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Oh, I got that from the context. It's just that I'm not sure if I'm fine with you projecting your personal concerns on some group that I happen to be in.
*checks his project-o-meter*
Welp, turns out I'm not fine. I've have had my share of "we, the people" or "all of us, concerned citizens/customers" on regular basis, so I usually shoot it down the moment it appears. Professional habits die hard. Sorry.
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I have been very happy with the amount of content coming out! I've fallen in love with Starfinder after years of Pathfinder. I was hoping Paizo would come out with some re-purposed hard bound books associated with past Adventure Paths like how Rise of the Runelords book was made. Giantslayer, etc. would be lovely hard bound books!
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Of course you should say "I". You're a long-standing, respected member of the boards. You don't need some appeal to numbers to have your voice heard. And by the way, the above is a rare moment of me not being sarcastic. Mark your calendars.
The problem with appealing to numbers outside of one-way communication OR situations where you have 2 million people (or signatures) behind you is that you get adversity-fuelled contrarianists such as me challenging your tribal rhetoric, usually leading to semantic bickering or "MY WE IS BIGGER THAN YOUR WE" contests. Meanwhile, the point of the thread dies quietly in the corner.
On the merits: I'm pretty sure Paizo are overworked. They're a bunch of dedicated people who for some arcane reason did not switch industries to video games yet AND who are trying, heroically, to compete against 5E. They're cutting costs, focusing on stuff that has good ROI and conserving resources, which is likely the reason behind numbers 1, 2, 3, 4.
5 and 6 are the results of the community going increasingly toxic, lessening the usefulness of playtests and increasing the fatigue of anyone who is brave (it took me some thinking to find the right adjective here) enough to stick their head into post-2016 anonymous online "fanbase".
7 and 8 should be pretty obvious once you do some research on how much does pen and paper RPG industry pay compared to other creative gaming industries.
9 is something unarguable, but likely necessary in order to stay afloat and expand.
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Of course you should say "I". You're a long-standing, respected member of the boards. You don't need some appeal to numbers to have your voice heard. And by the way, the above is a rare moment of me not being sarcastic. Mark your calendars.
Great, now I gotta clean up my drink.
Chief Technical Officer
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We expanded our staff more than 10% in 2017, and that isn't even counting some hires that will be coming onboard in January. And as you pointed out, we have additional open positions that will expand it even further.
Yes, some of those listings have been up a while, but there is not necessarily a 1:1 correlation between job postings and jobs. For example, the software developer posting from May has resulted in multiple hires already, but it's still up because we have one more opening to fill. Same deal with the editor posting (but with bigger numbers). The other postings, well, we're just being very picky about filling them.
But regardless of the number of employees we have, we're always trying to make sure we're maximizing the value of their efforts. Take RPG Superstar—it takes a lot of work to run that. Early on, the return we were getting out of it—the expansion of our writing talent pool—was high enough that we had several of our top people working on it. But over the years, it provided less and less return for our time invested, and eventually, we decided it was on the wrong side of that equation, so we needed to stop doing it.
(The state of Pathfinder Tales, on the other hand, has nothing to do with employee workload; it's just about finding the right partner, who may not actually exist.)
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Franchise Manager
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I'd be interested in seeing an industry in America in 2017 that doesn't overwork its employees. Without getting into potentially political discussions of macroeconomics, wage stagnation, and the benefits of more robust mandatory benefits, claiming that an American company or industry involves an overloaded workforce seems like a pretty easy conclusion to draw. It's been pretty well documented in many, many industries for almost two decades now.
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I'd be interested in seeing an industry in America in 2017 that doesn't overwork its employees. Without getting into potentially political discussions of macroeconomics, wage stagnation, and the benefits of more robust mandatory benefits, claiming that an American company or industry involves an overloaded workforce seems like a pretty easy conclusion to draw. It's been pretty well documented in many, many industries for almost two decades now.
But in two decades, you'll all be millionaires! Right? Right?!
