Forked Thread: What is WOTC's Goal with the GSL?

[Corjay]

"Product Identity" means product and product line names,

emphasis mine.

My bad. I thought both licenses said "intellectual property", not just the GSL. "Intellectual property" is also used in copyright law, while "product identity" is used in trademark law.

 

[Ranger REG]

The correct term in the U.S. is 'IP' for 'Intellectual Property', not 'PI' for 'Product Identity' or 'Propriedade Intelectual'[/nitpick]

RangerREG is correct. Angellis ater may also be correct, so long as no IP is involved. If there is no IP involved, then there's nothing the True20 staff can do about it. Mechanics are not covered under copyright.

No, but a written [non-mathematical] expression of game mechanics may be copyrighted. But if said written text is designated OGC under the OGL, then you may copy them verbatim, so long YOU obey the OGL also.

As stated before, the OGL defines OGC (i.e., Open Game Content) and PI (Product Identity). By using the OGL, you acknowledge the definition in the agreement and how they are used.

And yes, we all know what IP means. Copyright is one form of IP, trademark and short-lived patent are the others.

 

[Corjay]

Agreed.

 

[Corjay]

See Revised GSL on the Way.

I believe you are confusing political compromise for corporate compromise. Besides this, WOTC is run by people who love the game. Judging by those they hire, I would expect it to be a prerequisite to any position in the company (which is good business sense; you have to love a game and put your ear to the street to know what the layman really wants in order to properly interpret the marketing data). It's the lawyers I have no faith in, especially considering what they did to the first version of the GSL (which was very law-bent). I think what's going to happen is that the lawyers need to make the GSL work, or they'll find themselves looking for a new client. WOTC is making major cutbacks, and they aren't going to put up with lawyers skimming the company's pennies for a poor end-product that doesn't satisfy anyone.

It's not simply optimism. It's business sense.

Business sense went out the window when then-TSR was headed by Lorraine Williams. She absolutely hated D&D and RPG and wanted to turn the company into a Buck Rogers merchandising house.

Business sense was questioned when gamer-at-heart and former WotC President Anthony Valterra -- who replaced Peter Adkison, the founder of WotC -- resigned amidst the "Erotic RPG" controversy and Hasbro hired a former Coke Ad exec as the company president.

First, what does TSR and Lorraine Williams have to do with any of this? I'll tell you: nothing. Zilch, zip, nadda. If that's all you have as the basis for your opinion, then I would suggest reviewing the situation a little closer. Lorraine Williams was only out for her own agenda and didn't have a lick of business sense.

As for any "erotic controversy", I think any such issue has been resolved by the wording in section 7 of the GSL. The business sense in that situation comes when they don't want RPG's, or at least d20 and D&D, to be automatically associated with such a narrow market as erotica. When you get a stigma like that, it's pretty hard to live it down. There's a reason why so few pron stars break into the legitimate acting world. Their battles over the subject seem warranted. They may have even known that they couldn't win, but just making their separation from erotica public, they made a good business decision. Winning the case wasn't likely their goal. Publicly divorcing themselves from the erotica industry was the most likely goal.

Look, associating WOTC with a competitor that they bought out, and with a case that was perfectly justified morally and monetarily, are non-existent reasons for accusing WOTC of bad business motives. Neither one of them has anything to do with anything regarding that issue.

Personally, I don't know if WotC's lawyers are trembling at the possible loss of job from client that is WotC.

If they're in-house lawyers, then they're trembling. There's no one in the company that's not trembling right now. If they're outsourced, then losing a corporate client is no small deal.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

First, what does TSR and Lorraine Williams have to do with any of this? I'll tell you: nothing. Zilch, zip, nadda. If that's all you have as the basis for your opinion, then I would suggest reviewing the situation a little closer. Lorraine Williams was only out for her own agenda and didn't have a lick of business sense.

Lorraine Williams is relevant to the point that was being made. That point was that the head of a company doesn't always make the best business decisions. In fact she drove TSR into the ground to the point that WotC was able to buy it. The argument that this point makes by just looking at the history of D&D is that the president of the company in charge of D&D does not always make the best business decisions just because they are in charge of a business. While the current president of the WotC division of Hasbro may be a phenomenal business man, from past experience he may not be as well. We cannot assume from his title alone that he knows what he is doing.

