Green Ronin not signing GSL (Forked Thread: Doing the GSL. Who?)

[dmccoy1693]

I'm sorry Charles, but I have to disagree sharply with your post.

What I observed is that WotC left holes in the marketplace, and many 3PP, rather than exploit those holes, chose to make products that competed directly with WotC's products.

Is this because WotC fears the competition? No. The most successful OGL products of all time made only the tiniest blips on the WotC sales radar.

Here you appear to counter your own argument. If the must successful OGL product is "only the tiniest blips on the WotC sales radar" then why do they care if a 3PP makes a product "that compete directly with WotC's Products"?

Consumers and retailers are confused about which products to buy, so they dabble in a range and end up with a lot of stuff that doesn't sell. Huge amounts of revenue is tied up in dead product--revenue needed to order new product or simply pay the bills. Shops close (nearly half the core hobby shops in the US shut down over the past five years--admittedly, there are other causes, but the RPG glut was a very real contributor);

The numbers out of GAMA a few years ago is that RPGs represent something like 5-10% of the Comic and Game Industry. FIVE TO TEN PERCENT. You cannot built a thriving business solely on five to ten percent of a niche industry. It is not Green Ronin's fault if a game store does not diversify sufficiently into other areas. It is not Mongoose's fault if a store does not offer services and products that Amazon cannot. That is simply a poor business model, and those stores that do not adapt to a changing business market will not survive.

So WotC changed the terms of 3PP compatibility with D&D, and made it more restrictive. Insofar as it controls the glut and keeps 3PP focused on products that players actually want and don't get (or don't get enough of) from WotC, more restrictive is good for the RPG business as a whole, it's good for WotC, and frankly it's good for the third-party publishers.

You mean except for the part where you have to stop selling old product of a product line and the part where they can never publish this product under the OGL even after the license terminates. Oh, and the part where WotC can change the terms at any moment and the part were WotC doesn't even have to send up a mass email notifiying their registered licencees that the license has been updated. And don't forget the part that all court cases, win, lose, or draw with WotC result in the 3PP paying the behemoth's lawyer fees. And then there's ...

 

[DaveMage]

I agree. Those guys that were driving the glut with stuff produced based on personal tastes instead of sound business decisions did a lot of harm. To the business-oriented 3PPs, to the retail environment, and consequently to WotC.

Love it or hate it, one consequence of the GSL is that it'll keep a lot of those guys out of the market, making it a better business environment for the smaller number of publishers that do pursue the GSL.

And one should always make what's best for the bottom line rather than what one is passionate about, right?

WotC taught you well.

 

[Raven Crowking]

One doesn't need to get hit in the face with a skunk to smell it, or at least most of us don't.

Indeed.

(1) On Filling Holes: The first case I can think of is the excellent Tome of Horrors (Necromancer Games). They supplied a group of earlier edition monsters. They discussed the project with WotC and selected monsters that they were told would not be coming out officially. Of course, not so much later on, WotC did release official versions of quite a few of those monsters.

3pp saw a hole in terms of environment books, and Fantasy Flight Games created a very nice series thereof. Others, such as Monkey God, created specific environment books. WotC then created a competing series of official books that filled in the same niche. For my money, the 3pp books were almost always clearly superior, came first, and always had OGC that could be used by others as well.

Almost everyone I know who has bought alternate rules based off the OGL/SRD has also bought the PHB, DMG, and MM. Moreover, they have bought alternate rules specifically to port things into their D&D campaigns. So, IME, these products suppliment, rather than compete with, WotC's products.

If WotC is concerned about a book like Frost and Fur competing with Frostburn, it is only because the former is a far more useful book, coming from a far more friendly company.

(2) OGL/GSL: In the heady days when 3e came out under the OGL, WotC was a very friendly company. Indeed, I suspect that the creators of the OGL worded it so as to be as much of an estoppal to something like the GSL as was possible, because it didn't take a genius to see that WotC would eventually want to take the game back.

Moreover, I imagine that what really took the GSL so long to appear was apprehension at the reaction it would cause. After all, why else claim initially that 4e would be OGL? Why else try to get the big 3pp "on board" before they could see the GSL? Why else try to make the big 3pp invest in the GSL before they could see it ($5,000)?

The combination of these factors points to an obvious conclusion -- WotC correctly assumed that people would be displeased by the GSL, and wanted 3pp support in place prior to the GSL being seen to help mollify that displeasure. Of course, they didn't want those 3pp to see the GSL right away, either, because they knew (or should have known) that it would be rational for them to be displeased as well.

And that ploy worked -- Necromancer Games and others began planning a 4e product line before seeing the GSL, and are now invested in 4e enough that their simply dropping those lines because of the terms of the GSL is probably unfeasable. And, largely because of that support, there are people defending WotC's adoption of the GSL as okay.

Well, it's legal. And it's (perhaps) ethical. But it isn't friendly, it isn't good for the customer, it isn't good for 3pps, and it isn't (in my book) okay.

In conclusion, what 3pp did under the OGL was fix things that needed fixing, which (for some reason) WotC was unwilling to do itself. 4e has as much, if not more, that needs fixing. Without the vast resource that 3pp provide, in terms of different viewpoints and ideas, I very much doubt that these problems are going to be fixed as well as they were in 3e.

