Mike "Talien" Tresca is a freelance game columnist, author, communicator, and a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to http://amazon.com. If you like what we do here at EN World (the Forums, Columns, News, etc.) and would like to help support us to bring you MORE please consider supporting our Patreon. Even a single dollar helps!
Wizards of the Coast's forums are yet another casualty of the tension between the owners of the Dungeons & Dragons brand and the fan community. The fans have always strongly influenced the...
Today, Wizards of the Coast (WOTC) releases Portable Document Format (PDF) versions of much of its content, including both new products and older books from its back catalog, but it wasn't always that way. At one point, WOTC withdrew from the PDF market entirely. This article takes a look at the on-again, off-again relationship WOTC has with the PDF community.
We previously discussed the rise of MUDs and MMORPGs, led by D&D clones that mimicked the tabletop game's innovations while leaving the company that owned the brand (TSR and later Wizards of the Coast) behind. With the advent of networked audio and video tools, a new innovation came to pen-and-paper gaming: the virtual tabletop. Virtual tabletops seemed like an obvious evolution for tabletop gaming, but the path to a viable tabletop platform was so arduous that WOTC never succeeded in pulling it off.
This is the first in a series of articles about Dungeons & Dragon's expression in a variety of digital media. Our first installment begins with Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs) and Massive...
The commercial release of the Micro 3D printer was squarely targeted at gamers with ads of 3D-printed miniatures on Facebook. Other enterprising artists have recreated Dungeons & Dragons-style monsters. But when established game companies begin issuing cease-and-desist letters against hobbyists, it raises the question...when do we reach the tipping point where gamers print their own miniatures?
Minecraft has become ubiquitous with kids everywhere who are obsessed with the crafting game, and for good reason: the game has a presence on every major game console, raking in over $300 million in revenue in 2014. Although it might seem children are frittering away their time glued to screens, my kids' transition to Dungeons & Dragons was so effortless that Minecraft may be one of the most effective means of getting a younger generation into playing fantasy tabletop role-playing games.
The global recession hit the game industry hard, forcing developers to find new ways to fund their games. Crowdfunding has become a viable alternative, fueling a renaissance across all forms of game development. But like other kinds of crowdsourcing, crowdfunding is only effective as long as the crowd believes in supporting it. Will Kickstarter's high profile failures cause gamers to seek new crowdfunding models?
In 2006, Wizards of the Coast (WOTC) made a compelling argument for a My Little Pony role-playing game and miniature line as a means of reaching "a previously unexploited segment of the roleplaying game marketplace," girls ages 3 to 7. The press release argued that the game would be a draw for younger players, would provide "cooperative play" opportunities for girls, and act as a transitional game to Dungeons & Dragons. There was just one problem: it was all a joke. With the My Little Pony franchise grossing over $1 billion in gross sales in 2015 for WOTC’s parent company Hasbro, the possibility of a My Little Pony role-playing game is no laughing matter.
As kids who grew up with Dungeons & Dragons have gotten older, they've entered a new phase of gaming. These adult gamers now have enough influence as customers and game designers to return...
LEGO, the brick-building system, has been igniting children's imaginations for decades, so it's only natural that gamers (particularly gamers with children) look at their big multi-colored pile of bricks and wonder: how can I use these in my game?
It's a good time to be a geek. By all accounts we won the culture war; Geeks have conquered the world. But maximum geek is coming, and it's steadily going to pillage our nostalgia, overwhelm us with superheroes, and ruin our games. Are we ready to pay the price?
With Gen Con 2015 over, attendees can kick back their heels and reminisce about their awesome con experience. And it surely was for many people. But there were also con-goers who didn't have nearly as pleasant an experience, and it has to do with the ascension of geek culture and conventions' inability to keep up. At heart, conventions are geared for growth. It's a good thing, and convention companies work actively with hotels, restaurants, and exhibitors to ensure more and more people come to the convention. But what happens when a venue runs out of space?