Exclusive Races/Classes in Dragon: Why the Angst?

[Scribble]

The world of publishing is changing. The way we tell stories is changing. For example, podcast author J.C. Hutchins put out a book in print called Personal Effects: Dark Art. Inside the book cover is a packet of items that go along with the story. There are things like documents, credit cards that look and feel like real ones, and so on and so forth. If you call the phone numbers or go to the websites listed on the items, what you discover is a secondary story. Hutchins calls this a "transmedia event."

Yeah, ever watch LOST? They do a lot of off the TV storytelling for that. Lots of fake websites set up as a huge game that reveals clues and secret plot twists and spoilers for the "super fans." It's a lot of fun if you're into it.

 

[malraux]

You may find a one month subscription less involved. Most people I know would not. Buying a back order is a one time transaction with a defined goal and a single exchange. Go to store, place money on counter, take magazine, go home.

The subscription involves going to the website, setting up an account, determining the right options, providing payment information, logging in, determining what you're going to download, downloading it, and then remembering to cancel your subscription.

Assuming your game store holds magazines. If its purchasing from pazio.com, then its about as complicated. And as has been mentioned, gets you all back issues. The absolute level of complexity is still really small, and certainly not any more so than any other online purchase.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

DDi has always been mac friendly, excepting the character builder. That said, virtual box allows windows apps to run almost seamlessly within the Mac OS.

Sooo...I either get to pay the same for the subscription as everyone else, but get less utility out of it, or I get to pay more (either in $$$ or in space used on my machine) to get the same utility out of the subscription.

Thanks but no.

 

[malraux]

Sooo...I either get to pay the same for the subscription as everyone else, but get less utility out of it, or I get to pay more (either in $$$ or in space used on my machine) to get the same utility out of the subscription.

Thanks but no.

1 Gig of drive space costs ~ $0.30 So yeah, mac users have a fixed cost of 30 cents more. Not that big a deal.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

1 gig at $0.30 is its financial cost, which may or may not reflect my actual opportunity costs.

Besides, its my $0.30, and I choose not to spend it on Windows emulation. I do enough of that for work, I won't do that for fun.

Just because the difference in costs is actually small doesn't make it fair. They have a right to make their product the way they want, I have a right not to buy it because its gimped in regards to my preferred platform.

 

[Dire Bare]

When Dragon/Dungeon was in print, and freebies were to be had on WotC's site, we did get "more" than we got now, but not significantly so. I pay about the same for a yearly D&DI sub as I did for a yearly sub to both Dragon & Dungeon. There was some good stuff available for free on WotC's website that rivaled what was in the print magazines, but not consistently and the overall volume was small.

The stuff we get now in our D&DI sub is consistent and high quality, to the same level as the print mags but in a digital format. It is also vastly superior in overall quality, quantity, and consistency than the old freebies. If you take all of the magazine stuff and web stuff of yesteryear and compare it to what we get now, we probably did "lose" some pages of content monthly.

But I'm okay with it, and generally ignore the complainers along with most negative fan internet chatter. The reality of today in the publishing world is not the same as the reality of yesterday, and as a consumer, I realize that. I personally don't think WotC would have been able to maintain a quality focus in three areas, print magazines, online freebies, and the print books . . . not due to any sort of incompetence, but due to the changing economy and realities of the publishing world. They combined two separate focus areas into one, and did a good job with it, IMO.

I'd love to see more D&DI content, and more of that content be free to non-subscribers. But I'd also love Games Workshop to lower their prices on miniatures and I would love a house so awesome MTV would put it on "Cribs".

 

[Dire Bare]

I think we need to be careful generalizing from WotC's PDFs and web articles, which all used to be free and included a lot of the sort of things that are in DDI now, and the broader internet. There's is some truth to your comment, but I don't think it's a case here of 'stuff on the internet is free' here as much as 'Wizards gave this stuff away fro free for a decade'. Combined with the fact that, while Dragon had all sorts of cool feats and spells and monsters and races and classes and whatnot, if you didn't have a subscription you generally didn't know what you were missing.

Your argument is based on your own anecdotal experience . . . but then again, so is everybody's in this thread. Just want to point that out in case someone gets too attached to their version of the "truth". Except my posts, they are all absolutely true and inviolate!!!

I really don't see the difference between WotC and the NY Times at all. Except that I've never read the Times, and I suspect a lot of gamers don't care about it either. But just because it may be off our radars doesn't mean it isn't the exact same problem. We used to get something for free, reality no longer allows the company to continue producing free content to drive print sales, but we're still grumpy about the loss of free stuff.

