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I wonder how much of this box office take goes to hasbro https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Dungeons-and-Dragons-Honor-Among-Thieves-(2023)#tab=summary  Either way, it's gonna be more than zero, and probably enough to justify doing more films. D&D is going to be fine.
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May 9, 2023 01:47
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moths posted:The OGL thing was definitely the closest they've come to the brink of consequences. For what it's worth, there was actual consequences for them on that one. Like those numbers on Beyond are down, and more people did move to other systems, and like they did burn people/partners who will probably never go back. Dire enough where where they brought a poo poo ton of people from the community to try and get feedback, and then those people also raised hell there(which is why I think the notion of the people who decided to go being clout chasers or shills is absurd, at least loving wait to see what comes out of it before throwing those allegations around at people you don't know) and they were unprepared for just how mad people were. If WotC avoids pissing off their fanbase, and "influencers" or whatever you want to call them and the people who actually make content for their game like you said they'll probably get most of them back eventually. I guess we'll see how that goes with 5.5e's continuing playtest. It's the WoW thing, where Blizzard had two bad expansions where people told them the exact ways in which the expansion was going to fail, it failed in those exact ways, their content cadence got hosed due to covid, and then the whole ABK work environment being filled with sex pests came out. Backs against the wall they actually started listening and weird Dragonflight is like fullstop their best expansion ever(at this point in the expansion cycle at least). Numbers are down, but they are building goodwill with the playerbase that's kinda key to any hopes of turning the game around. But yeah it usually takes a complete multi year failure cascade for larger companies to feel it. The fact that it took like a couple of weeks for WotC's DnD Beyond numbers to get torched to a notable amount where they panicked kinda shows that people are the very least are more than fine with not giving WotC money if they are mad at them. D&D is like something that people online mostly consume and get information on through their parasocial relationships or general communities in forums or Discords. It's why pissing them off was such a comical own goal. As people aren't tied to D&D through D&D's platforms itself, they are tied through their favorite streamer, or forum. If those "communities" turn they can easily turn everyone within their reach against WotC again.
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May 9, 2023 02:44
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That's a lot of good information, and thanks. Hiring a disaster-spinner makes more sense if they're at an ebb. I wonder if the Beyond numbers might be staying depressed since 2023's introduced $4 eggs and gas, but that might just be part of this perfect storm.
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May 9, 2023 04:51
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gradenko_2000 posted:It's been a month, but I wanted to call back to this post and express appreciation for it - I rediscovered an interest for painting minis from watching the channel and spent most of Sunday doing just that. Her channel doesnt feel artifical at all like she really seems like she's actually doing whatever and hasnt figured out a format. I think her second video was a dungeon synth album, she's all over the place and I like it. She'll get boring and established eventually but so far I've been enjoying the ride.
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May 9, 2023 05:17
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Leperflesh posted:I wonder how much of this box office take goes to hasbro That probably won't be enough. Domestic matters a hell of a lore more than international and it didn't even match its budgest domestically. Which is a shame, it's a very watchable movie.
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May 9, 2023 05:18
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moths posted:That's a lot of good information, and thanks. Hiring a disaster-spinner makes more sense if they're at an ebb. They probably realized that the Biggest problem with the OGL nonsense, as far as the company is concerned, was that their messaging and response times was absolutely atrocious. Waiting weeks to put up a comically bad misreading the room message as "D&D Beyond Staff" with like no actual details as a way to staunch bleeding, that just led to more, people being confused, hearing wild statements from twitter users/youtubers/influencers doomsaying, and making up poo poo. Like the second, WotC had someone willing to put their name on a post, and you know sound like an actual loving human rather than a post made with a "we're listening" form letter with dumb "rolled a 1" references. Things died down, and then they put out their new plan saying "oops our bad" The fact that they didn't have someone in this position already is comically dumb. Good Crisis PR is so so important when you are a company that is prone to stepping on rakes. Cynically, unless the bridge is completely burned which it might be for many, people love a good redemption narrative, either Genuine or fake doesn't matter so long as you can sell it.
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May 9, 2023 05:21
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:That probably won't be enough. Domestic matters a hell of a lore more than international and it didn't even match its budgest domestically. Which is a shame, it's a very watchable movie.  I had heard the exact opposite: that making money in large markets like China were what mattered and America was nice but less important simply due to being a smaller market. Has that changed? I've been out of the movie world since the panini so the examples I can think of are old: Iron Man 3 (2013) had an China-only extended version scenes and Pacific Rim Uprising (2018) allegedly getting made due to positive response of the original in China.As examples, looking at the 3 recent Jurassic movies on the website the screenshot references: most of them took in about 2x internationally than domestically, but China specifically is about half the US domestic take. For instance, Fallen Kingdom took 400m domestically, 890m internationally but 260m in China alone. Other movies I checked (that were actually released in China) have similar trajectories like Avatar 2, though Pacific Rim 2 inverts it by making the China take nearly double the US take. The latest D&D movie was released in China but only made 12 million. They may still consider that a disappointment. That website shows a comparison of budget to gross as a ratio: Fallen Kingdom is a 7.7, D&D is a 1.3. I don't know if that is what the bean counters care about, and that probably doesn't include things like marketing costs. So yeah, maybe what I heard is wrong. Dexo posted:The fact that they didn't have someone in this position already is comically dumb. Good Crisis PR is so so important when you are a company that is prone to stepping on rakes. Cynically, unless the bridge is completely burned which it might be for many, people love a good redemption narrative, either Genuine or fake doesn't matter so long as you can sell it. I disagree with the assertion many are making that D&D is somehow 'too big to fail' but I also agree that this OGL controversy will probably be forgotten unless it makes some other powerful market participant such as Critical Roll encourage flight. We will see if that happens. I'm dubious but eternally hopeful for any WotC failure at this point.
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May 9, 2023 12:50
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The way that D&D or WotC would fail is by shareholders losing confidence in it, through bad press and a few numbers not on WotC's side. The bad press would not need to be proportional to the misstep(s) that caused it.
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May 9, 2023 13:41
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Magnetic North posted:
Money is money: the total matters. $200 million isn’t that great, though, particularly against a budget of $150 million. It could do great on streaming but if I had to guess I’d say there wouldn’t be another one.
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May 9, 2023 14:19
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I don't think they can do "Hollywood math" outside of America, which might explain some of the discrepancies.
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May 9, 2023 14:25
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yeah, considering what WotC's goals are with D&D and making it an entertainment brand, they'll probably make another one. The movie was critically successful, and didn't lose money. Especially if it does remotely well on streaming Probably just less budget next time.
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May 9, 2023 14:36
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Honor Among Thieves had a $150m budget??? Does that include marketing?
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May 9, 2023 14:37
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So a few things to note is that domestic is where the majority of the ticket sales go directly to the people that made the movie. International makes them some money too but not nearly as much. I don't know the ratios for China but the China obsession is that there's over a billion people in China and there's a very strong chance they're looking at that and going "man even if we only get a buck from each ticket thats 1.4 billion box office right there" and if that sounds really stupid to you well money talks. And business people want to make all of the money. Always remember that all of the people who thought that having complete control of a market wasnt the only goal worth pursuing died out a long time ago; see WWE's chairman Vince McMahon, he has stated many times his father hated what Vince did to pro wrestling (turning it from a funky network of acting troupes that traded talent to a massive behemoth that owned anyone that mattered and controlled the medium with an iron first). I think Nintendo has some holdouts since pre-panini they actually changed the drop rates of one of their phone games to be less exploitative because it was making too much money and kind of scaring them but there's a new CEO in town so I have no idea what they are up to now. Im getting off topic but making "Not Nothing" in profits is not really what these studio people want, likely they wanted at least 300-500 million and probably would have been satisfied with a billion. If that sounds unrealistic just remember: all of the money. Every single dime. Spending 150 million of capital to make "not zero" profit doesn't make sense, spending 150 million to make 800 million makes sense(although it would be better to spend 150 million to make 1.4 billion. Or even 5 billion. Honestly I think this movie studio is circling the drain with a measly 2 billion in profits, yikes!). Dexo posted:yeah, considering what WotC's goals are with D&D and making it an entertainment brand, they'll probably make another one. The movie was critically successful, and didn't lose money. Especially if it does remotely well on streaming Maybe not a reduction in budget, but it will start to look more like other more successful franchises i.e Marvel. Expect more jokes, probably even less violence, a de-emphasis on magic(or turning it into a "science") for the christian crowd, etc. TheDiceMustRoll fucked around with this message at 15:16 on May 9, 2023 |
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May 9, 2023 15:13
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I'll definitely be at Big Bad, already got the hotel room reserved. It'll be my fifth con this year and the only one I'm not working at (yet anyway). I just go because it's a really good con!
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May 9, 2023 15:23
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:Maybe not a reduction in budget, but it will start to look more like other more successful franchises i.e Marvel. Expect more jokes, probably even less violence, a de-emphasis on magic(or turning it into a "science") for the christian crowd, etc. I feel like one of these is not compatible with 5e era D&D
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May 9, 2023 15:23
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:a de-emphasis on magic Mike Mearls to do Iron Heroes 5e
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May 9, 2023 15:25
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Remember the studio doesn't get all of the ticket price, and marketing costs and other post-production expenses aren't included. The rough rule of thumb is a movie needs to make 3 times it's production cost at the box office to be considered profitable.
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May 9, 2023 15:27
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gradenko_2000 posted:Mike Mearls to do Iron Heroes 5e Every single magic class is removed except Wizards for some inexplicable reason.
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May 9, 2023 15:32
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Lumbermouth posted:I feel like one of these is not compatible with 5e era D&D I mean there was really only two wizards in the movie that I remember, the evil one and the goofy one whose magic didnt work and the only reliable magic that wasnt literally evil was magic items, the most useful one of the party is just the portal gun. They went out of their way to make the Speak With Dead sequence very silly and goofy otherwise it would have been cut because it's a pretty hellish ritual but I would be shocked if we saw something that dark in a DnD movie again. The Druid's(im 99% sure they also never called her a druid) magic was wildshaping and nothing else (and you will notice they made her look less devil-like, eh) and the bard didn't cast any spells at all despite the fact he should know a few. It's already happening
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May 9, 2023 15:33
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OTOH, they had a tiefling in the main cast. Not really spelled out what a tiefling is, but it only takes one nut job in the know to start the manufactured outrage for clicks.
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May 9, 2023 15:50
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:I mean there was really only two wizards in the movie that I remember, the evil one and the goofy one whose magic didnt work and the only reliable magic that wasnt literally evil was magic items, the most useful one of the party is just the portal gun. They went out of their way to make the Speak With Dead sequence very silly and goofy otherwise it would have been cut because it's a pretty hellish ritual but I would be shocked if we saw something that dark in a DnD movie again. I feel like that's less about eliding magic and more about a character getting One Thing To Do as "an adventurer," for simplicity in storytelling. Similar to a lot of secondary characters in an ensemble cast tending to get reduced to one personality trait, like the doctor always being A Doctor. Or to go back to the second D&D movie, the cleric simply being The Cleric and thus it caused the least impact on the party and plot to off him.
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May 9, 2023 15:58
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Yeah a friend of mine complained about that as well, but I can see why they did it. Look at it from the perspective of the average movie-goer who isn't immersed in D&D lore. If you have the Druid and the Bard using magic as well, well then everybody's a wizard as far as the general movie-goer is concerned. So why did they need the Sorceror? Does everybody in this world use magic? Why can't the fighting lady use magic? Etc, etc. It's genre protection of the party roles for perfectly understandable storytelling reasons.
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May 9, 2023 16:14
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:I mean there was really only two wizards in the movie that I remember, the evil one and the goofy one whose magic didnt work and the only reliable magic that wasnt literally evil was magic items, the most useful one of the party is just the portal gun. They went out of their way to make the Speak With Dead sequence very silly and goofy otherwise it would have been cut because it's a pretty hellish ritual but I would be shocked if we saw something that dark in a DnD movie again. The main thing that struck me about the D&D movie was how incredibly bloodless it was. I wasn't expecting it to be as violent as an actual D&D game, but I was expecting something on the level of a Marvel movie since people kept comparing it to Guardians of the Galaxy. It was not that at all, though. The violence was more in line with the D&D cartoon from the 80s. Only two people in the entire movie die, one of whom does so in a flashback and the other is dead for about two minutes. The only person in the main group who uses a weapon at all is the barbarian, and she mostly drops it so she can brawl. The paladin uses a sword and actually hits people with it, but they're undead so they just get back up. People get tossed around, hit with blunt objects, and at the end some offensive magic is used on the big bad, but none of it seems to do anything or matter. It's a very fun movie to watch but it's also apparent that they were terrified of bad PR from whatever the modern equivalent of Mothers against Dungeons and Dragons is.
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May 9, 2023 16:21
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They didn't have everyone cast magic to differentiate skill sets. They kept the violence to the minimum because they wanted this to be a family movie that sells D&D as a hobby to kids and their parents. (Although you're forgotten all the baddies who got et by Themberchonk.) EDIT: They can't do anything right on the first try, jesus: https://twitter.com/thedigitalfix/status/1655881458844565504 Megazver fucked around with this message at 16:30 on May 9, 2023 |
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May 9, 2023 16:28
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Dnd will be fine for a long time. If anything's going to collapse Hasbro/wizards it will be do to over-monitization of magic. There's a lot more cardgames, boardgames etc pulling attention away from it lately and you can only burn so many bridges before people stop putting money into it. I know I played as a kid pretty heavily and wouldn't ever suggest it to mine nowadays with how they've ramped up monetisation. I imagine there's a lot of people like me out there who feel the same and mtg relies on new generations being pumped into the ecosystem Now that said, funkopops have never been doing better and seem to follow the same sort of model so what do I know...
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May 9, 2023 16:38
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Megazver posted:They didn't have everyone cast magic to differentiate skill sets. Execs, eyes crossed with the effort of processing the information: "A fat dragon???"
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May 9, 2023 16:40
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I've said this before, but Magic was already disgustingly exploitative and design was utterly subordinate to profit when I still played regularly, almost twenty years ago. I would like to believe that a breaking point exists, and I don't doubt that it's gotten worse, but I also think that audience is sort of already primed to put up with anything.
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May 9, 2023 16:41
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I don't know if the premium booster packs that cost 10x more is a sign that the game is doomed or a sign that we are. It sure makes me think less of the community that seemingly loves it though.
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May 9, 2023 17:23
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I don't think Magic can really fail. I think you need something to take the throne. Magic sits on a throne built from the bodies of failed pretenders. Next up: Lorcana. Will the House of Mouse finally unseat Garfield's juggernaut?
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May 9, 2023 17:38
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Cool Dad posted:The only person in the main group who uses a weapon at all is the barbarian, and she mostly drops it so she can brawl. To be fair this has happened both times I've played Dungeon World. A certain subset of people would like to hit dudes with an axe but given the choice would much prefer to make a statement with their fists. Megazver posted:They kept the violence to the minimum because they wanted this to be a family movie that sells D&D as a hobby to kids and their parents. (Although you're forgotten all the baddies who got et by Themberchonk.) The fight scene just before the 'chonk's arrival shows the baddies were undead, so technically they didn't die in the movie 
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May 9, 2023 17:42
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Cool Dad posted:The main thing that struck me about the D&D movie was how incredibly bloodless it was. I wasn't expecting it to be as violent as an actual D&D game, but I was expecting something on the level of a Marvel movie since people kept comparing it to Guardians of the Galaxy. It was not that at all, though. The violence was more in line with the D&D cartoon from the 80s. A dude gets his head chopped off(in the background, at night), its when they introduce those undead assassin guys and the lady orders him to kill the guards that let egdin escape. w00tmonger posted:
Didnt they just have to dump millions of dollars of unsold product in a landfill three weeks ago Megazver posted:They didn't have everyone cast magic to differentiate skill sets. *EVil Wizard destroying stuff* Edgin, running with magic user guy: "Can't you DO SOMETHING?" "MY MAGIC HEALS PEOPLE! IF YOU NEED ME TO PATCH YOU UP OR NEED AND EXORCISM I'M YOUR GUY! THAT'S ABOVE MY PAY GRADE!" "MY MAGIC COMES FROM THE FOREST! YOU SEE ANY TREES HERE?" "MY MAGIC COMES FROM THE OCEAN! THIS LOOK LIKE A LARGE BODY OF WATER TO YOU?" Etc etc etc. It's very each to niche-ify user skillsets if they're all magic people. Instead, the druid only ever wildshapes, is not called a druid, and the whole Tiefling is watered down. The sorceror is a conman with a bag of tricks, Im pretty sure he doesnt do anything outside of a parlor trick without the assistance of a tool. Even his anti gravity wild magic used a device. This isn't genre role protection, tons of properties can make "everyone a wizard" while protecting a niche
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May 9, 2023 17:49
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CitizenKeen posted:I don't think Magic can really fail. I think you need something to take the throne. Magic sits on a throne built from the bodies of failed pretenders. Weirdly I think for a lot of people it fills the same void as a good boardgame etc. It's not that another cardgame will necessarily dethrone it so much as young nerds will go play boardgames, videogames etc instead. Especially when the costs are a few decks vs a console, stack of solid boardgames, etc. I think a parent is more likely to throw a deck of pokemon cards etc at their kid than ever get them into magic nowadays. I was really hoping lcgs etc overtook ccg's, but the community angle is always going to be really difficult to overcome vs magic/pokemon/etc. TheDiceMustRoll posted:Didnt they just have to dump millions of dollars of unsold product in a landfill three weeks ago $30million getting shredded because of overstock at warehouses w00tmonger fucked around with this message at 17:52 on May 9, 2023 |
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May 9, 2023 17:50
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:The sorceror is a conman with a bag of tricks, Im pretty sure he doesnt do anything outside of a parlor trick without the assistance of a tool. Even his anti gravity wild magic used a device. The device you're referring to is his component pouch. He uses it to cast spells throughout the movie. The whole point of his character is he's actually a very competent sorcerer (he's Elminster's grandkid even!), but he doesn't have faith in himself.
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May 9, 2023 18:02
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PeterWeller posted:The device you're referring to is his component pouch. He uses it to cast spells throughout the movie. The whole point of his character is he's actually a very competent sorcerer (he's Elminster's grandkid even!), but he doesn't have faith in himself. Which is why its a weird dial he turns and says "Please Work" toż
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May 9, 2023 18:04
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:
I told you the explicit reasoning the movie's creators gave in interviews. One can certainly argue they could've done it differently (I must admit I don't think your examples are an improvement), but they didn't, they chose to downplay the magic for the Bard and the Druid (and also make resurrection magic much rarer) for story reasons. And not because they're scared of BADD in 2023, lol. Megazver fucked around with this message at 10:44 on May 10, 2023 |
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May 9, 2023 18:05
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The thirty million being shredded is retail price, not wizards' actual costs, which are far lower per card, they're just playing cards... but yeah it's still a sign of significant missteps in the planning for a particular release, to have to do that. Nonetheless, the prognostications of wizards/magic's impending doom remind me a lot of the games workshop death threads, "market research is otiose in a niche" etc. etc.: it takes a lot to kill a huge worldwide entrenched brand, and until we see consistent huge misses on the quarterly reports there's every reason to think magic is and will be just fine for the foreseeable future. Arena prints money, paper magic prints money, they put out so many sets and secret lairs and special releases etc. etc. that one or two are bound to miss the mark and that's basically priced in already and not worthy of much note. The trap is being of the opinion "these people should fail" and then constantly looking for evidence of failure. That's not how you actually do financial analysis of a company. That's confirmation bias in action.
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May 9, 2023 18:15
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Large million/billion companies don't blow up overnight without Enron style malfeasance, and nobody is showing evidence of that. A slower Sears-style hollowing put, others take over as market leader, and WotC gets sold piecemeal for parts two decades down the line is how it would go, if it actually goes that way.
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May 9, 2023 18:26
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edit - nothing to see here.
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May 9, 2023 18:31
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I think a modern corporation is always in a bit of a precarious position, given how thoroughly most of them have been captured by the Wall Street expectation of infinite growth, but I also think it's basically impossible to predict which will actually collapse. A company can make enormous blunders constantly and be run by the dumbest MBAs to ever fill in in a coloring book but still keep on trucking, or it can make one seemingly minor mistake that gets some coverage and causes the shareholders to panic and collapse the whole thing. It's chaos and unpredictable.
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May 9, 2023 18:54
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:Which is why its a weird dial he turns and says "Please Work" toż Yes. He turns the weird dial to what components he wants it to dispense. It's like the arrowhead selector thingy that Hawkeye has in the MCU. He says "please work" because of the whole lack-of-confidence thing that he has to overcome.
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May 9, 2023 19:01
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