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

WotC has a number of problems, and many of them are systemic.

1.) WotC is effectively a small company (in terms of staffing and pull) nestled with lots of big company problems (legal, distribution, and funding). So WotC has the worst of both worlds; D&D is being run on small scale money and expected to meet large scale issues.
2.) Hasbro's legal and profit demands has hampered lots of things a smaller, independent company (Paizo) has done, such as the SRD or PDFs. WotC wants to do things like this, but I wager Hasbro's legal is dragging this out because 1.) its not important enough to their bottom line to solve quickly and 2.) its too dangerous to just let them try.
3.) WotC has had a history of partnering up with some bad designers. 3e's E-Tools was salvaged from the smoldering mess its original designer left it in, 4e's the less said the better, and 5e's debacle with Trapdoor shows again WotC has had no luck in picking digital dance partners.
4.) They promise too much. E-Tools/Mastertools promised us online virtual tabletop, including sound effects and animated monster tokens when all people wanted was a char-gen and monster builder. 4e's VTT and character visualizer again emphasized bells and whistles over a functional toolset, and Dungeonscape was spinning its wheels on multi-platform support and e-commerce content sales rather than fixing the damn "not-really-beta-beta" character generator.
5.) Contrary to popular belief, D&D is not an easy thing to code. Sure, it looks simple on paper, but having a character generator that can effectively allow anything (in terms of either future content or worse, user-created content) yet remain stable, auto calculating, and functional is a tall order. 2e's Core Rule's 2.0 + Expansion is perhaps the best D&D software ever made, and even with the expansion allowing custom classes, lots of workarounds, limitations, and "note this on your sheet" stuff.
6.) We forget this is not limited to D&D; Magic the Gathering has a long, horrid history of electronic issues as well.
7.) In short, WotC has been been lettting perfect be the enemy of the good. Even when things have gone good, they've had more setbacks and roadblocks than any company should rightly deserve.

I'd say more, but WotC already Maxed my Glee.

Evenglare said:

Good discussion so far. I'm honestly not trying to say WOTC is bad. Again, they are a great company, they give us great games, but their digital endeavors are just awful. Im honestly just... confused. More of their digital promises are broken than are kept and at this point it seems like some kind of curse or something. It's just always something that gets in the way every time they make a promise or talk about the future with digital products.

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Everybody's talking about WotC and their digital offerings as if D&D is all they do. Their D&D digital offerings may have a poor track record, but what about their Magic offerings? The app I have tried on my iPad seemed OK, reasonably faithful to the the Magic game and reasonably robust and reliable. Is WotC incompetent at digital offerings or just the D&D-side of things?

Remathilis said:

4.) They promise too much. E-Tools/Mastertools promised us online virtual tabletop, including sound effects and animated monster tokens when all people wanted was a char-gen and monster builder.

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With respect, I don't believe this is accurate, and it speaks to the requirements gathering issue rollingForInit mentioned. It is not at all clear to me that what people want is well-known.

Another thing I think is important to consider, regarding the whole "if they're not releasing a software at least they should allow fans to make them". While I definitely think the world would be better off with less strict copyright laws, given how things work now, I can understand why they wouldn't just go all "here, do whatever you want, we don't complain".

They're getting some badwill now by shutting down fansites that try to make these tools ... but I'm pretty sure the badwill is less now, than it would be if some tool got super popular, they decided to make their own, and then shut down that super popular tool.

Which is not to say that I think this is good. But I can understand why that's how it is right now.

billd91 said:

Everybody's talking about WotC and their digital offerings as if D&D is all they do. Their D&D digital offerings may have a poor track record, but what about their Magic offerings? The app I have tried on my iPad seemed OK, reasonably faithful to the the Magic game and reasonably robust and reliable. Is WotC incompetent at digital offerings or just the D&D-side of things?

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I think the difference is that Magic can afford to pay real salaries.

There are numerous complaints online about the pitiful salaries paid by WotC on the D&D side of digital.

Remathilis said:

5.) Contrary to popular belief, D&D is not an easy thing to code. Sure, it looks simple on paper, but having a character generator that can effectively allow anything (in terms of either future content or worse, user-created content) yet remain stable, auto calculating, and functional is a tall order.