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I'd be interested in seeing an industry in America in 2017 that doesn't overwork its employees. Without getting into potentially political discussions of macroeconomics, wage stagnation, and the benefits of more robust mandatory benefits, claiming that an American company or industry involves an overloaded workforce seems like a pretty easy conclusion to draw. It's been pretty well documented in many, many industries for almost two decades now.But in two decades, you'll all be millionaires! Right? Right?!
That's a pretty good estimate for my industry. ;)
-Skeld
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Maybe except for scandinavia, that seems globaly true.
In 2 decades we might have bottlecap millionaires should things continue the way they are :P
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I'd be interested in seeing an industry in America in 2017 that doesn't overwork its employees. Without getting into potentially political discussions of macroeconomics, wage stagnation, and the benefits of more robust mandatory benefits, claiming that an American company or industry involves an overloaded workforce seems like a pretty easy conclusion to draw. It's been pretty well documented in many, many industries for almost two decades now.But in two decades, you'll all be millionaires! Right? Right?!That's a pretty good estimate for my industry. ;)
-Skeld
One word:
Organize
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I'd be interested in seeing an industry in America in 2017 that doesn't overwork its employees. Without getting into potentially political discussions of macroeconomics, wage stagnation, and the benefits of more robust mandatory benefits, claiming that an American company or industry involves an overloaded workforce seems like a pretty easy conclusion to draw. It's been pretty well documented in many, many industries for almost two decades now.But in two decades, you'll all be millionaires! Right? Right?!That's a pretty good estimate for my industry. ;)
-Skeld
One word:
Organize
No thanks. I live in Korvosa.
-Skeld
Of course you should say "I". You're a long-standing, respected member of the boards. You don't need some appeal to numbers to have your voice heard. And by the way, the above is a rare moment of me not being sarcastic. Mark your calendars.Great, now I gotta clean up my drink.
Did you debeverage, TOZ? I certainly did. :)
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No thanks. I live in Korvosa.
-Skeld
Hmm, I am trying to figure out who is the Queen ...
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...there are no disgruntled former employees writing nasty blog posts...
I think Twitter is the fashionable place to vent yout Paizo hate these days, considering most of the major uproars recently have come from there.
Hmm, I am trying to figure out who is the Queen ...
No thanks. I live in Korvosa.
-Skeld
I dunno, but my kids a definately mischeivious, little sewer goblins.
-Skeld
This thread will accomplish nothing except stir gossip.
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Stir gossip should be a witch (cauldron) hex.
Stir gossip should be a witch (cauldron) hex.
For an intrigue-based witch.
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Stir Gossip (Su): You can brew a specially prepared vial containing a whispered rumor or piece of gossip. At any time, you can unstopper the vial, releasing the gossip aloud and allowing you to track the rumor as the rumormonger spell. You can have one rumor prepared in this way at any given time.
Is there a magic wand that acts like a hex to do this? Maybe even a magic cauldron?
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Hmm, I am trying to figure out who is the Queen ...
No thanks. I live in Korvosa.
-Skeld
There's only one queen that matters.
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There's only one queen that matters.Hmm, I am trying to figure out who is the Queen ...
No thanks. I live in Korvosa.
-Skeld
Oh yeah! Bring it on b%~#~!!
Sure I am, this is me being serious.
Oh yeah! Bring it on b+!@#!!There's only one queen that matters.Hmm, I am trying to figure out who is the Queen ...
No thanks. I live in Korvosa.
-Skeld
Dear me, is this a popularity brawl! without me!
Kermie, please hold my bag.
Hiiiiiiyaaaaaaa!!!
This concerns me because I selfishly want a healthy Paizo that will continue to produce interesting, high-quality products for me to buy and play with.
From what I see, Paizo was quite capable of adapting so far. I noticed the frequency of Player Companions and Campaign Settings going down lately, but despite a bit of disappointment: It shows they don't desperately cling to strategies they once made up, but adapt instead.
Of course, each change has the risk of alienating some customers, but without change in a changing market you lose way more. And changes like 'big campaign setting books now are part of the RPG line' might even keep customers interested and lead to new ones.
