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Organized Play: Can You Learn To Love It?
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<blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 7652411" data-attributes="member: 17106"><p>People aren't that simple. Sometimes they tell you what they think you want to hear. Sometimes they lie. Sometimes they're limited by their knowledge. Getting feedback is hard. Getting honest feedback is really hard. Getting honest and informed feedback is really really hard.</p><p></p><p>More to the point, if your business is built on getting people to buy products and play at home, information about what happens in an organized play setting is not really relevant.</p><p></p><p>It does. It just strikes me as naive. Research is not some all-seeing objective lens through which we view the world. The vision of the people in charge decides what research will be done and how, and it's then for them to decide how they'll interpret and use that information. There's no such thing as an opinion-free business model, for better or for worse.</p><p></p><p>But, as I've noted, unlike those items, D&D is freely available to everyone. If someone really likes an organized play campaign, they can set one up themselves and perhaps disseminate it widely, and it'll succeed or fail on its own merits without the company making any input into it whatsoever. Which leaves the company to focus all its time and energy on the game itself and make it better. Everybody wins.</p><p></p><p>Maybe. But the goal of life is not to make money. Throughout all businesses, there is money to be made by widely disseminating poor quality products and services, keeping cost low but finding various ways to entice people to buy anyway. D&D has moved strongly in the McDonald's direction in that regard. I don't believe in doing that stuff.</p><p></p><p>If I were in charge of a food company, I'd focus on providing quality, healthy food, treating everyone in the company fairly and keeping them happy, and providing the best possible experience for customers. I expect that any large company would quickly dispose of me on that basis. I say that's a good thing.</p><p></p><p>If I were in charge of a game company, I'd focus on providing the best game possible and providing products and services to support its use. I wouldn't try to create a separate, marginalized, and standardized game experience as a promotional tool. Would WotC hire me as their top man? Probably not. But again, I think that says something good about me.</p><p></p><p>All of which goes towards the point that I don't like organized play. If there are other people that do, that's fine, but they're unlikely to change my mind. I dislike it on principle, because (as in the original post above), I think that personal relationships and individual creative freedom are inherent to the experience, and that those are compromised in organized games. If someone played in an organized game and had fun, it doesn't falsify that principle, and it doesn't mean that their experience wouldn't have been infinitely more rewarding in a home game. I suspect that providing these types of organized games loses WotC a lot more money than it gains them, but that's purely speculative and it could be the other way around. I don't care. My only stake here is in supporting the kind of positive experience that I've had in gaming.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ahnehnois, post: 7652411, member: 17106"] People aren't that simple. Sometimes they tell you what they think you want to hear. Sometimes they lie. Sometimes they're limited by their knowledge. Getting feedback is hard. Getting honest feedback is really hard. Getting honest and informed feedback is really really hard. More to the point, if your business is built on getting people to buy products and play at home, information about what happens in an organized play setting is not really relevant. It does. It just strikes me as naive. Research is not some all-seeing objective lens through which we view the world. The vision of the people in charge decides what research will be done and how, and it's then for them to decide how they'll interpret and use that information. There's no such thing as an opinion-free business model, for better or for worse. But, as I've noted, unlike those items, D&D is freely available to everyone. If someone really likes an organized play campaign, they can set one up themselves and perhaps disseminate it widely, and it'll succeed or fail on its own merits without the company making any input into it whatsoever. Which leaves the company to focus all its time and energy on the game itself and make it better. Everybody wins. Maybe. But the goal of life is not to make money. Throughout all businesses, there is money to be made by widely disseminating poor quality products and services, keeping cost low but finding various ways to entice people to buy anyway. D&D has moved strongly in the McDonald's direction in that regard. I don't believe in doing that stuff. If I were in charge of a food company, I'd focus on providing quality, healthy food, treating everyone in the company fairly and keeping them happy, and providing the best possible experience for customers. I expect that any large company would quickly dispose of me on that basis. I say that's a good thing. If I were in charge of a game company, I'd focus on providing the best game possible and providing products and services to support its use. I wouldn't try to create a separate, marginalized, and standardized game experience as a promotional tool. Would WotC hire me as their top man? Probably not. But again, I think that says something good about me. All of which goes towards the point that I don't like organized play. If there are other people that do, that's fine, but they're unlikely to change my mind. I dislike it on principle, because (as in the original post above), I think that personal relationships and individual creative freedom are inherent to the experience, and that those are compromised in organized games. If someone played in an organized game and had fun, it doesn't falsify that principle, and it doesn't mean that their experience wouldn't have been infinitely more rewarding in a home game. I suspect that providing these types of organized games loses WotC a lot more money than it gains them, but that's purely speculative and it could be the other way around. I don't care. My only stake here is in supporting the kind of positive experience that I've had in gaming. [/QUOTE]
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