Still one make-or-break issue for me...

[Sanglorian]

I know this sounds kinda petty, but I hope there is never again an OGL...maybe in 10 or so more years people will stop asking companies to give away there main sourcs of income...

Those of us who support open licensing don't believe that it gives away a company's main source of income. It doesn't seem to have given away Paizo's main source of income (or the incomes of the several other Pathfinder publishers who volunteer their content to be put on the Pathfinder SRD), or Green Ronin's (True20, Mutants & Masterminds), or Evil Hat Productions' (FATE), and I don't believe that it gave away Wizards' main source of income either (the 3E years were good years for Wizards).

2. The hard part: Provide a convincing business case for providing a new DDN OGL. Use hard facts, not vague generalizations such as "D&D is a creative game" or "The first OGL made 3.x a success" (correlation does not equal causation).

3. The really hard part: Post a draft OGL for DDN on these boards. The draft OGL has to protect WOTC's interests, or they won't - and shouldn't - use it. The draft OGL will have to include some constraints on use of WOTC material (even the 3.x OGL had constraints):
- No using DDN material to create competing rules/games that do not require use of WOTC DDN rulebooks and/or online offerings.
- No repackaging of the DDN rules to compete with WOTC rulebooks and/or online offerings.
- No using the DDN material to create electronic tools that compete with WOTC online offerings.
- Does encourage 3PP's to produce material other than the above.

2. What sort of hard evidence are you looking for? We don't have access to sales figures for D&D, either during the third or the fourth editions. We can point to dozens of successful companies that license their games, their software, their books, etc., under open licences. We can point to the extraordinary growth of the world's second-best selling or first-best selling RPG, Pathfinder, and the fact that Paizo is very generous with its open content. We can point to the boom during the d20 era. None of this is evidence of causation, but how could we—as consumers and commentators—prove a causal link?

3. I think your proposal for a new OGL begs the question. It assumes that it is in Wizards' best interests to create a locked-down public copyright licence rather than an open licence. I don't agree that your three criteria (no competing games, no repackaged rules, no competing electronic tools) are necessary—or even desirable—for Wizards' interests to be protected.

But I think we already have a public copyright licence that fits your requirements: the GSL. I just think that the GSL did not serve Wizards' interests as well as the OGL did.

That's a very... odd requirement, to say the least. The license the game is under has literally no effect on the quality of the game, or whether the first books are worth buying. No matter what the license is, the base product will be exactly the same.

That's like saying "I love the taste of M&M's, but I refuse to buy them because the company won't let other companies make and sell their own M&M's flavors."

I see it more as saying, 'I love Hyundai cars, but if they don't let other companies make wheels that fit my car, I won't buy a Hyundai.' Sure, my Hyundai will work after purchase, and maybe Hyundai's wheels will always be better than their competitors' wheels. Maybe I'll get a new car before I want new wheels. But if I'm going to invest a lot of money in a car/roleplaying game, I want the security of knowing that support material can be created by third parties.

 

[jreyst]

I know this sounds kinda petty, but I hope there is never again an OGL...maybe in 10 or so more years people will stop asking companies to give away there main sourcs of income...

Yeah that model never works for anyone.

 

[jsaving]

For the gaming community, the 3e license was amazing, one of the best things that could have happened. From a business standpoint... it was a mistake. The success of Pathfinder alone shows that Wizards made a bad decision in allowing other people to use their license to create their own materials. Paizo stole a huge chunk of WotC's market with Pathfinder. Something I'm sure they're not keen on seeing happen again.

I couldn't disagree more with this sentiment. WotC's great insight with 3e was that their revenue is driven primarily by sales of the core books, not penny-ante stuff like modules, and that a vibrant and vigorous third-party marketplace would bring people into the game and thereby drive up core book sales. In essence, the third-party guys would unintentionally yet unmistakably funnel money to WotC -- an amazing insight that they promptly lost with 4e.

The other thing the OGL was intended to do, according to Ryan Dancey, was act as a "quality control" disciplining mechanism for any future edition. Because the OGL would enable 3e to remain strong after 4e's release, WotC would be under substantial market pressure to not release a sub-par 4e. And knowing this, consumers would feel comfortable buying the initial 4e print run sight unseen, secure in the knowledge that 4e surely would be better. And the truth of this argument can be seen in first-year 4e book sales, which were -- according to both WotC and numerous third-party reports -- off the charts.

