Licensing, OGL and Getting D&D Compatible Publishers Involved

[Wicht]

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?

I don't know. I can only speak for myself. I don't claim to be representative of anyone other than me.

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.

Well, like I said, they had begun to lose me long before 4e and it was their utilization of the OGL, or lack thereof, which moved me out of their camp. My departure was not a matter of hostility (I found myself annoyed by some of their moves but there was no anger on my part), but a more passive thing due to other companies picking up the slack. If WotC had utilized a better attitude towards the OGL from earlier on, I think things would have happened very differently. Because a different attitude would have led to different behavior.

But that's all hindsight speculation and is irrelevant to what did happen. But I do think that a change in attitude towards the OGL would help them still today.

 

[dmccoy1693]

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.

You hit the nail on the head exactly how I am trying to use it. I said that I am thinking like a corporate executive that may or may not understand the nuances of our industry or even what goes into making a good game.

Most gamers (on both side of the debate) banter about the OGL from an almost philosophical prospective: "Did Paizo steal Wizards' customers?" "Is it good for the industry as a whole?" "Does it encourage good game designers?" etc. But the decision to use or not use the OGL rests (or rested, if the decision has already been made and they are just hanging onto that little tidbit) with an executive wants to hear the bottom line: "Will it help this company sell more books?" and not someone that is wax philosophical about the OGL. So using a buzzword like "sense of ownership" helps them understand why the OGL will help them sell more books.

And yes, as far as that same executive is concerned, the OGL is a marketing tool. It does not contribute directly to the bottom line but it will have an impact on it. How much that impact is a guess, but my educated guess is is that it would have a significant impact on 20% of their customer base that make up 80% of their revenue. The 80% of their customer base (i.e. @morris whole gaming group) will buy the PHB and maybe a supplement or two afterwards. For them the OGL doesn't mean a thing. But to the 20% of their customers that buy almost every single book they produce (aka most of us that hang out on message boards talking about things like the OGL) will buy probably compatible books as well (perhaps not as frequently as the D&D books, but still, more than the 80% of D&D's customers who are never even going to hear about anyone other than Wizards). It is that 20% that drive the remaining 80% of their customers to buy anything. if the GM says to his 4 players, "I don't like D&D 4e. I like Pathfinder and that is what I'm going to run." Well, that 1 person just cost wizards 4 copies of the PHB. Does it matter to the players that the reason the GM wants to use a monster book produced by another company such as the Book of Beasts because the group munchkin is going to buy the monster books produced by whichever company produced the game and he wants to surprise him. To that GM, the OGL matters. Or the GM doesn't have much time and makes frequent use of pre-published adventures and feels that Wizards doesn't really produce good adventures. To that GM, the OGL matters. Or there's the GM that makes his own NPCs and wants to throw something new and unique that the players had never seen before or is tired of always using options in the main company's books. To that GM, the OGL matters. And things like that make the difference for a GM deciding which game to play and who's books to buy on a regular basis.

So while it does not contribute directly to the bottom line, the OGL makes a difference in sales to Wizards.

And before someone calls my 80/20 numbers into question, the 80/20 rule is a pretty well known business rule. Lisa Stevens was part of the study for Wizards (back when she worked at Wizards) that proved that it was true for them and she talks about that on a not-infrequent basis.

 

[dmccoy1693]

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

I know, I keep trying to give Wicht XP but the system won't let me.

 

[DEFCON 1]

You hit the nail on the head exactly how I am trying to use it. I said that I am thinking like a corporate executive that may or may not understand the nuances of our industry or even what goes into making a good game.

Okay, now I see where you're coming from. Point made. And I can't even attempt to dispute it, because that would involve trying to understand the most basic corporate executive and how he thinks, and god knows based upon decisions made in places like Hollywood, they are some of the most inscrutable people on earth.

 

[Mark CMG]

While I don't think that Wizards is lying (or even misleading) how well the (anything) 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 (. . .)

Unless the RPG market has nearly doubled (or increased by 40% with all of it going to one company), it's simply impossible for the most recent edition to have done as well as the previous one. If D&D had, let's just say, 80% of the RPG market share in its hey day, and PF took half the market during the time of 4E and PF's rise, thus 40% each, then the market simply isn't large enough for the current edition to have done as well as the last. You don't need exact sales figures to reason that out.

 

[Nellisir]

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 bought 3e because I was exhausted by 2e.

I didn't make this point well enough in my earlier post. Prior to 3e, I posted material online, but I posted it as discrete files to the AOL/TSR file library. I don't remember if there was a review process, but certainly things that were blatant copies of D&D products were deleted. The OGL gave security to moving off of TSR's site and opening my own website, one not under the aegis of WotC.

I don't remember the exact sequence of events (this was 14+ years ago), but the internet was also a very different place. Google wasn't incorporated as a private company until 1998. It didn't go public until 2004. There was no Facebook. PDFs were relatively newfangled technology. There were a lot of rumors and second- or third-hand information about people getting cease & desist, or being sued, for the content of their websites. Companies like TSR & WotC were still figuring out how to deal with the internet.

I sold one article to Dragon, (and had 3 rejected) around the time 3e was announced (Gen Con 1999; the only Gen Con I've ever been to. My article was in the issue that was on sale that month.) The switch to 3e more or less killed my ambitions of writing for Dragon (I had to learn the system first), but the OGL opened up another avenue that hadn't been possible before. I was conflicted about it - I felt, and still feel, that the 3e publishing market has had a negative effect on the quantity and quality of free material - and decided that rather than sequester my campaign material and house rules against the possibility of one day publishing it, I'd put them on my own website with the OGL, for free. The intent was to develop other material for publishing, plus answering open calls, etc, etc. (again, never really worked out or followed through - I sent a few magic weapons properties to Bastion Press for Arms & Armor that got accepted, but otherwise I didn't submit anything anywhere.)

Not sure if that made sense. Basically, I always viewed "generic/publishable" and "house campaign/free" material as two separate tracks, and both were affected by the OGL.

 

[Nellisir]

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.

Does WotC see more value in D&D as an RPG, or in the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Magic The Gathering, etc, etc? I'd guess the latter, and WotC does not need to release any of that under the OGL.

 

[Mark CMG]

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.

Hard to win back lost customers even in ideal circumstances.

(. . .) I just don't see how changing their stance on the OGL would really have any substantive impact on people's attitudes towards WotC (. . .)

The advantage is in the support from other publishers who didn't, themselves, lose the goodwill of customers WotC lost and how those 3PP can potentially drive those customers back toward the core line offered by WotC.

 

[Morrus]

Hard to win back lost customers even in ideal circumstances.

I think you underestimate the fickleness of us gamers. If we're one thing, we're fickle. Our ability to transfer allegiance en masse overnight is legendary. Our ability to not see that about ourselves is equally legendary.

 

[Mark CMG]

I think you underestimate the fickleness of us gamers. If we're one thing, we're fickle. Our ability to transfer allegiance en masse overnight is legendary. Our ability to not see that about ourselves is equally legendary.

Perhaps. Or maybe as human beings we just look for reasons to forgive? Using the OGL for 5E seems like it would give many the rationale the need to try it.