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Dragon 398: Rituals Index
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<blockquote data-quote="eamon" data-source="post: 5544355" data-attributes="member: 51942"><p>Ah, but you're completely oversimplying things! It's the difference between a single prisoners dilemma and an iterated prisoners dilemma - or rather an iterated prisoners dilemma with multiple parties.</p><p></p><p>Clearly, what's at stake is not just this single transaction between a single customer and the company, but many transactions by many customers, including possible future transactions. And the costs here are not merely a few dollars; but scarce attention and time; in <em>particular</em> given D&DI's setup which encourages prolonged subscription.</p><p></p><p>People are often and wisely willing to choose a seemingly less optimal negotiating result if they feel unfairly treated; as a group such altruism can have quite attractive results.</p><p></p><p>Don't get me wrong - I think it's ludicrous to suspect some kind of Machiavellian plan in WotC's keeping this particular index behind the paywall. It's just not that important. But I <em>do</em> think it's <em>very important</em> not to frame the discussion as a context free choice of what one guy can reasonably expect from WotC in one case. WotC is selling a bunch of books with rules that turn out to be hard to use for various reasons. If we don't expect them to address shortcomings (e.g. errata, or indexes in this case) - there's no reason for them too.</p><p></p><p>So I don't much care about the specifics - but I think it's important to support a sense of fair play as that group cohesion is absolutely essential for any semblance of a reasonably efficient asymmetric market.</p><p></p><p>So, I buy D&D books with the expectation - indeed the sense of <em>entitlement</em> - that they'll be well supported. This expectation is reflected in the price and market share that D&D books have. Note that without this sense of reliability and <em>entitlement</em> the D&D brand would be almost worthless, so this sense of entitlement is actually hugely valuable to D&D. </p><p></p><p>So what's the risk to WotC and their clients? One risk is that if this attitude persists - "<em>don't expect your books to be usable without a D&DI subscription</em>" - that people won't <em>buy</em> the game without a D&DI subscription, thus raising the barrier to entry and reducing the market size.</p><p></p><p>To put it bluntly: quit undermining D&D and grow a sense of entitlement. The game deserves it <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue :p" data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="eamon, post: 5544355, member: 51942"] Ah, but you're completely oversimplying things! It's the difference between a single prisoners dilemma and an iterated prisoners dilemma - or rather an iterated prisoners dilemma with multiple parties. Clearly, what's at stake is not just this single transaction between a single customer and the company, but many transactions by many customers, including possible future transactions. And the costs here are not merely a few dollars; but scarce attention and time; in [I]particular[/I] given D&DI's setup which encourages prolonged subscription. People are often and wisely willing to choose a seemingly less optimal negotiating result if they feel unfairly treated; as a group such altruism can have quite attractive results. Don't get me wrong - I think it's ludicrous to suspect some kind of Machiavellian plan in WotC's keeping this particular index behind the paywall. It's just not that important. But I [I]do[/I] think it's [I]very important[/I] not to frame the discussion as a context free choice of what one guy can reasonably expect from WotC in one case. WotC is selling a bunch of books with rules that turn out to be hard to use for various reasons. If we don't expect them to address shortcomings (e.g. errata, or indexes in this case) - there's no reason for them too. So I don't much care about the specifics - but I think it's important to support a sense of fair play as that group cohesion is absolutely essential for any semblance of a reasonably efficient asymmetric market. So, I buy D&D books with the expectation - indeed the sense of [I]entitlement[/I] - that they'll be well supported. This expectation is reflected in the price and market share that D&D books have. Note that without this sense of reliability and [I]entitlement[/I] the D&D brand would be almost worthless, so this sense of entitlement is actually hugely valuable to D&D. So what's the risk to WotC and their clients? One risk is that if this attitude persists - "[I]don't expect your books to be usable without a D&DI subscription[/I]" - that people won't [I]buy[/I] the game without a D&DI subscription, thus raising the barrier to entry and reducing the market size. To put it bluntly: quit undermining D&D and grow a sense of entitlement. The game deserves it :p [/QUOTE]
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