A New DRAGON+?

You got a message from Dragon+? Via email?

 

[Zaukrie]

Works now. Zero content for those who actually play D&D. Very lame. Sorry I spent any moment of my life trying to open it. YMMV

 

[BrockBallingdark]

Wasn't working for me a couple of hours ago, now fine on my iPad Air.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

Reading DRAGON+ makes me feel like Ralphie from "A Christmas Story"...

[video=youtube;2-H4LT-WZWE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-H4LT-WZWE[/video]

 

[SigmaOne]

At this point, I've just uninstalled Dragon+. I hope they have interesting stuff in the future, but between Dragon+ and En5ider only one has produced any content to speak of. I don't get what they're trying to do with Dragon+ --- I don'y see the point of a "magazine" that's really just a product catalog.

 

[Zaukrie]

I have also uninstalled it. Calling it Dragon is an insult to all former versions, imo.

 

[Queer Venger]

Just downloaded issue 2 on my ipad

 

[darjr]

I am disapoint. One good thing, I didn't pay for it, except my time, but that must be cheap.

Edit to add I've uninstalled it also. At least I don't have that to deal with anymore. Bright sides all round!

I find that my interest in the new video game is.... modified by this.

 

[vandaexpress]

I was willing to give them a free pass on the first issue...

They need to do better. As a marketer, this isn't a particularly effective strategy. They're trying to hit all of their demographics and customers of all their different products with one magazine. I don't give two about an MMO and I don't use fantasy grounds, although it would be a good read if I did or wanted to.

I was sort of interested in Sword Coast legends and the video game retrospective was nice but this entire thing smacks of thin-content that exists largely to push a product conveniently advertised on the next page. There's nothing of use in here to me and I'm not interested in reading the next issue. FFS dice rituals? You think anyone gives a about dice rituals? Thanks for telling me the short story you included was written while the original IWD game was being developed, btw, glad to know you have nothing better to include than recycled fluff from over a decade ago. BTW Icewind Dale is misspelled on that page.

Holy crap guys, hire a content marketing specialist or just outsource it to a firm or freelancers, it's not that expensive to do this right.

The worst part to me is that I took their survey and nowhere did it ever directly ask how useful the content was for me, or what my opinion was on the issue as a whole, what I'd like to see more of, etc. Instead they asked me if the text to image ratio was good. Way to ask the important questions, dude. Next time throw in a freetext field so I can give you the feedback you need to hear about the worthless-crap-to-advertisement ratio.

I love D&D. This edition is great. It's successful in spite of your bozo marketing and content teams, thank god. I want this to be successful, so here are some pointers on how to not alienate your readership:

Rule #1 of content marketing, Wizards: be relevant. Your MMO players aren't going to download an app to read a single article about strongholds amidst articles about all this other stuff. People wanting SCL info are watching for E3 announcements, blog posts, etc and aren't going to download an app to learn more about it (some will, but it's introducing numerous barriers for no purpose) amidst crap they don't care about. Yes, I get that your sophomore-level marketing intern's strategy document that's apparently steering this fustercluck of a media strategy talks a lot about synergy and "cross-pollination" between product lines but this isn't the way to do it because nobody wants to read this to begin with unless something changes.

You need to ask yourselves as a business, what, exactly, is the point of this app? Who is it for? It feels like they're just throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall, followed by a bunch of ads, and seeing what sticks. Like, it would MAYBE make sense if they had a large readerbase of casual folks, but honestly what kind of people are going to download frikkin Dragon+? Your hardcore TTRPG fans, that's who. This isn't TMZ or Huffpo or Reddit: you don't have a broad base of casual fans that are just gonna check in every now and then for kicks and giggles because they're dying to use a small screen to learn about what's going on with your transmedia ecosystem. Which brings me to rule 2.

Provide value. FFS there's nothing in here that is going to save me time or help me enhance my game. I could not care less about dice rolling rituals and a lame-ass family friendly comic. Way to keep it friendly for all the hoards of youngsters downloading and reading dragon+!

You don't even have to introduce bloat. Just give me a couple of fleshed out NPC statblocks or a magic item or SOMETHING. If you literally do not have the resources to do this, then throw a monthly ing contest and publish the winning submission. Not. Rocket. Science.

Segment your users by game. You have the damn data to do so and send me stuff I'm interested in. Even if it's a collection of variants like the last UA at least it's relevant to my primary interest of TTRPGs.

Jesus Christ. I cannot believe you invested so much effort and care into building a digital magazine and so little thought into the content strategy.

Sorry for the rant. It's just this entire thing feels like it could have been so much more if they got someone who knew WTF they were doing with digital marketing and just dropped a couple grand a month and got some freelancers to make it not suck. Lord knows there are plenty of talented folks on these boards that could have come up with something useful to include.

Ugh. They have ONE more issue to demonstrate its not just going to be puff pieces and ads.

 

[Quickleaf]

They could just rename it to "Plus"

Since there's virtually no trace of Dragon magazine here from what I can see.

 

[samursus]

To echo what many have said, disappointed.