Forked Thread: What is WOTC's Goal with the GSL?

[dmccoy1693]

Here's a good place to start. This is one of the things that influenced and helped the OGL's creation. Archived Record of the post-TSR buyout by WotC.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

Corjay, you get a lot further along in gaining acceptance for your points if you weren't be so antagonistic towards those who disagree with you. Tone it down.

Everyone - please do not make discussions personal. Also, its very bad form to report someone and then post that you have done so, or to publically threaten to report someone. It can only add to the animosity in a thread. All you need to do is report the post in question.

 

[Corjay]

I think one way to make this thread as constructive as possible is if you were to introduce your stance, where you're coming from, and your aims for the thread.

My stance is well-stated in this thread. I don't know what else I could say to make it any clearer. You can also get more on my view with my new signature.

I would say you are far too well-spoken to be dismissed as a mere troll

Thank you. I appreciate that. Now, if you could convince certain others of that, I think things might go smoother.

and telling us more about your motives for the discussions you start would go a long way of dispelling the suspicions you're having a hidden agenda. (Again, this is only me being open about my own impressions, and I don't talk for anybody else but me.)

Well, as I stated earlier, I was forking this discussion because it didn't belong in the other thread. If anything is hidden, it's because it hasn't been discussed yet. No hidden agenda on my part. We're having an open discussion on a topic of public concern. I suppose if I have any agenda, it's to keep people focused on the facts instead of putting a convenient "hate it all" blanket over an issue that appears widely misunderstood, not just by me, as some would paint, but by all parties. Whereas some have an intimate knowledge of WOTC, I have an intimate knowledge of contracts. Put those things together, and both sides can learn from each other.

As it is now, you're being cornered because (again, in my personal opinion) you're coming across as something of an Wizards/GSL apologist.

I'd say you've hit the nail on the head. It is my nature to defend where unjust accusations are tossed. I give no apology in regard to the errors of the GSL, but I will not have the GSL or WOTC indicted for things they don't/didn't do.

The "yes, the GSL has its flaws, but look how nice and shiny these bits are" is not a view you can expect people to warm up to. Neither is speculations on benevolent schemes of Wizards'. Not with the GSL as its written today.

You won't find a single post where I come across that way. What you will find are my posts that correct misconceptions about those so-called "shiny parts" or that pull those "shiny parts" out from under the blanket of hate. I have already said multiple times that I do not champion the GSL. I just want the detractors to get it straight what parts they should be detracting. If they got it right in the first place, I'd be standing next to them with the protests. Thus, I am left in the apologist position, because so many are ill-prepared to argue it correctly.

So, what did (and do) you expect from this thread?

I expect people to consider WOTC's motives for the GSL as per the title of the thread [which was another poster's subject, who prefers to remain nameless, not mine]. I also expect people to stop focusing on me and my motives, because that's not what this thread is about.

 

[Corjay]

Corjay, you get a lot further along in gaining acceptance for your points if you weren't be so antagonistic towards those who disagree with you. Tone it down.

Thank you for the advice, though (not protesting, just saying) I usually save my antagonism for those being antagonistic towards me.

To be honest, Corjay, you really are giving off the impression that you are not very well informed as to the history of d20 (and things that lead up to it).

Oh, my dirty little secret. Oh, wait, after 3 weeks of discussing these things, I'd say it's well established that I'm not particularly informed about WOTC's intricate and varied history. And as far as I can tell, you (and maybe jmuchiello) are the only one who is so well informed. So stop lording it over me, because it seems to me, if you lord it over me, you should lord it over just about everyone else in this thread.

You didn't know how the OGL and d20 license interacted

False. I'm the one who taught others how they interacted, and if you are talking about how they interacted with the industry (instead of each other), then you are mistaken, because I am well informed. However, if you mean that I'm not well informed about the exact particulars of what effect it has had on each individual company, then you are correct.

Really, we can't all be knowledgeable of every intricate working of the entire industry and every company in it. Feel free to inform me. As you can see by where exactly I concede points, I am more than willing to learn and adjust my views based on what I learn. However, if you have grown weary of teaching people, then perhaps you have actually grown weary of this particular forum and I am simply the manifestation of the thing for which you are weary.

you didn't know one of the main goals of the OGL was to create other games stand alone games that used basics of the d20 system but not the actual license.

