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So, my question is - how bad is my read?
Heya remoraz.
Honestly, I don't know. And I don't think I could know. And if I did know, it would likely be as a result of either privileged information I got under NDA and needed to not base public commentary on, or privileged information I got from people internally turning to me for a shoulder to cry on or elder statesman (god... did I just write that? bleh) to advise, in which case... I needed to not base public commentary on it.
I'm happy giving broad industry context, because I've seen a lot of the same things pop up over and over in my 29 years in the industry. And a lot of it shocked me the first half-dozen times it happened (death threats over GAMES used to weird me out). So, offering general input on what seems reasonable, possibly, overlooked, or misunderstood is well within my capacity.
But even if I had the skinny on all the inner workers of every exec at Paizo, I dunno I could tell YOU if YOUR read was bad... because I can't quantify how you weigh various concerns and plans.
For example, within the limits of legal and ethical duty, I consider the number one duty of Paizo's executives to be to try to pay employees and create a safe and supportive environment for them. I rate that as so much higher than, say, supporting any specific community of gamers. If axing the forums would long-term save a single Paizo employee's job (and I am NOT claiming it would--this is a hypothetical only), and that was true even given how MASSIVELY unpopular it would be and how much information it would cut Paizo off from, I'd be in favor of cutting the forums.
It is very clear to me a number of Paizo fans vehemently disagree with me on that. And I'm not saying their position is unreasonable. I'm saying if they felt the company was skewing more towards employees (which is honestly likely given the existence of an employee union) and that was not what they wanted to see in the company, even with perfect insight into what Paizo was doing, I couldn't tell those fans how the company lined up with their priorities, because I can't know everyone's priorities.
What I am more aware of than a lot of fans and gamers is how many decisions within a game publishing company must be trade offs. Popular things like more organized play adventures and faster sanctioning make organized play happy... but may be making employees miserable, or sucking up so much money that it can't be sustained regardless of how many extra rulebook sales it drives. Some companies handle such tradeoffs with regular rounds of hiring and laying off people. Others with trying to get contracts to work that ought to be done by people with full jobs and benefits. Others with closing down problematic programs entirely, because the pain and misery they bring as people b@*!& at employees and ownership isn't worth it to the decision makers as people.(And might lead to licensors or retailers or competitors or fans GRABBING employees and execs at things like GAMA and DEMAND answers why a company made some change--not kidding there. It's happened.)
So, has Paizo been changing its methods and priorities for the past few years? Of course it has. Because it was moving toward having to lay people off, that that means what it was doing WAS NOT WORKING. Things HAD to change.
Did they change the right things in the right ways for the right reasons on the right schedule? Not only do I have no internal insight on that (and, again, Paizo execs have more data than I do), but I suspect NO ONE will know the answer to that until a full cycle of products has been produced, from concept and scheduling to being sold out, under the new systems. So... anywhere from 18 to 36 months.
Did their changes align with your preferences. Even if I had all the data, I don't think I could tell you.
As an ASIDE, and not not picking on you in particular, in my experience 95% of ALL fan reads about a company's priorities, motivations, and reasons for taking any specific action are wrong. Fans lack 95% of the information that drives a company, so that makes sense to me. And this applies to me, too. When I was hired by Paizo in 2014, I discovered that a LOT of things I thought I KNEW about why the company (and individuals within it) took various actions was incorrect. No shock... I hadn't had all the information.
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Thanks for the insights Owen. You make really good points about what you see as the role of the executives, and seen through that lens, one can see how “unpopular” decisions, made where fans have 5% of the tacit info or “facts” can lead to disappointment for said invested fans, however misplaced.
It’s true, employees before fans. I guess my reply would be that if the employment of those workers was in part based on continuing to foster a strong community, then it is incumbent upon the executive *not* to make decisions that disrupt that community. Because that will lead to imperilling the employees.
Rereading your post, and my first paragraph here I honestly wonder if greater transparency might help.
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Thanks for the insights Owen. You make really good points about what you see as the role of the executives, and seen through that lens, one can see how “unpopular” decisions, made where fans have 5% of the tacit info or “facts” can lead to disappointment for said invested fans, however misplaced.
It’s true, employees before fans. I guess my reply would be that if the employment of those workers was in part based on continuing to foster a strong community, then it is incumbent upon the executive *not* to make decisions that disrupt that community. Because that will lead to imperilling the employees.
Rereading your post, and my first paragraph here I honestly wonder if greater transparency might help.
I'm not sure there's a level of transparency that will please the whole fanbase, because folks love playing armchair CEO.
