D&D (2024) D&D Pre-orders; this is sad

What, exactly, is the problem? It makes me feel a little crazy that several people have already posted and seem to agree on the existence of some problem, but no one, including the OP, has clearly expressed what that is.
I've expressed in many details of the further stages of this path as it is now in the video game industry. It is not good for the products, it is not good for the consumers in the end.

My issue with the image is not so much that the current state of things is terrible. But I saw the exact same thing appear a decade ago in video games and here we are. Many know where this is headed, and that is terrible.

It is unclear what you find to be such a death-knell. The fact that they give you a discount if you buy all three? That they give you some digital art bits along with if you're using D&D Beyond?

Note that they aren't offering different playable content in different tiers. The benefits are getting at it a little early (as if that matters - you hope folks play for years, a week one side or the other ain't a thing), and having some bits to spruce up your digital characters sheets.

Or, is it the fact that they have digital offerings at all? If so, with respect, this is the 21st century.

As mentioned above, the current state is not so terrible. I certainly don't like it. There's no need for these tiers; the only reason they exist is so they can put candies in bigger bundles and get people to climb the stairway. Ubisoft is notorious for it in the video game industry. You could buy the base game. But you could buy the other edition that gives you a rebate on four undisclosed expansion to come. Now's the only time to get this deal. Also, if you spend 50$ more, you get all this extra content that could have, and should have been in the main game, but we've split it to make you spend more.

They're not moving into digital because it will make for a better product (albeit it could arguably make one). They do it because they want you to buy third party content on their platform, where they have control and can change the terms. They want to go digital so that they can pull off what they tried to with the OGL without you having any recourse. They do it because they'll monetize it. If you buy the new book digitally, you'll get all of this. But if you pay more, you'll get three exclusive spells for your wizard.

It's just not a good path. Some good will come out of it, but the bad will be magnitudes bigger.
 

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I was away for a full week for vacations. I'm catching up on the news, I saw this, and I felt really sad.

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I'll be transparent. I grew tired of 5E about three years ago and haven't touched it since. Solely for these reasons. But the whole OGL debacle and all the other red flags that I saw pop in the last week made it very clear that, interest or not in the rules, I ought to stay away from the game and the company owning it.

However, the game still has a massive influence on the industry and community of TTRPG so I take interest in the news. And seeing this preorder page is exactly what I feared would happen many months ago.

For context, I work in the video games industry. It's an industry that's incredibly creative and remarkable in many ways. But it's also an industry that has been strangled for almost a decade by rapacious capitalism and greed. Games get more and more pricier to develop and the marketing budgets are exploding, all in the goal of projecting value and convincing customers that your game is the one to buy. These high cost lead companies to hire rapacious CEOs that take away tens of millions of dollars in salaries, while cutting away employees in wave and cribbling games with questionable monetary practices. So many design decisions are taken not being it'll make a better game and give you more fun, but because it'll make you feel bad and get you to spend. It's a big disgusting.

And for those that don't know, there's been records massive layoff in the industry. Tens of thousands have lost their jobs in the past 18 months.

The image above? It's exactly the first step into the same model. I don't know how the TTRPG industry will react, the composition and balance of its ecosystem is quite different than video games; however, it cannot be positive. Less than a decade ago, a video game offering a DLC too soon after launch was questionable; did the devs cut some content from the game to make you spend more? Now, every release has such practices. Early accesses, different tiers, fear of missing out, exclusives.

You used to be able to buy one product. You buy the book, you have the book, you play the game. You want more book? There's more books. It won't be the same. And, rightfully so, many will say "but you can still just buy the book and ignore all of that!". The thing, is that if my experience proves me right, the kind of practices detailed above will be embraced and accepted by enough people that it will prove the executives right. "That's where the money is." And it will continue to drift in that direction. With video games, you cannot just "buy the game" and ignore the naughty word. Your product is already cut in pieces. You pay the full price, get a part of it. And the design of your products is affected by it. They do not design the best product possible, they design the product they can monetize the most.

I guarantee that in a set number of years, it will all be subscription based and you will own nothing and be happy.

I will anxiously be looking at the general reception of all of this. I wasn't planning to, but I now know 100% that I will not buy any more Wizards of the Coast products. I cannot participate in telling them that this path is the best one for us, because it's not.