When it comes to the actual products, I don't see any positive or negative tendency when it comes to the content. There were always some gems (like the latest First World Campaign Setting book), a lot of average books and some letdowns. Art and layout are a different story, they improved significantly over time. For example Hell's Vengeance wasn't my cup of tea, but heck, already the Player's Guide was beautiful.
Was Pathfinder Tales a loss maker when it was in house?
If not, it seems like it would be better to keep the line healthy while looking for partners. No?
I feel like I should ask what happened - I was just getting *really* into the tales line when they changed format and prices which made me drop all interest 100% (I just don't like the 'larger to charge more' format) - are they going back to a normal paperback size?
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I feel like I should ask what happenedWas Pathfinder Tales a loss maker when it was in house?
If not, it seems like it would be better to keep the line healthy while looking for partners. No?
Their partnership with Tor ended, for reasons that I don't believe have been made public, and they are actively searching for another partner to publish the line. They say they have completed manuscripts ready to go as soon as they can reach an agreement with a publishing firm.
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Was Pathfinder Tales a loss maker when it was in house?
James Sutter on the reasoning for partnering with Tor in the first place:
What was wrong exactly with the original way of doing it that necessitated the need to partner with TOR?The problem is that we're fundamentally a game company, not a fiction publisher, and that hurts us a lot when it comes to getting books in stores and marketing them to the public. A big publishing partner offers a lot of benefits: they can negotiate from a place of greater strength with printers/book buyers/etc., they've got a lot more people devoted to marketing, they've got a lot more money to throw around, etc. Even just having a partner helping pay for the production of the books takes a lot of the risk and strain off of us. But the real hope is that by partnering with a big company, we can get the books in front of folks who would otherwise never know about them, and expand the brand beyond just the folks who are already hardcore fans.
Also, this:
One of the big plusses of this deal is that we can finally, *finally* get the books on Kindle, which folks have been asking for on these threads forever.
....
When we started Pathfinder Tales, we chose mass market because it seemed like the default, and because it's what we all had such fond memories of—certainly when I was a kid, most of what I owned were mass-market paperbacks. But the market has changed since I was a kid. More and more publishers are moving to trade paperback because you simply can't make money on print unless you're publishing an increasingly small list of Big Names. If we were starting Pathfinder Tales now, there would be no question that we'd go trade paperback.
The changes—the price bumps, the new size, the partnership with Tor, being able to sell on Kindle—are necessary to help the line grow and thrive. We need the books to be a competitive price and sell more copies so that we can do right by our authors, our game, and our partners.
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I actually have wondered if Paizo should be hiring more people. It's a successful company, but instead of putting more investment in community management (a stronger moderation team is badly needed), they expect a small number of employees (1.5, at last count) to handle it all on their own. I wouldn't be surprised if that policy was applied to other aspects of Paizo's management, but I'd be interested in hearing from those who know better on the matter. Of course, it's hard to ask "Does this company treat its employees well?" and expect a really honest response. Employees can't answer, ex-employees have their careers to worry about, and the company itself is not an unbiased source.
I get that people are taking the s!&# out of the OP, but there might be a valid question here. I appreciate Mark's and Vic's answers on the subject.
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OP here. Paizo is a small, closely held company and I have the impression that many employees stay there for a long time. There's no rumors swirling around the industry about Paizo being a horrible place to work, there are no disgruntled former employees writing nasty blog posts
In the interests of ethical discourse: Jessica Price has vocally called out Paizo for its suppression of sexual harassment victims. We had a whole four-page locked thread about it. So this isn't entirely true.
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OP here. Paizo is a small, closely held company and I have the impression that many employees stay there for a long time. There's no rumors swirling around the industry about Paizo being a horrible place to work, there are no disgruntled former employees writing nasty blog postsIn the interests of ethical discourse: Jessica Price has vocally called out Paizo for its suppression of sexual harassment victims. We had a whole four-page locked thread about it. So this isn't entirely true.
Ever heard of disgruntled, freshly-fired employees taking it to the Internet to enact revenge for being fired?
