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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7647826" data-attributes="member: 82106">Here's another great Cthulhuoid insight from the software industry. A LOT of success is related to MIND SHARE. It isn't really about the bottom line. You have to have mindshare. In the software industry that comes from developers, and I suspect in a sense it is the same in the TT RPG industry. OGL created mindshare. This is how Linux succeeded. It captured the developers away from the big commercial OS developers. Any kid in his garage, any college student, anyone with a hankering to scratch an itch could get on board and with no investment but time they enjoyed spending use and hack on and build upon an open tool set. And the same thing happened that has happened with WotC too, the Microsofts of the world got cast as the big bad evil corporate guys in suites that want your money. Look at what people are DEVELOPING for, not 4e. Again, just like with Linux, the people that get onboard and contribute that mind share are a wedge. They're evangelists, dedicated commandos that went out and set up Linux servers in the closets of the server rooms of the world when the bosses scoffed. The big guys couldn't keep it out, they couldn't get those people back. Nothing they could ever do would make those people toss away their vision and sell out their passion until finally they just won. They won because they could not lose. Mostly they just wanted freedom to do their own thing. It wasn't even a better thing, it was just pleasing to them. WotC walked away from the mind share of the whole community AND they alienated half their customers (which might have been inevitable) but the sum total of all those mistakes was a giant mistake, maybe a disaster. The people out there developing games will certainly work for WotC for pay, and there are certainly 4e evangelists among them, but there's a big hunk of people out there in that group that just aren't on WotC's bandwagon anymore. Maybe WotC will just outlive them all and with all its money jump into some new post-digital-RPG business space that nobody else can afford to do, but they sure have given themselves a tough road to walk to get there, IF they can get there.</blockquote>

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