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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6466301" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>It was business decisions which killed 3.5 and made 4e necessary. Chief of those was that the astounding success of 3e ended up creating a high revenue stream that they decided to try to retain year after year. WotC was trying to follow business models that they'd learned by selling MtG. Keeping the revenue stream level required increasingly high numbers of splatbooks be released every year, which meant that less and less revenue was being spent on design and testing. Further, to market those splatbooks they made two decisions. First, that each splatbook would contain both a player and a DM focus in order to ensure the widest interest in the product. Secondly, that each splatbook would have player options that would be attractive - in essence, power creep. In MtG terms, it was as if they were releasing an Urza's Saga style expansion every year. They were killing their own game. In MtG, they'd figured that out years ago. But in MtG, they are able to 'reboot' by phasing out sets. RPGs don't really allow you to phase out rules in stages, so they came up with the idea that they could phase out a whole set of rules and replace them with another one. At the same time, that - they thought - would let them kill the SRD.</p><p></p><p>But RPGs aren't CCGs. They don't monetize in nearly the same ways. There is no such things as 'fake rules' for RPGs. Making up your own rules is part of the process. With CCG's, the danger is always that players decide to take 3x5 index cards and make their own cards. With CCG's, if players do that then your market dries up, but with CCG's generally players do not do that because there is a value in owning the 'real' pieces. With RPG's, the 'real' pieces are actually in players heads. You make your money by selling aids that support the real game, and if your trying to make a living as an RPG publisher and you forget that, well, then you're screwed.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 6466301, member: 4937"] It was business decisions which killed 3.5 and made 4e necessary. Chief of those was that the astounding success of 3e ended up creating a high revenue stream that they decided to try to retain year after year. WotC was trying to follow business models that they'd learned by selling MtG. Keeping the revenue stream level required increasingly high numbers of splatbooks be released every year, which meant that less and less revenue was being spent on design and testing. Further, to market those splatbooks they made two decisions. First, that each splatbook would contain both a player and a DM focus in order to ensure the widest interest in the product. Secondly, that each splatbook would have player options that would be attractive - in essence, power creep. In MtG terms, it was as if they were releasing an Urza's Saga style expansion every year. They were killing their own game. In MtG, they'd figured that out years ago. But in MtG, they are able to 'reboot' by phasing out sets. RPGs don't really allow you to phase out rules in stages, so they came up with the idea that they could phase out a whole set of rules and replace them with another one. At the same time, that - they thought - would let them kill the SRD. But RPGs aren't CCGs. They don't monetize in nearly the same ways. There is no such things as 'fake rules' for RPGs. Making up your own rules is part of the process. With CCG's, the danger is always that players decide to take 3x5 index cards and make their own cards. With CCG's, if players do that then your market dries up, but with CCG's generally players do not do that because there is a value in owning the 'real' pieces. With RPG's, the 'real' pieces are actually in players heads. You make your money by selling aids that support the real game, and if your trying to make a living as an RPG publisher and you forget that, well, then you're screwed. [/QUOTE]
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