D&D (2024) The Very Real Possibility and Impact of Microtransactions in One D&D

[MGibster]

How are they going to do that? Genuinely curious, as it is unclear to me how they could.

They're working to drive their customers to being dependent on WotC's online tools whether it's the VTT, D&D Beyond, or some other APP. And the more reliant their customers are on these online tools, the more influence WotC will have on how the game is played, which, in turn, will help them market the heck out of us and get those recurrent spending dollars.

I admit that I can see a future where that happens, but it isn't next year. It's sometime in the far future when paper books are like vinyl is for records now. As long as publishing books remains a profitable industry they're going to keep making books. Their digital strategy is where they see growth, but the books are where they get a constant stream of revenue currently.

This is true. It'll be a long, long time, if ever, WotC abandons the table top in its entirety. They're not going to pivot overnight, they'll go slowly just to acclimate their customers to the changes rather than risk driving them to competitors or out of the hobby entirely. I do wonder what impact the uprising against the OGL changes had on any of their monetization plans.

 

[Clint_L]

They're working to drive their customers to being dependent on WotC's online tools whether it's the VTT, D&D Beyond, or some other APP. And the more reliant their customers are on these online tools, the more influence WotC will have on how the game is played, which, in turn, will help them market the heck out of us and get those recurrent spending dollars.

How? Like, what specifically will they do? Because I have fully embraced DDB and it saves me a ton of time and money.

 

[Incenjucar]

I'm fine with them selling texture packs like dice and terrain. Maybe some snow flurry or volcanic ash environmental effects. If they overdo it, then that's an opening for the competition.

 

[Jer]

I do wonder what impact the uprising against the OGL changes had on any of their monetization plans.

I think the main one is the loss of immediate money coming in from third party licensors. Even though they dropped that quickly, that part had the stink of "we're leaving money on the table, why aren't we getting a cut of these million dollar kickstarters" about it. I think they were hoping to have that to tweak their balance sheets. I also think they were setting up to actually try to go after anyone using D&D rules in a video game and demand a pound of flesh from them as well - though I think they'd have a harder case to make there given that "D&D-like mechanics" have been in video games almost since video games were invented. I don't think it was just about their VTT at all - I think was a much broader attempt at a money grab.

And I think they dropped it quickly because it turns out that the YouTube and Twitch celebrities who make the million dollar kickstarters were the ones who could do the most damage to the brand in the shortest amount of time. Which should have been obvious if they'd put 10 seconds of thought into what the market for the game actually is, but they didn't think about it. That very first turn around to OGL 1.2 felt very much to me like a damage conrol pass at a "quick remove anything that the influencers object to but we'll keep in anything we can spin at all as pro-little guy, anti-big corporation so we can save something from this debacle" move. So it's tough for me to really think we can divine any long term plans from it (as opposed to the original 1.1 version, which I think does reveal some bigger picture things that I think they'll keep trying to figure out how to work in this new CC-BY licensing era they created).

 

[Velderan]

Yes, but TSR failed because of the way they were structured, especially their finances, not because D&D wasn't selling well enough.

The sales numbers Ben Riggs revealed would suggest otherwise. There's a post here with some charts, but the last one comparing settings sales show that basically nothing was selling particularly well past 1987 Forgotten Realms. Their financial structure certainly didn't help when sales dried up, but lets not pretend they were selling anywhere near the books they were in the 1e days.

 

[mamba]

You don't destroy your revenue stream just to pursue another one unless you're really bad at business.

or really confident that people will make the switch with you… that being said, yes, there still will be books, but WotC would not mind if most sales were digital

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

They're working to drive their customers to being dependent on WotC's online tools whether it's the VTT, D&D Beyond, or some other APP. And the more reliant their customers are on these online tools, the more influence WotC will have on how the game is played, which, in turn, will help them market the heck out of us and get those recurrent spending dollars.

I'm having trouble understanding the malice you're implying here.

 

[MarkB]

Just to point out, microtransactions on VTTs are nothing new and not intrinsically exploitative. Plenty of current VTTs allow the piecemeal purchase of tokens, terrain, area maps etc.

 

[MGibster]

I'm having trouble understanding the malice you're implying here.

I'm not implying any malice. When publishers added a bunch of microtransaction nonsense to Dead Space 3 it wasn't out of malice it was out of a desire to make more money.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

I'm not implying any malice. When publishers added a bunch of microtransaction nonsense to Dead Space 3 it wasn't out of malice it was out of a desire to make more money.

So, again, you're implying malice i.e. 'publishers added a bunch of microtransaction nonsense to Dead Space 3'. Are you saying that a desire for a company to be profitable is somehow reprehensible? It might be if there was harm being done to someone in the process. What's the harm being done here?