Yeah, it's not great that many mainstream articles about the 50th anniversary will include at least a line about "WotC is coming off a year filled with controversy." Even if that only shaves 1% off of sales next year, that's a number WotC will care about, and a loss that could have been avoided by not finding so many rakes to step on.
Except they aren't actually producing news if they're using generative AI. They're reposting the work of others and claiming it as their own.
They are not using generative AI on every article. James Whitbrook is a human and has been writing for them for a very long time.
They are definitely a content aggregator, at least in part, but so is ENWorld. If you want every outlet to do 100% of the reporting on every piece of content they produce, you are going to see a lot less content from everyone. (Broadcasters, in particular, love to repurpose stuff from their local newspapers, even if they don't cop to it on the air.)
The difference is with generative AI there's no original work. It's valid to call out Gizmodo for this as they criticize cutbacks at Hasbro, because their cuts were much more dramatic and their overall quality went down dramatically.
These Kickstarted options all have 10-15 thousand takers: the latest number suggests thst D&D has 60 million players. I do think the longterm potential damage is what allowed the "put it in Creative Commons" folks to win an internal argument, but...we are talking about a fraction of a percent impact...and not everyone who went for ToV or Shadkowdark is going to stop buying mainline D&D products.
Yes and backing does not equal long term engagement or sustainment. I know a lot of people who backed 7 Seas and once they started playing it hey did not care for it. I know people who backed MCDM previous 5E supplements and liked the idea but found the execution too unwieldy. Just because something has a lot of backers does not mean they have a lot of long term players.
They are not using generative AI to create all their articles. I don't know where you heard that, but it's simply not true.
So, because Gizmodo/io9, which reports on geek stuff, is a company with problems, it's not allowed to report on problems at geek companies? When they run into issues, is the proper response for them to stop covering these issues generally?
Yep. None of us know what the future holds.
I certainly lost interest in 7th Sea 2e as soon as I actually read the books I paid for.
TTRPGs are such a strange market to try to figure out who your active customers actually are. It's why a range like somewhere between 3 million and 60 million D&D players can be said because it's all a best guess at this point.