I will look even more anxiously to the rest of the ecosystem, the OSR, the indie games, the other systems like Call of Cthulu, Pathfinder, World of Darkness, etc. Will they follow suit? Will it affect it? How?

I can't be the only one shaken by this.

I get what you’re saying but I don’t see the issue specifically here outside of a general weariness with literally everything that is sold today - so not just WotC.

I can go down to my local game store tomorrow and pre-order the physical only copy of the book. I can be lazy and search Amazon or Barnes & Noble and pre-order the physical copies too. I don’t have to buy into their D&D Beyond stuff. I don’t fault them for trying - they’ve got a good product - but for the reasons that you’ve somewhat pointed out, I don’t want to. I want my copies, not something under someone else’s control. But that doesn’t stop me from buying the physical books. When and if that day comes, that’s probably the day I stop playing their current version of the game.

As for CEOs being rapacious, this is not new or special to the game industry. Robber barons got their moniker for a reason. But it’s somewhat irrelevant to this. I can apply that same complaint to practically everything I purchase.
 
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What is the problem?
Bundle pricing?
Having digital products?
Having bennies for early order of bundles?
Having digital products is not the issue. Albeit I'd prefer if they moved in a more open environment (see my reply above).

Bundle pricing is not an issue. We see it all the time.

The artificial early access, the exclusive goods for the bundle, the number of frames and backdrop which immediately tells you how they intend to run the VTT and the integration with DBB. You'll pay for every little bit.

They do not want you to buy a book, own it and be able to ignore them and their new content. Their goal is to get you to have to be on their digital platform and have to pay monthly to play. To have to pay 1.99$ if you want a 3D model of a goblin, and you' don't have a choice because the game has moved entirely digitally.

I absolutely see a world where a digital integration could be beneficial to a TTRPG. I work in video games, we made many prototypes to explore ideas.

But the core of the issues is that many design and product related decisions will not be taken because it's good for the quality of the product or the consumers, but because it'll be monetizable. Video games don't offer a ton of different cosmetics in a shop because it makes for a better game, some game did that without monetizing it, the reason they do is because it brings in a ton of cash. A huge amount of production bandwidth is spent on something that is monetizable because it is monetizable and not because it is better.

Once again, if I had a crystal ball and could see that it won't go further down, I wouldn't have too much of an issue with the bundle. But as I said, it's a sign of what's to come.
 


I can go down to my local game store tomorrow and pre-order the physical only copy of the book. I can be lazy and search Amazon or Barnes & Noble and pre-order the physical copies too. I don’t have to buy into their D&D Beyond stuff. I don’t fault them for trying - they’ve got a good product - but for the reasons that you’ve somewhat pointed out, I don’t want to. I want my copies, not something under someone else’s control. But that doesn’t stop me from buying the physical books. When and if that day comes, that’s probably the day I stop playing their current version of the game.
You can now. In a couple of years you won't be able to.
 

What is the problem?
This is the top of the slippery slope that often leads to videogames being funded by microtransactions, to the point that otherwise good games (like Diablo Immortal) are basically rendered almost unplayable due to being choked with them.

None of the individual things happening right now are a problem. It's just that this exactly resembles the start of the path the videogame industry took.

The OP and others who are worried believe this road will inevitably lead to the Diablo Immortal-ification of D&D.

This can either be no big deal because WotC won't ever go further or because the proverbial frogs get used to the water heating up as it approaches the boiling point.

No one really knows for sure at this point, but the OP works in the videogame industry and it's giving him bad flashbacks.
 
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Our State Fair has extra wrist bands you can buy to get in a special access line for rides. You can see the other folks standing there in the longer line and it feels like paid line cutting. Which doesn't stop me from buying the wrist bands for the offspring if it's scorching hot out or if we have a limited time for he and his friends to hit everything. :-/

This doesn't feel like that to me. It feels more like being in a musician fan club and getting something special or early, or being a regular sub at the comic shop and getting access to the special covers, or having jumped on the KS and getting some limited edition thing or getting the regular thing early. They aren't particularly extra expensive and it isn't taking that much out of your enjoyment of things. Unlike the folks at the fair without the wristband who only get 1/3 of the rides someone with one gets.
 
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