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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Larry Fitz" data-source="post: 603621" data-attributes="member: 3949">Oni opined:WotC is selling you their books, not their website. Their website is a freebie, a perk, an extra. You may not like their website, or the content found there in, but you are not paying for it either. Just like eratta, WotC doesn't have to do these things. When you buy a book, you buy the content that is contained between the covers, nothing more. Then I point out:Wotc is a company endeavoring to make a profit. When you buy their books you pay for many things, you pay for the books, you pay for the advertising that got you to buy the books, you pay the salary on the nice underpaid receptionist, you pay for that huge space at GenCon, you pay for the R&D people who thought that a D&D movie was a good idea, and then got the worst people they could find to make it. You also pay for "free services" like the website. Mat Smith gets paid, he is not writing that ad copy for free. Yes, I called it ad copy, because that is what it is, it is not a review column, it is not news, it is ad copy. Wotc uses that space to promote sales, not actually inform the public. Because of the volume they do, Wotc has rudely low printing costs on a per book basis, this lower cost does not get passed on tothe consumer because they also have a much larger infrastructure than a small publisher like MEG or LI. The price of the books has to cover the price of that infrastructure and still leave enough left over to pay a profit to the people that own the company. They are not actually interested in your opinion of Mr. Smith's writing unless it actually affects how much money they make. The people who own that company are not gamers, they are businessmen. If the people running the company don't make them money, the people who own the company will find other people to run the company. It's that simple. Mr. Smith's campy ad copy is not going to become an economic issue to Wotc. Wotc still employs him even after it's layoffs because he is cost effective. They have research that tells them that spending X amount of dollars on advertising will increase the sales of their products by X+Y where Y>1. Mr. Smith is a small cog in that X. That being said, taking the point of view that when you buy a company's product the product itself is all you are buying is not entirely accurate. If you buy products from a compamny that tests it's products on animals, or makes their product in sweatshops with poor conditions, you are in effect endorsing that behavior with your sheckels, lucres, steel pieces what have you. No, having a company shill writing an inspid column is not the moral equivalent of animal testing or sweatshops, but it is a service you are paying for, even if indirectly.Personally, if you realize that the column is a shill for the company, I don't see how you can get mad at the style. If you don't like it, don't buy the book it's hyping, and tell Wotc that is why you aren't buying the book. If a number of people do this, and the number does not have to be high, the column will be written differently.</blockquote>

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