to hear the truth. Apparently Wizards of the Coast CEO Chris Cocks was behind all the greedy selfish "Cut the Local Game Store (LGS) for Secret Lair". They may have also brought in somebody saying, "Hey make more money, maximize this, you're not doing well enough" and then a bunch of their pushed power level stuff was a direct result of Hasbro saying, "Make more money" and then giving Wizards of the Coast really poor advice on how to do it because nobody in management doesn't seem to know how to run a Trading Card Game / Collectible Card Game. So the whole, "Why aren't we selling more high powered Standard cards to EDH / Commander players or Modern players?" Their answer is "Up the power level." So it's either basically Hasbro's fault or they're completely ignorant of it and Wizards of the Coasts' management is sweeping it under the rug and not letting them know what's really going on by just making the numbers for their shareholders and stock brokers look pretty.
There's absolutely no accountability for mistakes at Wizards of the Coast as it was 100% verified by former employees of Wizards of the Coast on Glassdoor. So If you've been working there for 10 years you can make all the mistakes you want, nobody's allowed to call you out on it, If you do you're fired and giant mistakes by Mark Rosewater, Aaron Forsythe, or CEO Chris Cocks, upper management are never addressed, they're not brought up in meetings about how they can avoid doing this before. It's basically that you're kept quiet about it or you lose your job. That's literally hundreds of former employees at Wizards of the Coast that say how the company operates. They don't behave like a normal company would. They're such egotistical stuck-up jerks who never want to be reminded of the mistakes they make, they think they can do absolutely nothing wrong, they're the perfect person for the job, and that they know everything and nobody's smarter than them which "Welcome to Seattle". That's the attitude over there. Because of that nothing in MTG ever gets fixed. Nothing gets changed. The same mistakes get made over and over. The same anti-consumer crap keeps happening, they keep losing players and it never gets addressed or fixed.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
And he pushed for Companions which is one of the most hated mechanics ever printed. Honestly in my opinion only Ante is worse.
Don't make it seem as that this man can do no fault.
Hands to the sky
Give a round of applause
For the great Miss Y!
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!