Spam email is free, that doesn't mean it's welcome or desired or poor form to complain about getting it, even if, buried in a site's terms and conditions, you agreed to it because you expected the site to respect you enough as a user to not waste your time with irrelevant garbage. I will absolutely fault a company for wasting my time.
I've been meaning to weigh in on this since I was a highly vocal critic once the second issue came out, you can see my rage on display in that thread. Unfortunately I'm on vacation and am forced to reply on mobile, which isn't my preference and I'm not able to quote as effectively as I'd like.
And to be clear: I never subscribed to the original dragon magazine. I am a relatively new to the scene, starting in 3e/3.5 and taking a 10yr break before returning. That being said, I am a huge fan of D&D but I also have experience in publishing and my full-time job is doing digital marketing, primarily content marketing (which is what Dragon+ is, a content marketing strategy) and email marketing. I do a lot of ROI and demographic analysis as part of my job. I say this to provide context to my remarks.
My main issues with Dragon+ rest on understanding a number of points which flow together.
1.) In addition to the name, as others have mentioned, in the first issue Chris Perkins implied this was the continuation of the original Dragon Magazine, drawing upon nostalgic references to what once was. The latter point (Perkins' introduction) is what caused, for me personally, a misalignment of expectations. Expecting one thing and getting another is an understandable cause of FRUSTRATION. Did they say it was just going to be a bunch of poorly targeted ads for products we already knew about? Apparently, since people are quoting this statement, but I didn't see it anywhere when it came out initially and it's not like people were setting their expectations based on disclaimers prior to it being released since there was literally no warning or fanfare. It just showed up in the App Store. Thus, I heard about it here, said "sweet" and downloaded it, and set my expectations based on what Perkins said in the first article of the first issue. I suspect many of the people complaining here went through the same steps.
2.) They've invested time and effort into the content for the app. The original content that is there is well written, even if it is irrelevant to me. They have an editor, whether or not this is his only responsibility or just part of a wider set, the fact is that they are paying someone to oversee this. My point is that they are INVESTING RESOURCES into this. This is relevant to the next point.
3.) The target audience doesn't match the distribution method. Notwithstanding snarky "this isn't 2012" arguments, my own experience is that casual people are, in fact, more likely to look for a website than an app when first seeking out information on something. The site needs to be mobile optimized, sure, but there's a reason Siri defaults to searching the Internet when you ask her something, not the App Store. The alleged popularity of this format of serving ads in a e-magazine does not necessarily mean it's an especially effective medium for all businesses. Trust me, there are plenty of companies burning money on marketing initiatives at a loss due to lack of insights or ego.
Now, I'm going to enter the realm of speculation here: the majority of people downloading dragon+ are TTRPGers and existing fans, not newbies. I welcome and appreciate disagreement on this assumption and admit to having no numbers to back it up. I just cannot fathom very many newbies going through the effort to find and download Dragon+... if they even hear about it to begin with.
4.) Developing on my last point, D&D doesn't have tremendous brand equity outside of TTRPGs. I will make another speculation: most diehard fans of the D&D brand are TTRPGers. They have a goal to build the brand and expand into more verticals which have a higher margin, and I respect that, but currently most of the existing D&D fan base that they are promoting this app to is the TTRPG crowd. Note that I qualified that statement with "that they are promoting this app to" because I don't see a lot of evidence of their pushing this app with their CRPGs or partners or anything.
5.) Dragon+ could be GREAT if they invested just a few more resources into adding VALUE and TTRPG content that would appeal to the core demographic that they are marketing the app to. I'm much more likely to flip through ads without a problem if the content of the piece is relevant and of use to me, personally. If, after the first few issues I see nothing of value, I will stop downloading it. In email marketing, we call this the ATTRITION RATE, or how a list over time gradually unsubscribes or stops opening and clicking. The attrition rate skyrockets if you don't have relevant and fresh content for your subscribers on a regular basis. It then becomes a race to acquire new subscribers faster than you lose them, which, unless WotC has some incredible methods for driving traffic to this app which I'm unaware of, is not a luxury Wizards can afford. Given that they are investing resources, they need to generate enough profit from the campaign to offset those costs and, equally importantly, generate a higher ROI from this initiative than the next best option.
6.) Based on the above assumptions and logic, I experience not only plain ol' nerdrage at Dragon+, but also marketing nerdrage. I guarantee you they are seeing some short term revenue from this, but in doing so they burned a bit of good will (not tons), made me question whether they actually know what they're doing from a business sense (up until this point I was pretty confident that Mearls & Co knew what they were doing with the business), and more frustrating, they wasted a better opportunity.
Back in the Wild West days of SEO, if Dragon+'s content were put on a website, the term would be a thin affiliate site; sites that are thin on content, high on advertising, and heavy on deceptive black hat techniques to get them high on google's search engine rankings. Eventually Google realized people hated these sites and penalized them. I would argue with the way that the app was initially presented relied on expectations and misleading implications, this was a fairly shady way to get a lot of loyal table top fans to look at a lot of ads for the same handful of products wizards has pushed everywhere already. It felt desperate, honestly. They'll look at the numbers for a few months and continue pursuing this strategy. Then the revenue will begin to dry up and they'll be forced to either shift focus or shutter the mag. Again.
7.) This entire fiasco could have been averted if they just put out a call for freelance TTRPG articles. Here. On ENworld. The pay wouldn't have even needed to be competitive, since people love this hobby and the prestige alone of being featured in Dragon would have been compelling. Literally, a $250 freelance budget per issue would have made all the difference and made this a viable channel for them. As-is, it's a campaign targeted at TTRPGers, misappropriating the name of a beloved TTRPG content piece that doesn't cater to the interests of this demographic and feels like something that was edited by a guy that doesn't even play the game we love. I don't care if it's free to us, it wasn't free to Wizards, either financially or in terms of the lost trust and goodwill and the missed opportunity cost of what could have been.
This is the idea of an executive who said "we need an app" in a meeting, nothing more.
The D&D brand isn't flush with cash and resources, they need to be smarter about how they handle these things. And yeah, I'm upset even if it's free because it wasted my time and annoyed me.
Like spam email. Except I was expecting something cool. Double disappointment.