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I'm not sure there's a level of transparency that will please the whole fanbase, because folks love playing armchair CEO.Thanks for the insights Owen. You make really good points about what you see as the role of the executives, and seen through that lens, one can see how “unpopular” decisions, made where fans have 5% of the tacit info or “facts” can lead to disappointment for said invested fans, however misplaced.
It’s true, employees before fans. I guess my reply would be that if the employment of those workers was in part based on continuing to foster a strong community, then it is incumbent upon the executive *not* to make decisions that disrupt that community. Because that will lead to imperilling the employees.
Rereading your post, and my first paragraph here I honestly wonder if greater transparency might help.
I feel it would just result in more conspiracy theorizing, combining whatever was revealed into some sinister plot to take away something from "the community" for eeeeeeeeeeevil profit motives.
Honestly, the last two days have been pretty revealing to me how some people will just end their long-proclaimed support at the drop of a hat. I think partly this is because the last ten years have been crazy bad worldwide and the last two years especially so, which has people on pins and needles.
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I've seen many "fan" communities go rabid at minor things, and I am very sure appeasing any section of so-called fans is a bad idea. A lot of angry, entitled people nowadays hide behind the term "community" and can make absolutely irrational demands that are not conducive to a business.
I guess my reply would be that if the employment of those workers was in part based on continuing to foster a strong community, then it is incumbent upon the executive *not* to make decisions that disrupt that community. Because that will lead to imperilling the employees.
Rereading your post, and my first paragraph here I honestly wonder if greater transparency might help.
Sure. I’ve seen all that too. Lots of places. But these decisions, over years, *aren’t* when taken as a whole, a minor thing. Paizo has positioned itself as pro-community, and progressive - and gained popularity and “fans” and “community” through that positioning.
Also, many of the considered voices on these threads including former employees, current contributors and various other long term folks are not rabid or irate or entitled - they are merely voicing concerns that the Paizo they know and love is making decisions contrary to the positioning that made people love them for.
Level headed people are calmer and don't go off at the drop of a hat, that's the community that should be heard and fostered.
And to reiterate, this isn’t the first drop of the hat. And those considered voices absolutely want the best for Paizo.
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I'm not sure there's a level of transparency that will please the whole fanbase, because folks love playing armchair CEO.Thanks for the insights Owen. You make really good points about what you see as the role of the executives, and seen through that lens, one can see how “unpopular” decisions, made where fans have 5% of the tacit info or “facts” can lead to disappointment for said invested fans, however misplaced.
It’s true, employees before fans. I guess my reply would be that if the employment of those workers was in part based on continuing to foster a strong community, then it is incumbent upon the executive *not* to make decisions that disrupt that community. Because that will lead to imperilling the employees.
Rereading your post, and my first paragraph here I honestly wonder if greater transparency might help.
I feel it would just result in more conspiracy theorizing, combining whatever was revealed into some sinister plot to take away something from "the community" for eeeeeeeeeeevil profit motives.
Honestly, the last two days have been pretty revealing to me how some people will just end their long-proclaimed support at the drop of a hat. I think partly this is because the last ten years have been crazy bad worldwide and the last two years especially so, which has people on pins and needles.
As I said in the above post, these are, many of them, as you say, long term supporters of Paizo, who want the best for Paizo, and this definitely isn’t the first drop of a hat that people care a lot about. And because the hat keeps getting fumbled, they are becoming more and more concerned.
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As I said in the above post, these are, many of them, as you say, long term supporters of Paizo, who want the best for Paizo, and this definitely isn’t the first drop of a hat that people care a lot about. And because the hat keeps getting fumbled, they are becoming more and more concerned.
Please, do enumerate all the failures of Paizo over the last ten years which have people so concerned? I can think of a few minor things, but nothing on the scale where I'd drop my support.
Again, I think the overreaction we've seen in the last two days to this issue was due to bad communication on both sides and that the gaming community (I'm including video games here as well) is having a very strained relation with gaming companies right now, due to AI use and general layoffs in the industry. Hell, Paizo is very clear that they don't use AI art, but you will have regularly on the subreddit some joker pop up and go "WAS THIS AI ART?!? AAAAARRRRGHGHH!", because people see AI under their bed nowadays.
Hence why people are treating Paizo, a struggling 150 employee company, like as if they are a giant soulless company like Hasbro. I think Paizo fumbled the ball here mightily, but I also think they are run by humans who make errors and am willing to give them some grace on the issue.
Personally, I think they should renew their relationship with AON, but as Owen pointed out, we don't know 95% of what goes on behind the scenes.