I support GR's decision, and I hope (though I don't expect) that, given enough pressure, WotC will drop the GSL and release 4e under the OGL, as we were initially told it would be.


RC

 

[Lizard]

Maybe I'm the spoilsport here, nitpicking away and meaningless things, but I used to write press releases for a living for a major Fortune 500 company, and it just seems unprofessional to go into detail about why the license doesn't work for you and explain to the public which aspects of WotC's deal you specifically can't support.

It's *un*professional to discuss and explain corporate decisions in plain English, instead of hiding behind evasions, weasel words, and "for reasons we choose not to disclose at this time"?

We need more unprofessionalism in business!

 

[humble minion]

I agree. Those guys that were driving the glut with stuff produced based on personal tastes instead of sound business decisions did a lot of harm. To the business-oriented 3PPs, to the retail environment, and consequently to WotC.

Love it or hate it, one consequence of the GSL is that it'll keep a lot of those guys out of the market, making it a better business environment for the smaller number of publishers that do pursue the GSL.

I'd guess it'll have the complete opposite effect, actually.

The pre-existing, successful, business-oriented 3pp has committments that a backyard hobbyist doesn't. Higher expenses in art, writing fees, layout, possibly hardcopy publication, etc, etc. Maybe even a full-timer or two, whereas the hobbyist does it in their spare time away from the real job, on their home PC.

It's 3pps with these bigger committments that are going to be more scared off. It's a livelihood for these guys, not just a hobby, and if WotC can change the license willy-nilly and without notice then the whole business is a castle built on sand. I'm sure some of the current 'name' 3pps will take the plunge, but it's a big risk and it puts them utterly at the mercy of WotC and whoever owns/runs WotC in the future.

The 3pps who can afford to adopt the GSL will more likely be the basement hobby operators, since if the license gets cut from underneath them they gripe about it on ENWorld and then get on with their life. Were it Paizo or someone in the same situation - well, people's livelihoods would be at stake. The hobbyists will dive in, and produce a mass of stuff widely varying in quality, and the more professional, experienced (and, quite often, superior) publishers will have to stay out.

 

[Lizard]

It's because WotC fears the glut. When an unrestricted number of companies creates an unrestricted number of products in an unrestricted range of categories (especially categories in which WotC is strong), the inevitable result is a huge glut that sucks revenues out of the sales channels and creates a swath of destruction.

Except that the GSL is still free and there is still no approval process. There's nothing to stop the glut. Indeed, if few of the old D20 companies jump on, that just means there's more room for the next generation of basement publishers. So instead of having the big boys with a reputation for quality quickly seize the market and crowd out the wannabes, WOTC has opened it up to the small players and pretty much turned the larger, better, 3PPs into their competition, producing for 3x or their own product lines instead of supporting 4e.

I do not understand the meme that the GSL is about "controlling quality" or "raising the bar" when nothing in it includes any kind of WOTC approval of a product. The STL *also* defined lots and lots of game terms and mandated they could not be redefined; how did this work for assuring a minimum level of quality and compatibility?

The GSL permits exactly as much cheap, unbalanced, crap as the OGL/STL did, and you'll get just as much. Sturgeon's Law.

 

[Dykstrav]

If a company of GRs size isn't willing to find some way to work things out, then it speaks to a direct lack of interest in continuing to support the D&D community their business was founded upon.

Just as a side note... I know plenty of people who aren't going to 4E. Of the regulars at my FLGS, about a third jumped on to 4E wholeheartedly, another third are straddling the fence (but at least got a PHB and played a session or two), and the remaining third are either disinterested or adamantly opposed to it.

Maybe it won't compete with the marketshare that 4E will have, but I think that there will definitely be a market for OGL products for older versions of the game for years to come.

 

[wayne62682]

The irony is that, if I remember correctly, companies like Green Ronin are the reason why the GSL is so restrictive in the first place, since they created Mutants & Masterminds and True20 and similar to compete with D&D, not supplement it.

More power to them for creating a recognizable brand, however. I've heard good things about M&M but never had the chance to play it.

 

[Raven Crowking]

The irony is that, if I remember correctly, companies like Green Ronin are the reason why the GSL is so restrictive in the first place, since they created Mutants & Masterminds and True20 and similar to compete with D&D, not supplement it.

Shall we remember that, when the OGL came out, it was specifically claimed that a number of games all using the same (or similar) base mechanics would increase the familiarity of those mechanics, and thus make D&D more attractive? IOW, 3pp were encouraged to create new games off the same engine, because, within the rpg industry, all roads lead to D&D.


RC

 

[DandD]

One doesn't need to get hit in the face with a skunk to smell it, or at least most of us don't.

Then I advise you to check your nasal cavities to smell the conspiracy-skunk. Before I put him on Ignore for telling non-sense, mangamuscle tried some kind of whacky WMD-allegory to the GSL.

Funnily enough, he's the one who claims to have found the evil hidden plan of Wotc, the same as Bush claimed to have proof of WMDs in Irak. Irony bites you in the most unexpected ways.

And that's it. This thread ends for me, because the rest is only badly-applied political deviation.