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Author Topic: Forbes Article on WOTC  (Read 7973 times)

David Johansen

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Re: Forbes Article on WOTC
« Reply #15 on: October 14, 2022, 10:06:51 PM »
That picture is of the same character at different levels.
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Chainsaw

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Re: Forbes Article on WOTC
« Reply #16 on: October 14, 2022, 10:14:42 PM »
I get others saying this isn't the direction for them. I don't get what you think is the lie in this? You saying nobody told her she couldn't play?
Awfully convenient backstory, but who knows. Maybe true.
« Last Edit: October 14, 2022, 10:17:59 PM by Chainsaw »

Lunamancer

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Re: Forbes Article on WOTC
« Reply #17 on: October 14, 2022, 10:27:53 PM »
While I think it's fair to say that D&D grows out of distinctly European history & mythos,

I don't think it's fair to say that. Too much evidence to the contrary.

Quote
even trying to talk about real-world racial groups in the context of fantasy worlds doesn't make sense. None of the characteristics of real-world races inherently apply to fantasy races, even if they're using similar costume or features.

Plenty of fantasy worlds are simply alternate earths and DO in fact retain real world racial groups. There was absolutely no mention of fantasy races at all in my comment.
That's my two cents anyway. Carry on, crawler.

Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito.

Ratman_tf

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Re: Forbes Article on WOTC
« Reply #18 on: October 15, 2022, 12:39:15 AM »
What do people think about the business information in the article? From other estimates, it sounds like D&D is about a quarter the size of Magic: The Gathering, which has also been growing, making $580 million in 2021. Still, D&D's supposed continuous growth for 9 years and young player base sounds good as far as their business. Of course, their own numbers are suspect - but WotC president being promoted to top Hasbro CEO and shareholder reports sound positive.

If they really want to make some cash, they'd dump this D&D nonsense and go into the pornography business.
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Effete

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Re: Forbes Article on WOTC
« Reply #19 on: October 15, 2022, 02:12:40 AM »
What do people think about the business information in the article? From other estimates, it sounds like D&D is about a quarter the size of Magic: The Gathering, which has also been growing, making $580 million in 2021. Still, D&D's supposed continuous growth for 9 years and young player base sounds good as far as their business. Of course, their own numbers are suspect - but WotC president being promoted to top Hasbro CEO and shareholder reports sound positive.

If they really want to make some cash, they'd dump this D&D nonsense and go into the pornography business.

Nice reversal. Normally it's their customers who get fucked.

Melan

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Re: Forbes Article on WOTC
« Reply #20 on: October 15, 2022, 04:21:22 AM »
I'm triggered that the DM's name is "Cocks" in a game that has historically been a racist, misogynistic boy's club dominated by incels.

I thought Wizards was trying to do better. Such a disappointment.
You are triggered by "Cocks"?

Let me tell you, I am fucking triggered and literally shaking that D&D is now in the hands of a fat, woke, white, upper-class woman named Williams... again.




Is this even a different person or just a different outfit? Put Gene Weigel and his mighty spiked flail on the case at once!
Now with a Zine!
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weirdguy564

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Re: Forbes Article on WOTC
« Reply #21 on: October 15, 2022, 10:17:35 AM »
Anybody else notice the article has both a complaint that women are over-sexualized and that genders are non-binary?

Which is is?  If you want to argue gender descrimination, you need genders to be firmly defined.
« Last Edit: October 15, 2022, 10:35:01 AM by weirdguy564 »
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Lunamancer

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Re: Forbes Article on WOTC
« Reply #22 on: October 15, 2022, 11:48:59 AM »
Anybody else notice the article has both a complaint that women are over-sexualized and that genders are non-binary?

Which is is?  If you want to argue gender descrimination, you need genders to be firmly defined.

It actually makes things easier. For example, here's an image of a non-binary person who I will just assume identifies as a woman who is being sexualized:
That's my two cents anyway. Carry on, crawler.

Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito.

