The designers weren't hired to make their own personal game for themselves, they were hired to make a game that the broad range of D&D fans would enjoy. If they want to make their own personal game they can do that in their own time or start their own company.
The new core books have the same price as the 2014 core books despite having substantially larger page count and there being significant inflation over the last 10 years. So this notion is contradicted by WotC's actual behavior. Further, there are numerous major reasons why it's not likely that...
1) A lot of people buy both print and digital which makes WotC even more money than one type of product alone.
2) A lot of people strongly prefer print books and a good chunk of them would stop buying new products if they were digital only.
3) Physical products are a great way to draw people...
There is a very good reason to doubt this claim, and that is the fact that the new license went WAAAYYY beyond what was necessary to protect from a megacorporation entering the market. The revenue reporting requirement was for anyone who had a mere $50k of revenue a year and the punitive tax...
SteveC's original comment made no reference to you let alone accuse you of having a sense of entitlement so your response to him came across as implying that he had a sense of entitlement.
I didn't say that familiar is better. My point was that if a person were to listen to every song ever played and grade each on a scale of 1 to 10 based on how much they enjoyed it they would rate most as a 6 or worse. If they tried every type of food ever made they would rate most as 6 or worse...
Everyone, including you, is ignorant of most things in the world. We all have to make choices on how we spend our time and money based upon very limited knowledge and experience. That others aren't as open to trying other RPGs as you or me is not a character flaw.
I'm not saying there aren't other factors, of course there are. My original comment was to point out that the claim that people only or primarily like D&D because it's their first RPG they've played is false. If it wasn't a really good game they wouldn't enjoy it, and so it is wrong to say that...
Because most things in life we don't enjoy as much as our favorite things. You don't think most music is good as the bands you love, most food isn't as good as your favorite food. So if you listen to another band or eat another food simply because someone else really likes it you are probably...
I exclusively play with friends and family, too, and have been willing to try a wide range of games. But I am someone who enjoys learning about other RPGs and eagerly learns the rules of any game I play (except for Pathfinder, I immediately decided to not even bother trying to absorb all those...
You don't know, but we can't try everything so we have to decide if something is worth trying before we've tried it which means we always risk missing out on something awesome or trying something that turns out to be awful. That's life.