D&D (2024) D&D Pre-orders; this is sad

[KYRON45]

Good thing they are still printing books.

 

[occam]

I guess I should better explain

Capitalism is fine. Predatory Capitalism is not. What we have today is Money over Morals. If a Corp can poison a river to make a few extra $$$ they will (and concerning new US laws that's about to get worse).

What I have a problem with is exploitation. Those with money and power using it to better themselves at the expense of the plebs.

It's not a joke that we do in fact live is a dystopia and it's only going to get worse.

People will live and adapt, but people will also die because of it. And not just the US but other countries.

Greed is the issue. Pure naked barely regulated greed.

And yes WotC is a minor player in all of this but they are still out for profit over costumer. What some people see as free digital incentives that doesn't hurt anyone is just that, an incentive to get on the digital train. The fact that people can't see or believe that WotC would like to "ONE DAY" (not right now or soon) get rid of paper products and go full digital subscription to play D&D blows my mind. Yes you don't have to worry about it now. Yes you can just keep using your 5th ed books forever. But as a company who wants money, and not just the money but more money, they have to find a way to make you keep ponying up $$$ and that doesn't work as intended when you can just buy 3 books and call it a day.

And so your evidence that WotC is an evil capitalist predator intent on luring us all into a digital prison where they can charge whatever they want for things we can't get anywhere else is... an advertisement in which they're offering physical books for sale? This is what I just don't get.

If the argument is that the digital extras are compelling customers to trap themselves in DDB subscriptions... First of all, DDB is completely usable without a paid subscription. Furthermore, I would wager that not a single person is buying one of those bundles so they can get a special backdrop for their DDB character sheet.

Frankly, from a business perspective, I doubt WotC much cares whether people buy physical or digital books. They're selling digital products because their customers want digital products. But WotC could make the money they need to make either way.

There's also the obvious counterbalance to any WotC attempt to jail us in a digital walled garden; we could just go play something else, or keep using the books we already have. Seriously, their leverage to draw us into a nefarious capitalist trap is extremely limited.

 

[occam]

I am sure they do, and so does WotC given that these are the only incentive they are offering for preordering the books

They offer character sheet decorations as incentives because they have so little value.

I challenge anyone to find a customer whose only reason to purchase a book from WotC is so they can change the color of frame around their ability scores.

 

[Argyle King]

They offer character sheet decorations as incentives because they have so little value.

I challenge anyone to find a customer whose only reason to purchase a book from WotC is so they can change the color of frame around their ability scores.

I know people who change the frame around their social media photo to show that (in their mind) they are doing their part to combat a real-world issue.

I don't think it's a particularly large leap from that societal mindset to wanting to pay extra for a product that neither tangibly exists nor actually does anything.

 

[Epic Meepo]

If you are talking about printing books or purchasing say a studio or producing razoer blades, then yes corporations will be able to do that better than individuals, but that is a small portion of the value compared to the intellectual property and while the barriers to an individual competing would be significant, they would be lower than they are now.

I must be misunderstanding your argument, because it sounds to me like you're saying corporations are better at making physical products than individuals, but their ability to own intellectual property is somehow an even bigger barrier of entry for newcomers to the market. So your solution is to make all intellectual property free for everyone to use.

Which, of course, makes no sense. Because if intellectual property is free for anyone to use, no one can make a living producing intellectual property. The only way to make money in this hypothetical economy is to produce physical products. Except, as you say, corporations are better at that than individuals. So it sounds like you're advocating giving large corporations even more of an economic advantage.

 

[Remathilis]

Capitalism is fine. Predatory Capitalism is not. What we have today is Money over Morals. If a Corp can poison a river to make a few extra $$$ they will (and concerning new US laws that's about to get worse).

There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. The best you can do is use the power of collective action and government to mitigate the damage to the best of our ability.

 

[Scribe]

I don't think it's a particularly large leap from that societal mindset to wanting to pay extra for a product that neither tangibly exists nor actually does anything.

MtG Arena does this (or did) with Deck skins, Avatars, whatever. Hell, all game skins are just this, and I bet you it made Blizzard massive cash in Overwatch for example.

 

[cbwjm]

To me the image looks like WotC are doing the following.

• They are trying to direct more people to their virtual tools in DnDbeyond. Not a bad thing, they're actually pretty good and it makes sense they want eople to use them.
• They are trying to grow their subscribers by capitalising on FOMO. I don't what else the hero tier gets you, I was on the master tier a while back which gave you everything but dropped it once I realised I hadn't been using it. More subscribers, more constant income.
• They are providing a discount for the latter 2 bundles which seems good. I'm not really too concerned about local game stores, but this looks like they're trying to push initial sales at least through the wotc online store. I don't the $ difference that they make from selling direct rather than local stores, but I'm making an assumption that even with the discounts they'll be making more money selling them this way.

I don't think this is particularly bad (maybe the FOMO bit), it seems pretty standard for many industries, even other RPGs offer pre-order bonuses. I doubt this will lead to them offering "dlc" content that should have been part of the initial release which some game companies have done (I think a ubisoft game had day 1 dlc), but i guess time will tell with future releases.

 

[occam]

This has been asked and answered several times on this thread.

He works in the videogame industry and this is how it started at his company and competitors before sliding into absolute enshitification and it's giving him flashbacks.

If you don't think it'll inevitably go that way, great, but he's been through it himself before and the chart he posted is making him feel like he's about to watch it happen again.

What, exactly, is this? Multiple posts in this thread have complained about this without once explaining what this precisely is.

 

[occam]

I know people who change the frame around their social media photo to show that (in their mind) they are doing their part to combat a real-world issue.

I don't think it's a particularly large leap from that societal mindset to wanting to pay extra for a product that neither tangibly exists nor actually does anything.

But we're not talking about paying anything extra.