What I got from reading your posts. I read a lot of them was that you somehow think other companies are not providing online or digital tools. I found that to be false.
I find it to be true. WotC is the only company providing official digital support at the level I'm talking about. Plenty of other companies provide a bit of digital support. That will, on the whole, increase as time goes on.
It's interesting, though: look at what companies like Paizo are doing for online support now, and look at what WotC was doing for online support 5-10 years ago. The similarities are striking.
You seem to think providing the entire game system online is "cutting edge".
I don't think it is. I think it is using existing technology and further co-opting the cloud model many computer companies are going with to a pen and paper RPG. And you seem to think I should buy in on this basis?
It's really tough to understand exactly what you're trying to say here, but my point is not that you should buy in. You
should buy in, but the point I'm making is that this is where the hobby is headed.
I have never complained about WotC's lack of books or their delivery system. I'm fine with a digital delivery system. I like online tools that help me prepare as a DM, allow me to access the ruleset whereever I am at, and generally make the game easier to experience and participate in. That had nothing to do with my decision to leave D&D behind after 25 plus years.
I never said that it did.
I personally doubt that moving D&D to a completely digital format will be all that helpful in growing the game. It's not a video game. If people are on the computer, most likely that is what they will play.
See, this is the crucial gap in understanding.
You see "using a computer" as something that involves sitting down, booting up a computer (that is significant enough to be the focus of a desk), and then using that computer for an activity that is wholly facilitated by that computer.
Five years ago, you would have been right.
Today, in 2011, you are less right.
And five years from now, you will be
much less right.
I own three devices that can be considered fully functional computers: my desktop, my netbook, and my smartphone. I'll soon be adding a tablet to that list. Of the four that I will have, three of them are going to be computers that will not be used for video games (aside from the occasional Angry Birds level). They will be used for mobile computing (to enhance other areas of my life), and this includes tabletop gaming. And I'm far from the only one heading down this path.
I don't think D&D will ever be mainstream.
Neither do I. But that doesn't really matter.
I don't think many people understand it all that much. It appeals to a small select group for reasons that are very difficult to boil down into a specific demographic.
Basically, yes.
I bet if you were to speak to folks in the industry, they would tell you that building a marketing model for D&D is very difficult. It's not a family game. It's not a video game. It's not a book. It's not a board game. It's not a card game. Explaing it in a marketing blurb is nigh impossible.
I don't think that's true. They've had a lot of practice at it, and I'm sure given about five minutes pretty much anyone in the industry can come up with a passable description.
And picking who will and who will not enjoy the game is like throwing darts. Every geek isn't going to love it, every jock isn't going to hate it.
And to a company like Hasbro, the primary attraction of D&D is most likely for use in video game properties and licensing.
Perhaps. I can't say whether or not this is true.
I bet they could care less about the table top version of the game. Which is why I hope D&D falls back into the hands of people that care about the game and not a megacorporation like Hasbro who will let it languish if it isn't making them money.
WotC cares about the game, and they do a good job stewarding it.
Why is it so difficult to simply accept that just because you
don't like the current iteration of the game doesn't mean that the people who make the game don't care about it?
I saw someone post 54,000 subscribers at $10 a month. That's $540,000 a month and around seven million a year. That is nothing to a company like Hasbro that makes billions. Drop in the bucket.
$7 million a year is
not nothing to Hasbro, especially if that number is higher than it was last year.
If D&D ever falls on hard times or misses sales numbers, they won't respond at all to arguments by RPG game designers about love of the game or anything of the kind. And we all know RPG game designers only do this because they love the game. It's not exactly the most lucrative of professions and I doubt any RPG game designer chooses that profession for money. There are plenty of other ways to make money more lucrative and stable than RPG game design.
This is very much the case, and it's why it's really odd to be accusing the company responsible for D&D of not caring about it.
So if you have a game fueled by a small, strange group that probably couldn't explain to mainstream people what the attraction is other than "It's like being part of a book or movie" or something of the like, doubtful that the distribution system is the primary driver of the market.
Word of mouth is and always has been the primary driver of the tabletop roleplaying game market. If D&D were nigh impossible to explain, it would never have attained the level of popularity and recognition that it has.
For movies, books, or TV shows digital distribution was cutting edge and a primary market driver for those companies that did it first and built their economies of scale on the digital format like Amazon, Netflix, and Hulu. Will it work for a pen and paper RPG in the same fashion it did for those companies?
You mean in the sense that those new products replaced what came before? Probably.
For instance, Netflix: prior to Netflix's appearance on the market, it's not like people watched less television. People watched tons of television before, and they still do. But they probably enjoy that television more if they use Netflix because the relevance (read: utility or hedonics) of the programming to them has increased.
Similarly, bringing D&D into the age of connectivity won't necessarily make people play more D&D. But they'll probably be enjoying their game more thanks to the improvements digital integration makes to how they play the game.
I doubt it. We gamers are an uncommon market. And what stirs us is content, not distribution.
One is not sacrificed for the other.
But trust me, we
are moved by distribution. See: WotC ceasing PDF sales.
We'll buy any manner of esoteric item from giant plastic dragons to strange arcane books with odd rules in them for something as small as how to construct a widget in a fantasy world to the common core rulebook. Whatever catches our fancy and enhances the game from our own perspective.
And, for a crapton of us, ever-increasing digital integration catches our fancy and enhances the game from our perspective.
We write our own rules for each individual game. We write our own adventures. We play with and modify and read over everything we buy. We are primarily interested in creative content that inspires us to create ourselves. Hard rules are attractive some which refer to as "rules lawyers", a pejorative term by many in the gaming community.
Yes, a pejorative used by those who believe that the way they play D&D is goodrightfun and the way that others (for instance, those they call rules lawyers) play is badwrongfun.
Suffice it to say we gamers are as strange a lot as they come. I doubt the new generation is any less strange than the old generation.
Sure it is. The new generation is, on average and as far as I've seen, cooler, and less creepy-weird.
There were certainly other forms of entertainment I could have chosen to be a part of even in my day, but I chose D&D. I couldn't at all tell a marketer why except it allowed me to be a part of the stories I enjoyed.
What exactly am I saying?
To sum it up:
Content will always trump distribution in the world of Pen and Paper RPG games.
Sure it will. That's not an excuse to stifle changes in distribution. You have to show that those changes are bad on their own merits (or lack thereof).
WotC's delivery system is great. I freely admit it was creative and probably has all kinds of cost advantages. As far as RPGs go, it is "cutting edge". Though it is nothing more than co-opting existing technology, which many game companies are doing. Not exactly in the same way as WotC, but most are doing it.
Again, it's a matter of degrees and the extent to which they are embracing the changes rather than resisting them. WotC is, as far as I'm concerned, deserving of the title of "industry leader" for precisely this reason - they lead, and the rest of the industry follows.
But it doesn't matter how good the delivery system is if their content isn't as attractive as it used to be to the majority of D&D gamers, does it? Even if they retained say 70% of their former customers and gave only 30% to Paizo, that is still a huge split of the community. Enough that D&D, a game that already isn't mainstream or perfectly stable in sales, might not be attractive to a company like Hasbro.
It's a huge split, sure. But if WotC pulls in new customers equal to 40% of their previous active customer base, it's actually an improvement. People always fail to mention new customers when they talk about a "split" in the community.
Then let's say Hasbro sells off D&D or shuts it down if they can't sell it. Then where does your ruleset go with no books?
It doesn't go anywhere. It's online.
Or let's say like myself they move to a system of rules you don't like. Then how is that digital ruleset you no longer have access to look?
Who says I don't have access to that rules set?
Again, mark my words: the second WotC announces that 5e is in development, someone will begin making regular dumps of the entire Compendium database, and will eventually make that database dump available somewhere online.
There are people on this board that still own red Basic Set or the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons PHB or Unearted Arcana. They might even still play that version of the game. Will you still be able to do that if you the rules are turned completely into a digital format? Unknown.
People always say this.
Yes, I will still be able to play 4e after WotC moves on to the next edition. I probably won't, because I'll probably be playing the next edition of the game instead, but I
could if I wanted to.
Will every new iteration of D&D be adapted seamlessly by the current market? This is a definite no.
Frankly, it doesn't matter whether it is or not.
So I don't see how you can laud the distribution system as the primary attraction of 4E.
Simple: it makes the game easier to play and easier to run than it's ever been.
You're free to think that.
It should be merely an added bonus. The primary attraction should always be the content.
Many people will see the content as the primary attraction and the tools as the added bonus. Others will see the tools as the primary attraction and the content as an added bonus (for instance, people who wouldn't have the time or ability to play D&D were it not for the digital tools).
I can't see how content that in essence shattered their market in a way that has never happened before is a positive for WotC, especially with the looming giant Hasbro watching over them.
Any "shattering" of the market was not caused by the introduction of helpful digital tools.
I'm going to pose a truly radical theory, here:
It is irresponsible for us as fans of the hobby to blame anyone but ourselves for any schism that exists within the hobby.
I have no doubts that WotC D&D is till the top dog. Many are staying with D&D because they like 4E or they like to stay with the main brand and having new books or WotC has attracted new gamers. But I also have no doubt Paizo took a big chunk of their market because their content is very strong and appeals to a substantial percentage of the D&D base and the 3E ruleset is still a very strong ruleset, one that did more to fuel the industry than any previous ruleset D&D ever used.
Undoubtedly.
And that just further illustrates the point I've made several times: Content trumps distribution aka the delivery system for the content.
So talking up how great the 4E delivery system isn't particularly persuasive. 3E didn't do well just because of the delivery system or licensing (though the OGL did help the overall community), it did well because it's content was such that it was adapted by nearly 100% of the market. I doubt you can say the same about the current version of D&D.
But I'm
not saying that about the current version of D&D.
D&D wants to be the monster in the marketplace. It wants to get its whole market back. All those guys they lost with 4E that spent hours ranting on this board in edition war threads, then get back to the content that made 95% of the market want to buy their game.
Here's another radical notion:
The guys who spent hours ranting against 4e in edition war threads (and who still do)? WotC probably doesn't want them back - they'd rather replace them with new, less terrible fans.