Again, false. Almost every post I've made has made my understanding of this abundantly clear. But now this whole post of yours is simply attacking me, as if you no longer care to address the issues. If you can't keep this discussion focused on the issues, instead of personal attacks against me, then feel free to bow out.

You don't even know who Mike Mearls is or how he got his start in the industry.

I know who Mike is, I don't know his history. My last post was responding to the information given in your post.

But you're arguing against our points with all furvor.

False. I'm arguing against attacks against my right to upholding a single motive on WOTC's part. In case you don't know how the dynamic works, the one being beaten down by everyone else is the one on the defensive, not the group of people circling that person. I will continue to defend my stand "with all furvor" until you can convince me to change my stance, or get you to accept that I have a right to my stance whether you accept it or not.

(Incase you're wondering, Mearls is kind of the Eminem of the RPG industry, started off as just an average guy who could write well and wrote some stuff and got discovered by one of the industry heavy weights and started working for them.)

Thank you for that wisdom. I pretty much gleaned that from jmuchiello's post. Unfortunately, I have not seen such high praise for Mike before now.

(Just curious, but have you heard of the Dragonlance SAGA system or knew that Spelljammer was in a different system then D&D? I'm asking about the systems, not if you've heard of Dragonlance or Spelljammer, just to make sure we're clear.)

You're going to have to explain to me what that has anything to do with this discussion or my understanding of WOTC or contracts. If it has something to do with Mike, then I still don't know what it has anything to do with this discussion or why it should affect it.

If you really want to have a discussion about the virtues of OGL/d20 vs GSL, I highly recommend you first educate yourself on the past 8 years so you can genuinely argue what the OGL has and has not done.

I'm getting quite enough education from others on that score. Besides, I don't care to spend the next several months going over thousands of threads and tracking down every tidbit of information through thousands of web pages. You, my master, in all your infinite wisdom, are just going to have to have patience and teach me, if you indeed expect me to learn.

Here's a good place to start. This is one of the things that influenced and helped the OGL's creation. Archived Record of the post-TSR buyout by WotC.

Thank you for the link. My education continues.

 

[pemerton]

Let's take for granted that WoTC (as a wholly-owned subsidiary, I believe, of a publicly listed company) is acting in a way that it believes will maximise its returns, and hence its value.

From that, it follows that WoTC believes that the GSL (appropriately revised) will generate more returns for it than did the OGL + d20 STL.

Furthermore, we can look at the particular changes from one licensing regime to the other to work out exactly how WoTC believes those returns will be generated.

Roughly speaking, the OGL licencsed stand-alone games ("variant SRDs" in many cases), but the d20 STL was understood as providing an incentive to 3pps to support D&D.

Did WoTC introduce a separate OGL and d20 STL in order to facilitate the production of stand-alone games, or rather to resolve certain difficulties inherent in trying to regulate the use of its IP via a single licence? Given the difficulties that have attended the GSL's attempt to do the latter, it seems to me reasonable to suppose that it was the IP complexities, as much as if not more than the desire to facilitate stand-alone games, that motivated WoTC.

I would offer, as support for this hypothesis, the following thought: WoTC's financial benefit from having 3pps publish modules, campaigns and D&D rules supplements is much more direct (ie more PHBs and MMs sold) than is their financial benefit from having players move to stand-alone games that are nevertheless d20, or from having 3pps finance the rise of Mike Mearls (after all, the same thing happened before the OGL/d20 STL - ICE financed the rise of Monte Cook before he went to TSR).

Further support for this hypothesis is that, despite the complexities involved which have necessitated a revision within weeks of release, WoTC is licensing 4e via a single licence that will make stand-alone games more difficult to produce.

Now, it is of course possible that WoTC have miscalculated where their best financial interests lie, and in particular have overestimated the worth of immediate returns and underestimated the worth of indirect benefits. Personally, however, given that they probably employ a number of accountants to work these things out for them, I'm prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt until some more concrete evidence of miscalculation is produced.

