Exclusive interview WotC President Greg Leeds

[Dumnbunny]

Funny how those only started to appear (for D&D) until WotC started to make them...

Heh, vendors responding to competition.

It's an interesting world in which we live.

 

[Hairfoot]

And 0% will be of high-quality, extensively bookmarked, searchable PDFs with low file-sizes built by WotC.

Most pirate PDFs are, to put it mildly, crap.

With respect, I can't imagine where you formed that idea. It certainly can't have been by examining pirated PDFs. More than a few gamers download books after they've bought them simply because the illegal editions are searchable and much, much better indexed than the originals.

 

[AllisterH]

With respect, I can't imagine where you formed that idea. It certainly can't have been by examining pirated PDFs. More than a few gamers download books after they've bought them simply because the illegal editions are searchable and much, much better indexed than the originals.

I'm not so sure about that....

Most high quality PDFs I've seen DO come from original sources like the Publishers. For many piraters, you do have to go beyond and above. Remember, you have to basically physically destroy the book to properly scan most books and then you have to get the full version of ADOBE to properly index it.

Us ad WOTC et al will see with Arcane Power.

That said, in this pirate discussion I'm wondering if any one has a solution other than "you can't stop pirates and WOTC just needs to get over it"

 

[Staffan]

I think the only way to crack down on pirating is to get the ISPs to block torrenting, which is far from impossible. Unfortunately a lot of people torrent perfectly legal content including MMO clients and other items that the publishers want distributed in this way.

That's a path I do not want to see society go down (though we are headed in that direction). There are several reasons - one is the one you mention, that there are perfectly legitimate reasons for using Bittorrent. Another is that I do not want my ISP to give a damn about what I use my connection for. The messenger should not look at the message.

Or do you also think it's OK for the post office to open and scan all mail in order to make sure they're not being used to transport anything illegal?

Does it really matter?

Honestly, I don't think a person needs to be a lifetime D&D geek in order to be a great manager for WotC. I mean, for one thing D&D is just a small subset of WotC's business, but much more importantly it simply seems irrelvant. The CEO makes business decisions, not game design decisions. A CEO should be hired for raw ability, not "geek cred". If I had the choice, I would much rather see a competant CEO who keeps D&D profitable than one who may muck up the game with too much personal involvement.

I want someone in charge of D&D who cares about the game. Sure, maybe an arch-geek like Adkison isn't necessary, but I want someone there who knows the geek crowd.

D&D is a strange game in that it expects a far greater level of involvement than most. You're supposed to use it as a starting point for your own imagination. Even board games generally limit your involvement to the actual playing of the game - you take Axis & Allies down off the shelf, set it up, play the game until someone wins, and then pack it up again. You don't have one player setting up different scenarios, adding new factions, and the like.

 

[Maggan]

... then you have to get the full version of ADOBE to properly index it.

While I agree onyour point that it's a lot more work to get an indexed pirate PDF up and running, I think getting their hands on a full version of Adobe Acrobat Professional is the least of a pirates worries.

/M

 

[roguerouge]

Funny how those only started to appear (for D&D) until WotC started to make them...

Funny how advances in hardware and software make adding features to scans so much easier in the last few years...

 

[Hairfoot]

You may be right, AllisterH. I can't claim to be an expert on pirated PDFs.

Staffan/TwinBahamut raise an issue which I think is central: does the D&D community want its game produced by a corporate giant with full marketing departments but a ruthless and impersonal business ethic, or by smaller companies that care about the game and its players, but which lack the resources to promote the game on a modern commercial scale?

 

[Maggan]

Staffan/TwinBahamut raise an issue which I think is central: does the D&D community want its game produced by a corporate giant with full marketing departments but a ruthless and impersonal business ethic, or by smaller companies that care about the game and its players, but which lack the resources to promote the game on a modern commercial scale?

Well, the obvious choice is of course the good things from both (a corporate giant with full marketing departments that care about the game and its players) but if I had to choose, I'd go for the corporate giant with the impersonal business ethics.

Why?

Because there are already a lot of smaller companies that offer games (very much D&D in style, among others) and which "care about the game and its players". I think that having at least on giant corporation with the reach of WotC/Hasbro in the mix is interesting and ultimately good for the game.

If nothing else, it gives the smaller players a good and solid fumbling juggernaut to base their marketing on, e.g. the recent spate of "we love PDF so buy from us! We care about you, we're not like the big bad corporation!" initiatives.

Then again, I have a theory of my own, and that is that any company that owns D&D becomes "the evil corporate money-grubbing blight on gamerdom" in many gamers eyes. The biggest fish are always seen as the bad guys.

Note that I don't presume to speak for the community. It's all my opinion, YMMV and so on so forth.

/M

 

[Hairfoot]

If nothing else, it gives the smaller players a good and solid fumbling juggernaut to base their marketing on, e.g. the recent spate of "we love PDF so buy from us! We care about you, we're not like the big bad corporation!" initiatives.

I agree. But what if the fumbling juggernaut uses its influence to squeeze the smaller guys out of the market? Is that what's happening in relation to Paizo?

Do we need to decide between a bucket of vanilla or a hundred teaspoons of exotic flavours?

 

[Oldtimer]

Really?

That device has nothing to do with montoring the entire Internet. It just watches a LAN (or, to be precise, an Ethernet hub/switch) for .torrent files being transferred. From my quick scan of it, it doesn't seem to react to the actual P2P transfer, just the .torrent file. So if I sent you the .torrent file in a e-mail or an IM, it wouldn't be any wiser.

Hardly any proof that Hasbro can monitor all traffic on the Internet. Do you actually have any clue on how TCP/IP (or BitTorrent) works?