Hasbro/WotC has crossed the Trust Thermocline

[The Stray]

So I was this article linked on Twitter:

Breaching The Trust Thermocline

The basic idea is:

In large bodies of water, the temperature drops slowly the deeper one dives. That change can, if the descent is slow enough, feel almost imperceptible. Yet at a certain point, the water temperature drops sharply and alarmingly. This point is the thermocline—a near-physical barrier where warm water meets cold. The shift between the two is sudden and dramatic.

In business, particularly digital services or businesses relying on a subscription revenue model, trust works in the same way. Wired into those products and services is a “trust thermocline.” It is a point which, once crossed, otherwise healthy businesses and products suddenly collapse.

The article then goes on to talk about how:

In most cases, that failure follows a pattern: the company or service will be growing, whether in users or revenue, and perhaps rolling out new products that are bundled within an expanded subscription, or showing good adoption on their own. In many cases, there will not even seem to be a new rival in the market, with existing ones failing to threaten them through market share. Then suddenly, over a short period of time, sales and user numbers collapse. Consumers move to seemingly inferior products or simply disengage completely from the business.

The thermocline has been crossed.

At its simplest, the trust thermocline represents the point at which a consumer decides that the mental cost of staying with a product is outweighed by their desire to abandon it. This may seem like an obvious problem, yet if that were the case, this behavior wouldn’t happen so frequently in technology businesses and in more traditional firms that prided themselves on consumer loyalty, such as car manufacturers and retail chains.

The cause of this crossing is the slow erosion of individual trust in a brand which translates to a massive, large-scale abandonment of the product or service.

A multitude of micro-infractions for consumers don’t just harm an individual’s experience; they damage that trust commons until the trust thermocline is breached for large groups of users at the same time.

This, I feel, is a good explanation for the sudden kick in the pants that Hasbro/WotC are experiencing now. WotC was already causing problems for its major brands, particularly Magic: The Gathering. There's been several years worth of slowly simmering discontent in the MTG community over the direction the brand has gone, particularly since the start of the pandemic. The Magic 30th Anniversary collection, the introduction of Non-Magic IP into the game (up to the point that you can now find Universe Beyond cards in boosters for the latest Standard set), endless variants of cards that have no actual use in gameplay, direct-to-consumer sales eroding the brick-and-mortar hobby shops where people, you know, actually gather the play the game, and other decisions made to maximize revenue at the expense of customer service have eroded the trust commons of normally very loyal customers.

And then they turned their attention to D&D. I know I, personally, have been unhappy with the quality of recent products (I liked Tasha's, but was completely underwhelmed by more recent fare), suspicious of the OneDnD initiative (especially the moves that seem designed to move it further from the tabletop to a VTT that, importantly, does not yet exist and that they've massively failed to deliver before), and now the OGL 1.1/2.0 debacle kicking an entire industry in the jibblies -- this has gotten to the point where they have crossed the thermocline for me, and my patience for Hasbro/WotC is at an end.

They managed to weather a storm with 4e by backpedaling to the more open 5e, but they're going to have to do a LOT more work this time around to regain customer trust.

 

[overgeeked]

I don't think there's anything they can do as a company to regain my trust.

 

[mamba]

I don't know, this theory basically says there is a slow gradual erosion until it eventually crosses a line. That is not what happened here, they dropped a nuclear bomb without warning, nothing gradual about it.

 

[darjr]

I don't know, this theory basically says there is a slow gradual erosion until it eventually crosses a line. That is not what happened here, they dropped a nuclear bomb without warning, nothing gradual about it.

Note that in the details that slow encroaching can happen internally and in a two steps forward one step back sort of way.

Lurching as in the GSL attempt and then again now with the OGL 1.1/2.0 etc.

 

[The Stray]

I don't know, this theory basically says there is a slow gradual erosion until it eventually crosses a line. That is not what happened here, they dropped a nuclear bomb without warning, nothing gradual about it.

The erosion was there. It had been growing pretty steadily. This is just the move that made the cliff face crumble.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I had no issues with OneDND. I was cautiously optimistic about the VTT, and quite optimistic about 5.5. Whether or not I adopted the VTT, if you had asked me in December whether I would buy and play 5.5, I would have said it was all but guaranteed.

Sadly, after the OGL debacle, that's no longer the case. Even after their (rather limited) walk back, I just don't want to support them anymore. I'm not even angry... more like disappointed. At this point I prefer to take my business elsewhere (perhaps an ORC game, should that license live up to what's been written). It's not that I've shut the door to ever buying another WotC product again, but i don't see it happening in the foreseeable future either.

 

[Scribe]

I don't know, this theory basically says there is a slow gradual erosion until it eventually crosses a line. That is not what happened here, they dropped a nuclear bomb without warning, nothing gradual about it.

In terms of the thermocline, thats what the leak of the original documented terms was. The slow gradual erosion has been a thing again Wizards for some time, it just wasnt seen in exclusively D&D circles, because 5e has been on an upward trajectory since the rejection of 4e.

As noted though, in MtG, this has been going on for years now, and it came to a head a month or whatever ago, with the 30th 'release' of 4 packs of cards for over $1000 USD. They were rejected outright by the community, and not just MtG, but other CCG segments as well. It was a debacle.

Wizards then followed up on that banger of a PR gaff, by...doing all of this with the OGL.

This OGL fiasco, is the thermocline, where it goes from gradual, to shocking.

The comparison seems pretty apt, to me.

 

[The Stray]

I had no issues with OneDND. I was cautiously optimistic about the VTT, and quite optimistic about 5.5. Whether or not I adopted the VTT, if you had asked me in December whether I would buy and play 5.5, I would have said it was all but guaranteed.

Sadly, after the OGL debacle, that's no longer the case. Even after their (rather limited) walk back, I just don't want to support them anymore. I'm not even angry... more like disappointed. At this point I prefer to take my business elsewhere (perhaps an ORC game, should that license live up to what's been written). It's not that I've shut the door to ever buying another WotC product again, but i don't see it happening in the foreseeable future either.

That's a lot like how I feel (with more ambivalence towards OneDnD, but if you'd asked me a month a go I'd have said I'd still have tried it). That's why I think this is a thermocline, and not just regular disgruntlement. Disappointment, and feeling that I can do better. just a flat "this is going to keep happening. This is not the worst they will do." I'm just done, and I suspect a lot of other people are, too.

 

[mamba]

As noted though, in MtG, this has been going on for years now, and it came to a head a month or whatever ago, with the 30th 'release'

agreed, if we expand this from D&D to WotC, then this might function better as a steady decline. Both came to a head shortly after another too

 

[darjr]

Though in many ways we may still be in the slow decline phase overall. If you take the rest of the wider general player base into account.

Most of them may not have any idea if any of this.

We may just be too close and in the front cars that have already gone off the cliff.

Those of us with issues with this OGL thing that is.