Kyle Brink Interviewed by Teos Abadia (Alphastream) on OGL, WotC, & D&D

D&D executive producer's Kyle Brink's second hour-long interview OGL/D&D has dropped--this one is with Teos Abadia, otherwise known as Alphastream. The notes below are my attempt to paraphrase the main things Brink said, but as always you should watch the actual video if you want the full context.

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Company Structure

• There's around 30 people on the D&D team, and that many again freelancers.​
• The hiring process has equity targets to bring in a representative sample of candidates, after which it is who is the best candidate.​
• There has been increasing diversity in the pool of designers while maintaining quality.​
• Brink reports to Dan Rawson, senior VP of D&D, who reports to Cynthia Williams, president.​
• D&D Beyond is the front door to D&D on the web and will be even more so. It is the D&D website, and will become more so.​
• D&D Game Studio is center for game content. D&D Beyond turns that into a play service. Content gets expressed in ways appropriate to an audiance (ie digital, book, etc.)​

OGL/Creative Commons

• It was a surprise to some of the D&D team that the OGL might be changed. Partly that was about shielding them from distracting stuff. Brink feels that was too strong a wall and their views might have been beneficial.
• Some internal feedback from the D&D team reflected the views of external creators.
• The community's point of view was not the one wining internally, but may have been had people there been able to speak more loudly.
• The worry was about new technologies and big companies--Brink uses the VR example, with user generated content but poor content controls. They didn't want the term D&D to become 'that video porn game' looking ahead.
• The position now is that the community is the strongest weapon against that.
• The royalties were to discourage big companies moving in and redefining D&D. By 'drips and drips' they got to the wrong position. $750K was a ceiling which they felt would not affect most creators, and larger companies would deal directly with WotC.
• Right now they're looking at protecting D&D via things not now in the Creative Commons. Community protects the open space and WotC protects copyright and trademark.
• They feel that the community is able to take care of hateful content.
• They want the creator community. A deal where WotC got more powers to act but lost the creator community was not a good deal.
• NFTs are not the concern, it's about how people use them for scams.
• WotC will be publishing a content policy (for representation, hateful content, etc.) and hold themselves to it. They cannot hold others to it.
• The Creative Commons license chosen's lack of sharealike attribution isn't a problem for WotC. They want people to build stuff they own and don't have to share and build value in their own IP. They've chosen the road which gives creators the choice, and can make any of their content sharealike, but WotC isn't forcing them to.
• CC means that nobody has to take WotC's word for anything as they don't control that license.
• The drive to change the OGL was coming from various parts of the organization (legal, business, studio). It was an ongoing effort when Brink arrived.
• The faster the audience grew the bigger the risk that hateful content or scams would arise, so there was a rising sense of urgency to take action.
• Did anybody sign the v1.1 version? It was distributed with an NDA, and with some creators a discussion about other arrnagements/licenses they might make separate from the OGL.
• 'The impression someone could get that I have to sign v1.1 is absotely a believable impression for someone to get'.
• The design of v1.1. was always going to be an ongoing no-signature process.
• Feedback from larger creators like Kobold Press, the failing is on WotC for not communicating that they were listening. 'Thanks for the feedback' isn't enough.
• 'If you're going to write a new OGL to protect yourself from the vulnerabilties of the old OGL, you kinda have to take the old OGL off the table, otherwise you're not protecting yourself at all'. There's no point in changing the OGL if you don't de-authorize the old one.
• They weren't worried about competitors arising from within the community. They love the creator community, and WotC can't satisfy all appetites. That serves the broad needs of the player community.
• They wanted to have closer relationships with the most successful creators, talking to them about licenses and going bigger. The tiering structure was meant to identify those creators. 'The way it was executed was very cleary going to be an attenuating destructive structure which we did not want.'
• The OGL survey results were clear, from a range of people, 15000 responses. The intent was to treat it like a playtest but it became obvious where it was going. The survey feedback supported CC, and there was no reason to drag it out.
• WotC still has their concerns, but their approach to it has changed (to a combo of copyrght/trademark and community).
• Putting D&D into CC has made de-authing the OGL unimportant to WotC.
• The SRD will be updated to continue to be compatible with evolving rules.
• They're looking at adding the 3.5 SRD to the SRD but they have to review that content to make sure they're not accidentally putting stuff into CC.

Company Culture

• People being afraid to speak up is a sign of 'immature management' and leading from ego.
• That's not the kind of leaders WotC has today, but Brink cannot speak about those who were there before he arrived.
• Brink feels that every month he is there people feel more comfortable speaking up, though that doesn't mean they'll always agree. But they will listen.
• 'That's not how we operate today but I can certainly believe echoes of that in the past'.

VTTs/Digital/DDB

• Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds are important to the hobby and WotC.
• WotC is also making digital playspaces. The goal is to give more choice. The way WotC succeeds is if they make the best stuff. It's a 'virtuos' competition.
• The license that Roll20 etc. has to sell WotC content still applies. Remains to be seen down the road.
• It's possible that third party content will be seen inside DDB or the VTT but it takes a fair amount of work to being a piece of content in. It would have to be a pretty important piece of third party content. Brink could see a day when that would happen.

One D&D

• The OGL issue has not impacted the One D&D strategy. It has maybe helped WotC express their plans publicly.
• D&D should be a living game which evolves but is familiar.
• The One D&D timeline is not changed, but the playtest timeline was impacted by the OGL situation. They'll get back on track real soon.
• A professional research team gathers the survey information.
• There are also internal playtests with robust feedback.

Other

• The game team has gained more of a voice.
• More trust has been built between design leadership and the executive team.
• Dan Rawson's role is new and is the first time the D&D brand has been represented at that level at the executive level.
• Cynthia Williams is empathetic and data-oriented, and willing to change direction.
• It sounds like they'd consider the SRD being placed into French, German, Italian, and Spanish, though Brink did not promise.

 

[Parmandur]

Look, I can tell when basic things are left out of a product (ship combat in Spelljammer)

I mean, just to focus on this a bit: Spelljammer has ship combat. It's in there, same rules as Ghoats of Saltmarsh streamlined a bit. Is it Starfleet Battles? No, it is not. Is it an actual system for simulating fantasy space battle? Yes, it is.

 

[Parmandur]

As a person who worked in more that one very large corporation at the ground floor customer facing end.

Nothing Brink said surprised me one bit.

Yup, this really matches how I've always thought of WotC.

Which really makes me wonder about what they hear in various board meetings.

Many people are in shareholders and board meeting of different corporations, right? It is possible that some people are in one meeting about something that they worry about and in another meeting doing getting information about doing the exact same thing that they're worrying about happening to the first company in the first meeting.

I mean, I see a lot of people in the community think these fears are absurd, but these Executives all come from a Trillion dollar company before they moved to Hasbro...they may have deemed their way into a disaster, but they do know some things about big orgs and what they do.

 

[Umbran]

I don't know what browser you're using, but whichever one it is, it likely has a private or incognito mode. Look up how to turn that on and look at the thread that way and you'll see any posts you're missing.

Mod Note:
Hey, Whizbang. If someone has put in a block, it was for a reason. In giving lessons on how circumvent the system, you are taking away people's agency and ability to enforce their own boundaries. That's really inconsiderate.

So, please stop. Thanks.

 

[HectorsNemesis]

Has no one asked if Kyle Brink has ever played D&D?

 

[Parmandur]

Has no one asked if Kyle Brink has ever played D&D?

Yes, that was a significant chunk at the begging of this interview. He has actively been playing since the 4th grade, and has a multigenerational campaign (thar is, retiring characters at Lecel 20 and starting over in the same workd with a new batch) that he has been running since 1988. Ao his cred is solid. Apparently the new Senior VP of D&D is also a super-fan who is in two ongoing campaigns, and gets a major kick out of getting sneak previews of all the new books

 

[darjr]

It does seem a dramatically disconnected view, when one simply needs look at "d&d twitter" for 5 seconds to get into NSFW territory.

Or watch Critical Role.

How much of the show would WotC have banned?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Literally nothing they've done since Jan 1st has made any sense. It's like is a weird other multiverse version of WOTC took over on NYE and it's not just "the evil version" but actually the "everyone is Loki version". Mischief, betrayal, illusions, enchantments...it all adds up.

Even on his worst days, Loki had style.

This has just been the spectacle of a company shooting themselves in the foot with a nail gun and then trying to pry the nails back out with a claw hammer without losing too many toenails in the process.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Or watch Critical Role.

How much of the show would WotC have banned?

Hopefully all of the hours-long shopping montages!

 

[Dausuul]

So... my take after watching:

TL;DR: I think Brink's heart is in the right place. I'm not convinced his read on the overall culture at Wizards is accurate. The top executives seem to be generally hands-off, open to arguments from both the pro- and anti-OGL factions, but the pro-OGL faction has gained significant cred after this debacle. It sounds as if we can expect the 3E and 3.5E SRDs to be released to Creative Commons once they've plucked out all the references to product identity. A 1D&D SRD is less certain, and significant expansion of 5E open content is unlikely.

1. I think Brink is giving us (mostly) his honest assessment of what happened. He is trying to present Wizards in the best possible light under the circumstances -- that's his job -- but I don't think he's trying to be deliberately deceitful.

2. HOWEVER, remember this is just Kyle Brink's point of view. He does not and cannot know everything that goes on at Wizards, particularly given his short tenure in his current role. When he describes other people's motivations, it's got to be mostly based on what those people told him their motivations were, not on full knowledge of what those people were doing and saying over years.

3. In a similar vein, his answers on leadership style and culture felt rather glib. Not that he's lying -- I think he's accurately describing his own leadership style -- but it's very easy for an executive to miss toxic dynamics playing out in their organization unless they actively look for them. I didn't get the sense that Brink actively looks for them. I'm reminded of one of the employee quotes from DND_Shorts: "[Kyle] is a good guy, but largely is motivated to keep his head down and not make waves."

(I'm not going to get into whether DND_Shorts is a credible source here; just saying that that particular quote rings true to me based on this interview.)

4. There has clearly been an anti-OGL faction inside Wizards for a long time. (The GSL was back in 2008, long before any of the concerns Brink brought up. Even the 5E SRD, released in 2016, is much less comprehensive than the 3E/3.5E ones.) There is also a pro-OGL faction. The top brass doesn't appear to have strong feelings either way.

5. My guess (and this is just me speculating now) is that the anti-OGL faction found they could get the top brass's attention with the "Tech giants and hatemongers are going to use the OGL to ruin D&D!" argument, and that's where the impetus for all this came from. I do believe things played out more or less as Brink described -- I just don't think it was as organic as he implied.

6. Brink did note that the design team now has much more credibility with executive leadership than it did before all this. I entirely believe this statement, and it's very good news. He also made it clear that he at least regards the D&D community as an asset; that was a theme he came back to repeatedly.

7. As regards the future: He was rather evasive on exactly what the plan is for 1D&D and SRD updates. Which may just mean the plan hasn't been nailed down yet. But he carefully avoided committing to a real 1D&D SRD. He totally ignored the question about whether artificers would be added.

8. He was much more definite on the 3E/3.5E SRDs: They do intend to put those in Creative Commons, they're just doing their due diligence first to make sure they don't weaken their copyrights and trademarks. (Translation: "We would like to avoid any more situations where we accidentally toss 'Strahd von Zarovich' into CC because we were in too much of a rush to carefully review what was in there.") So that's also good news.

 

[see]

When the ignorance runs so deep as to be functionally indistinguishable from malice, how should that affect the public response?

When a hurricane hits, survival actions don't depend on whether it was directed at you maliciously or not.

When evaluating in the aftermath what you should do in preparation for future hurricanes, it matters a lot whether it was directed at you maliciously or not.

People who have had their trust in Hasbro destroyed, for example? If they think that the problem this time was malice, they might make the mistake of trusting Hasbro or a company like it again. If they instead understand that the problem was the inherent ones of ignorance and internal corporate communications, and that with the regular turnover in Hasbro personnel the people who learned the lesson this time won't be making decisions in 2033, they'll avoid repeating that mistake.