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.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

Please correct me if I am misinterpreting or otherwise fail to understand your argument here, but: are you seriously advocating here that quote/unquote 'stealing' (or at the very least 'copying') content from a service in a way that is in direct conflict with the terms of agreement for the service, is perfectly fine as long as you do not get caught ?

You have to agree to the terms of service first for them to be binding, and you have to care about what happens if you violate them. WotC has unilaterally decided to take things from me in the past, so why can't I treat them the same way?

 

[abazaba]

You have to agree to the terms of service first for them to be binding, and you have to care about what happens if you violate them. WotC has unilaterally decided to take things from me in the past, so why can't I treat them the same way?

I suppose I should then interpret that statement as a 'yes, piracy is perfectly fine' ? Again, please correct me if I am misinterpreting or otherwise fail to understand your post here.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

I suppose I should then interpret that statement as a 'yes, piracy is perfectly fine' ? Again, please correct me if I am misinterpreting or otherwise fail to understand your post here.

Mankind has had piracy long before it had intellectual property rights, and society got along just fine. Imagine if Petrarch had to pay the Cicero estate royalties before starting the renaissance.

 

[Clint_L]

Preference for digital ? Perhaps. Preference for subscriptions ? Perhaps not. These two do not necessarily need to be the same thing.

Okay then, preference for a digital subscription.

Not sure what point you are making. My point is that the explosive growth of DDB, describing it in whatever way makes you happy, surely indicates that it is a popular preference, given that other options exist. Do you disagree?

In other words, no one is paying for it because they are being forced.

Could there be other versions that are even more popular? I suppose. Everyone thinks that their personal perfect choice would be the most popular thing in the world, if only everyone else saw the light. But why would WotC not double down on something that consumers have grabbed onto since DDB was introduced? They didn’t create DDB, they bought because the market had already spoken.

Quibbling about correlation/causation just seems pedantic. Either way, DDB is clearly a preference for a majority of players today, many of whom may indeed also like getting the physical books (which is great for WotC and their preferred option; it’s the first thing they offer you on DDB).

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

Also, for context, the piracy I'm advocating for in this instance isn't just relatively benign, literally copying text, but it's something D&D players have been doing and have been encouraged to do for decades, since the start of the fandom! Copying down the text of a spell or a class feature onto your character sheet, by hand, with pencil, is just as bad as copying the text of a drop!

If you have the DDB drops, put that on your character sheet, print that sheet, then cancel your subscription, every time you look at your paper that makes you a pirate! Do you burn your hard copies when you stop subscribing?

 

[Lazybones]

I'm sure everyone knows this based on the comments above, but DDB is not the only option for digital D&D materials. I have over two dozen WotC 5.0 and 5.5e books in digital format, and I do not have a DDB account. Furthermore, if Smiteworks goes out of business tomorrow, I would still be able to play using those materials to the end of time (they do provide a cloud server for matchmaking, but an IP address works just fine). I have those books backed up on multiple flash drives, both on and off site, so if anything they are more reliably "mine" than my physical volumes.

 

[AlViking]

There are a few simple facts that in my opinion are pertinent to this topic.

Very few things we purchase are permanent. Books get lost or damaged, other products wear out. Sometimes technlology changes - I used to have a collection of cassette tapes and a walkman then I had CDs, now I have Spotify. Each step was an improvement as far as I'm concerned even if that means that other people can't purchase cassette tapes because there was not enough demand to continue their manufacture.

Hype and advertising will never guarantee success. The Segway had a ton of hype, it didn't help. Many companies have spent millions making and then advertising live service video games only to see them go down in flames. If there is enough continued demand for a product, it will still be produced. People still buy vinyl records. I personally drive a car with a stick shift even though there are no longer any advantages from a performance standpoint.

There have always been people who would prefer other options to get access to the products they want. There will always be people who cannot get exactly what they want. There are many issues with our society and the products that companies sell and how those companies sell them. But companies do not drive demand (with some rare exceptions like diamonds for engagement rings), they predict demand and create new products and options that they hope people will buy. Sometimes they're right, oftentimes they're not.

People who subscribe to services are not stupid. With some incredibly rare exceptions we are not being bamboozled, we do not feel like we are victims of a scam, we know what we are getting for our money. The only way we could be wrong about that would be if companies had mind control or we are just fools. I don't believe in mind control and I don't like being called a fool.

Last, but not least, WOTC plans to continue publishing books. So if digital purchases are not your thing you will continue to be able to get a dead tree version.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

I'm sure everyone knows this based on the comments above, but DDB is not the only option for digital D&D materials. I have over two dozen WotC 5.0 and 5.5e books in digital format, and I do not have a DDB account. Furthermore, if Smiteworks goes out of business tomorrow, I would still be able to play using those materials to the end of time (they do provide a cloud server for matchmaking, but an IP address works just fine). I have those books backed up on multiple flash drives, both on and off site, so if anything they are more reliably "mine" than my physical volumes.

 

[Lazybones]

I guess it wasn't obvious, but I was not talking about piracy. I purchased my materials for Fantasy Grounds. None of the things I suggested are a violation of the terms of the software license I have with Smiteworks.

Maybe you were just exaggerating to mock the earlier poster, but I wanted to make that clear. And while I won't judge you for your choices, I think that advocating for piracy of digital content is not the flex you think it is.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

I guess it wasn't obvious, but I was not talking about piracy. I purchased my materials for Fantasy Grounds. None of the things I suggested are a violation of the terms of the software license I have with Smiteworks.

Maybe you were just exaggerating to mock the earlier poster, but I wanted to make that clear. And while I won't judge you for your choices, I think that advocating for piracy of digital content is not the flex you think it is.

If smiteworks goes under, and you share the content of your privately backed up books that you bought with anyone, including your players, that's piracy.