While some of the older freebies would have made great Dragon articles, in print or digital, most of it was "meh". And even if you consider it all to be stellar stuff, you get so much more with the new D&DI service.

And my gamer friends, at least, were very aware of what they were missing in Dragon magazine when it was in print. I was the one with the subscription, they were the cheapskates complaining about the cool stuff in the mag they wouldn't buy. Didn't stop them from borrowing it to read and photocopy the good stuff, though. The complaints don't sound any different today, except I don't let them print out the good articles from my account!

 

[Dire Bare]

1 gig at $0.30 is its financial cost, which may or may not reflect my actual opportunity costs.

Besides, its my $0.30, and I choose not to spend it on Windows emulation. I do enough of that for work, I won't do that for fun.

Just because the difference in costs is actually small doesn't make it fair. They have a right to make their product the way they want, I have a right not to buy it because its gimped in regards to my preferred platform.

Oh the injustice!

I really don't think that "fair" is the right word to be using here. So, WotC is being "unfair" by not providing a Mac version, or a Linux version? It's simple business. If WotC thought they could make back their investment and earn a decent profit, they'd put out a Mac version. It's really that simple, "fair" has nothing to do with it.

I got tired of my Mac-using friends making these sorts of complaints in righteous fury long before D&DI was ever a gleam in WotC's eye. Entertainment software on home computers has always been a Windows game with the Mac users losing out, it's not a new thing at all. The reality is, if you want to play games on your computer, get a PC!

That might change as the Mac user base continues to grow (and I hope so), but it is still the reality that WotC faces. And with the popularity of consoles now, many Mac users can have their cake and eat it too (as long as they are willing to shell out hundreds of dollars on a game console). Oh well.

Actually, come to think of it, I wonder how many Mac-users would be willing to shell out the dough for an XBOX 360 or PS2 or Wii and yet balk at spending $400 on a mid-range PC for D&D purposes. Just random curiousity.

 

[malraux]

Actually, come to think of it, I wonder how many Mac-users would be willing to shell out the dough for an XBOX 360 or PS2 or Wii and yet balk at spending $400 on a mid-range PC for D&D purposes. Just random curiousity.

Not to be snarky, but mac users already have a medium to high end PC; it just happens to have a windows logo on it. Yeah, the graphics cards aren't great, but that's about it.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Oh the injustice!

Its not injustice. Its business.

So, WotC is being "unfair" by not providing a Mac version, or a Linux version? It's simple business. If WotC thought they could make back their investment and earn a decent profit, they'd put out a Mac version. It's really that simple, "fair" has nothing to do with it.

There are several surveys that indicate that Mac penetration of the gaming market was higher than WotC's market research indicates, and I have enough buddies in the computer game programming biz to know what it takes to be practicable.

The simple truth is that its nearly as cheap to make a web based application platform neutral as it is to make it a hassle to less popular platforms to use. By not doing so, they've shifted an otherwise trivial cost from producer to consumer- something I reject in any form of business.

Or, to put it a different way, would you buy T-shirts from a company that charged $1.50 more per increase in size? $1? $0.50?

Would you eat at a restaurant that charged more to fat customers? To skinny customers?

Again, they have every right to use whatever business model they want (as long as its legal), and I have every right not to use it if I disagree with that model.

I got tired of my Mac-using friends making these sorts of complaints in righteous fury long before D&DI was ever a gleam in WotC's eye. Entertainment software on home computers has always been a Windows game with the Mac users losing out, it's not a new thing at all. The reality is, if you want to play games on your computer, get a PC!

My personal experience tells me otherwise. When I got my Apple 2e, there were far more games for it than for PCs. After the Mac became Apple's platform, it wasn't until maybe a decade ago that I had any problem finding high-quality Mac games, usually the same ones my PC loving buddies were playing. Even with PCs taking the lead, I could usually find Mac or platform-neutral versions of the top PC games pretty readily.

And even today, I can usually find quality games. My only problem is that, inexplicably, those retailers who stock Mac games don't stock them all...not even all of the popular ones.

To illustrate, a buddy of mine told me about a game from his company that was available in Mac, PC and Playstation format, and the versions could be networked for multiplayer play. I bought it- and it lived up to its hype. Its sequel, though, could only be found on about 1/3 of the same retailers as the first game.

Its not that there are no Mac games, its that they are not well publicized and not well distributed.

Actually, come to think of it, I wonder how many Mac-users would be willing to shell out the dough for an XBOX 360 or PS2 or Wii and yet balk at spending $400 on a mid-range PC for D&D purposes. Just random curiousity.

Personally, the last console I bought was an Atari 2600, which died in 1991. I own a Wii, but it was a gift (though I do buy games for it). I wouldn't buy a PC for D&D.