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As I said in the above post, these are, many of them, as you say, long term supporters of Paizo, who want the best for Paizo, and this definitely isn’t the first drop of a hat that people care a lot about. And because the hat keeps getting fumbled, they are becoming more and more concerned.Please, do enumerate all the failures of Paizo over the last ten years which have people so concerned? I can think of a few minor things, but nothing on the scale where I'd drop my support.
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That’s just the thing magnuskn. I’m not going to enumerate “all” the failures in the minds of even *some * of the people. They are doing that well enough themselves. And my own personal list ranges from the pretty biased to the probably petty-based to the possibly rational, all wrapped up in my own “standards” which are entirely bespoke and unique to my worldview. I’ve seen the company change both its presentation and its trajectory a great deal over the past…almost 15 years, and I’ve pretty much stayed terse the entire time. Not because I’m a naysaying troll, but because I’m critical, I critique that which seems off to me. And more and more, things are not only “off” but the executive responses to being called out are ever more egregious.
I seem to remember you yourself were fairly vehement that PF2 itself should not have happened back in the day, and yet here you are, embarking on your own PF2 campaigns. Frustrations are not only borne out of or by knee-jerk reactions, but often deep seated value-judgments that speak to our feelings, desires, morals and ethics. Which also change over time.
I’m not a fan of Golarion as a campaign setting. I think baking the campaign setting into this edition’s ruleset has been disastrous as a game-mechanic-informing design path. I haven’t been inspired by a single Adventure Path, and have even purchased a couple direct from Paizo. I haven’t liked a playtest class apart from the Guardian since the edition launched. While I have endlessly lionised the base system as elegant and rigorous/well built and my current favorite ruleset to play/run there are dozens of points where I houserule it to make it a) make more sense to how I run a game and b) more fun. So basically, apart from the decision making antics of the executives at Paizo, I’m not really much of a fan of what they are currently releasing. I keep holding out hope that some strange alignment of celestial bodies will happen and some designer will present a class that I feel is warranted, interesting, inspiring or fun in some way and it just keeps not happening. I’m also finding the player base mostly at variance with my interests.
Realistically then, as a member of this community, I’m on the way out. But while I’m here, I’ll continue to call out behaviour that I believe is not in the interests of the community as *I* think the community is. And that is all any of us do. I don’t pretend to represent the whole community. I don’t pretend to speak for the whole community. But I am here, I am a part of it and I have an opinion. I’m sharing it, just like everybody else.
As I said in the above post, these are, many of them, as you say, long term supporters of Paizo, who want the best for Paizo, and this definitely isn’t the first drop of a hat that people care a lot about. And because the hat keeps getting fumbled, they are becoming more and more concerned.Please, do enumerate all the failures of Paizo over the last ten years which have people so concerned? I can think of a few minor things, but nothing on the scale where I'd drop my support.
.That’s just the thing magnuskn. I’m not going to enumerate “all” the failures in the minds of even *some * of the people. They are doing that well enough themselves. And my own personal list ranges from the pretty biased to the probably petty-based to the possibly rational, all wrapped up in my own “standards” which are entirely bespoke and unique to my worldview. I’ve seen the company change both its presentation and its trajectory a great deal over the past…almost 15 years, and I’ve pretty much stayed terse the entire time. Not because I’m a naysaying troll, but because I’m critical, I critique that which seems off to me. And more and more, things are not only “off” but the executive responses to being called out are ever more egregious.
I seem to remember you yourself were fairly vehement that PF2 itself should not have happened back in the day, and yet here you are, embarking on your own PF2 campaigns. Frustrations are not only borne out of or by knee-jerk reactions, but often deep seated value-judgments that speak to our feelings, desires, morals and ethics. Which also change over time.
I’m not a fan of Golarion as a campaign setting. I think baking the campaign setting into this edition’s ruleset has been disastrous as a game-mechanic-informing design path. I haven’t been inspired by a single Adventure Path, and have even purchased a couple direct from Paizo. I haven’t liked a playtest class apart from the Guardian since the edition launched. While...
Yeah, that's fair enough. You are correct, I was absolutely against 2E when the playtest happened and didn't look at it anymore since the Remaster. Which both convinced me that a 3E wasn't happening for another decade and made me take a good look at what the rules had become since the playtest of 2E. Which is when I noticed how well written they were.
Since I love Golarion as a setting, I do not have those reservations you have and am looking very much forward to what Paizo is doing with it, quibbles like the unpersoning of Drows aside.