As for any "erotic controversy", I think any such issue has been resolved by the wording in section 7 of the GSL. The business sense in that situation comes when they don't want RPG's, or at least d20 and D&D, to be automatically associated with such a narrow market as erotica. When you get a stigma like that, it's pretty hard to live it down. There's a reason why so few pron stars break into the legitimate acting world. Their battles over the subject seem warranted. They may have even known that they couldn't win, but just making their separation from erotica public, they made a good business decision. Winning the case wasn't likely their goal. Publicly divorcing themselves from the erotica industry was the most likely goal.

Not sure where you are going with this. The second half had absolutely nothing to do do with the conversation. As for Anthony Valterra, once more the point was that just because someone was in charge of D&D doesn't mean that they actually had the best business sense. In this case it was pointing out that unlike Lorainne Williams, this time it was a gamer in charge who did love the game.

Look, associating WOTC with a competitor that they bought out, and with a case that was perfectly justified morally and monetarily, are non-existent reasons for accusing WOTC of bad business motives. Neither one of them has anything to do with anything regarding that issue.

Now I am entirely lost. WotC bought TSR because Peter Atkinson loved D&D and wanted to save it from the bankruptcy that was TSR at the time. Peter did have some good business sense but then he left the company and Valterra was put in charge of D&D. Valterra as part of WotC/Hasbro also made bad decisions. The point once again was showing a past history of both TSR and WotC making bad decisions to help prove the point that just because someone owns D&D doesn't mean they are making the best decisions about it.

If they're in-house lawyers, then they're trembling. There's no one in the company that's not trembling right now. If they're outsourced, then losing a corporate client is no small deal.

As for the lawyers they are probably in no danger. The GSL probably makes up a very small portion of their jobs, which is also likely why it doesn't get done very fast. If WotC is laying off their lawyers then they are in worse shape than I thought.

 

[Corjay]

Lorraine Williams is relevant to the point that was being made. That point was that the head of a company doesn't always make the best business decisions. In fact she drove TSR into the ground to the point that WotC was able to buy it. The argument that this point makes by just looking at the history of D&D is that the president of the company in charge of D&D does not always make the best business decisions just because they are in charge of a business. While the current president of the WotC division of Hasbro may be a phenomenal business man, from past experience he may not be as well. We cannot assume from his title alone that he knows what he is doing.

Not sure where you are going with this. The second half had absolutely nothing to do do with the conversation. As for Anthony Valterra, once more the point was that just because someone was in charge of D&D doesn't mean that they actually had the best business sense. In this case it was pointing out that unlike Lorainne Williams, this time it was a gamer in charge who did love the game.

Now I am entirely lost. WotC bought TSR because Peter Atkinson loved D&D and wanted to save it from the bankruptcy that was TSR at the time. Peter did have some good business sense but then he left the company and Valterra was put in charge of D&D. Valterra as part of WotC/Hasbro also made bad decisions. The point once again was showing a past history of both TSR and WotC making bad decisions to help prove the point that just because someone owns D&D doesn't mean they are making the best decisions about it.

As for the lawyers they are probably in no danger. The GSL probably makes up a very small portion of their jobs, which is also likely why it doesn't get done very fast. If WotC is laying off their lawyers then they are in worse shape than I thought.

My being lost on RangerREG's points is probably why you're lost on my points. If I don't think his points affect the conversation, then my points regarding his points aren't going to affect that conversation either.

The Lorraine Williams point is still moot. Yes, a business head can make mistakes. No one was saying they can't. If you want to establish a stream of mistakes by the head, then you need to show examples (We're all well familiar with the mistakes they've made over the last year regarding Gleemax and D&D that lead to the reorganization, but I mean over the extended time that seems to be suggested here, as well as connecting those decisions to the President of WOTC). Perhaps that's what the erotica point was about, but I'm not seeing it, probably because I don't know the particulars regarding that case. Perhaps if you all could spell out the particulars of that case that make it a bad business decision, I might understand it better. But the only discussion that I've seen on it has simply mentioned that they sued a company for making an erotica game that may or may not have violated the OGL. Give me some background or an article, and maybe I can make more of it. Even just summarize what the mistake was. It just seems like a total non sequitur to me.

