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Monte Cook Leaves WotC - No Longer working on D&D Next [updated]
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<blockquote data-quote="Kobold Boots" data-source="post: 5902364" data-attributes="member: 92239"><p>To an extent you're correct. Here's my thoughts:</p><p></p><p>1. The vocal fanbase that is upset is not necessarily correlated to a loss of sales. Certainly it's resulted in a sales loss to some repeat customers, but whether or not that's anything more than a drop in the bucket is unknown. I don't like all of the 4e changes, but I didn't like many of the 3e decisions either. I still bought both 4e and Pathfinder and I'm willing to bet I'm more in the center of the demograph of older gamers that WoTC is looking for than the people that are complaining.</p><p></p><p>2. Certainly the vocal minority is an important enough group that they're trying to quiet them. If I was running the company though I'd be quieting them not to increase sales; but to reduce the distractions to my teams that are making them less productive. Point being that the vocal group is obviously annoyed because they feel they're wasting cash. If they're "wasting cash" on a hobby.. they probably don't have enough disposable cash to be my primary targets.</p><p></p><p>3. To their model, yes you're correct. They can't make money on the core rules and rules supplement model over more than a three year span and the evidence points to this. They'll need to take a hard look at their operating expenses and cut them if they want to extend an edition past a few years given what they've got going at present. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>There are some reasons why this doesn't necessarily work in my opinion as far as D&D as a property is concerned. This has to do with who owns the property. If the property were owned by a company that did books as their primary business these issues wouldn't exist.</p><p></p><p>1. From 2e to 3e and 3e to 4e the game needed to shift to something that could leverage existing business competencies at WoTC in order to reduce production costs. Additionally, more product lines than books needed to be created for the game to offset production costs of the main line. To this end we saw card decks and miniatures added to the game and video game concepts added to the RPG when the MMO came online.</p><p></p><p>2. These changes make a stronger property able to extend into other media than the tabletop, but they also alienate long time fans that love their game. WoTC has to decide whether they want long term success across generations or short term success with who they already have and the longer they take to make changes the harder it is to turn the brand.</p><p></p><p>The major issues they have right now in my opinion are: </p><p></p><p>1. Staying the course: They've gone with 4e and they need to make sure that they don't go too far back with 5e that they hose themselves going forward. The 4e game mechanics are solid.</p><p></p><p>2. Putting together a solid OGL like legal platform that protects the brand and the rules set while opening up their total platform (including web and MMO gaming) to third party publishers such that it's both easy and cost-effective.</p><p></p><p>3. Paizo: There needs to be a working relationship. They're just really good at certain aspects of the trade and I'd almost be willing as a business line manager to give them the RPG license for books for D&D and focus on the tools and MMO if I were WoTC. I don't think WoTC has the resources or the buy in to run the entire line well and if they were smart about it the distraction of 5e D&D may be enough to take the steam out of the Pathfinder line or ensure that 5e has some great modular PF like rules.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Kobold Boots, post: 5902364, member: 92239"] To an extent you're correct. Here's my thoughts: 1. The vocal fanbase that is upset is not necessarily correlated to a loss of sales. Certainly it's resulted in a sales loss to some repeat customers, but whether or not that's anything more than a drop in the bucket is unknown. I don't like all of the 4e changes, but I didn't like many of the 3e decisions either. I still bought both 4e and Pathfinder and I'm willing to bet I'm more in the center of the demograph of older gamers that WoTC is looking for than the people that are complaining. 2. Certainly the vocal minority is an important enough group that they're trying to quiet them. If I was running the company though I'd be quieting them not to increase sales; but to reduce the distractions to my teams that are making them less productive. Point being that the vocal group is obviously annoyed because they feel they're wasting cash. If they're "wasting cash" on a hobby.. they probably don't have enough disposable cash to be my primary targets. 3. To their model, yes you're correct. They can't make money on the core rules and rules supplement model over more than a three year span and the evidence points to this. They'll need to take a hard look at their operating expenses and cut them if they want to extend an edition past a few years given what they've got going at present. There are some reasons why this doesn't necessarily work in my opinion as far as D&D as a property is concerned. This has to do with who owns the property. If the property were owned by a company that did books as their primary business these issues wouldn't exist. 1. From 2e to 3e and 3e to 4e the game needed to shift to something that could leverage existing business competencies at WoTC in order to reduce production costs. Additionally, more product lines than books needed to be created for the game to offset production costs of the main line. To this end we saw card decks and miniatures added to the game and video game concepts added to the RPG when the MMO came online. 2. These changes make a stronger property able to extend into other media than the tabletop, but they also alienate long time fans that love their game. WoTC has to decide whether they want long term success across generations or short term success with who they already have and the longer they take to make changes the harder it is to turn the brand. The major issues they have right now in my opinion are: 1. Staying the course: They've gone with 4e and they need to make sure that they don't go too far back with 5e that they hose themselves going forward. The 4e game mechanics are solid. 2. Putting together a solid OGL like legal platform that protects the brand and the rules set while opening up their total platform (including web and MMO gaming) to third party publishers such that it's both easy and cost-effective. 3. Paizo: There needs to be a working relationship. They're just really good at certain aspects of the trade and I'd almost be willing as a business line manager to give them the RPG license for books for D&D and focus on the tools and MMO if I were WoTC. I don't think WoTC has the resources or the buy in to run the entire line well and if they were smart about it the distraction of 5e D&D may be enough to take the steam out of the Pathfinder line or ensure that 5e has some great modular PF like rules. [/QUOTE]
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