D&D General io9: 2023 Should Have Been D&D's Best Year, Until It Wasn't

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

2023 Should Have Been D&D's Best Year, Until It Wasn't​

If the OGL controversy in January represented Wizards and Hasbro executives’ hubris in being able to strongarm its titanic grip on the TTRPG industry through the sheer force of D&D’s cultural dominance, then these layoffs are a mirror to how little that financial dominance means when it comes to safeguarding the workers that helped establish that success in the first place. Two tales of corporate greed bookended what should’ve been one of the greatest years for Dungeons & Dragons the game has ever seen—more popular than ever, more accessible than ever, more culturally relevant than ever—and in doing so transformed it into a golden era sullied with dark marks, overshadowed by grim caveats, a reflection that those with the most power in these spaces never really take the lessons they espoused to learn from their mistakes.

Read more at io9.

 

[Umbran]

Oh, that's funny.

io9: Our parent, G/O media, has fired most of our editorial staff, and all our genre media investigative reporters, and told folks we are leaning into generative AI for our stories. So let's write a story about how someone else screwed up this year!

 

[Clint_L]

That's some purple prose. Can we enter it in the Gygax competition?

 

[Zardnaar]

Oh, that's funny.

io9: Our parent, G/O media, has fired most of our editorial staff, and all our genre media investigative reporters, and told folks we are leaning into generative AI for our stories. So let's write a story about how someone else screwed up this year!

It's also spin.

Don't think anyone knows yet how 2023 has turned out.

May be big hit financially PR wise not so much.

 

[William Ronald]

Oh, that's funny.

io9: Our parent, G/O media, has fired most of our editorial staff, and all our genre media investigative reporters, and told folks we are leaning into generative AI for our stories. So let's write a story about how someone else screwed up this year!

Irony may be a fundamental building block of the universe.

I have seen major blunders by companies. As an ex-reporter, I hate layoffs and have to wonder how the media market will adapt to the new challenges. As for D&D, things are not as dire as when TSR stopped publishing. (I remember that and I would argue that many people who take or took business management courses should read Ryan Dancey's Why TSR Died.

 

[jerryrice4949]

Article is ironic and accurate. This should have been such an amazing year. Quality D&D movie, strong sales, preparations for the 50th anniversary and the continued mainstreaming of D&D not to mention video game of the year and instead it is PR bungle after PR bungle.

 

[Clint_L]

I’m going to say that it was an amazing year for the D&D brand. The OGL fiasco was inside baseball and I doubt there was much lasting impact in terms of stank on the brand. The AI art thing and delay on the cards for Deck…please. No one cares except people who need to write clickbait.

The brand impact of the movie and especially BG3 outweigh these by orders of magnitude.

Lousy year for Hasbro, though.

 

[Parmandur]

I’m going to say that it was an amazing year for the D&D brand. The OGL fiasco was inside baseball and I doubt there was much lasting impact in terms of stank on the brand. The AI art thing and delay on the cards for Deck…please. No one cares except people who need to write clickbait.

The brand impact of the movie and especially BG3 outweigh these by orders of magnitude.

Lousy year for Hasbro, though.

Yeah, the OGL thing did actually spill over into public conciousness...but not for long. Pretty sucky year for the people working on the gamez stress wise, and bad for engages fans. Which they can't keep up either one of those.

 

[Raith5]

Yeah, the OGL thing did actually spill over into public conciousness...but not for long. Pretty sucky year for the people working on the gamez stress wise, and bad for engages fans. Which they can't keep up either one of those.

Yes, but the OGL kerfuffle seems to provoked some other game companies to step and create more open games (that seem to have a fair of public interest as per the MCDM game). This could have longer term consequences for D&D - good for gamers but may effect D&D in terms of supporting the new version of 5e and may have consequences on a financial level.

 

[Yora]

What's different now is that the latest event will significantly cut into their ability to produce new products, in a year that is supposed to see the launch of a new edition and an in-house VTT, something very ambitious for a company whose history with developing D&D online services has been a very long string of failures.

Of course we could all see a big surprise and their plans for the next 6 to 12 months turn out amazingly and everything before will immediately be forgotten.
But even when the furious talking about the drama of the day dies down, the impacts of a continuing series of bad PR and disappointing products does add up over time.

And we have to ask if the underlying causes of the issues of the past year (and previous years) have been solved so that these things won't continue to happen. And it does not seem that there is any indication for that being the case.
Keep the same procedures in place, and expect the same outcome to continue.