D&D General Interview with D&D VP Jess Lanzillo on Comicbook.com

[mamba]

Well, yes, that kinda goes without saying for any business. But, the point is, the idea that random packs are somehow gouging the consumer is simply not true. Randomized packs are not necessarily a bad thing.

for physical packs there is a give and take in that the consumer gets minis cheaper than in the pick and choose world (on a per unit basis, that might be very different when ‘needing’ a specific one) while the manufacturer still makes about the same (I presume) by selling out everything.

Once you get to digital, the drag of unsold inventory goes away however.

I was always under the impression that loot boxes were a problem because MMO's and various other games used the Pay to Win model, forcing users to continuously buy random boxes in order to get that "whatever" that lets you move on to the next level of the game. That's where it becomes predatory..

no, even if they only had cosmetics that are entirely optional but valued by the community they are. It’s the randomness that makes them predatory.

Even in pay to win you usually could also grind the loot, so the boxes ‘just’ make you spend less time to get there. You are basically paying the game company to not have to play the game as long

Simply having random packages isn't predatory

it is, but at least on the physical side you can make the case that the average mini has a somewhat lower price in exchange for you allowing / volunteering for the predation

Not sure you could even make that same case for physical MtG cards however

 

[SlyFlourish]

I thought I had seen you complain about microtransactions for years now but if I am wrong you let me know. I am not sure why complaining after is meaningful here. I am not literally saying you personally are the reason they pulled the microtransactions - just that people making that argument, which is something you've also done, probably didn't help with their view on whether they should do them.

I never complained about the ala-carte purchases on D&D Beyond. If I ever saw anyone complain about that, it was extremely rare and there was certainly no outcry in any community I frequented anywhere near the time frame when they decided to pull down ala-carte purchases in April 2024. I don't see any evidence that this was a reaction to a community outcry but I sure did hear an outcry after they removed it.

And my point is people who complain if the do X, and then complain when they stop doing X, are not helping and are probably hurting. The endless claims "WOTC will do micro transactions and that's bad!!!!!" is a bad message if you actually like some micro transactions and are upset when they are taken away.

I wish they were as responsive to the community as you make them out to be. Maybe then they'd release D&D 5e books in PDFs! People complained about that for ten years.

 

[mamba]

Are we seriously at the point where companies should be losing money in order to not be seen as predatory?

no, but some models are inherently predatory

Your arguement though seemed to be that WotC will use predatory models to gouge the users when there isn't any actual evidence of that.

no, the argument was that it does not take pay to win to have a predatory model, random packs in itself are. The VTT could have those or not.

And as far as the VTT or D&D Beyond having an impact on the writing of books

I did not bring that up

 

[Aldarc]

I gotta admit - randomized packs = Loot Crates is a definition I'm not sure I buy into. That means that the old D&D miniatures game was 100% loot crates. And Magic the Gathering, which predates MMO's by several years, has always been "loot crates".

Jein. There are some countries that have banned "loot crates" but are conversely fine with Magic the Gathering or other collectible card games. The gist of the legal argument (as I understand it) goes that even if you don't know what you are getting in a pack of cards, you are still getting a physical product, whose contents can be valued, collected, or traded. In the case of the D&D miniatures game, you are likewise still getting a physical product.

In contrast, you do not own what you buy as part of digital loot boxes/crates for digital games. You are licensing those digital products as part of playing the game. If for some reason you are banned from a digital game by the game developers, you will no longer have access to anything that you purchased as part of that game. You do not own those goods.

There is another difference between buying packs of collectible cards and game loot boxes. The latter often inclues audio-visual enticements that are meant to be more psychologically addictive. Some of these loot boxes and gacha games are explicitly modeled after addictive gambling games like slot machines.

There are a lot of predatory practices when it comes to loot boxes in computer games and their rise is "crapifying" a lot of games right now. As in games are intentionally being designed to suck in ways so as to encourage you to bypass that suckiness with pay-to-win microtransactions in the shop.

Another separate issue that sometimes exists with online games with loot boxes or microtransactions, though not all, involves currency exchange of real world currency to a game shop currency, and the nature of the exchange rate requires that you spend more real world money than the face-value worth of the item. Moreover, using fake currencies like "Gems" are often used by companies as a way to mask and obfuscate the price of the microtransactions.

So let's say for example that a game has a cash shop that uses "Gems" as its currency. You can buy Gems with real world currency (e.g., Dollars, Yen, Euros, etc.). However, items in the shop are usually priced in a way that requires you to buy more Gems than you need to buy the items you may want. So for example, a game releases a mount that costs 2000 Gems in the shop or an armor skin for 1200 Gems, but you can only buy Gems in increments of 800 Gems for $10 or 1600 Gems for $20 dollars or 2400 Gems for $30. So to buy this game shop mount, you are likely spending $30-40 for what would be a $25 item.

