Any DDI News?
- Thread starter Scribble
- Start date
It now seems appropriate to remind everyone in the thread that on EN World you are expected to treat your fellow posters with respect. We don't require that you agree with everyone else, but we expect you to not stoop to getting snarky at them.
Please continue with that in mind. Thanks.
I don't believe we're entitled to anything.
I never really cared much for the idea of a digital table -- crudely drawn grid maps and coins for me! -- and thought the initial excitement was over the least important/interesting part of 4E.
However, I still find it laughable, like Peter Molyneux over-hyping his own games and Richard Garriott in the 90s, talking about how much verisimilitude he wanted to put in an online game. Fanciful talk for a whole lot of aspects of gaming that really don't matter as much as their hypers think they do.
To me, this is more a laughing matter of poor management and marketing, than a serious matter of disappointed customers.
I never really cared much for the idea of a digital table -- crudely drawn grid maps and coins for me! -- and thought the initial excitement was over the least important/interesting part of 4E.
However, I still find it laughable, like Peter Molyneux over-hyping his own games and Richard Garriott in the 90s, talking about how much verisimilitude he wanted to put in an online game. Fanciful talk for a whole lot of aspects of gaming that really don't matter as much as their hypers think they do.
To me, this is more a laughing matter of poor management and marketing, than a serious matter of disappointed customers.
Kurtomatic
First Post
Flights of fancy are pretty much all we have to go with on this topic (mostly), but I do think some guesses make more sense than others.
Virtual Tabletop: I personally think any VTT plans are dead, D.. E.. A.. D.., dead. That was part of the original DDI strategy as it was announced during the run-up to the 4E release. That strategy failed almost completely; it was farmed out to an outside developer (like the old 3E digital strategy that also failed pretty badly), and those devs have been out of the picture for some time. I will honestly be surprised if any remainders of that stuff ever see the light of day. WotC would be better off making a new DDI virtual table project a lower priority than it was originally (and I think that have). But hey, that would be an interesting surprise.
More Adventure Tools: After the consultants working the original application strategy failed to deliver, a new .NET applications team was built in-house. These folks have some real chops (or at least had, depending on layoff impacts). The Character Builder is not perfect, but it's by far the most effective D&D chargen software evar. I believe it was this same team that posted some throw-away javascript tools on the website for encounter planning. These spare-time widgets turn out to be hugely popular, and someone at WotC finally figured out this is the sort of stuff they should really be spending their time on. Between the Compendium, CB, and Monster Builder, they now have a pretty strong codebase to work from, and I think even a small team could maintain some momentum extending Adventure Tools in the expected ways. Which would make that no surprise at all.
Cross-Platform: I expect WotC to announce Silverlight versions of the DDI apps sometime in the next two years. Maybe even this summer. Future versions of the CB will be running in a browser on PCs, Macs, or any other platform Silverlight finds it way on. It's just a matter of time.
Regarding imaginary backseat driving with DDI revenue: please consider that subscription revenue has to first offset any lost book sales before anyone starts rolling around in piles of cash and funding some super-team of caped crusading coders.
Virtual Tabletop: I personally think any VTT plans are dead, D.. E.. A.. D.., dead. That was part of the original DDI strategy as it was announced during the run-up to the 4E release. That strategy failed almost completely; it was farmed out to an outside developer (like the old 3E digital strategy that also failed pretty badly), and those devs have been out of the picture for some time. I will honestly be surprised if any remainders of that stuff ever see the light of day. WotC would be better off making a new DDI virtual table project a lower priority than it was originally (and I think that have). But hey, that would be an interesting surprise.
More Adventure Tools: After the consultants working the original application strategy failed to deliver, a new .NET applications team was built in-house. These folks have some real chops (or at least had, depending on layoff impacts). The Character Builder is not perfect, but it's by far the most effective D&D chargen software evar. I believe it was this same team that posted some throw-away javascript tools on the website for encounter planning. These spare-time widgets turn out to be hugely popular, and someone at WotC finally figured out this is the sort of stuff they should really be spending their time on. Between the Compendium, CB, and Monster Builder, they now have a pretty strong codebase to work from, and I think even a small team could maintain some momentum extending Adventure Tools in the expected ways. Which would make that no surprise at all.
Cross-Platform: I expect WotC to announce Silverlight versions of the DDI apps sometime in the next two years. Maybe even this summer. Future versions of the CB will be running in a browser on PCs, Macs, or any other platform Silverlight finds it way on. It's just a matter of time.
Regarding imaginary backseat driving with DDI revenue: please consider that subscription revenue has to first offset any lost book sales before anyone starts rolling around in piles of cash and funding some super-team of caped crusading coders.