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OP here. Paizo is a small, closely held company and I have the impression that many employees stay there for a long time. There's no rumors swirling around the industry about Paizo being a horrible place to work, there are no disgruntled former employees writing nasty blog postsIn the interests of ethical discourse: Jessica Price has vocally called out Paizo for its suppression of sexual harassment victims. We had a whole four-page locked thread about it. So this isn't entirely true.Ever heard of disgruntled, freshly-fired employees taking it to the Internet to enact revenge for being fired?
I expected better of you, Gorbacz.
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Better of what? Not presenting hypothetical scenarios? Well, if that wasn't clear enough, that's how I earn my living, so it kind of sticks around. If there's anything I can be sorry about, it's for not fitting into the template.
And maybe for the deficit of empathy. But hey, I get to help evil people get away with horrible things. For money! Guilt trips don't really faze me, that goes with the job.
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Ever heard of disgruntled, freshly-fired employees taking it to the Internet to enact revenge for being fired?
Weirdly enough, I heard the parting was amicable and reasonable and very much NOT a 'firing'. Perhaps there is something that was missed, then?
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Weirdly enough, I heard the parting was amicable and reasonable and very much NOT a 'firing'. Perhaps there is something that was missed, then?
Ever heard of disgruntled, freshly-fired employees taking it to the Internet to enact revenge for being fired?
I did not, at any point, point to how Jessica and Paizo parted their ways.
But you seem to be more in the know than I do. Amicable and reasonable, any sources for that? I mean, I'm bloody curious myself.
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Weirdly enough, I heard the parting was amicable and reasonable and very much NOT a 'firing'. Perhaps there is something that was missed, then?
Ever heard of disgruntled, freshly-fired employees taking it to the Internet to enact revenge for being fired?
Jessica has indicated she left of her own free will, albeit possibly as a consequence (at least in part) of her frustration with Paizo*. Regardless, she was not "fired", and I honestly am forced to doubt that we'd be assuming this was just a hysterical and vengeful ex-employee if it was a male employee we were discussing.
And if she was out for revenge, she wouldn't be mentioning this sort of thing as an aside as part of broader discourse—she'd be writing angry essays about it. She has referenced problems in Paizo's management bluntly, yes, but strategically, as part of a larger conversation on sexual harassment and corporate sponsorship thereof.
*I say "possibly" and "in part" because it is speculation on my part—I don't remember if she confirmed that this was the reason.
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Here are some citations, though we're drifting off-topic. I just don't like misinformation floating around. Sometimes we get in the habit of seeing Paizo through rose-tinted glasses—I regret to say I have lost that ability. To loosely paraphrase Dumbing of Age, "The more I look back at my childhood home, the less I like it."
Complaints about harassment being discouraged.
It should be remembered that in spite of ultimately being owned by a woman, and employing lots of women and queer people on the lower echelons, Paizo is largely dominated by a certain demographic. Most of the "beloved figures" (James Jacobs, Erik Mona, etc.) are old white male gamers.
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Sure, KC, it's down to you being an empathetical, side-with-the-weaker-ones person and giving Jessica a rather wide benefit of doubt and me, being a heartless shark, not giving it at all. The chances that we'll convince each other are pretty close to zero, so all I wanted is to make sure that my contrarian point of view keeps being floated.
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cool.
Anyways, another important angle to this is that Price has left the tabletop games industry. She is in the unique position of being able to afford to discuss what's been going on. There are very, very few ex-employees who get that special luxury.
To be frank, I see no reason to give Paizo the benefit of the doubt. The burden of proof that Paizo is actually the one good company run by old white dudes that isn't toxic towards its minority employees rests moreso on Paizo's shoulders, I think—cultural patterns would suggest Jessica is more likely to be telling the truth. She doesn't really gain anything from weaving a web of lies about Paizo, whereas Paizo gets to protect its branding by ignoring and dismissing her complaints.
What a lot of people missed about Lisa Stevens's very powerful apology at the end of that thread was that it wasn't really an apology at all. It actually took the form of a denial. A fairly standard corporate denial, in fact—"We understand your concerns and have always addressed these matters with the utmost sensitivity."