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.

 

[Incenjucar]

There are multiple ways to offer a written product. WotC prefers to offer digital products in a way that is inherently temporary, and is testing the waters to have content that is not offered in a permanent form. If you value permanency in digital content, they are the wrong company to spend your money on.

 

[AlViking]

For what it's worth: I never made the claim that content should be provided 'for free'; the point was that the fact that people pay specifically for subscriptions does not automatically mean that they like the situation we are currently in and would not prefer other means of obtaining the content.

We've never had a perfect market for everyone to purchase how every product how they want. We've always had limited options for the majority of things we purchase.

 

[AlViking]

I never said anything to the contrary, but I find your eagerness to contort the argument in this direction definitely telling.

If you have a point feel free to explain. What am I "contorting" by acknowledging how things have always worked? That options in the past were not better for everyone.

If there was a better mousetrap in the past that had wide appeal it would still be for sale. That may leave some people without their favored option because the majority favor some other option.

 

[abazaba]

If there was a better mousetrap in the past that had wide appeal it would still be for sale. That may leave some people without their favored option because the majority favor some other option.

Or perhaps commercial entities just found ways of selling the material in a way which allows them to make more money (for example by not giving customers any other options), regardless of the fact of wheter the majority actually likes it or mot.

 

[bsss]

If you have a point feel free to explain. What am I "contorting" by acknowledging how things have always worked? That options in the past were not better for everyone.

If there was a better mousetrap in the past that had wide appeal it would still be for sale. That may leave some people without their favored option because the majority favor some other option.

Directly replying to my statement, which is about some people hypothetically not preferring subscriptions even if they pay for them, with "we've always had to pay for virtually every product" reads as if you are eager to imply that my statement is somehow arguing that people shouldn't have to pay for products, and then arguing against that point instead of the point I am actually making. I think there's a word for that.

 

[Alzrius]

There are multiple ways to offer a written product. WotC prefers to offer digital products in a way that is inherently temporary, and is testing the waters to have content that is not offered in a permanent form. If you value permanency in digital content, they are the wrong company to spend your money on.

I think another aspect is that a lot of digital publishers are trying to create switching barriers, where you're incentivized to stick with a service because going to a different one is laborious and/or causes you to lose a lot of what you've invested (e.g. beyond just money) in your current service. WotC very clearly wants to do this, as leaving D&D Beyond can mean not only losing access to Drops, but also your characters, purchased content, old campaign materials, etc.

At that point the "value" is determined not (only) by what you're getting, but from what you'd lose if you went a different way despite liking said other way more.

 

[Incenjucar]

WotC is trying to make DDB a console of sorts, given the Microsoft influence. They could actually beat down one of the biggest arguments against them by guaranteeing that all products that are removed from support will be provided as PDFs, either free or at deep discount. But doing so would make it easier to skip what they want to sell next, so it's quite unlikely. PDFs at full price for that double dip is more likely.

 

[abazaba]

I think another aspect is that a lot of digital publishers are trying to create switching barriers, where you're incentivized to stick with a service because going to a different one is laborious and/or causes you to lose a lot of what you've invested (e.g. beyond just money) in your current service. WotC very clearly wants to do this, as leaving D&D Beyond can mean not only losing access to Drops, but also your characters, purchased content, old campaign materials, etc.

At that point the "value" is determined not (only) by what you're getting, but from what you'd lose if you went a different way despite liking said other way more.

Thanks for sharing, I had not heard that term before. I guess I can think of older examples, like the fact that in my part of the world (and perhaps elsewhere) it used to be the case that if you switched from telco provider, you would not get to keep your current phone number and were assigned a new one at the new telco. Because of the hassle of informing everyone that your phone number had changed people tended to stay with the same provider, even if they could get a better deal elsewhere. At some point laws were passed that forced telco's to transfer your current phone number to the new provider, so you could keep your number when switching.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

Google is an ad company. Television and radio and newspapers and magazines are driven by ads. Most websites are driven by ads. Sports are driven by ads. THIS website is fueled at least partly by ads. Parades are driven by ads. Fireworks shows are driven by ads. The cartoons that put Hasbro in a position to buy WotC were ads. There are ads on public transit. There are ads on cars. There are ads on clothes. There are ads on the side of the road and plastered onto buildings. There are ads in movies and games and TV shows. There are ads in stores. There are ads in books. There are ads in apps. There are sometimes even ads in the sky. There is so much marketing that they have to invent new kinds because of over-exposure.

DDB is certainly a mere mote compared to all of these, and frankly their marketing game is overshadowed by their shenanigans and controversies. The marketing push for the live service model, which is failing regularly in the video games industry, will hopefully also be drowned out by criticism like so many of their bad moves before.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

"Free choice" is probably not the right phrase; I think @abazaba's point is that, if the two options are pay a subscription or GTFO, there's no good faith argument that subscriptions are universally favored, as you can't point at any individual subscriber and say "this person (or people in general) must like subscriptions, or else they wouldn't be paying for them" --- they might just want to be let in and are willing to hold their nose. I would say it stops being an expressive choice.

My dude you know you can literally highlight everything on DDB and save it locally as a word doc, right? To say nothing of the robust piracy network that automatically scrapes from their website. You don't have a problem with subscriptions, you have a problem with DRM in the abstract. But WotC is just straight up not using DRM and they seemingly don't care if you pirate. So your argument, that you can't get the information you want in the format you want on the schedule you want for the price you want is just straight up specious. I don't pay for DDB drops but I managed to get all them onto my harddrive and it took like, a minute.