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I agree with most of what you're saying, but I'd like to point out that WotC/Hasbro didn't spend money on this game. Quite the opposite; they were paid for their license and cooperation on this project and they likely had an agreement where they got a cut from the sales at a certain point. So...

That's fair. I'm just trying to make it clear that there are natural tensions between the executives setting the goals and signing the paychecks and the developers working on the products. They may all want to do what's best for the company, but that doesn't mean they all perfectly agree and...

Lying? No. He's likely stating a fact: If they spend more on D&D books and it causes their ROI to drop, then their budget might shrink further. That doesn't mean it's his ideal preference though. Plus, his job is more focused on promotion and brand management now. It's literally part of his job...

This very much depends on your definition of "they" and "want." What Hasbro needs and what the D&D team wants don't have to be in perfect sync. I think if you had Mearls or Perkins in a closed room, they would admit they want to be working on more books. There are a lot of former co-workers that...

Good point. I wonder if that accounts for some of the ~14,000 uninstalled but sold copies of the game.

I saw it a few weeks ago on the official swordcoast.com forums from a user named "Mad.Hatter" who outlined which game files contained what data, and what it meant for the game's future updates and mod-ability. I skimmed the first few pages of the General Discussion forum and didn't see the...

WotC at least had editorial power over the story and dialogue elements of the game. That much has been revealed by the players who have cracked open the scripts and found edits and comments left by WotC staff.

According to Steam's API I think at least 64,500 licenses for SCL have been sold and not returned. That's unfortunately still less than they had at their peek two days after launch. Of those, it looks like about 50k actually installed it. Those numbers sound good compared to 5,000, but it's not...

Once the character builder went online with Silverlight, we could no longer insert house rules or create custom material. So I think the problem was even bigger than 3rd party support, but one that hampered the entire 4e experience. Of course, it's part of why software support for a table-top...

So here's the bad/good news for N-Space and fans of SCL: Total customers for the game reached its lowest since release on the same day that this "State of the Game" announcement was released. However, over the Halloween weekend they finally made up for all those lost players and seem to be...

Probably the #1 skill in game development is expectations management. And expectation management is partly a matter of marketing. It doesn't matter if you technically never lied or not. It doesn't even matter if you do lie. What matters is if the expectations of your customers are met by the...

It certainly doesn't have most of the features that I desire. For a lot of people, it clearly doesn't play just fine. The designers promised to have the tools for designing and running entire campaigns. What they delivered just doesn't fit the bill. Perhaps all you want or need from a campaign...

I'm not paying full price for unfinished software, but the chances that I buy Sword Coast Legends in 2016 when it goes on sale just increased significantly.

Keep in mind, when the 56 hours were put in was during early access without the single-player campaign. Essentially this person spent 56 hours during the early access to test out the DM mode and see how it was coming along. They weren't beating the game and then demanding a refund, they were...

That marketing wasn't zero cost though. Digital Extremes definitely paid Hasbro (through WotC) to license the D&D brand for this game. And Hasbro made that brand prohibitively expensive for many studios to license. Which makes this all the more serious an error. They went out of their way and...

That marketing wasn't zero cost though. Digital Extremes definitely paid Hasbro (through WotC) to license the D&D brand for this game. And Hasbro made that brand prohibitively expensive for many studios to license. Which makes this all the more serious an error. They went out of their way and...

Does it though? SLC's ratings so far on Steam and Metacritic are both less than 60%. Keep in mind that in many development studios, desks get cleared for aggregate approval ratings less than 80%. (I don't necessarily agree with that stance, but it happens.) We can skip talking about the...

Does it though? SLC's ratings so far on Steam and Metacritic are both less than 60%. Keep in mind that in many development studios, desks get cleared for aggregate approval ratings less than 80%. (I don't necessarily agree with that stance, but it happens.) We can skip talking about the...

While I was disappointed with the lack of features for DM's and a lack of authentic D&D game mechanics, I do think SCL has a unique set of features compared to most computer RPG's. Sword Coast Legends differs from most action RPG's (like Diablo) in that SCL is more focused on a party of...

While I was disappointed with the lack of features for DM's and a lack of authentic D&D game mechanics, I do think SCL has a unique set of features compared to most computer RPG's. Sword Coast Legends differs from most action RPG's (like Diablo) in that SCL is more focused on a party of...