929
'There's almost nobody left': CEO of Baldur's Gate 3 dev Swen Vincke says the D&D team he initially worked with is gone, due to Hasbro layoffs (www.pcgamer.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/games@lemmy.world
191 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Suffering and success.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 54 points 2 years ago (12 children)

MtG made over a billion dollars. From what I can see WotC, products/services/licenses, make up over 3 billion of Hasbro's 5.something billion revenue.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 12 child comments
    •
  • [–] 36 points 2 years ago (11 children)

    Yeah, card crack is real. They've been whaling and getting kids into gambling since the 90s. Don't know why lay offs there. Line go up just a little more probably.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 11 child comments
    •
  • [–] 20 points 2 years ago (8 children)

    It's not that. It's that the fewer people they have to pay the more money they get to keep. It's incredibly short sighted and self destructive. But they don't care at this point.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 8 child comments
    •
  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (7 children)

    That or they’re planning to lean on generative ai to produce content

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 7 child comments
    •
  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    IIRC they contract and credit the artists. I don't think theyveven use any in-house srtists.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
    •
  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    They've been caring less about artists and the community in recent years.

    At cons, they used to pay for artists hotels and give them free booths to set up, now artists get nothing and have to pay something like $750 for a booth.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago

    I think that's more about WotC giving up on cons and tourneys than giving up on artists. If they're having events at all, they're not putting as much money into them as they used to.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    And the generative card properties?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    You mean using AI to design the card's mechanics? I'd like to think we are still a ways away from that, specially since they'd have to train their on model that adjusts not only for the text generated but what the actual card would do in a game. they could use it for french vanilla cards I suppose, but it's not like those take a human that long to make anyway.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago*

    I didn't say they needed to be quality or anything, they just need to appear quality to corporate, as all the corps are starting to cannibalize staff at the idea of using LLMs. Corporate doesn't play the game and doesn't care about long term, just the short term gains.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago

    MTG used to have 2 or 3 releases a year. Enough to keep things fresh, but not an instance amount.

    When I was working in a Game Store in the Early 2020's, there as more than one release a week, and a major release about once a month. They set the milking machine to maximum.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent