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funnily enough the originators of the book of erotic fantasy lost their d20 license because of QUALITY standards from wtoc and had to switch to just ogl(Open gaming License)

http://www.gamingreport.com/article.php?sid=10243

Who cares about D&D when there's a whole new, revamped edition of TRAVELLER coming out in a few months?

I'll see your Fireball Spell and raise you one FGMP-15.

Of the post-college adults I know that are still into gaming, relatively few are from the IT world and those that are are generally my generation or older. Even at the edges of my generation (Gen X) you'll find that gaming has largely been replaced by computer gaming and old-school gaming is declining. The raw numbers of gamers might be increasing, but not at the same rate as the IT industry and perhaps not even at the same rate as the general population.

It's hard to find good current numbers, but 2004 was a bleak year for gaming and the best news from 2005 was that no major gaming publisher shut its doors. It's been a long time since the heady days of the seventies and eighties when gaming was all the rage.

Of the post-college adults I know that are still into gaming, relatively few are from the IT world and those that are are generally my generation or older. Even at the edges of my generation (Gen X) you'll find that gaming has largely been replaced by computer gaming and old-school gaming is declining. The raw numbers of gamers might be increasing, but not at the same rate as the IT industry and perhaps not even at the same rate as the general population.

It's hard to find good current numbers, but 2004 was a bleak year for gaming and the best news from 2005 was that no major gaming publisher shut its doors. It's been a long time since the heady days of the seventies and eighties when gaming was all the rage.

Check out the pictures of the new Settlers game... the hexes are fully painted sculpted 3D pieces the size of your hand!

Second that. You might have trouble getting the english version though, as it's been out of print for a while (a german version is available). Looks like it's being re-released though.

If you look here, http://www.gamingreport.com/article.php?sid=12203& mode=thread&order=0, you can see that the game was suppost to be released in October and be $39.95.

There's a report in this gaming journal (I am a former tactical game designer/developer).

Let me know what you guys think. I know a GUI based cyberspace isn't any more useful then the current indexing/text version, but man is it loads of fun.

Good Luck to all the folks who were laid off and are going to receive "career transistion services and support."

I was one of Wotc's laid off employees and they never provided any career transition services and support even though I received a letter from the company stating I would. Unfortunately, it was a big lie.

My two cents,
Rondi Patterson
Former Regional Representative
Wizards of the Coast

From this page. It's sad too see this stuff... :-/

Hasbro's not gutting them - Wizards is doing it to themselves. The story is the same as when they had the layoffs after the pokemon market collapsed.
There's a little bit more on the story at
gamingreport.com, but official annoucements aren't due to come out until tomorrow (Friday).

It looks like exactly the same situation as a year ago when pokemon bit it. Wizards can't support itself at its current size so they're downsizing. The market for disposable income items isn't the best right now, and there's no "must have" item for the card game kids on the docket. Harry Potter isn't doing nearly as well as anyone had hoped (probably because it doesn't capture the feel of the books) and the general economy isn't doing so hot.

I just hope they don't cut the RPG group back too much more. They're only releasing one product a month (or so) and while I think that's a perfect rate to be releasing new RPG material, too much less than that might be bad.

Wizards of the Coast (who is owned by Hasbro) is laying off 100 employees... for those that do not know Wizards of the Coast is the current owner of D&D

read about it here

Speaking of gaming crashes, apparently WOTC has gotten screwed over by corporate money grubbers, because their stock prices aren't doing so well. Check this out. Hasbro's won at least one gamer's emnity now.