Chris Cocks says it makes sense to move D&D to a "live service" model, but Hasbro will always make physical books

Chris Cocks isn't shy about plans to move Dungeons & Dragons to a more live service model of gaming. In a recent interview with GamesRadar, Cocks explicitly said that "it makes sense" for players to shift their mindset towards a live service due to the high amount of players using digital services, but assured the interviewer that books will still be produced by Hasbro. When asked if Wizards was moving away from books in favor of a more piecemeal release schedule, following the announcement of D&D Beyond's new Drops service. "Books will always be an important part of D&D," Cocks said. "It will always be kind of like a special totem that you can collect. I have a big bookshelf of D&D books myself."

"But we see what's happening – almost everyone who plays D&D uses D&D Beyond, like a super high percentage uses it," Cocks continued. "A very high percentage use Foundry VTT or Roll20, and so it just makes sense that you should start to migrate your thinking about the way you play to more of a live service where you don't have to wait 18 months for us to build a book. We can start to release components or aspects of that book over time, and you don't have to buy everything all at once. You can buy chapters or segments of it over time. That makes a ton of sense to me. That said we will still have big moments. We will still have like, 'hey, ta da, here's a huge campaign.' You can expect there'll be more around that, both from us and from all the creators in the world that can leverage a platform like D&D Beyond to share their content as well."

Broadly speaking, Dungeons & Dragons has always been a "live service" game, as the game's core business model involves continuously releasing new content in the form of new rulebooks or campaigns. However, it seems that Cocks is principally interested in shifting this model around more frequent releases. We'll note that the business model suggested by Cocks was already rolled out in a manner of speaking. The Dhampir species rules were released as a "digital DLC" for D&D Beyond subscribers who digitally ordered a Forgotten Realms book bundle, but a physical version of the rules are being released via the upcoming Ravenloft: The Horrors Within book. However, a la carte purchases were removed from D&D Beyond several years ago in order to force users to purchase entire books instead.

 

[Imaro]

Can they not pitch in for physical books?

And we'd spend 5 times the amount of time passing it around and lending it out to various people, praying they dont forget to bring it back.

That is what Einstein said, "Why bother to remember something that I can just look up again later?"

Yes because my favorite part of playing is...memorizing rules??

 

[Parmandur]

And we'd spend 5 times the amount of time passing it around and lending it out to various people, praying they dont forget to bring it back.


Yes because my favorite part of playing is...memorizing rules??

I mean, I enjoy memorizing rules, but that is pretty low effort.

 

[mamba]

Live service = frequent drops of expensive garbage with barely any real content as they drive the game into the ground.

It does not work well with D&D where a campaign can take 6 months to 2 years.

maybe, but it sure looks like that is what they want to try anyway

 

[AlViking]

I've had a Kindle for like 15 years, and I did use it a bit when I was taking the train. I prefer the experience of a nicely bound book with quality paper. Nice books are not just eye candy, they also feel better in the hand.

I get it, it just doesn't matter to me and I was kind of surprised it didn't. If it did I'd likely still have multiple bookshelves and all those books that I sold to the used bookstore long ago.

A Kindle needs light to read the same as a physical book.

I have a paperwhite(?) kindle and I've read in the dark, I think all kindles nowadays have backlighting.

 

[mamba]

One thing I will point out is that a DDB sub is much cheaper than my old AP subscription from Paizo.

that is because your Paizo subscription bought you the books while on DDB you have to buy them separately…

 

[Parmandur]

I have a paperwhite(?) kindle and I've read in the dark, I think all kindles nowadays have backlighting.

Oh, good, something else for me to be a cranky old man about.

 

[Parmandur]

that is because your Paizo subscription bought you the books while on DDB you have to buy them separately…

The core rules are free and now the subscription can be mea with a growing library of built-in content. The comparison seems apt. And I'm sure a lot of Paizo subscribers also bought the core rules.

 

[Incenjucar]

I've already escaped WotC's orbit, but I do keep my sizable collection of 2E, 3E, and what remains of my 4E books (gave some to a buddy when I stopped DMing), and it has been a whole week since I pulled out the 2E Ninja book, and a whole month since I pulled out the 2E Dark Sun boxed set as references. I do also have a fair number of PDFs on Drive Thru. The kids in my family will inherit my books someday, and get to flip through them if they turn out to like that sort of thing, or can donate or sell them to someone who does care. PDFs are not quite so sharable if by license, ironic as that is.

My Pathfinder collection is most of the 2E books, plus most if the PDF versions thanks to all the Humble Bundles. I don't buy or use adventures, but those flood the bundles regardless. I ALSO get lots of digital tools. I can get all the rules for free on Nethys, I can build a character for free on Pathbuilder, and I can build and play in Foundry which I only paid for once. Even if every digital service goes down all I've lost are tools and maybe some errata because of how Paizo shares that. If I get tired of the shelf space loss, I can toss my books and keep playing with the PDFs I've downloaded.

Incidentally, I recently picked up a portable DVD drive.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I think it's perfectly fine that some people have a place such as here on EN World to shake their fist at the clouds. We've been doing it for decades now. Every single playtest packet, every single adventure release... every single one has a handful of people livid at what they've bought, been given, or seen.

The only problem is... in probably 99 out of every 100 situations nothing actually results in the fist shaking. Nothing changes. So it's purely a tension release for the person doing it. And that's okay! It's sometimes good to be able to do that! I just hope for everyone's mental health that they realize that's all it is, and not that they think their fist-shaking here will actually result in something different. Because we have seen that in the like only 1 time out of 100 where WotC did change something... it was either when the entire industry had something to say about it (like the rollbacks of the OGL revocation)... or enough players from across the entire spectrum of gameplaying just happened to have the same feelings on the matter and all made mention of the same opinion (from like the occasional playtest survey result.)

But for anything else? Where isolated posters around these boards make statements of opinionated so-called "fact" that in truth is merely their own wish of what was true but for whom very few if any other people actually give a rat's ass about? WotC just lets those people get angry and make their own independent decision on what to do, because their decision will have have ZERO impact on the game as a whole. Some people think Drops will lead to D&D's "ensh**ification"? Okay. That's their right to believe that. But so what? Enough other people across the gaming spectrum don't agree or just don't care, so there's no reason for WotC (or any company for that matter) to try and placate that one individual. And if they leave D&D? Okay. That's fine. Because when they do, there will be a half-dozen 15 year olds who will get online and join random online groups using DDB to pick up the slack.

 

[Selas]

Live service = frequent drops of expensive garbage with barely any real content as they drive the game into the ground.

It does not work well with D&D where a campaign can take 6 months to 2 years.

maybe, but it sure looks like that is what they want to try anyway

Again, no different than the old Dragon magazine that ran from 1976 - 2007 in print, and to 2013 digital when it was replaced by Dragon+.
How many subclasses, spells, items, monsters, rules, etc. were introduced during the lifetime of the publication? And it was a monthly drop at that. What WotC is doing now is certainly retreading the neddle, so to speak.

I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy of those that are complaining about something like Drops, but were fine with a monthly magazine service because it was on paper. I wonder how many still keep those magazines around (certainly some folks, but not all)