Forked Thread: What is WOTC's Goal with the GSL?

[Corjay]

I have to respect your outspokenness.

I would just like to remind you that WOTC is a business. Businesses are out to make money, whether they are mom and pops, or corporations. If they're not out to make money, then they won't stay in business for long, because they will fall to those who are. Now anyone who says a business is not out to please the people how is it they can make money if they're not making the greater majority of their customers happy and staying out of small customer niches? WOTC is at the top of the food chain because they've done a lot of things right over the years. And ever since they were bought out by HASBRO, they have had to produce profit or get downsized. This last year and a half, they lost perspective, not on the customer, but on proper money-making business, because in their effort to please the customer, they forgot to pay attention to a few necessary business practices, including: 1) pacing their budget, 2) pacing changes to the product, and 3) controlling the number of major projects in motion.

In short, yes, WOTC is out to make money. No question about it. However, if they were out to make money at the expense of the customer, I don't think we would have seen any cost-cutting measures reflected in the cost to the customer.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

It's not about evil, or some misguided notion that small businesses don't want to make money. This is about issues of scale, corporate inertia, and depletion of market resources. The bigger a business grows the more its overhead rises and organizational inertia sets in. Plus once you get to the publicly traded level there are the demands of shareholders and boards to consider on top of the already high price of continuing to operate and profit.

Yet RPGs are a niche market and a small one by the standards of companies that size. Notice that WoTC already makes most of its money on other sources and DND is simply one product line. A product line expected to hold up against others that have a much larger customer base to draw on to continue operating.

The rock has only so much blood to squeeze out. I believe that corporate inertia combined with the monetary needs of WoTC will damage the RPG community in the long term in its goal of justifying itself in the short term to HASBRO. That it does not have a sustainable model and its attempts to stay online will damage the rest of the industry and the gaming community. As such it should fail allowing businesses of a sustainable size to grow up and take its place.

Do I expect them to see it this way? Of course not, many of the WoTC team love DnD and even those who aren't related are doing a job that they probably like to some extent. The thing is none of us as gamers need WoTC or any other particular business. We merely need a gaming company that provides products we like. Hopefully one that provides for a continual cycle of new talent to renew the industry and community. So if a business is unsustainable in my opinion I certainly hope it collapses so a more sustainable smaller one can take it's place.

 

[Corjay]

Actually, becoming larger makes the overhead per product go down, because they can buy materials in larger, discounted orders, making their purchasing power much stronger, which allows them to afford more bells and whistles like hardback publications, high quality paper, and their own legal department. Also, as I was shown recently, WOTC is not publicly traded.

RPG's are a niche market, but when I used the term, I was referring to that they weren't niching into ultra-complex RPG's or obscure genres.

The rock has only so much blood to squeeze out. I believe that corporate inertia combined with the monetary needs of WoTC will damage the RPG community in the long term in its goal of justifying itself in the short term to HASBRO. That it does not have a sustainable model and its attempts to stay online will damage the rest of the industry and the gaming community. As such it should fail allowing businesses of a sustainable size to grow up and take its place.

I have to disagree. Their online initiative wasn't "an attempt to stay online". It was an attempt to grab the majority share of the online RPG community, which is good business. It failed for the reasons I described. They spread themselves too thin, failing to pace themselves. Any business that wants to survive in this day and age has to have an online presence. Without it, they are sure to fail.

But I must ask you to elaborate on how their online presence is going to cause the industry to crash. That was an unsupported slippery slope that I need the support for to understand your meaning. Or you could just say it's just an opinion you hold and I'll respect that as a no need to discuss. Though if someone else comes up with something and you wish to use your view as grounds for the discussion, it would be good for us to know the support for the view.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

Did you hear me say anything about their online presence? I wasn't referring to any single product or service at all. I was referring to WoTC as a company and the sum of their RPG products. The overhead per product goes down due to economy of scale. But the overhead of the company as a whole rises, and rises rather steeply once it gets past five heirarchical steps, just as efficiency begins to decrease from inertia.

Also WoTC does not have to be publicly traded itself, it is a wholely owned subsidiary of HASBRO and they are undeniably a publicly traded company. This puts pressure on WoTC from the HASBRO end to match HASBRO expectations high not only due to the size of its parent company but the desire for ever increasing share value by stakeholders.

 

[dmccoy1693]

This is about issues of scale, corporate inertia, and depletion of market resources. The bigger a business grows the more its overhead rises and organizational inertia sets in.

I'd have to agree. Is Wizards evil, no. They want to make money, just like everyone else. They want to do it by making something they, and lots of other people, love. Admirable. But some things are very true.

1) 4E split the market. What percent, I don't know, and am I am not going to presume to guess. But there is a sizable percentage left behind. Undeniable. Those customers left behind use to be WotC customers are now no longer. Unless their new customers were large enough to replace those old customers, then their publishing schedule from 3E that they are maintaining in 4E is going to not sell as well.

