No Macs? Holy crap did WotC do the math wrong!

[CharlesRyan]

CharlesRyan is claiming that because many groups will contain at least one Mac, the DDI is doomed to failure.

To be clear, my claim is that when the basic consumer unit is the playing group, not the individual player, the number of basic consumer units affected by Mac exclusion rises from "negligible" to substantial.

DDI may still be quite successful, despite one of its key features lacking value for a substantial number of D&D consumers. But WotC will have left a lot of money on the table, given their competitors (3rd-party VTTs or fantasy IPs like WoW) an advantage, and done a disservice to a substantial portion of its fans.

 

[Thorin Stoutfoot]

To be clear, my claim is that when the basic consumer unit is the playing group, not the individual player, the number of basic consumer units affected by Mac exclusion rises from "negligible" to substantial.

That might be true, but let me assure you, this is but one of many reasons why after my current Mac dies, I'm replacing it with a PC. It's too annoying to deal with software incompatibilities with the rest of the world all the time. Buy a Garmin GPS? Oops. No Mac support. Share a printer with your brother? Oops, windows drivers only. Want to run the latest games? Oops, no Mac support. I think long time Mac users are so used to this that they're inured to this.

Us recent cross-over users, however, are definitely not used to it and I have definitely dissuaded my fellow coworkers from buying or using Macs because of this issue. In any case, if I ever get into virtual gaming, rest assured that if D&D was that important to me, scavenging an old PC to run this application is no big deal.

Mac users might buy their computers and then look for applications to run on it, but the rest of us still look at applications first, and then buy computers to run them.

 

[Dinkeldog]

WOTC can say whatever it wants publicly, but, at the end of the day, it's going to be new groups that drive the VTT, not disbanded groups from ten years ago. If those groups wanted to play together, there is absolutely nothing stopping them from doing so right now. The existence of the DDI does nothing to change that.

Oddly enough, I've got one group of friends in Chicago that would want to reintegrate me into the game and another with members here that we've talked about the possibility of playing with the DDI. Then there's the possibility of reuniting two groups that I've played with only a few times. In each case it's been the geographical separation that is keeping us apart.

I've got some experience using other virtual tables, but they were so difficult to use that the groups gave up.

 

[cthulhu_duck]

To be clear, my claim is that when the basic consumer unit is the playing group, not the individual player, the number of basic consumer units affected by Mac exclusion rises from "negligible" to substantial.

There's also examples like me. As mentioned before - in my group I seem to be the most interested in 4E, and I'm a Mac user.

If my face-to-face group goes ahead with the idea that's being mooted of skipping an edition - then if I wanted to play 4E one obvious way would be the DDI. I could buy the books, get myself a subscription and find a DDI group to play with.

But I can't. Not unless I want to outlay for not only the DDI and 4E, but also a new Mac (in advance of my planned replacement in 2009-2010) that can run one of the newer Windows emulation options.

 

[The Little Raven]

They probably looked at the amount of time and additional resources it would require to incorporate Mac support into the DDI VTT, then decided that cost was not worth adding support for less than 10% of the computer market.

I have friends on Macs, so I know how much this sucks for them, but any suggestion that it is doomed to failure because 9% of the market can't use it is just silly. Many software and game companies don't provide Mac support, yet they are still in the upper echelons of the industry.

 

[The Little Raven]

I think one of the most significant things about the multitude of threads like this that have pages and pages of responses is that there are multitudes of threads like this with pages and pages of responses.

That pretty much says it all, I think.

Multitude of threads? I see one here, and maybe a handful of others on a handful of sites. That hardly constitutes a multitude.

And pages and pages or responses? Sure... I guess 6 pages of responses might appear significant, until you note that many of them are by the same people again and again, or note that threads about demons and devils and the change to Forgotten Realms garners more response than this.

And that's completely ignoring the >10% market share that Macs encompass.

 

[Dinkeldog]

Clustering is a hypothesis,

No, it's probability.

 

[akaddk]

Multitude of threads? I see one here, and maybe a handful of others on a handful of sites. That hardly constitutes a multitude.

And pages and pages or responses? Sure... I guess 6 pages of responses might appear significant, until you note that many of them are by the same people again and again, or note that threads about demons and devils and the change to Forgotten Realms garners more response than this.

And that's completely ignoring the >10% market share that Macs encompass.

I'm not going to address any of these arguments because I know my statements are solid and don't need defending.

Instead, I'm going to ask why people like you are so adament to put down the Mac and people who use them? What interest do you have in us not getting a program that works for us? If you're not a Mac-user, why come to this thread and dump in it?

I just don't get that kind of reasoning. And I only ever seem to see it from PC people. There are plenty of Mac-only programs where I see PC people cry foul and yet, I never see Mac-users come into those threads and say, "Yeah, well, PC's suck so you don't deserve our software."

 

[Nifft]

The only thing I'm confused about is your need to pick apart a very simple sentence and correct it to the nth degree when all it really is, is a matter of semantics.

Yes, "free" vs. "not free" is a very subtle point, and I'm a jackass for distinguishing between them. Oh, the shame.

Wait. I forgot. This is teh intarweb. My bad.

Indeed.

Ciao, -- N

 

[The Little Raven]

Instead, I'm going to ask why people like you are so adament to put down the Mac and people who use them?

Uhhh... what? I was pointing out the numbers behind why WotC isn't doing Mac support. How is that insulting the Mac or the people who use them? You're a small part of the computer market. Deal with it.

What interest do you have in us not getting a program that works for us?

I have no interest in the Mac having no support. In fact, I have a greater interest in the Mac actually having support, since I have friends who use Macs.

If you're not a Mac-user, why come to this thread and dump in it?

Can't deal with Apple being called less than 10% of the computer market, like they are?

I just don't get that kind of reasoning. And I only ever seem to see it from PC people. There are plenty of Mac-only programs where I see PC people cry foul and yet, I never see Mac-users come into those threads and say, "Yeah, well, PC's suck so you don't deserve our software."

Take a valium or smoke a bonghit or something, man. Just calm down and actually read my post and point out where I say that Macs suck or that Mac users don't deserve software.