WotC How much does Hasbro / WotC impact your feelings towards D&D?

[Scars Unseen]

I put a "3" because I believe that WotC's (or Hasbro's, your pick) business strategies dominate their game design more than a genuine desire to make the best product possible. I don't fault a company for trying to make money, but the way they do it can and does diminish my enthusiasm for the products they're making.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

So that's a fallacy and a manipulative trick one after the other.

Mod Note:

It is one thing to point out a possible fallacy in someone’s posts. It is quite another to openly accuse someone of being manipulative. The first is fine; someone suspected of the latter should be reported, not called-out in thread.

 

[Parmandur]

No really, all three are now profitable. I am not speculating. All three are in fact profitable now. Disney reported a $47 million quarterly profit from its Hulu and Disney+ services (and a break down of I believe the second quarter just came out, with both services in the black even more), while WBD earned $103 million profit from its Max service per year. Amazon is more difficult to tell as they cannot precisely measure which portion of subscribers are there primarily for free shipping, for streaming, or the combination. But many financial reports believe they are now profitable since moving to advertisements.

The big one ia Netflix, which is majorly profitable Quarter to Quarter. The movie streaming business model is still in it's infancyy, but it is coming online in a big way.

 

[Oofta]

Because it's not about the facts of reality. Its about finding a reason for doomsaying over D&Dbeyond.

In my opinion, it's actually hard to find a future timeline that ends with the criteria postulated in the book. It requires so many weird changes to the hobby, like random companies just leaving the hobby.

But maybe that's just me being too simple to understand.

Source: Chokepoint Capitalism - Wikipedia

Nah. WotC and D&D are not Amazon or Google. Those companies use many anti-competitive tools, such as Google handing payouts to ensure their search engine was the default which has led to antitrust rulings in federal court in the US. If you go back further, a historical example would be GM buying out all the public transit like trolley cars and bus services for the purpose of shutting them down so people were forced to buy cars.

I don't see anything approaching that ever happening with D&D. First, they learned their lesson and are now supporting 3PP more than ever. Even if WotC ever tried to control the market, there are plenty of other social pastimes out there. Nobody can ever be forced to play D&D, much less use Sigil or DDB. The idea is that somehow Sigil is going to so dominate all VTTs that, along with DDB, the will gain such power in the TTRPG and VTT market that they're a virtual monopoly is borderline conspiracy theory with no real justification. It's making a mountain out of an imaginary molehill.

D&D may be the 800 pound gorilla but there's still plenty of competition. Sigil could, maybe someday, dominate the VTT environment but there are, and will continue to be, plenty of options.

 

[Umbran]

You are really trying to make a general problem a personal issue, so you can dismiss it.

How you feel about a company is a personal issue. It is not a general problem.

 

[Umbran]

You are confusing chokepoint with a monopoly right now

No, I am not. A chokepoint must be able to restrict flow, or it isn't a chokepoint. If you can easily go around, it isn't a chokepoint.

 

[Mistwell]

You are really trying to make a general problem a personal issue, so you can dismiss it.

No, I am addressing what you said. If this isn't even about you, then are you trying to speak on behalf of unknown people who have not even expressed this issue and it's not even impacting you?

I am not dismissing your view but I am addressing it and finding it wanting. I am asking if your view is because it's your group doing this to you (the pressure thing you mentioned), or you have evidence of other being pressured. You got upset when I assumed it was yours, because you kept expressing it as if it were, but if it's not even you then yeah, I think it's pretty unsupported for you to say "It will be so popular and people will like it so much that will be bad because I think it's a bad inferior product and others will be pressured into using it anyway." You have a lot of assumptions to support there - 1) it's bad, 2) it will be huge despite being bad, 3) others won't compete with a better product, and 4) people will be pressured to using it despite them not liking it. So far the only support for any of this is you don't like it, and I assumed you felt pressured.

 

[Mistwell]

The big one ia Netflix, which is majorly profitable Quarter to Quarter. The movie streaming business model is still in it's infancyy, but it is coming online in a big way.

Yeah he was saying only Netflix is profitable and everyone else is failing and I was saying Disney+, Hulu and HBO are all now also profitable. The free services with ads are also showing profits. I think he's focused on a few that were struggling, or had some bad reports and cut backs, and extrapolating from that they're all failing. That's not the case. The model is adapting over time and there definitely is successful competition and no, as he claims, chokepoint in that industry.

 

[SteveC]

I've been thinking about this issue for a while as I've been seeing the thread expand. Really, the answer is that it's taking my modest interest in the new books and making me care much less about them. I'm not buying the books, but I plan on picking the PHB up on Foundry to support the Foundry developers. More than that, the new Ember campaign in Kickstarter will run under the new edition of 5E so there's even more reason for me to go there.

Outside of that, I have little enthusiasm for the game. That's partially because there hasn't been much buzz on the Edition (the biggest event in D&D history ever, which I'll never see again). But moreso it's because of all of the things WotC management has been up to. It's killed the modest interest I had in it.

This year I've backed Kickstarters that aren't something I'm likely to play much if at all. That's because I wanted to support the developers and encourage them. I'm ready to spend money on things, you just have to really get me to care about your project. And WotC has done an excellent job of killing my interest in something I dearly love.

Just one more thing. There is no way I'm buying the print books, but I might buy them as PDFs. Only that doesn't seem to be an option. So no sale for me.

 

[CordTheSeeker]

To the original question, I would say WotC/Hasbro has very little impact on how I feel about D&D--- but it's more than 0%. Corporate decisions clearly influences creative decisions, but it hasn't been so detrimental I'm willing to work myself into a frothing lather.

I could easily eschew official D&D for an earlier version or Old School Essentials, Basic Fantasy, Cairn, Knave, etc. if I still want to experience what I consider to be D&D.