Of course, what is good for WoTC's finances isn't necessarily good for that of all the 3pps. But WoTC's motivation is never going to be one of offering philanthropic support to 3pps.

 

[pemerton]

A further thought: the issue of which particular clauses of the GSL are untenable to 3pps is really a secondary one to the issue of what WoTC's motivations are.

WoTC's motivation is to draft a contract which will get 3pps producing product that supports WoTC's sales of its goods (ie D&D books) and services (ie DDI). It failed first time round, so is revising. Given that some 3pps have already signed onto the unrevised GSL, or expressed an intention to do so, it seems pretty likely that WoTC will get the rest of the support it wants from its revisions.

I'd be quite surprised if those revisions allow the easy production of stand-alone games in the way that the OGL did. What I think they probably will do is give 3pps more rights in respect of licence variation/termination, and more rights in respect of simultaneous production of OGL and GSL products (probably by redefining the notion of "converted OGL product" as it appears in clause 6 of the GSL).

 

[pemerton]

Further to the further thought: I think Ryan Dancey's theory, that the market only wants to support a minimal range of mechanical variations, has been shown (by the proliferation of stand-alone games under the OGL) to be false.

It may be that he was correct about players, but players don't all count equally in the RPG market, because they are not all purchasers of RPG rulebooks.

However, I suspect that he was wrong even about players, because he did not appreciate that RPG players want to use different mechanics for different sorts of play experiences.

In any event, the proven existence of a market for multiple mechanical systems helps explain (in my opinion) why WoTC have tried this time round to set up a licensing regime that makes it harder to do something that the OGL made trivially easy, namely, producing variant systems that are easily marketable to WoTC's customers.

 

[CapnZapp]

Yes, I feel it can be stated as fact that the market don't want to use d20 for all their gaming. There are several games whose biggest fault was that they tried to shoehorn their settings into the restrictions imposed by d20.

Of course, that they even tried to do so, is a testament to the success of d20, no matter what your opinion on the individual attempts are.

For me, judging the GSL's success solely (or even chiefly) on how well it sets up that safe harbour, or its financial success, alone is too narrow. Unless the GSL will allow creativity outside of Wizards' own playgrounds (the new paradigm of play in 4E as well as its settings) it will never amount to anything significant in my book.

But all of this is off-topic, I guess.

 

[dmccoy1693]

Personal rule of mine, Corjay. Treat everyone like they are well informed until they prove otherwise or tell me to act otherwise. You have been making claims about things that lead me to believe that you thought you were well informed. I was wrong. So, changing modes ...

Why was the OGL created? To keep companies from suing each other while allowing other companies that would otherwise go copyright happy. TSR (or T$R as they were called in the 90's because they were so sue happy) filed quite a few law suits against companies that went copyright. TSR lost almost off of them. The few that TSR did win is when another company blatently violated TSR IP. All in all it cost TSR quite a bit of money with very little gain. When WotC took over they didn't want to fall in the same sue trap. So they created a "safe haven" for other companies to publish in. The license basicly said, "You follow a few simple rules and we will not sue you." It kept WotC from having to sue people left and right and it kept other companies within the bounds that WotC wanted. WotC only had a few instances of things going wrong and they were easily handled.

The license allowed WotC to have certain things all to themselves and certain other things any other company could do with as they wish. Things like Beholders or skill tricks or greyhawk were never touched by another company. And 3PPs played nice as a return favor to WotC.

Why did WotC give away so much of the system? One of Dancey's ideas is that it is NOT other companies or other games that hurt TSR (and the RPG industry as a whole) but competing systems. Two prime examples of this are Spelljammer and the Dragonlance SAGA system. Both Spelljammer, basicly being D&D in space, and the SAGA systems were different from D&D's core system. So you basicly had two D&D games that you couldn't easily port over material. This created market "inefficiency" according to Dancey. By getting everyone under the same roof (er system), there will be increased revenue for WotC. D&D has the name recognition and WotC has the distribution capabilities and capital for larger print runs then anyone else in the industry. They can be places where no one else can and they will be able to make more money then anyone else. All the while still giving smaller companies the chance to make a decent buck and the chance to make something of themselves.