 

[Corjay]

Peter did have some good business sense but then he left the company and Valterra was put in charge of D&D. Valterra as part of WotC/Hasbro also made bad decisions. The point once again was showing a past history of both TSR and WotC making bad decisions to help prove the point that just because someone owns D&D doesn't mean they are making the best decisions about it.

I suppose this is the crux of your point, but then this just misses the point of what I said earlier. I didn't specifically spell out that the people in charge should have good business sense AND be gamers because I thought the collective intelligence could understand my meaning without having to spell it out. I was wrong. Spelling it out now. Here is a good business model for an RPG company:

1) Having employees who have good business sense.
2) Those same employees loving RPG's and D&D in particular.

Those are not mutually exclusive. My point, conversely to your own, was only that just because they love the game does not mean they're going to make bad business decisions through choosing the game over the business. The fact is, they made a lot of really good and valuable changes to the game, to the license, and to their online awareness that had the potential for revitalizing the game and the industry. But it was all poorly executed.

They went through tons of trouble making D&D conform to the changes requested by the D&D community, as well as conforming the GSL to those requests. However, instead of finding a business-savvy means of converting old players to the new game, they gave reasons to people why they shouldn't convert to the new system.

From my study of the new rules, I see a lot of places where they returned to the old rules, a lot of places that aren't actually as drastic of changes as people are screaming about, and some places where drastic changes were needed and made. The presentation was spartan in comparison to 3.5, and I suspect that had a lot to do with people's rejection. In time, though, all that will be reversed as people begin to change their minds with experience. So it's not the system, it's the execution of presenting the new system.

That's the problem with all the decisions over the last year and a half. With the GSL, it's the hard-nosed lawyer-ific parts that have turned the publishers off, and that can only be remedied through rewrite. Gleemax was a good idea, but was executed horribly. So the decision to follow through with Gleemax could have been a good one, business-wise, but poor execution can ruin the best ideas. DDI is a great idea, but poor planning has lead to its costly belated start. It's not the decisions to take on those projects that was bad business. It was the execution of those projects in a way that was both costly and rushed.

At the core of all of that, I firmly believe, is their persistent lack of carefully calculating the time it takes to get one of their projects out the door. Time is money, and if you are persistently late on the completion of all your projects, you will persistently hemorrhage money, especially when you're making sky-high promises.

D&D 4e's execution is due to a poorly thought out execution (likely due to too tight a release schedule), but for Gleemax, DDI, and the GSL, time ran out each time, and each time they have presented a too poorly executed product. I can see where time approvals and taking on too many projects at one time could be a mistake that traces back to the company president, but the ideas themselves were solid business decisions. So I'm not seeing WOTC fall down in the vision of what it wants to do, but it falls down repeatedly in the execution of that vision.

I seriously doubt that a single case against a single company's copyright violation cost them tons of money unless they dragged it out forever. And I'm firmly confident that the Lorraine Williams scenario is not happening to WOTC. Bad business decisions running the company into the ground I can see. Frivolous lawsuits, pushing out product after product that no one wants, firing the most valuable employees to push a single person's agenda, and ignoring anyone outside the company that has input, is not something I see WOTC doing. They are way beyond that stage of development corporate-wise.

 

[Ranger REG]

First, what does TSR and Lorraine Williams have to do with any of this?

First of all, how the HELL did my post from another thread ended up in this thread? What relevancy did you find to make it posted here?

 

[Ranger REG]

If they're in-house lawyers, then they're trembling.

Then I can't help but chuckle because we lost many great RPG designers through many past layoffs.

Of course, feel free to say that is also moot. All hail to the present WotC corporate regime.

 

[Corjay]

First of all, how the HELL did my post from another thread ended up in this thread? What relevancy did you find to make it posted here?

Is striking that out somehow supposed to lighten the statement? News flash: it doesn't work.

The relevancy is WOTC's motives regarding the GSL.