No Dice <Nerd Rage>

[Chrono22]

If you call the GSL and the fansite license "open gaming", you are living in a fantasy.
My rage hurts the hobby? Puh-lease. What expands the hobby is Gaming, not advertisements, not physical copies. People get involved with D&D (and RPGs) because they have friends or family that participate and draw them in.
The GSL excludes a huge amount of what would otherwise be edition/hobby support through a range of products (alternate versions of rules, player aids, etc). The claim that WotC is restricting access based on some kind of principle regarding quality is tenuous. It's been shown in many ways that the quality of WotC products has generally declined over the last couple of years.
WotC's policies regarding PDFs and the GSL serve one purpose and one only- hedge out other businesses (and previous editions). This doesn't expand the hobby, it reduces it. It doesn't make it easier to play (which is the basis of our hobby), it makes it harder. Higher barriers to play means more lapsed players. WotC has enacted policies that are aggressive and divisive. The policies worked, increasing their bottom line, but at the expense of the wider gaming community.
Also, I don't agree with the assessment that a "majority of gamers" are satisfied with WotC's policies or actions. As far as I can tell, there is a pretty even split in the gaming community, leaning slightly toward disliking what WotC has done.

I'm just shouting out my complaints so that they are heard (an act that is no more heinous than the policies of WotC). Many people aren't satisfied with what WotC has done and would prefer a change. Perhaps if it became apparent that there are many disenfranchised customers, WotC would consider changing their policy.

 

[Crothian]

I Many people aren't satisfied with what WotC has done and would prefer a change. Perhaps if it became apparent that there are many disenfranchised customers, WotC would consider changing their policy.

And many people are satisfied so it works both ways. I'm sure Wizards knows there are people that don't like some of the policies they have done and that there are people that don't like 4e. That's the nature of business; you can't please everyone.

 

[Maggan]

My own group plays multiple systems, always has, and nowadays (last couple years) that includes 4E, 3.5/d20 plus variants, 1E, and many non-D&D systems.

Yeah, same with us normally. That's why it is remarkable that we have played so much 4e. We'll take a break now, but will probably return. In the meantime I'm planning on running Mask of Nyarlathoptep for Call of Cthulhu.

/M

 

[Mark CMG]

Yeah, same with us normally. That's why it is remarkable that we have played so much 4e. We'll take a break now, but will probably return. In the meantime I'm planning on running Mask of Nyarlathoptep for Call of Cthulhu.

/M

I remember your affection for it -

http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...-your-favorite-module-ever-3.html#post3267605


In fact, I picked it up some time ago based on the enthusiasm shown for it by you and others, though I have yet to get to read it through. It is high in the pile of things to read. CoC was never a game I played much but I always heard good things about the design of that module.

 

[IronWolf]

What expands the hobby is Gaming, not advertisements, not physical copies. People get involved with D&D (and RPGs) because they have friends or family that participate and draw them in.

And this is what the Encounters is all about. Getting people in to game in bite sized chunks that they can participate in as they can fit into their schedule. So it seems WotC is at least making strides on this area.

WotC's policies regarding PDFs and the GSL serve one purpose and one only- hedge out other businesses (and previous editions). This doesn't expand the hobby, it reduces it. It doesn't make it easier to play (which is the basis of our hobby), it makes it harder. Higher barriers to play means more lapsed players.

Their policy on PDFs is to hedge out other businesses? I am not sure I follow that. Now the license adjustment I could believe, but the lack of PDFs?

Now I don't play 4e and choose to support companies with a more open license and more product available in PDF format as I do appreciate both paper books and PDF books depending on usage - and sometimes purchase both. But I don't see WotC's lack of PDFs as a move to hedge out other businesses.

Also, I don't agree with the assessment that a "majority of gamers" are satisfied with WotC's policies or actions. As far as I can tell, there is a pretty even split in the gaming community, leaning slightly toward disliking what WotC has done.

I would suspect that WotC has fairly decent market research going on to guide their decisions. I would suspect the majority of gamers are satisfied with WotC. It might be more accurate to say the split is more even across various message forums, but I don't think we are the majority of gamers - just the more vocal of gamers.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'm a big believer in open gaming, 3rd party products, and PDF distribution. I think all of those are part of the wave of the future, and I want to see WotC cultivating them.

But I don't think nerd rage about marketing e-mails is going to win anyone over to any of those positions.

You aren't doing your cause (my cause, too) any favors with this thread.