VisionStorm

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Re: Forbes Article on WOTC
« Reply #23 on: October 15, 2022, 12:25:11 PM »
I get others saying this isn't the direction for them. I don't get what you think is the lie in this? You saying nobody told her she couldn't play?
Awfully convenient backstory, but who knows. Maybe true.

I don't care if she was literally told she couldn't play. This "story" is being presented to advance a false claim of widespread misogyny and non-acceptance within the hobby.

Even if her anecdotal tale of one single incident that may or may not have taken place the way she recounts it happens to be true what's actually being claimed here is still a lie.

Jam The MF

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Re: Forbes Article on WOTC
« Reply #24 on: October 15, 2022, 02:17:30 PM »
Now, just imagine if the 3.0 / 3.5 OGL hadn't happened......

These people would have even more of a stranglehold on the hobby, than they do now.
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jhkim

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Re: Forbes Article on WOTC
« Reply #25 on: October 15, 2022, 03:26:39 PM »
Anybody else notice the article has both a complaint that women are over-sexualized and that genders are non-binary?

Which is is?  If you want to argue gender descrimination, you need genders to be firmly defined.

That doesn't logically track. For example, I can argue that there has historically been discrimination against black Americans, while at the same time arguing that there has never been a binary division between black people and white Americans - since there have been mixed ancestry people since long before the U.S. was a country.

According to the logic expressed here, I'd have to define a clear binary line between black Americans and white Americans in order to say that blacks were discriminated against. But I don't think that's true. Historically, the people most concerned about defining a firm binary line were racists, such as those who enforced the "one drop" legal standard in laws against miscegenation.

Marchand

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Re: Forbes Article on WOTC
« Reply #26 on: October 15, 2022, 03:46:46 PM »
From the article:

Quote
Another challenge: diversity and inclusion, topics that are of special interest to the game’s young fan base. The artwork in D&D’s early publications featured overwhelmingly white characters and sexualized women. Wizards has made a conscious effort to change that in the currently available fifth edition, but critics have noted that the game’s use of “race”—a character’s species, like a gnome or an orc—can reinforce stereotypes. All drow, or dark elves, were traditionally portrayed as evil, for instance.

Wizards seems to be trying, hosting roundtable discussions with fans after promising to promote diversity in a 2020 blog post. And while some efforts have been derided as lip service—such as slapping sensitivity disclaimers on culturally insensitive books that remain for sale—Williams insists that she is serious about creating “a culture where everybody can do their best work” and “bringing more people into the party.” The Player’s Handbook now explicitly tells readers, “You don’t need to be confined to binary notions of sex and gender.”

“D&D as a game, as a lifestyle has the potential to help people be more comfortable with who they are, express themselves more,” says Williams, who finally got the opportunity to play the game this year, with Cocks as her dungeon master. “It’s amazing how far it’s come since someone first told me I couldn’t play when I was in that basement. I’m super-excited.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/could-dungeons-26-dragons-be-the-next-harry-potter-stranger-things-have-happened/ar-AA12N7Ia

I find what's happened here really interesting.

D&D has become more socially acceptable. By which I mean people who play D&D are no longer subject to as much risk of ridicule or ostracism as was the case in the 1990s. You could quibble with that but let's run with it for a while.

How does a mainstream journalist build a narrative for this? It is all about establishing and reinforcing social status by kicking downwards. Back in the 90s, the mainstream could make themselves feel great all day by kicking down on nerds and geeks. But then geek culture became lucrative. So now the mainstream needs to invent some narrative why it was ok to kick down on D&D back then, but now it's a respectable market segment. So, in the spirit of the times, make up some crap about how it used to be racist or misogynistic or whatever. It used to be for proto-incels (so it was ok to hate it back then) but now it's for lovely geeks.

What hack writer wouldn't prefer to avoid challenging their readers by making them think maybe they were wrong to despise D&D before? Better to blame the victim, i.e. old-school D&D (and its players), and avoid challenging the reader. Plus (although Forbes doesn't need to do this, only the woke end of the hobby), you can still kick down on those old-schoolers.
« Last Edit: October 15, 2022, 03:59:17 PM by Marchand »
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Jaeger

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Re: Forbes Article on WOTC
« Reply #27 on: October 15, 2022, 08:28:12 PM »
Awfully convenient backstory, but who knows. Maybe true.

