D&D 5E Why is WOTC so awful at providing digital content?

transtemporal said:

I'm sure there are people at wotc who would read this and say "What?! We release tons of online content on our website, we have a fantastic web presence, we're on twitter. What more do you people want?!"

The thing is, and this has been true for years, WotC (and TSR before them) operate in a publishing mode. It may have moved to the web now, but their core competency is the written word, not software.

I'm not sure that's a bad thing necessarily. Companies can spend a lot of money chasing the product dragon that's not their strong suit. I just wish they'd choose a development partner for character/dm tools and stick with it.

Click to expand...

I'm ok with WOTC just coming out and saying that they don't have the resources to do a good set of digital tools. While doing that though, they should let fans who want to make & share their own do so. It's the whole "we aren't doing it and no one else can either" that is so lame. I wish D&D was owned by a company that didn't have a legal department 10 times the size of the game development team.

ExploderWizard said:

The simple answer is because they are not equipped to do so.

Click to expand...

shidaku said:

WOTC is not equipped with someone with the knowhow to hire a firm to properly produce a digital product?

Click to expand...

That's not as straight-forward as it sounds. I've seen a number of cases where large IT departments (i.e. places you'd expect to find expertise) had a hard time learning new tricks. This includes the ability to correctly manage third-party developers.

The truth is, managing software development is hard. It's made harder by the fact that "managing" is largely a non-technical function, but actually doing is very technical. The paradigms involved have changed dramatically since many folks who "used to do IT" were actively engaged. Heck, there are a lot of really good developers who are just one cycle out of date. It's hard for the pseudo-technical and non-technical managers (literal or figurative) to sort out who's who. While you may be able to find a guaranteed top-tier talent, it's going to cost you. Odds are that someone in the food chain is going to try to keep costs down and you'll end up with a) talent with an attitude issue, b) folks who are competent, but don't quite have all their 'I's dotted, or c) an up-and-comer with all the raw talent to pull it off, but in need of a bit of discipline. If you're really lucky, you find someone with talent and a passion for the subject matter, but those folks are more likely to do a side project of their own (HeroForge, etc.).

Based on other projects, I could easily see the development effort alone costing a half-million dollars or more. A project I was on that had a project manager, business analyst/QA, and for developers ate through $750,000 in one year -- and we didn't have to include infrastructure costs because we were corporate. A team for DDI could reasonably be that size, given what people want for it (and what was promised). That doesn't even count the ongoing maintenance or digital content (Dragon and Dungeon). Also, that team would have fit into category "B", above (good for the task they were hired to do, but not for "shrink-wrapped" software).

There's an adage that goes, "cheap, fast, quality; pick two". Almost every project I've been on has tried to fix cost and time. Commercial products that lack quality never make it to market or are quickly discontinued. IME, cost is a function of quality and you can pay now or pay later. It should really be, "quality, fast, maintainable; pick two", but I digress.

The point is, doing DDI (or whatever name) right would not be cheap. I don't know how big the market is for DDI, but it may not actually support the software at a level sufficient to justify the investment -- or the powers that be may not have faith that the market is large enough.

ExploderWizard said:

While doing that though, they should let fans who want to make & share their own do so. It's the whole "we aren't doing it and no one else can either" that is so lame. I wish D&D was owned by a company that didn't have a legal department 10 times the size of the game development team.

Click to expand...

I would like to use this as evidence that, should WotC do something, the expectations would be higher than for the developer in his garage - simply put, we collectively feel entitled.

Mercule said:

There's an adage that goes, "cheap, fast, quality; pick two". Almost every project I've been on has tried to fix cost and time. Commercial products that lack quality never make it to market or are quickly discontinued. IME, cost is a function of quality and you can pay now or pay later. It should really be, "quality, fast, maintainable; pick two", but I digress.

Click to expand...

Well, the usual I hear is, "good, cheap, fast; pick two". And "good" is broad, encompassing quality assurance, proper engineering (which includes maintainability), and actually doing what they customer wants in a usable way.

Umbran said:

I would like to use this as evidence that, should WotC do something, the expectations would be higher than for the developer in his garage - simply put, we collectively feel entitled.

Click to expand...

I don't think that people who pay good money for software and expect a certain level of quality have entitlement issues. Those who complain and moan about freeware not being good enough are a different story.

The expectations should be in line with what the user is asked to pay. I am thankful for any effort that someone puts into shareware no matter how crappy the functionality is.

ExploderWizard said:

I don't think that people who pay good money for software and expect a certain level of quality have entitlement issues.

Click to expand...

Not at all. However, "if WotC doesn't do it, it is lame if WotC doesn't allow us to do so," is entitlement. Pretty literally - if they don't do it, you should be entitled to do so.

shidaku said:

WOTC is not equipped with someone with the knowhow to hire a firm to properly produce a digital product?

Click to expand...

That really depends on how invested they are in seeing it work, and what resources in terms of domain experts they're willing to invest in the development. There's a lot more to creating a software than just saying "we want a great D&D character creation tool". You gotta do requirements. Requirements are important, critical, and also extremely difficult to get right. They'd have to have people who really know D&D be a part of the development, someone who's used to working with software development, someone who knows what can and can't be done, etc. And who can make sure that the product is exactly what WotC wants, not what the development company believes WotC wants.

As someone mentioned earlier, if WotC launches a product, people are going to expect a whole lot more from it than they would from a fan-made, free product. And they have to make sure that the product ends up meet all of those demands, otherwise it'll cause bad-will against the D&D franchise. That's actually very common in software development. An absurd portion of all software development ends up being what's called "shelfware", that is, software that's developed but never actually released, because the owners end up believing that it's not good enough, or the timing wasn't right, or it wouldn't really be what people wanted.

I'm certainly not saying that they couldn't produce a decent piece of software. I really hope that they do produce a decent piece of D&D software. It's just that, there's a whole lot more to it than just hiring a firm to produce something. The cost aside, if they want something good that'll meet the expectations, they're going to have to be invested in it.

Umbran said:

Not at all. However, "if WotC doesn't do it, it is lame if WotC doesn't allow us to do so," is entitlement. Pretty literally - if they don't do it, you should be entitled to do so.

Click to expand...

In this matter WOTC is deputy chief Dwayne T. Robinson. If you're not part of the solution then you're part of the problem. Quit being part of the #$%^ problem and let someone release some tools.

ExploderWizard said:

In this matter WOTC is deputy chief Dwayne T. Robinson. If you're not part of the solution then you're part of the problem. Quit being part of the #$%^ problem and let someone release some tools.

Click to expand...

Except there is no "problem". Not in the objective sense. Not having online tools to play D&D isn't a "problem", because the game isn't designed to require them. The only "problem" is that you, ExploderWizard, want some, but you aren't able to get some. So for you there's a problem.

But that's not WotC's problem.

ExploderWizard said:

If you're not part of the solution then you're part of the problem. Quit being part of the #$%^ problem and let someone release some tools.

Click to expand...

Put it as colorfully you want, it's still a statement that we are entitled to tools.

From WotC's point of view, lack of these tools is not a "problem". Electronic tools are a potential business opportunity. There is a major question as to whether it is a large enough opportunity to make the investment and risk pay off in the long run.

Take that team I mentioned before. For this project, add a graphic artist/designer and a user experience specialist - we are now running at nearly three-quarters of a million dollars a year to develop, and we haven't begun to talk about the infrastructure for these people (and IT the infrastructure will mean more people). We haven't spoken about the long-term running costs, support and maintenance of the system. How many sales or subscriptions at what price point does it take to make this pay off?

Umbran said:

Oh, as soon as it is "official", they probably would be. A third party, some guy working on his home computer to build the thing, is forgiven much by the public. But if WotC does it, what the public will expect in terms of quality standards will be higher, and the expected list of features will be longer, and more complicated. In addition, if WotC does it, there will be an expectation of some form of direct customer support, and that, too, costs money.

Click to expand...

And DDI is perfect example of this. The character builder had great functionality considering all the elements it had to account for. If someone made it for free in their free time, people would fall over themselves praising it. But when WotC did it and charged a very reasonable price, there were a lot of complaints. It used Silverlight, it wasn't downloadable, it wasn't what was initially promised, etc. By no means was it perfect, nor am I saying that people shouldn't complain. Just that when WotC is does something that costs money, the expectations go up.