2) Customers that are going to switch to 4E would have done so relatively quickly. Some LGSs I've talked to said they saw really good sales of the core books while more LGSs said they saw a small bump in sales right when the books came out and no real major sales afterwards. 3E players have been well schooled in how to get books at lower prices when they know in advance they want that book: they order it from amazon. There's a reason why it hit so high on Amazon: there's where alot of players got their books. Wizards makes less money from those sales and LGSs make none off them. Good for consumers, bad for everyone else. So instead of the 3E books that brought alot of older games back with time, 4E had a more established fan base going in. I'm guessing sales of the core books spiked higher at the beginning but will see a smaller tail throughout the life of it.

For the record, I did like the fact that Wizards released their books to Amazon later then to LGSs. I've seen that from other publishers as well and I hope the practice keeps up.

 

[Corjay]

I agree with dmccoy.

Did you hear me say anything about their online presence? I wasn't referring to any single product or service at all. I was referring to WoTC as a company and the sum of their RPG products. The overhead per product goes down due to economy of scale. But the overhead of the company as a whole rises, and rises rather steeply once it gets past five heirarchical steps, just as efficiency begins to decrease from inertia.

I think it's my own meaning that got missed. Their overhead as a company is going to be reflected in their overhead per product. I said "per product" because it highlights how much money they are actually saving by being a larger business. They have to pay more employees, but their ratio of products to employees is greater, saving them money as they get more product for less payout. They are in a higher tax bracket, but get much greater tax breaks, as well as privileges, that a mom & pop doesn't.

The quality of the product compared to the industry standard is a direct reflection on their overhead in comparison to their supply & demand. WOTC produces the very highest quality books. If their overhead were more than smaller businesses, they would be producing lower-quality books than the industry standard, not higher. Big business is about continually seeking to reduce overhead in order to improve their product, not in order to maintain the status quo.

The recent cutbacks are due to overzealous business decisions and maybe the sky-rocketing economy, not because their overhead continues to rise (inflation aside).

I believe that corporate inertia combined with the monetary needs of WoTC will damage the RPG community in the long term in its goal of justifying itself in the short term to HASBRO. That it does not have a sustainable model and its attempts to stay online will damage the rest of the industry and the gaming community.

I still don't understand how you come to this conclusion. How are WOTC's money needs going to damage the industry? Any void they create will be filled by other companies eager to take the top of the heap. Paizo and White Wolf would gladly take that title. That's how capitalism works. This does no damage to the industry.

WOTC has a corporate model. The corporate model has proven to be sustainable thousands of times over. What specific model are you referring to? Is there a specific flaw in WOTC's model that's different than other companies? It seems to me that you're saying that because they're a subsidiary, they'll fail. But seeing as there are thousands of subsidiaries out there that operate just fine, how is it that this specific subsidiary isn't going to succeed?

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

I just lost a 2 page response I was posting and it's getting late. I'll pick back up tomorrow. But let me say based on your responses in the thread you seem actively unwilling to allow yourself to understand anything contrary to your viewpoint.

 

[CapnZapp]

Corjay,

I am sorry - I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, but your recent activity in this forum has forced me to realize your frantic attempts at spinning the GSL for Wizards (for reasons we shall probably never know; whatever mess they have made out of the license, they certainly do not deserve you as their champion) cannot be categorized as anything else but trolling.

I sincerely hope you can find yourself another pet project that is (much) more deserving of your patronage. I can only speak for myself, but at least to me, your presence here is unwanted, unneeded, and frankly, directly disruptive.

Basically, you're standing in the way of facts and truths about the GSL; filling up the board with baseless optimism and ungrounded faith in Wizards and its motives.

Have a nice day,
CapnZapp

 

[JohnRTroy]

While I'll admin Corjay has crossed the line in a way to some members, I will state that I appreciate all opinions, positive and negative, and I'm hesitant to label anybody a troll.

I've found that if people are critical of the OGL in any fundamental way some people on this board start questioning the personal motives of the posters. I agree for instance, the GSL is a bit too restrictive, but I also think the OGL had several flaws, since I think Wizards gave away too much, the fact that people chose to create D&D-based games hurt the industry long-term (lack of diversity), and that the open source model is not a good fit for the game industry (as opposed to software).

I think many OGL fans also quote rank and verse from Ryan Dancy without a critical or skeptical eye. (For instance, everybody assumes the lawyers alone are what lead to the GSL, but there's no proof that a game desinger or designers might be anti-OGL as well--it's a quick assumption that it's the "suits" doing this).

So if you don't like what Corjay has to say, ignore him, but I don't think this forum should be strictly a place where everybody agrees that the OGL is a good thing either. The forum is called RPG Legalities, not the OGL fan forum, so I think some debate about these licenses should still be allowed.

 

[Corjay]

HeavenShallBurn: I just don't understand where you're coming from. You're assuming bad will on my part that isn't there. Earlier, when I mentioned the online stuff, I misread your usage of "RPG community", and I'm sorry about that, but I ask you to assume that I genuinely want to understand where you're coming from, but I'm missing the whole foundation of your view. I asked legitimate questions in my last post. If someone wants to challenge those questions or my right to ask them, then they need to provide proof that those questions are malicious in nature.

CapnZap: I don't care. In case you haven't gotten the message, I never cared. The only thing you have ever done is come into threads to attack me. If you want to talk about trolling, look in the mirror. Once again you are spouting things that have absolutely nothing to do with the discussion.

JohnRTroy: Thank you.