Licensing, OGL and Getting D&D Compatible Publishers Involved

[dmccoy1693]

you are treating correlation as causation.

And you're treating corporate executives like they understand the difference between correlation and causation. While I do want to believe that Wizards is a company that is a different kind of company than most of Corporate America, I vividly remember Scott Rouse in a candid moment here on these boards bemoaning the fact that the license was stuck in committees and how he was spending a considerable about of time at that particular point in time in meetings that were going nowhere. I realized that while the game developers, much like software programmers, are hard workers and love games much like you and me and everyone else here on these boards, they have a layer above them that may or may not be as such. They are just like every other corporate management out there. They may or may not understand the nuances of the industry all that well. They may or may not understand why they should allow their fans to post their homebrew material on their website. They may or may not understand what is a good game.

What they do understand is how to manage people to do the work, profits, and graphs. And what I described in my post above would be the basis for a graph on how to make more profits. Now while it is true that I did take facts that are correlated and make them out to be causation, if you make a bar graph of sales vs OGL usage, a corporate executive would see the two as directly related and say "Go OGL." Seriously, this kind of thinking is straight out of the Dilbert (or any corporate office).

 

[dmccoy1693]

But, is this actually true? The 4e PHB outsold any other PHB since 1e. Unless WOTC was flat out lying about that. The game is profitable enough that it has allowed WOTC to take a 2 year hiatus from publishing any new material while they develop 5e, which is unprecedented for any gaming company.

While I don't think that Wizards is lying (or even misleading) how well the 4e PHB1 sold, I highly suspect that the 4e PHB 2 and 3 sold nowhere near as well, not to mention all other supplements and cards and so forth. I also suspect that it wasn't D&D's profits that allowed them to take the time to develop 5e but rather Magic's since MtG is Hasbro's #2 property. I imagine that profits from that game alone allows them to fuel the rest of the company, no matter how well anything else sold. Also, since the start of 2012, they have release 21 D&D fiction titles (plus 1 more coming later this year), 2 D&D Board games and 1 expansion, 6 dungeon command sets, collectors version of all their major versions and released much of their back stock as PDFs. So they have managed their property quite well to pay the bills and keep the money coming in while working on the new version.

Besides, no company would just stop releasing for 2 solid years if they had a choice. The way a company would want to do it is the way they did the 4e transition: produce material for the old version until the minute they switched over. They probably looked at a cost-benefit analysis and discovered it would cost them less money to focus all their people (not working on the above mentioned products) on a new version instead of splitting their people between coming up with more products and developing a new edition. From a business prospective, this is the most logical answer.

 

[pemerton]

Does the OGL above not point back to the original open content within the SRD, hence they get to use D&Disms, such as spell names, classes, ability scores? And doesn't the reference in the language of the OGL point at the original open content?

If not, how do they use they gain access to classes, spells etc without breach of IP ownership by WoTC? (I'm really curious about this now)

i always read section 15 as a general copyright, but now it all makes actual sense.

The first time that you actually release a game text as OGC under the OGL, the terms of the licence (clause 6) specify that you include a copyright notice for your game text within section 15 of the licence as that licence appears within your game text.

To see where WotC did this for their SRD, have a look the file called "legal.rtf" on this webpage.

Here is the FATE Core OGL license. Is it identical to Wizards? I think it is.

Yes. You can see that the text of the licence is itself copyright WotC.

 

[pemerton]

3E came along, Wizards release the core rules for everyone to use under the OGL, giving the fans a sense of ownership that they never had before. This made the fans happy, allowing them to sell more books.

Then they switched to 3.5 and released the core rules again under the OGL. The fans still had that same sense of ownership. While it did not sell as well as 3E, it did sell still quite well. They were selling good numbers of books.

Then came the switch to 4E and used a completely different license that was not give the fans the same sense of ownership. Infact it felt more like a leased vehicle or a rented apartment then owning a home or a car. Fans were not happy and thus did not buy in good numbers.

I don't know of any particular evidence that 4e was not bought "in good numbers".

I don't see why WotC would have stopped publishing 3.5 and started with 4e if they didn't think they could improve their sales. And as [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] has indicated, they did. I think it's pretty clear they didn't reach their $50 million target. Is their evidence that their D&D revenue stream in (say) 2011 was significantly different from the D&D revenue stream in (say) 2007?

Meanwhile Pathfinder, a game that was using the OGL, gave the fans that same sense of ownership to the rules. This made the fans of D&D happy, and it did not take long for them to outsell D&D. Pathfinder sold in good numbers for using the OGL.

Do we know that PF has generated more revenue over its lifetime than 4e over its?
[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] has said that we don't know these things. I think he's right.

I also suspect that it wasn't D&D's profits that allowed them to take the time to develop 5e but rather Magic's since MtG is Hasbro's #2 property. I imagine that profits from that game alone allows them to fuel the rest of the company

Does WotC subsidise D&D via MtG? I've never heard this said before, which isn't to say that it's not the case. But I thought each product line reported as a distinct item to Hasbro, and that that is why D&D has to aim for a $50 million target on its own.

