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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DarkKestral" data-source="post: 4662203" data-attributes="member: 40100">Let's talk about the difference between Magic's side of the house and D&D's. Magic's development articles? Weekly and free. Magic's preview articles? Weekly and free. Magic's equivalent to the compendium? Free, and regularly updated with every block release and every official ruling that changes the effect of cards. Magic's art? Not generally reused except for re-releases of cards (which is a bit different, since one of the ways people recognize cards quickly to speed up play is by their art. Even then, between editions, they sometimes change the card art to fit the theme.) Magic also has free tourney reports and free deck guides... in short, darn near everything that the D&D side of the house makes you PAY FOR, Magic's side of the house gives away, and does so on a far more regular basis, since they don't have one preview a month, they can have as many as four. Sometimes more, if multiple columnists get into the act.Admittedly, Magic Online is a pay-for-play service. But it's closest companion on the D&D side is the combo of the character builder and the game table, which are separate products from the rest of DDI. That doesn't give me any confidence in the DDI. Admittedly, I'm not really into 4e. But the amount of free material that's coming out for Dragon and Dungeon does not impress me, particularly when most of the material now in Dragon and Dungeon is material they gave away as recently as a year ago. Similarly, I might see the value in saving 30 dollars per book and spending 15 a year for the compendium, but that presumes they've managed to hook me into buying their books. And I really don't see a reason, at least with the material they've put out for free...Frankly, what's left of the free content is simply advertising or what is generally required content for a major RPG manufacturer...I'll run down the list:Character sheet --- required (seriously, unless it's FUDGE, most companies have character sheets so that players don't have to rip out the page in the book with it.)Upcoming Product Excerpts --- advertisingUse this Book --- advertisingImage and Map Galleries --- often required for GMs.. again, no one wants to have to rip out pages out of the books in order to produce a map of the area, particularly if the map is nice looking.In the Works --- advertisingScreensavers and Wallpapers --- not directly advertising, but given that most advertising sites for movies, comics, books, and whatnot are likely to have them if there's any visual content at all, it's fairly likely this is the purpose.Character Builder Demo --- obviously advertising a pay-for-play product. Limited feature demos are quickly becoming standard in the software industry.Spotlight Interviews --- advertisingD&D Podcast: haven't listened to it, so I can't say much about it.Vicious Venues and Steal this Hook are the only real "content" that actually has an in-game use in general that isn't directly advertising specific products. In comparison, columns like Design and Development used to explain things like "why are we moving in this direction for the next few books" were free but long-form material designed for direct in-game use tended to be pay for play... So tell me again about the oodles of free material that comes out for D&D? How does this compare to the pre-4e era in any good ways? Because I don't see any trends towards opening up material and letting people see it for free, but I do see one of canceling free material or putting it behind a pay wall.As for giving away stuff for free, there are companies (including multi-billion dollar ones) whose business model revolves around giving certain stuff away, and making money elsewhere. For example, companies like Red Hat. They give away unsupported versions of their software for free, but charge for support. The New York Times gives away it's entire content on a daily basis for free online; they charge for adspace and the physical costs of printing. In fact, there's a large amount of daily content they put on the website that does not ever show in print, despite being considered top-tier content. For a company like Wizards, they can charge for the game table; if it uses their servers and provides a nexus of services that is useful, particularly if they add integration with other things like the character builders and a place to save character sheets online, I could see why people would pay. But the thing is, you now pay for what you used to get for free, and what you get is in total a lot less than what you previously would have gotten for free, much less what you would have gotten if you'd have paid for the magazines.</blockquote>

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