An Open Letter To Sweet Baby Inc.

And All Their Clients

Dear Sweet Baby Inc, Clients & Potential Clients

Listen. I hate all of this. I wanna get back to gaming, whether that’s tabletop, video games, board games, doesn’t matter at this point. The picture above is me, personally, extending an olive branch to you…but it does come with conditions.

Let me tell you a story.

I used to work for a business. In fact, I managed one. We needed to move the needle on some metrics. I wasn’t inclined to chase certain metrics but I was going to be held accountable if our goals weren’t met so I asked some advice from a guy I knew who used to work for the same company. His team seemed always so motivated and inspired. Even if the day was going horribly for them or the week was a bad one, they never got the “You Rock! You Suck!” treatment. It was always, “You and your team are seriously driven individuals, we know you’ll turn it around.”

That’s what I wanted. No more of this “Your Team Rocks!” one minute with “Your Team Sucks!” in the same breath. To be honest, I didn’t think moving those goals along was realistic and I had my reasons for thinking that.

I took him to lunch and asked him “Matt, I’m having a problem, do you think you could help me?” and being the helpful guy he was, he nodded. I explained my situation and he chewed on his food, thought for a minute and he said, and I quote:

“Okay, when it comes to that, first you have to ask your team to get those needles moving. That’s the first step. If you never ask them, they never will. I know you, you’ve asked and it’s probably not going anywhere.

Make a leaderboard in the back. You got that dry erase board, right? Okay cool. Get fresh markers and make a leaderboard. See what happens. It’s gonna be something super stupid and small…to you but to them, it means the world.

Past that, you will have to have conversations with people who won’t even place or who consistently place dead last. Pull them into the back and let them know. This is what we’re doing. This is what we’re paid to do. Clock off, take your break. Go get some food or some coffee or whatever. Get out of the business for awhile but think about this. If you decide that you can’t join with us, that’s fine, just come get your stuff, go home. Doesn’t make you a bad person, doesn’t make the organization bad, we just don’t fit together well, that’s all. No hard feelings. If you do clock on, then you accept that this is what we’re doing and it’s a condition for continuing to accept the paycheck that keeps going into your bank account.”

That got me to thinking and I created a leaderboard. Before I knew it…things started happening, good things! Then I went and added these stupid plastic WWE toy belts into the equation. Things started moving even better. Before I knew it, we were being celebrated and getting the confidence of our regional people. The whole business that I managed was on autopilot and we hardly ever caught flack. I never had to have that final conversation with anyone. His advice worked.

Now I do, with all of you. See what occurred to me was, in the time I managed that business, it wasn’t the company paying us, it was our customers. Without them coming through the door and wanting something we had more than they wanted the money they busted ass to earn, there was no company paycheck. At all. There’s also no such thing as growth in perpetuity. These are simple, universal facts.

Here’s the part of the story that’s a bit of a cautionary tale. The business was RadioShack. They’ve been an online only presence for several years now and that’s due to colossal gaffes from the leadership, alienating their core customer base and, in large part, putting their customers and employees on the hook for all the mistakes they’d made.

You’ve done far worse. You blatantly attacked your customers. You tried to shove things at us, sub-par quality products that we did not want nor did we ask for. When we asked for something, you went in the opposite direction and got angry at us for it.

You proudly listed the companies and games you worked with and on on your own website and then you went on the run when Kabrutus curated a list. You called 300,000 plus gamers, “small and sad” and you recently had your friends write a hitpiece on us.

But this is the part where we’ve attempted to demonstrate and tell you what’s going on and we see that has failed. Now, you’re looking at 17,000 layoffs in the AAA games industry. Not something I will celebrate. I’m not going to engage in schadenfruede like some did when I lost my job seven or eight years ago. I worked for a company that didn’t manage things correctly and of course, I paid for it…for four days. I had a new job a mere four days later. I bounced back. I landed on my feet. RadioShack…that’s subjective.

Most of us have closed our wallets to your clients Sweet Baby Inc. We’re tired of your sensitivity reading, your lectures, your wanton desire for control.

Still, there is a way back. See we’re not all a bunch of overbearing people as you’ve demonstrated yourselves to be and I’m speaking only for myself here. At least with us, there is a path to redemption.

Here’s what I want you to do upon receipt of this missive today.

Clock out. Go take your breaks. All of you. Take your half hour or hour. Go have lunch or coffee. Go for a walk. Get out of the business for awhile. Think about something though. If you clock back in, you do so with the understanding that you make quality games we want, without all the lectures, the pandering and the desire for control. That will not be happening. You make women beautiful again. You eliminate “the message” whatever that is and you cease the nickel and diming of gamers for the privilege. You apologize. You humble yourselves and you understand that these are the conditions that come from accepting our money.

Or…

You only come back into the office to clear out your desk and go home because you’re not a good fit for us and we will never be a good fit for you and you get no money. Well, not from us. You now have to find or create a means of employment with the audience you’ve selected. That’s it. That’s the simple choice you have to make.

The third option is what you’re in right now. Keep up the nonsense and we’ll watch that ESG money run out. Can you afford this third option? I don’t think you can. Clock is ticking and time’s running out. You had a good run doing everything your way but now those chickens are coming home to roost. That’s a real problem. What are you going to do about it?

As for someone like me, I probably have more games than I’ll ever need or want or will be able to play. Everything from tabletop games to board games and everything in between and only one person needs a copy in order to play those, me. I also know where to direct people that may be interested into games that aren’t yours and they’ll have just as much fun if not more.

Fact is, I never wanted to have this conversation with any of you but it has to be had now. Now that it’s been had, ball is in your court. I’m curious to see what you do with it.

Not holding my breath though.