GSL questions for Scott Rouse and Mike Lescault

[mxyzplk]

Fair point. What do you think of this counter-point? How do you cook frog legs? If you put the live frog in a pot of boiling water, it'll jump out before you can get the lid on. If you put it in a pot of cold water and slowly heat it, he'll stay in and die.

I totally agree. I doubt they're "revisiting" anything - whatever license there is would be at the printer with the core books. They've been deliberately stringing along everyone in hopes that they could minimize the damage. I'd guess they'll wait until after the books come out, and maybe right post Gen Con so they don't have to deal with gamer revolt there, and then say "Yeah so we thought about it and no third party products."

There would be some companies that usually conduct themselves openly and honestly that I wouldn't believe that of, but the current Hasbro/WotC - you better believe it.

 

[xechnao]

Factories get closed, subsideraries get sold off, departments get downsized all the time without employees suspecting until a public announcement is made.

We are not talking about factories but the entertainment industry. The environment is not equally the same.

 

[mxyzplk]

Factories get closed, subsideraries get sold off, departments get downsized all the time without employees suspecting until a public announcement is made.

Yeah, really! Has anyone here actually worked in a business? Come on people.

Happened to Black Industries (Warhammer RPG) just a couple months ago. Game Workshop shut 'em right down.

Some of the employees may "suspect" - but you usually don't want to quit what could be a sweet job on "suspicion." Even when managers, who part of you knows you shouldn't believe but human nature makes you want to, are reassuring you and saying "Oh, we'll get through this," "You know, delays with upper management," etc. Even when there have been a round or two of layoffs, people still stick with it. Then they show up and there's a padlock on the door and they don't get their last paycheck until after a year of siccing the US Department of Labor on someone. (This true life example brought to you by a publishing company. No one's "different.")

An unfortunate number of companies still firmly believe in the "lie to 'em as long as you can" model of employee and customer communication.

 

[xechnao]

Yeah, really! Has anyone here actually worked in a business? Come on people.

Happened to Black Industries (Warhammer RPG) just a couple months ago. Game Workshop shut 'em right down.

Some of the employees may "suspect" - but you usually don't want to quit what could be a sweet job on "suspicion." Even when managers, who part of you knows you shouldn't believe but human nature makes you want to, are reassuring you and saying "Oh, we'll get through this," "You know, delays with upper management," etc. Even when there have been a round or two of layoffs, people still stick with it. Then they show up and there's a padlock on the door and they don't get their last paycheck until after a year of siccing the US Department of Labor on someone. (This true life example brought to you by a publishing company. No one's "different.")

An unfortunate number of companies still firmly believe in the "lie to 'em as long as you can" model of employee and customer communication.

Again do you know their relations? Do you know how it worked and works out for these people eventually? It is wrong to equate the relations of the labor industry with the entertainment industry.

 

[Lizard]

I totally agree. I doubt they're "revisiting" anything - whatever license there is would be at the printer with the core books. .

This is highly dubious. The license is going to be data -- or run off on an office printer and snail-mailed to 'early adopters'. It's not like the 3x books included copies of the OGL.

 

[dmccoy1693]

Let me state, that I don't want to start another panic. This is just a theory from a former middle management person. Nothing more, nothing less. I've never been upper management. I know no one at Wizards. I have no clue how close upper management is to their employees. I have no inside info as to much much/little people like brand managers are included in legal decisions and so on.

 

[Lizard]

I have very little -- almost no -- doubt that any public statements made by people WRT to the OGL/GSL were believed by the people making them when they made them. I also strongly doubt anyone deliberately deceived employees as to the future of the OGL.

I do believe people changed their minds -- or that management itself changed.

I also believe that there were errors in people's beliefs about how flexible the OGL was and how it could be 'modified' with ease. Being wrong is not the same thing as lying.

I think a combination of misunderstanding of the OGL and changes in both policy and personnel led WOTC to their current state of indecisiveness. I also think that no matter what policy they put worth, they've burned a LOT of goodwill. WOTC earned tremendous trust with the 'gentleman's agreement' back in 2000; it became a sign that companies could work with them and not get screwed. While no one paid money for the GSL yet, I know of companies which made plans and committed resources based on WOTCs timeline, which has cost them; I know of at least two companies which might have been planning to make 4e supplements but which, due to the delays, have reallocated resources towards other, competing, products. How all this translates into the 'bottom line' is very uncertain, but it's a clumsy misstep in public and corporate relations.

 

[Alzrius]

I'm wondering if any of the delays - and possible alterations - to the OGL this late are related to some of the other things WotC has seemingly done wrong lately.

If you think about it, WotC seems to have been tripping over its own feet almost since 4E was announced. Specifically, I'm referring to the fiasco involved with moving Dragon and Dungeon online. First they say they're going to have them be appearing on their website from now on until 4E launches. Then both magazines experience massive delays. Then the announcement that e-Dragon was going to basically serve as a 4E promo until the new edition launched.

Clearly, there was a lack of planning, and insufficient resources, taken with that particular step. Likewise, the GSL appears to have been similarly mis-managed in being held up so much, and apparently still being worked on.

Could the two have anything to do with each other, and/or with WotC receiving a new president? How deep do all of these internal troubles go?

 

[DaveMage]

I have very little -- almost no -- doubt that any public statements made by people WRT to the OGL/GSL were believed by the people making them when they made them. I also strongly doubt anyone deliberately deceived employees as to the future of the OGL.

I do believe people changed their minds -- or that management itself changed.

Then WotC higher management has killed their credibility going forward. How can anything they say (without written proof) have any value?

It reminds me of a column in Dragon Magazine shortly before TSR died. Allan Varney (IIRC) wrote a column indicating how well TSR was doing. It turned out to be quite incorrect. The credibility of that column was instantly destroyed. (Not that I blame Allan or those caught in the middle here, but it does mean that as long as they are in their current positions, their word alone loses significant value, IMO.)

 

[Ydars]

I am sure Scott and the others believed there would be a GSL when they announced it so there are three possible reasons for a backtrack/delay/cancellation;

1) Unable to deliver; WoTC seem to work by defining what they want to acheive, then they try and make it a reality. This is what they did with the 4E game engine itself so I suspect that they may have started out with the presmise "GSL will be a restricted OGL that doesn't support standalone games" and announced this. Then they now find they can't actually achieve it legally without undesirable side-effects (letting people use FR or Mindflayers because they wanted no settings books). Or that one legal stategy compromises other projects that they have yet to announce.

2) There has been a change of heart at WoTC because of new personnel (New CEO).

3) The reaction by 3PPs to the adoption of 4E was so lukewarm at the conference call (or read by WoTC as this) that they decided there was actually no real appetite for a GSL within the 3PP industry.

3 seems incredibly unlikely given what Clark at Necro has told us and his very public endorsement of 4E. I would like to know more about the attitude of the parties at that meeting (but it is probably all NDA'ed to hell, so no chance of that).

All in all, the delay is not very heartening and nor is the silence. I am hearing alot of static at the moment..sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss