Well yeah, the ultimate goal of any company is to make money- got to keep the lights on somehow. However, there is a key difference between companies run by gamers who are passionate about the hobby, and those who are run by soulless corpo types who barely understand the product they are producing.
Yet no one will even consider my idea that we form an ENworld investment activist group and buy up shares of Hasbro.
Doesn't the second conjunct describe TSR from some time in the mid-80s?
Yeah, so? I don't see what your point is. Could WotC have not had better motives initially than Lorraine Williams?
My point - primarily in reply to @Lanefan - is that commercial publishing houses will act as commercial publishing houses.
It is possible to focus on making the best game you can and make enough profit to keep the doors open. The proportion of attention is falling too much on the profit side and not enough on the "make a great game" side in my opinion.
Well they set out to make a great game with 4e D&D, and you (along with many others) didn't buy it.
They did set out to make a good game with 4e, and I deeply respect those designers for it, even if I didn't like the game they made. It's a shame that WotC's desires for profit were unreasonably high at the time, but good on the designers for following their muse.
I'd love it if that balance was less dominated by the question, "How can we squeeze the most money possible out of the gaming community? Our shareholders aren't getting rich fast enough". I'm not saying profit isn't an important consideration. I just don't think it needs to be chased as far as possible, as fast as possible, and nothing else matters unless it contributes to higher profits.