Even less well known games that used the OGL were doing well. Spirit of the Century, Traveller, Mutants and Masterminds, and a bunch others. They all had that same sense of ownership and made their fans happy. They were selling in good numbers.

Are you seriously suggesting that these games sold better than 4e?

So the conclusion that a corporate executive would draw is:
Use the OGL =>
Give customers a sense of ownership =>
Customers are happy =>
Higher sales. [/quote]The conclusion I would draw from the 3E/PF/4e debacle, were I a WotC executive, is that pissing off your fans in a niche hobby market, in an environment in which you have granted all your competitors a royalty free licence to try and capture your customer base, is something to be avoided.

I would therefore look for a way to avoid pissing off my fans without granting my competitors a royalty free licence to try and capture my customer base. The D&Dnext "big tent" rhetoric seems to be one element of the "avoid pissing off my fans" part of this strategy.

Now to answer everyone who has been saying, "But that will hurt 6E in 5 years." Yea, well, do you know what 5 years is to a corporate executive: 20 quarters of earning reports. If you were a corporate executive, would you really want to tell shareholders for the next 20 quarters that you a) are making lower sales then you could have because you didn't use some obscure marketing tool that is niche to the industry that would have made customers happy, or b) you have higher sales then in previous quarters because you allowed the fans a sense of ownership, making them happy that also enabled somebody in their home garage to make something compatible with your product and not get sued over it? What would you rather say?

The OGL is not an obscure marketing tool. It is a royalty free licence to your IP, which - for a publishing company - is one of your most valuable assets.

As a corporate executive, my job would include working out to leverage my assets to generate maximum revenue over the near- to medium-term. (I agree the long term tends to be disregarded.) It is going to take a fair bit to persuade me that the best way to do that is to give all my competitors a royalty free licence to exploit those assets.

I more-or-less agree with [MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION] upthread, though I'd put it in terms of "customer preferences" rather than "quality". 4e is a game that seems designed to people who like (i) gonzo fantasy, (ii) highly technical action resolution, and (iii) a high degree of indie-style player protagonism achieved via metagame mechanics. In these respects it overlaps somewhat with Burning Wheel, though BW is less gonzo and more gritty and thematically "serious". WotC - whether guided by Heinsoo, or Mearls, or Slavicsek, or Ron Edwards, or whomever - seemed to have thought that there was a big market for this sort of game which Luke Crane had not yet tapped but which they could. It turns out they were wrong. (Though I don't think they really had the best go at it that they might have - their GMing advice was so-so, and their pre-packaged adventures were bad.)

Misjudge your customer preferences like this, in an environment in which your competitor can continue to publish material for the ruleset that you've abandoned, and you won't do as well as you had hoped! The idea that people who hate fighter dailies, and "player empowerment", and "everything is core", would have happily played 4e if only it was released as OGC, strikes me as somewhat fanciful.

 

[Cyberen]

The Official Executive Advice I would give to WotC is :
Stop competing with yourself !
Which is exactly what they're aiming for with Next "Big tent" approach.
As PHB are major hits sale-wise, I wouldn't let anybody be able to compete with mine for some time (one or two GenCons/Xmas, perhaps)
Once the edition is on rails and thriving, I would release most of it as OGC, and keep on selling supporting material (including already paid, prior editions material !), transmedia spin-offs, etc.
I would also rewrite the OGL in order to permit limited copying, book printing, but keeping web-based massive diffusion under control, in order to protect their very lucrative DDI subscription model. (and I don't have a clue about the means to achieve those ends)

 

[DEFCON 1]

Talking with them seems to suggest the drive to create and share that creativity is not a small factor in the RPG community, at least that has always been the feeling I get from our crowd. Maybe I am wrong. But I would like to think not.

I would not disagree with you here in the slightest. I think you are absolutely right, people enjoy showing off their stuff and knowing that other people are making use of it. My only quibble is with the idea that this was only possible because of the OGL, and that is what drove people to buying the game. Nellsir right below your post made an interesting point that he felt "safer" putting his stuff online that he did before that... but at the same time, he was in fact posting his stuff online prior even when he didn't feel as safe. So it wasn't the OGL that drove him to buy 3E, because he did with 3E the same stuff he did with editions prior.

I'm only bringing this up because dmmcoy used "sense of ownership" so many times in his post to justify the use of the OGL, that it just came off to me as nothing more than a marketing buzzword. So I'm trying to figure out what exactly he means by it in a way that truly illustrates why people bought 3E because of it. And "sense of ownership" just isn't passing my sniff test.

 

[Zireael]

The OGL can point back to the SRD. Section 15 is the pertinent section. Each book that uses the OGL references prior OGC (Open Gaming Content) in section 15 and then lists itself in section 15.

Thus, if I was doing a Pathfinder book, I would reference in section 15 the SRD, the Core Rulebook, The Book of Experimental might, the Tome of Horrors, any other book I might wish to use, and then would list my own book.