I like 4e and think many of its advances should be incorporated in 5e, but as people had time to digest the core books they had so readily purchased, they came to the conclusion that it wasn't good enough compared to 3e to merit playing. While this did decrease WotC's profit in the near term, it shows that the 3e OGL was a *success*, not a failure, because it enabled RPG consumers to speak in a way they had been largely unable to speak before. With a strong 4th edition OGL, third-party developers could potentially have bridged this gap, but WotC made the deliberate decision to cut third-party guys off at the knees in 4e with predictable results. This made 4e worse than it would otherwise be and, ironically, held 4e core-book sales figures below where they could have been in a 3e-like OGL environment, reducing WotC's profit below where it could otherwise have been.

Over the long term, if 5e proves to be the "unifying force" that WotC hopes it will be, and if a 3e-like OGL accompanies its release, then WotC may well see the same kind of sales success it saw in the early 2000s -- the pinnacle towards which it is currently striving. The 3e ruleset wasn't perfect by any means, but WotC really shot itself in the foot by not having an OGL in 4e, even though Pathfinder's recent growth may make it appear otherwise, at least on the surface.

 

[Balesir]

For the gaming community, the 3e license was amazing, one of the best things that could have happened. From a business standpoint... it was a mistake.

That's one view. Mine, based on 35+ years gaming and 25 years working in business, is that it wasn't a mistake at all. In fact, I think the "issues" WotC are having as a result of Pathfinder right now are caused, in fair measure, by the fact that 4e was not OGL.

If 4e had been OGL, I think two things would have improved, from WotC's perspective:

1) Some customers who abandoned them because of principled stands over their "closing down" of the license would have stayed with D&D. Customer revulsion at a business practice is both a real and a very rational market mechanism.

2) Third parties would have picked up and covered a lot of customer-perceived "gaps" in 4e. This would have done two things: it would have kept "on board" gamers who had specific gripes with 4e but found 3PP material to change, replace or obviate those issues, and it would have given WotC feedback from the market about what areas customers perceived 4e as weak in - what types of product were popular, in effect.

Failure to pursue an OGL approach left, I think, a gaping hole in the market for an established OGL product (Pathfinder) to flood into.

Returning to the point of the OP, D&DNext will have to rock my socks off, if it's not OGL, for me to be interested in it. That's not purely a principled stand thing - an OGL product will likely have some good product come out for it, making the core buy worthwhile even if it's only average. 4e managed to impress me even without OGL - that speaks to how well I regard its actual systems. But I still regard the abandonment of the OGL for it (not to mention the clustercockup surrounding the whole digital area, which seems mostly to have related to a paranoid psychosis concerning IP) a massive mistake from a business standpoint.

 

[Croesus]

Those of us who support open licensing don't believe...snip...I don't believe...snip...I don't agree...

And this is the disconnect between what keeps being posted on EnWorld and what is likely to happen - our beliefs don't matter. What matters is what the WOTC decision makers think. And we have ample evidence that they don't believe the OGL was good for their business.

Try thinking of it this way. You're attempting to sell something to a customer. The customer doesn't think the product is of value to them. You can: 1) tell the customer that you believe it's a great value and the customer should, of course, take your word for it, or 2) you can address the customer's specific concerns. If we want an OGL, we have to address the issue from WOTC's point of view, not ours.

 

[Croesus]

2. What sort of hard evidence are you looking for? We don't have access to sales figures for D&D, either during the third or the fourth editions. We can point to dozens of successful companies that license their games, their software, their books, etc., under open licences. We can point to the extraordinary growth of the world's second-best selling or first-best selling RPG, Pathfinder, and the fact that Paizo is very generous with its open content. We can point to the boom during the d20 era. None of this is evidence of causation, but how could we—as consumers and commentators—prove a causal link?

Which is why I tend to give greater deference to WOTC's opinion than ours. They do have the hard data.

Could they have misintepreted it? Of course. But more often than not, it's the group with good data that will have a better handle on things than the group without it. As I've said many times, the plural of anecdotes is not data, and just because something was good for the hobby doesn't mean it's a good business decision for WOTC.

 

[rkwoodard]

already open

Hello,

With or without a license to use D&D on the product, 90% what we have seen so far can be redone with the SRD anyway, right?