So how is this different with the (current) GSL? Excellent question.

Licensee will not define, redefine, or alter the definition of any 4E Reference in a Licensed Product.

One of the first things that Paizo did after losing the magazines was take come of the classic monsters and redefining them. In Pathfinder #1 they turned Goblins into something alot closer to the Grimlins from the movie Grimlins/Grimlins 2. Mongoose's first product line was all about taking various monsters and expanding upon them. Paizo, if they went 4E, would definitely be in violation of this. Mongoose could be. This point puts a real damper on creativity. This is a change from the d20 license.

For the avoidance of doubt and in addition to the provisions of Section 10 related to ownership and use of Wizards Intellectual Property (as defined therein), Licensee expressly acknowledges Wizards’ ownership of all imagery and artwork contained in 4E, and Licensee expressly agrees it will not use, publish or reprint any such imagery or artwork, including without limitation any derivatives thereof, without Wizards’ written permission.

emphasis mine.

This is a point of serious confusion. So 4.1 says I can't redefine something, but 5.7 says I can't make it look like it came from their picture. Back to the goblin example, how can a company have a picture of a goblin that is both not derived from WotC's artwork and without redefining the goblin? Sounds like a catch 22 to me.

The OGL was in plain simple language. But the GSL is meant to be confusing?

Licensee will not institute any suit or take any action on account of any such infringements or imitations, or otherwise institute any suit or take any action relating to Wizards Intellectual Property. Licensee will take no action that will harm, misuse or bring into disrepute the activities, properties or products of Wizards or Wizards Intellectual Property.

Now, I'm not a lawyer, but to me this sounds like a licensee is signing over some of their rights to sue WotC for specific circumstances. As discussed previously, the GSL has a number of ways that Wizards can sue the licensee, but the licensee has to sign over certain right to sue back? That is not the "safe harbor" type of environment of Wizards of 8 years ago. This shows a definite shift in priorities and make some (myself included) wonder if WotC's returning to the days of T$R. This shift also begs the question as to where future shifts will be going to.

 

[jmucchiello]

Oh, my dirty little secret. Oh, wait, after 3 weeks of discussing these things, I'd say it's well established that I'm not particularly informed about WOTC's intricate and varied history. And as far as I can tell, you (and maybe jmucchiello) are the only one who is so well informed. So stop lording it over me, because it seems to me, if you lord it over me, you should lord it over just about everyone else in this thread.

We aren't lording anything over you. We are asking you to become informed, to not speak with authority about subjects you are uninformed about. I don't think that is unreasonable.

False. I'm the one who taught others how they interacted, and if you are talking about how they interacted with the industry (instead of each other), then you are mistaken, because I am well informed. However, if you mean that I'm not well informed about the exact particulars of what effect it has had on each individual company, then you are correct.

I do not understand what you are saying here. How does licenses interact with an industry? The OGL and d20STL are separate licenses covering two unrelated things. The OGL provides license to copyrighted material. The d20STL provides access to trademarks. The only reason they interact is because the d20STL directly references the OGL and has terms and conditions based on content licenesed by the OGL. The d20STL needs the OGL. The OGL does not reciprocate this need. From your earlier writing you did not seem to understand this.

Feel free to inform me. As you can see by where exactly I concede points, I am more than willing to learn and adjust my views based on what I learn.

This attitude is the only reason I haven't left the thread. The problem is how do we know what you don't know? We know what we know by experiencing it for the last 8 years. It's not like we read a book/website about it. Nor is there a single book/website to point you at.

I'm getting quite enough education from others on that score. Besides, I don't care to spend the next several months going over thousands of threads and tracking down every tidbit of information through thousands of web pages. You, my master, in all your infinite wisdom, are just going to have to have patience and teach me, if you indeed expect me to learn.

And this attitude makes it hard to stay. If you want to be taken seriously that you want to understand, this sarcasm is inappropriate. Nothing in dmccoy's or my posts have implied we are mountain top sitting gurus of open licensing. Don't treat us disrespectfully if you want respect in return.