If I was doing a non-d20 book, I might reference a Fate book or some other book. But if you look at the Fate form used above, it is the WotC OGL, but it does not reference the SRD, rather it becomes a new base upon which to build.

But any content released under the OGL is thus OGC, and can be used by anyone else. The d20 SRD, released by Wizards, has reference to some particulars, such as monster names, Alignment, and the like, that make it easier to use to recreate a game using the same terms, because the terms themselves have become Open Content.

"You must spread some Experience Points around".
Exactly. It's as easy as pie.

 

[Wicht]

So it wasn't the OGL that drove him to buy 3E, because he did with 3E the same stuff he did with editions prior.

Yes, but the attitude towards doing that stuff was different. I know exactly what Dale was meaning, because I felt it when I realized what the OGL was. It happened after I bought my first 3e book, but once it sank in, the attitude change towards the game itself (and WotC) was deep and profound, though the effects were not immediately obvious.

While I hesitate to criticize WotC, because to some it comes off as edition warring, which it is not because it happened way before 4e, I would point out, that WotC squandered that feeling of good-will produced in me by the OGL. They simply never took advantage of it and pushed the OGL aside so that other companies, such as Green Ronin, and Swords and Sorcery, and Necromancer became the guardians of the OGL. This meant that for me, in a practical sense I began looking away from WotC well before 4e was announced and by the time 4e was rolling out, my fidelity, such as it was, was with Paizo and Necromancer. But it was not solely because of the products these companies were producing, though I thought the Rise of the Runelords to be fantastic, but because they were supporting the OGL, and the OGL was a thing that created a sense of "ownership" in me towards the game. And all of this was well before I had anything published.

 

[Wicht]

I would also rewrite the OGL in order to permit limited copying, book printing, but keeping web-based massive diffusion under control, in order to protect their very lucrative DDI subscription model. (and I don't have a clue about the means to achieve those ends)

One of the features of the OGL is that if a new version is released, a revised version, publishers can choose to use the version they prefer (as per section 9 of the license), so trying to create a more restrictive form of the OGL is sorta pointless. They either need to use the OGL, use a different license, or use no license. Marvelous thing that OGL, covers a lot of possibilities

 

[DEFCON 1]

Yes, but the attitude towards doing that stuff was different. I know exactly what Dale was meaning, because I felt it when I realized what the OGL was. It happened after I bought my first 3e book, but once it sank in, the attitude change towards the game itself (and WotC) was deep and profound, though the effects were not immediately obvious.

While I hesitate to criticize WotC, because to some it comes off as edition warring, which it is not because it happened way before 4e, I would point out, that WotC squandered that feeling of good-will produced in me by the OGL. They simply never took advantage of it and pushed the OGL aside so that other companies, such as Green Ronin, and Swords and Sorcery, and Necromancer became the guardians of the OGL. This meant that for me, in a practical sense I began looking away from WotC well before 4e was announced and by the time 4e was rolling out, my fidelity, such as it was, was with Paizo and Necromancer. But it was not solely because of the products these companies were producing, though I thought the Rise of the Runelords to be fantastic, but because they were supporting the OGL, and the OGL was a thing that created a sense of "ownership" in me towards the game. And all of this was well before I had anything published.

I don't doubt that open gaming has had this big of an impact on you as a consumer. But the real question is though... is how many other people actually see things the way you do? Enough such that it makes an actually noticeable difference in the sales of 5E? Maybe I'm cynical, but I don't think it's really that much of a factor in the grand scheme of things, despite what people say.

I mean let's be honest... besides the OGL, what were the two other reasons people said they wouldn't support WotC and/or 4E?

1) It was the "badwrongfun" attitude that they supposedly gave off when they introduced 4E. But they've made it a point to change that during these open playtest months, and are trying to make the game as inclusive as possible. But I don't believe we've heard nearly the same number of people giving WotC credit for this attitude change and their word that they will give 5E a fair shake, as we did the number of people caterwauling against them back in '07 and '08.

2) It was not having any D&D products available for download that made countless people scream out that they would never support WotC so long as they had these byzantine attitudes and hatred towards their customers. But now that Wizards have released all their old material in PDF form... I don't recall seeing nearly the same amount of people on boards like this saying they are now coming back to WotC's D&D because of it.

Now is my memory possibly a bit faulty on my recollections on the numbers and strident attitudes of people back in the transition to 4E? Maybe. But at the same time... I honestly don't think so. I really think that anyone who was here during that time would agree that the amount of time, energy, and anger spent on ripping WotC a new one for the "badwrongfun" and the removal of the PDFs far, far outweighed the time, energy, and thankfulness people have had towards WotC for changing their stances on both of those point. I mean hell... we STILL get people complaining about the tired "skip the guards to get to the fun" statement Wyatt made.

So I'm sorry... but I just don't see how changing their stance on the OGL would really have any substantive impact on people's attitudes towards WotC enough to actually generate substantial additional sales of 5E over what they'd get without it... since their changes to the other two have not seemed to create a giant groundswell of support either.

But like I said.. maybe I'm just cynical.