Standard Races, Classes, Feats, Skills, Spells.


Even if the suits don't allow any type of Game license, the development team seems to be making a game that will be easy for 3PP to make supplemental material.

For myself, open or closed is not a big deal, as I tend to stick to the Core 3 books (PHB, MM, and DMG) and don't even buy a lot of the WOTC followup stuff.


Just make a good game (hopefully great) and i will buy it.

RK

 

[Ahnehnois]

Alright, let's look at it from WotC's perspective.

Is what they are doing now working?

No.

Is there another company doing well, better than WotC, with the OGL, with making all their substantive products open and available in usable format, despite profound (from a business perspective) disadvantages?

Yes.

If you were WotC, what would you do differently?

It's hard to argue that the GSL was a good business move. I'm not a lawyer, so I can't draft a better license, but this thread is about the hope that their lawyers can do that.

Which is why I tend to give greater deference to WOTC's opinion than ours. They do have the hard data.

True enough, but I give greater deference to Paizo's opinion that WotC's, for these reasons.

just because something was good for the hobby doesn't mean it's a good business decision for WOTC

Well, not in every case, but if the hobby dies out, it's hard to see that as being good for WotC.

 

[Balesir]

It's always nice to find points of commonality with another poster, especially one with whom one often disagrees. In this context, I'm very pleased to note that I agree with every last word of [MENTION=17106]Ahnehnois[/MENTION]' last post

 

[Redbadge]

I couldn't disagree more with this sentiment. WotC's great insight with 3e was that their revenue is driven primarily by sales of the core books, not penny-ante stuff like modules, and that a vibrant and vigorous third-party marketplace would bring people into the game and thereby drive up core book sales. In essence, the third-party guys would unintentionally yet unmistakably funnel money to WotC -- an amazing insight that they promptly lost with 4e.

The other thing the OGL was intended to do, according to Ryan Dancey, was act as a "quality control" disciplining mechanism for any future edition. Because the OGL would enable 3e to remain strong after 4e's release, WotC would be under substantial market pressure to not release a sub-par 4e. And knowing this, consumers would feel comfortable buying the initial 4e print run sight unseen, secure in the knowledge that 4e surely would be better. And the truth of this argument can be seen in first-year 4e book sales, which were -- according to both WotC and numerous third-party reports -- off the charts.

I like 4e and think many of its advances should be incorporated in 5e, but as people had time to digest the core books they had so readily purchased, they came to the conclusion that it wasn't good enough compared to 3e to merit playing. While this did decrease WotC's profit in the near term, it shows that the 3e OGL was a *success*, not a failure, because it enabled RPG consumers to speak in a way they had been largely unable to speak before. With a strong 4th edition OGL, third-party developers could potentially have bridged this gap, but WotC made the deliberate decision to cut third-party guys off at the knees in 4e with predictable results. This made 4e worse than it would otherwise be and, ironically, held 4e core-book sales figures below where they could have been in a 3e-like OGL environment, reducing WotC's profit below where it could otherwise have been.

Over the long term, if 5e proves to be the "unifying force" that WotC hopes it will be, and if a 3e-like OGL accompanies its release, then WotC may well see the same kind of sales success it saw in the early 2000s -- the pinnacle towards which it is currently striving. The 3e ruleset wasn't perfect by any means, but WotC really shot itself in the foot by not having an OGL in 4e, even though Pathfinder's recent growth may make it appear otherwise, at least on the surface.

Your point about the OGL ensuring quality from WotC and faith from the consumer is a good one that I hadn't considered. Another point in favor of the OGL it seems.

Howver, your "sight unseen" argument about the initial success of 4e seems weird to me. I'm not sure it really explains why the first wave of 4e supplemental books also did so well. Presumably, people had time to digest the core books before they decided to buy Martial Power, FRPG, Adventurer's Vault, etc. I mean, Player's Handbook 2 came out over a year later (iirc), and it sold nearly as well as the core and is the best-selling supplement book in the WotC era.

Of course, the sales really started dropping off right around the time that DDI was (mostly) fully implemented. Also, Pathfinder was really demonstrating its viability as a powerful and popular alternative by this point, so YMMV.

Edit: Also, I imagine that the PHB2 was so succesful because it replaced the missing half of PHB1 (barbarians, gnomes, etc.), so it really was an important purchase for anyone at all interested in playing 4e.