The Le: What kind of PR nightmares did you run into while at Wizkids, and how would you respond to them today?

Jason Mical: Heh, a PR person would never use the term 'nightmare' but that's actually pretty darn close on some counts so I won't contradict you. The biggest one is the whole Galactus debacle. I came in the weekend after Wizard World Los Angeles, the one convention that year I couldn't go to, and found that HeroClix fans wanted to string us up for not being able to buy Galactus and worse their treatment by some of the staff at the show. That was a major learning experience for us; I don't use corporate terminology that often but it's appropriate here.

All of our calculations for conventions in terms of the stock we brought were based on how well things sold at other shows, and how many people we expected to attend that particular convention. The only thing we had to base our calculations for Galactus on were the Dropship sales from the prior year - and the backstock of Dropships we still had taking up space in our warehouse at the time. So people were appropriately skeptical that a $100 HeroClix figure would sell. I suppose history kind of speaks for itself, and it was a major error on our part.

The Le: I'm sorry, "Dropship?"

Jason Mical: The Dropship was the first convention 'big figure' WizKids did. It was a spaceship for Mechwarrior: Dark Age, and really a cool piece. I tried to rig mine up with lights but only ended up ruining it. Sigh.

In retrospect I'm not sure there's much I'd do differently about that situation. I was on the forums as much as I was on the phone, gathering information and trying to figure out exactly what happened. It didn't take long for us to realize our calculations for future conventions were way off and we ordered the next batch to go into production almost immediately, but we still had a massive bruise from what happened at Wizard World LA that year, and it's one that we never fully shook off. I know there are people on the 'Realms who still believe we intentionally shorted people at Wizard World LA to create demand. It's simply not true, and if I could do anything to respond differently today it would have been to issue a statement sooner that we hadn't intended to short people and that attendees who missed out on a Galactus could have had the chance to get one in another way. Sure, there would have been unscrupulous people who gamed the system (there always were a few) but the goodwill it would have saved us would have been immeasurable.

Another major one was when our website got hacked. This isn't really a PR debacle by most people's standards but I remember a very nasty exchange on the 'Realms right after it happened. I learned about it on a Friday night about 9pm as I was going out with some friends; I got the call as I was going into a casino actually and I was trying to coordinate getting the site back up and still salvage my time with my friends.

I checked the forums when I got home and some of the responses were just downright mean. People calling us stupid for allowing it to happen, and one person saying not-so-subtly 'well I told them about this security exploit a month ago, and now look!' It was one of those times when I realized that turning your hobby, something you care about, into your job, something you have to do, has some major drawbacks. Sometimes those drawbacks are on a personal scale, because on one hand you simply need to do your job or to have a very hard skin to abusive people. On the other hand, you're thinking yourself 'well, yeah, this was pretty damn stupid on our part' and the insults hurled your way find a way to connect. If I had that one to do over I might have made sure the website was put up and come back to the forums after I'd had time to sort through it a little bit. That, and I would have approached it with a much thicker skin.

The Le: Well, even Microsoft and Google have gotten hacked from time to time. Are there any features you would have liked to incorporate into the website?

Jason Mical: Well our CMS was not the most robust thing on the planet. I'll admit that my technical knowledge is pretty limited but even I knew the CMS didn't work right all the time, and was a mess for search engines. The figure gallery (which was hacked) wasn't a heck of a lot better, but it had to deal with a massive amount of data and interface with our spreadsheets so I'm not sure how it could have been done any better, at least at the time without a massive overhaul. (Note: CMS = Content Management System)

The Le: What other PR issues were there?

Jason Mical: There's various other little things that happened too, misprinted figures or other quality control issues that ended up becoming PR problems. I'd like to think that I handled it all pretty well. If anything, what I'd like people to know is that I always approached that job as a fan of the game who got lucky enough to work for the company, not some PR schlub who could have been selling widgets or HeroClix because he simply didn't care about either. I tried very hard to represent the voice of the community and the fan base in meetings, whether that was fighting for the company to do the right thing even though it would cost a little bit more or saying 'hey, it would be awesome if we did this!' in a brainstorm.

Don't misunderstand - there were a good deal of people at WizKids who cared just as much as I did if not more; Seth, Jon, Wade and Rollie just to name a few. If anything I would have been more transparent to try to help people understand why we did some of the things we did or what was going on behind the scenes a little more. There are some things that are not appropriate to share with your fan base of course, and it's hard to tell if sharing any more information would have simply given the nay-sayers more fuel to add to the fires or if it would have helped them understand. But I always believed in doing right by the fans, and I hope that showed through in how I did my job. In fact I hope it showed through in how WizKids approached our games and our community, even after I left. Some of their best work was done following my tenure there and the people at the company always cared a great deal. Working there was like working with your friends in a clubhouse. Just a clubhouse where we were responsible to some very cranky stockholders and accountants.