You will have leftover Gems, but those Gems can only be spent in their cash shop. So if you want your value's worth for what you actually spent, you may need to buy something else in the shop. However, you may not have enough leftover Gems to buy anything that you want, which is meant to encourage further real world spending into the game shop. This is also "working as intended" as far as the game company is concerned.

 

[TiQuinn]

There really isn't - Wizkids has been selling blind boxes for years and they're fun. I don't buy them as much anymore because the price has gone up more than I think they are generally worth, but I've purchased my share in the past. In general, I have found them an affordable way to get my hands on miniatures for repainting, often cheaper than buying the unpainted version, even when I knew exactly what I was getting. As well, depending on rarity you can get some really great miniatures for cheap on the resale market (though, again, those prices have gone up a lot in the past few years).

And anyway, what's it to you? If I want to spend my money on miniatures, analogue or virtual, sight unseen or not, why is that anyone else's business? If WotC want to enter that market, then people with either buy their stuff or they won't. Same with the VTT - it'll either be good enough to get folks to pay for it, or it won't. I'm not seeing the issue - D&D is basically free to play, with the basic rules, or really cheap with the three core books, and anything after that is gravy. I spend a fortune on miniatures and terrain because that's my jam, but lots and lots of tables have as good a time with pencils, paper, and their imagination.

Let me be clear - It’s nothing to me what you do.

It’s nothing to me if WotC decided to sell loot crates because I don’t waste my time with that junk to begin with but you do you. It’s personally nothing to me if WotC leans hard into VTT as long as print continues, but I do see a risk that the rules quality could change. But for me, I would stop buying if that happened. (Sorry, 4e fans)

What I was responding to, and have been responding to throughout this thread is whenever I’ve seen people say “Oh that’s impossible, WotC would never do that!” WotC will do whatever makes WotC the most money, and sometimes those choices can be seen as anti-consumer. Or when people say “You shouldn’t care about what WotC does.” Well, no, people don’t get to dictate to others what they choose to care about. We are all making our purchasing choices based on our history, values and preferences.

 

[TiQuinn]

Jein. There are some countries that have banned "loot crates" but are conversely fine with Magic the Gathering or other collectible card games. The gist of the legal argument goes that even if you don't know what you are getting in a pack of cards, you are still getting a physical product, whose contents can be valued, collected, or traded. In the case of the D&D miniatures game, you are likewise still getting a physical product.

There is another difference between buying packs of collectible cards and game loot boxes. The latter often inclues audio-visual enticements that are meant to be more psychologically addictive. Some of these loot boxes and gacha games are explicitly modeled after addictive gambling games like slot machines.

There are a lot of predatory practices when it comes to loot boxes in computer games and their rise is "crapifying" a lot of games right now. As in games are intentionally being designed to suck in ways so as to encourage you to bypass that suckiness with pay-to-win microtransactions in the shop.

Another separate issue that sometimes exists with online games with loot boxes or microtransactions, though not all, involves currency exchange of real world currency to a game shop currency, and the nature of exchange rate requires that you spend more real world money than the face-value worth of the item. Moreover, using fake currencies like "Gems" are often used by companies as a way to mask and obfuscate the price of the microtransactions.

So let's say for example that a game has a cash shop that uses "Gems" as its currency. You can buy Gems with real world currency (e.g., Dollars, Yen, Euros, etc.). However, items in the shop are usually priced in a way that requires you to buy more Gems than you need to buy the items you may want. So for example, a game releases a mount that costs 2000 Gems in the shop or an armor skin for 1200 Gems, but you can only buy Gems in increments of 800 Gems for $10 or 1600 Gems for $20 dollars or 2400 Gems for $30.

I now know what Jein means

 

[Aldarc]

I now know what Jein means

"Jein" has become one of my absolute favorite German words over the past nine years living abroad in Austria and Germany. It's just so useful. It has become my mission to bring it to English.

 

[mamba]

"Jein" has become one of my absolute favorite German words over the past nine years living abroad in Austria and Germany. It's just so useful. It has become my mission to bring it to English.

it will have to be Jein (a combination of Ja, the German Yes, and Nein, the German No), combing the English words into Yo won’t work

 

[Aldarc]

it will have to be Jein (a combination of Ja, the German Yes, and Nein, the German No), combing the English words into Yo won’t work

I did write "Jein" in my post.

 

[TiQuinn]

"Jein" has become one of my absolute favorite German words over the past nine years living abroad in Austria and Germany. It's just so useful. It has become my mission to bring it to English.

Btw, thank you too for a very good summary on the loot crate legal background.