If you have a gripe about WotC over-using social marketing to advertise to gamers, that's a totally different topic. But for that, I'm with a previous poster. I'd rather be sold stuff I might have a passing interest in then sold stuff I'm never really going to buy. All the SUV adds in the world are wasted advertising dollars when they hit my eyeballs, but a thread about WFRPG or Fantasy Craft or even D&D Encounters (sadly, nothing truly convenient to my home) are all dollars well-spent, even if I don't pick up their products, 'cuz I'm exactly the kind of person who is going to be interested in those things when I get a little disposable income.

 

[Maggan]

If you call the GSL and the fansite license "open gaming", you are living in a fantasy.

Good thing no one did that, then.

/M

 

[Umbran]

What do you think is going to expand the hobby faster? 3rd party support, open gaming and PDFs? Or junk email?

What would expand the hobby fastest would be giving all their products away for free, forever! So, why aren't you arguing for that?

Because, obviously, it would be a bad business decision. Or, at least I hope that's why you aren't arguing that...

Somewhere between the decisions that have no negative impact at all on the business, and the ones that would be disastrous, there's a wide field of choices, whose merits and detriments aren't so clear.

The fact of the matter is that while e-mail marketing isn't terribly effective, the cost is nearly zero - so the rate of return on investment is actually not too shabby.

Meanwhile, third party and pdf support have ROI that is questionable. Given their current electronic model, pdfs are probably a pretty bad idea - they want you in DDI, not in offline pdfs. Third party support might grow the hobby, but it is not plain obvious that it actually helps WotC sales. We don't have the numbers to say.

Compare something cheap and simple to something that costs (at least in terms of headaches for your legal department, and possibly for your brand identity and other ways), and the answer there seems pretty clear.

 

[Mark CMG]

If you have a gripe about WotC over-using social marketing to advertise to gamers, that's a totally different topic.

Looks like the point in this case is that it is related. Without the 180 on Open Gaming and the reversal on selling the PDFs, it seems Chrono22 would have been receptive to the marketing. It's an interesting point, too, and the combination of factors has spurred him to start up a thread. In essence, he's still not a customer because of previous transgressions by WotC and since their new advertising initiative has reached his door, so to speak, he is using that as the impetus to remind them on a message board where their employees keep watch that he's still not a customer because of those past decisions. It's the trigger, and thus related, and certainly fair enough. I have to wonder if those who feel the same way would look to the new revisions as a time to revisit WotC products if the PDFs were again made available and/or the OGL was reinstituted. I don't suspect the latter would happen but I wonder if some minds at WotC have been reconsidering the PDF situation. Some folks in this thread seem to want to couch the PDF situation and the marketing push as an either/or position when clearly they could do both. If WotC is reaching out to lapsed D&Ders with this new initiative as some say, why do so by also making the older edition PDFs available again and please that many more gamers?

 

[Mistwell]

What do you think is going to expand the hobby faster? 3rd party support, open gaming and PDFs? Or junk email?

Definitely junk mail. Expanding the hobby mostly means new players, not players of earlier versions playing the new version. The number of NEW PLAYERS interested in 3rd party support and open gaming is very small, and the number of NEW PLAYERS interested in PDFs is also small.

I mean think about it, the PDF argument is often about PDFS of the stuff from prior versions of the game. How would PDFs of prior game versions create new players? How would it expand the hobby, given the people who want them are already players in the hobby! And I doubt there are a ton of people just waiting to play 4e once the books are available as PDFs. Those people would have just gotten the DDI by now, or downloaded illegal copies of the books if it was really the one issue standing in their way of playing the game. It's just not realistic to think PDFs is an issue preventing new players from playing.

A similar argument goes for 3rd party support and open gaming, which are essentially the same point. People who only want to play the game is some third party they know about can produce stuff for it, are people already in the hobby to begin with. That's not really growing the hobby, and frankly if those players of older versions are still holding out this long because of lack of third party support, they probably have plenty of other reasons to not want to play the new version in addition to that issue.

Spam, on the other hand, continues to be used worldwide, because it works to some extent to get new purchases from new people who were not previously making purchases. That stands a much better chance of growing the hobby than PDFs and 3rd party publishers.

So yeah, my answer is SPAM, give the choices and goal you offered. Particularly when that spam, like here, was targeted directly, and backed by free gaming opportunities with a specific game in mind at a specific location and time. Do you really think that kind of thing is unlikely to grow the hobby? I don't. It's the kind of on-the-ground approach I think most likely to succeed at growing the hobby. Not PDFs and an open license, both of which are frankly niche things directed at certain smaller sub-groupa of existing older players who are likely to have a host of other issues about the new version and WOTC anyway.