I don't care if she was literally told she couldn't play. This "story" is being presented to advance a false claim of widespread misogyny and non-acceptance within the hobby.

Even if her anecdotal tale of one single incident that may or may not have taken place the way she recounts it happens to be true what's actually being claimed here is still a lie.

^THIS^

She left out all context and circumstance from the time she was so horribly told that she 'couldn't play'.


The most likely scenario:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/could-dungeons-26-dragons-be-the-next-harry-potter-stranger-things-have-happened/ar-AA12N7Ia
...
“D&D as a game, as a lifestyle has the potential to help people be more comfortable with who they are, express themselves more,” says Williams, who finally got the opportunity to play the game this year, with Cocks as her dungeon master. “It’s amazing how far it’s come since someone first told me I couldn’t play when I was in that basement. I’m super-excited.”

“My very first experience wanting to play Dungeons & Dragons was back in the ’80s,” says the 55-year-old Williams, who grew up amid the tobacco fields of North Carolina, “and there were some of my male friends in a basement, and I wanted to play, and they were like: ‘No, you can’t play. This isn’t for girls.’ I’m really excited that that is no longer the case.”


She was a teenager in the early 80's, probably at a female friends house, and some of the girls brothers friends came over to play D&D.

They were not her "male friends", they were just some boys she knew in high school...

She see's them playing D&D and was like: "Hey I'd like to play!".

So a group of teenaged boys looking to play their game get asked by a girl that they obviously didn't want around at the moment if she could play too...

Of course they kicked her to the curb!

Naturally in her mind: one group of teenaged boys in a basement = all evil straight white male D&D players ever.

This article was a good thing. It showed that Cynthia Williams is not above being a disingenuous to serve her own ends.
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Zelen

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Re: Forbes Article on WOTC
« Reply #28 on: October 15, 2022, 10:09:13 PM »
This article was a good thing. It showed that Cynthia Williams is not above being a disingenuous to serve her own ends.

She's still bitter that she wasn't attractive enough. This is her way of trying to take revenge for the insult to her ego.

Effete

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Re: Forbes Article on WOTC
« Reply #29 on: October 16, 2022, 02:00:02 AM »
The most likely scenario:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/could-dungeons-26-dragons-be-the-next-harry-potter-stranger-things-have-happened/ar-AA12N7Ia
...
“D&D as a game, as a lifestyle has the potential to help people be more comfortable with who they are, express themselves more,” says Williams, who finally got the opportunity to play the game this year, with Cocks as her dungeon master. “It’s amazing how far it’s come since someone first told me I couldn’t play when I was in that basement. I’m super-excited.”

“My very first experience wanting to play Dungeons & Dragons was back in the ’80s,” says the 55-year-old Williams, who grew up amid the tobacco fields of North Carolina, “and there were some of my male friends in a basement, and I wanted to play, and they were like: ‘No, you can’t play. This isn’t for girls.’ I’m really excited that that is no longer the case.”


She was a teenager in the early 80's, probably at a female friends house, and some of the girls brothers friends came over to play D&D.

They were not her "male friends", they were just some boys she knew in high school...

She see's them playing D&D and was like: "Hey I'd like to play!".

So a group of teenaged boys looking to play their game get asked by a girl that they obviously didn't want around at the moment if she could play too...

Of course they kicked her to the curb!

I'm much more cynical.

What I think happened is a bunch of kids were hanging out, some were playing DnD, and she mocked them for it. So they told her, "okay then, fuck off, you can never play with us."

What doesn't pass the sniff test is that she wanted to play since the fukken 80s, but somehow was never able to? Because she was "a girl?" Bullshit! Most of the groups I've been in since the 90s have had at least one girl in them. No one cared. In fact, most players welcomed the different perspective. Her whole story is a lie, and I'll put money down that she's merely trying to save face because back in the 80s-90s SHE was the one shitting on the dorks who spent their weekends playing elf games. SHE was the toxic one (and clearly still is).