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Do not underestimate the impact of this point. I've started to build a character creation/management tool a couple of times, after being dissatisfied with other offerings. Regardless of edition, I eventually reach the point where I need to either a) accept that many, many rules will get hard-coded in and I'll have to revisit the source code for expansions, even new weapons or b) create a scripting language or XSD that essentially exposes the internals, anyway, so that I can share my creation with others. Both chafe my "professional developer" sensibilities, so I generally end up going with the latter and trying to build a UI to simplify things. That amounts to writing an app that lets people use another app, and is a glorious frustration.

I have no doubt that I could put something together, if I worked full time. I suck at design work, though, so I'd want a graphic artist on staff. Working alone tends to create bugs, so I want another developer. Also, someone to fill the PM/BA/take notes and heat from management role. Give me, say, 3 months for the first public beta, somewhere between 6-12 months for a v1.0 ship, depending on "surprises". That's for either a web or Windows version, your choice. If you want iPad, that'll cost you another guy at about the same billable rate as me, which is higher than any of the others.

Also, do you want your data to sync, so you can build all the PCs/NPCs at your desktop, but pull them up on an iPad, at the table? Increases the cost. What about letting the DM look at his players' characters or establish house rules (including a cool, named sword)? Now, we have to set up not just individual logins, but group memberships. Since some DMs run multiple games and some players are in multiple games and some DM are players, we have to add multiple-to-multiple relationships between groups, players, and DMs. Do you allow a player in one campaign to steal a custom weapon (we'll forget about custom classes/races, for now) for when he DMs? How about a way to share creations publicly -- that could really give the lawyers fits? What even qualifies as a minimum viable feature set for the v1.0?

Scrivener of Doom said:

I think the difference is that Magic can afford to pay real salaries.

There are numerous complaints online about the pitiful salaries paid by WotC on the D&D side of digital.

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There are?

Umbran said:

It isn't actually a curse. It is that our view of software production is skewed. We have this idea that software is easy, software is cheap, and most folks who try to put out software succeed. I'm pretty sure this impression is incorrect. Lots and lots of software initiatives fail.

Making software is not, in fact, cheap. Consider: A decent, proven development professional is, once you consider salary and benefits, a six-figure item. A team of three developers, one quality assurance engineer, and one product/project manager for a year is a half-million dollars right there. And that's before you buy a single machine for them to work on, or pay for a single software license for their tools. That's before you pay for however many servers this software needs in production to serve the customers, as well.

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Small time software coders that hit it big help skew expectations. I'm thinking of examples like Notch(Minecraft) and Collosal Order(Cities: Skylines). Fan projects that are impressive labors of love do too. Kobold.Club is crazy good and could be a pro product with a little visual polish. Maybe an open-source community project type approach would help WotC out? If there's really no middle ground between the fan stuff and a $500,000 minimum pro cost, then you are absolutely correct that my perception is skewed, but I am skeptical that they can't do it for less.

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.

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It's not just fan entitlement, it's fans expecting an act of redemption. They have to overcome the expectations created by past failures.

Remathilis said:

4.) They promise too much.

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They always seem to want to "revolutionize" and "reinvent" on a grand scale. They promise the world while struggling to basics...like how to organize content. The article archive for 5e on the WotC site looks like it will eventually be a nightmare to browse. I'm really enjoying the monthly content push (Eberron test mats, EE players Guide), but down the road that content could be hard to locate if I lost my downloaded copies.

Morrus said:

There are?

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I checked a few different review sites, and in addition to having IT managers that are behind the time the pay for IT was the biggest complaint for WotC. Not sure if that's D&D, MtG or just in general though.

Morrus said:

There are?

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Yes, there are. The links were posted here a year or two ago. I had them bookmarked but my last laptop shat itself and I never backed up the bookmarks but...

Beleriphon said:

I checked a few different review sites, and in addition to having IT managers that are behind the time the pay for IT was the biggest complaint for WotC. Not sure if that's D&D, MtG or just in general though.

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... Beleriphon clearly found the same comments and even more than those I saw.