WotC D&D Historian Ben Riggs says the OGL fiasco was Chris Cocks idea.


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Your premise is flawed, here, as I'm not the one having trouble understanding the quote in question. As I noted previously "not even counting" something means that the thing in question is being taken into consideration, just in a supplementary manner.
yeah, that precisely is the misunderstanding, it isn’t… it only implies that it also could be considered
 

It's really not. WotC as it exists now is a paper company, producing books and cards, that is trying to transition into being a video game company. To that end, it's been dipping its toes in the digital realm (mostly by either outsourcing or acquiring existing studios), but hasn't itself made the jump to being a video game company (as of yet). As it stands now, they've made some digital options to existing content, but being able to buy things on DDB (for example) doesn't make them a video game company.

I'm not sure what you mean by a "threat" per se, but WotC's deciding that D&D is best monetized via a digital experience, then it means that the tabletop version will necessarily be not only considered ancillary, but will be designed with digitalization in mind. Which strikes me as narrowing creativity, rather than abetting it.

What are you talking about?

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This image is directly from the Wizards of the Coast home page: Wizards of the Coast

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Skeleton Key and Invoke aren't listing major products on their home website, but a second google search shows: Skeleton Key is new as of 2022 and their game still seems to be in development for a AAA release. Invoke is a new name for an old company, their current games include D&D Dark Alliance from 2021 and a game called Livelock

So, okay, you can argue that the Wizard of the Coast Company is not itself legally taxable as a studio, but that would be like arguing that Nintendo doesn't make Pokemon because technically they only own the studio for Game Freak. This is business accounting stuff for taxes and liabilities, not some indication that WoTC who has been behind multiple video games and officially owns multiple studios is somehow only just now "dipping their toes" into the digital marketplace. They have three AAA studios.

Because that wasn't a ground-up attempt by the people who design it to turn it into a "recurrent spending environment." I thought it was obvious that "digitized" was shorthand (in this discussion) for designing the game in a manner that it was easily transitioned to a(n interactive) digital environment (which is necessarily more limited in what it can do than what can be done in tabletop play) which has been made to abet micro-transactions ("get a free virtual gold dragon mini), subscription fees, other hallmarks of video games.

Again, what are you talking about?

Champions of Krynn on floppy disc was a version of DnD from TSR that was an interactive yet limited digital environment. DnD was made into a video game in 1988. I played those games. They were DnD, on the computer. So how in the world will the game get damaged by something that happened 36 years ago?! The game is already "easily transitioned to an interactive digital environment", what the actual heck do you think an RPG video game IS? Do you think people in the videogame industry use the term as some sort of bizarre coincidence? Like, oops, we made a fantasy game using terms like level and experience points, where mages and fighting-men equip weapons and armor, and use potions, and fight floating eyeballs and squid-faced monsters and we call it a Role-playing Game.... but we have never heard of Dungeons and Dragons before? Why do you think we specify that it is a Tabletop Role-playing Game?

Seriously, I know people are pearl-clutching over the idea of WoTC somehow forcing us all into subscription micro-transaction slavery to their brand, but the idea that DnD will only NOW be designed to be turned digital, when it has multiple video game series over decades of the industry, and INSPIRED some of the biggest video games in the world.... that has to take the cake.
 

no, that means you do not need them to make your case (even though you could, for an even stronger case)
Which means that they're still being taken into account as part of your case, albeit as a supplement (e.g. you're pointing out that you could cite them, but don't think you need to).
yeah, that precisely is the misunderstanding, it isn’t… it only implies that it also could be considered
Which means that they're relevant in terms of what's under discussion.
What are you talking about?

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This image is directly from the Wizards of the Coast home page: Wizards of the Coast

View attachment 373353

View attachment 373354

Skeleton Key and Invoke aren't listing major products on their home website, but a second google search shows: Skeleton Key is new as of 2022 and their game still seems to be in development for a AAA release. Invoke is a new name for an old company, their current games include D&D Dark Alliance from 2021 and a game called Livelock
You do realize that you just made my case, right? WotC is trying to become a video game company, in this case by contracting to outside studios or simply acquiring those studios outright. So WotC themselves aren't making video games.
So, okay, you can argue that the Wizard of the Coast Company is not itself legally taxable as a studio, but that would be like arguing that Nintendo doesn't make Pokemon because technically they only own the studio for Game Freak. This is business accounting stuff for taxes and liabilities, not some indication that WoTC who has been behind multiple video games and officially owns multiple studios is somehow only just now "dipping their toes" into the digital marketplace. They have three AAA studios.
See above. I already addressed the fact that WotC, after having failed to create their own digital studios in-house, has been either licensing their content or acquiring existing studios. I suppose you can dicker over what a "studio" is, but that strikes me as a semantic issue which detracts from the wider discussion, which is that WotC themselves still make cards and games, and clearly want to move that over to video games (i.e. games that they make themselves).
Again, what are you talking about?
Again, see above.
Champions of Krynn on floppy disc was a version of DnD from TSR that was an interactive yet limited digital environment. DnD was made into a video game in 1988. I played those games. They were DnD, on the computer. So how in the world will the game get damaged by something that happened 36 years ago?!
No, it wasn't from TSR. It was from SSI. Your entire premise here seems to be that WotC is a video game company if they license out their IP to video game companies. That's not any kind of workable definition for what constitutes being a video game company, and certainly not in the context of this discussion.
The game is already "easily transitioned to an interactive digital environment", what the actual heck do you think an RPG video game IS? Do you think people in the videogame industry use the term as some sort of bizarre coincidence? Like, oops, we made a fantasy game using terms like level and experience points, where mages and fighting-men equip weapons and armor, and use potions, and fight floating eyeballs and squid-faced monsters and we call it a Role-playing Game.... but we have never heard of Dungeons and Dragons before? Why do you think we specify that it is a Tabletop Role-playing Game?
Histrionics aside, the game clearly isn't easily transitioned to an interactive digital environment, since D&D is more than just Champions of Krynn. Now, you might suggest that simple VTTs (which do little more than share a screen, connect players via voice/video chat, and allow for simple interactions such as drawing maps) are essentially the same as sitting around a tabletop, and that's not an unreasonable assertion. But that's very clearly not what WotC is trying to create, and so isn't really germane to what's being talked about in this thread.
Seriously, I know people are pearl-clutching over the idea of WoTC somehow forcing us all into subscription micro-transaction slavery to their brand, but the idea that DnD will only NOW be designed to be turned digital, when it has multiple video game series over decades of the industry, and INSPIRED some of the biggest video games in the world.... that has to take the cake.
The cake is a lie. The idea that TSR's having licensed a few video games meaning that D&D has already gone digital, and that WotC is already a video game company, is so over the top that it's impossible to take seriously.
 



2. People often don't behave in the best economic interests of the company. We often say that companies act in the best interests of their shareholders but that's not always, or even often, the case. People, including fancy C-suite executives, make terrible decisions all the time based on their own ego, desires, and intuition.

And to dovetail this. They don't always agree on what is in the best interests of (x). Incompatible outcomes can be equally "best" depending on area of focus and timeframe. And this assumes the inputs generate the expected outputs....
 

Zeb Cook, Lawrence Schick, Dennis Detwiller, Jennell Jaquays...it's definitely not a small list. I would say it seems pretty common and I would say that after years of low pay in the TTRPG space, it's a better financial move that allows them to creatively play in the same space.
Not to be argumentative here - al of the examples I have seen ( and a few I knew of who haven't been listed) are people I know of as going from TTRPGs to Digital space. Do we have any examples of the opposite?
 



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