Matt Colville weighs in.

[overgeeked]

With respect to the actual topic, as much as I like a lot of what Matt does and enjoy a lot of his videos, I think he's wrong about this.

Any way you slice it, they're asking people to pay more for less. I don't think it will work.

A lot of RPG gamers don't want any part of it. Especially the older, more plugged into the hobby and industry folks. They are generally going to be your DMs and GMs...who are the whale customers, who spend the most money and spend it on non-WotC products. Those are the people immediately affected by this. A lot of them seem to be bailing in droves.

But what about the kids coming in? The same kid Matt's worried about jumping on the VTT can buy an immersive video game for $50 that will generally give them hours of play. That video game is on their steamdeck or is a disc or is a download on their console and they can play that as many times as they want. Maybe a few bucks a month to play with friends online. Plus they already have dozens of free-to-play video games on their phones.

And WotC wants to directly compete with all that? Compete against flashy and noisy button smashers with a clunky turn-based game that you need other people to play with? No way. Yeah, the possibility of chat bot DMs exists...but it'll be years before there's any real chance of it being a thing they can rely on.

Think about actual plays for a second. WotC will want people to play on their VTT and stream it to show off how flashy it is. But how many of the live plays with actual followings will do that? Essentially none. So WotC will be advertising their VTT to the same customers they just pissed off or new people. Those new people will take one look at a clunky, turned-based game with micro-transactions and laugh. If they notice it at all. I mean...look at WoW. It's $60 every few years plus $15 a month and you could play that almost non-stop for a decade and not run out of stuff to do. (Heya, Asmon.) And next to that you have...a shiny VTT for a clunky turn-based game that you can't play solo at all.

 

[darjr]

I also have to wonder, if someone didnt look at Arena for MtG, and its profits during Covid and thought, 'why not D&D' without really thinking it through.

/speculation

Chris Cao was Executive Producer of MTG Arena.

 

[darjr]

 

[Scribe]

Chris Cao was Executive Producer of MTG Arena.

Well well well... lol.

 

[Greggy C]

Matt has lost the plot.

D&D lost to video games a long, long time ago.

Wotc 3D D&D will be a novelty for sure. Maybe it will be even better than playing on roll20 or Foundry. Who cares.

Kobold Press just made $800,000 churning out 5e content, not even new content, rehashed content.
Everyone will go back to making 5e content by the end of the year under OGL 2.0.

 

[Glade Riven]

We'll see. Wizards is going into it with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the foot. This is a social game, and there is no word about about social tools. And it's been shown that the executives running the show don't understand the game or the community.

 

[mamba]

FWIW, I think WoW is a slightly dated thing for what they're actually going for.

yes sure, it is, still the big one, that is why I used it. Go with Diablo IV then, or Path of Exile, or Lost Ark, or ... plenty to choose from and the TTRPG will be a lot more clunky than any of them if that is what they are aiming for

Colville mentions loot boxes. If that's near the target, it's more free-to-play / freemium online tabletop or something. A live service. Which can be a lot cheaper to launch than a full MMO.

Not really, you can gradually release content I guess (adventure modules), but in the end you need to have people playing. If they can get through your content in a week (ands they can...) then they won't keep spending

 

[Enrahim2]

The way I read mr Colville is that the big depressing thing here is that we will lose the gating into the hobby. It is a bait and switch. There will be people curious about this D&D thing, they will find references to it all over Internet. And when they check out how they can play, they are coming across this digital platform that provides an experience that is deceptively close to what is being presented in those old articles, just upgraded "for a new generation".

There will still be fighting dragons. There will still be talking in character rather than dialog options. There will still be character creation and builds, and for the full experience with live GM you will still have a real inteligence adapting to your custom input. And it is this later feature that can differentiate D&D from WoW and its decendants.

What they misses out is the wider creative experience that is harder to explain. The joy of fully freely imagine your character in all possible detail with no skin microtransactions involved. The experience of how insanely more creepy a scene can be in the teathre of the mind vs as assets on a screen. The creative freedom of coming up with, implementing and enforcing whole new mini rulesystems on the fly without any rechnical knowledge.

I tried running some games using highly automated VTT. While convinient for speeding up the mechanics, I found it heavily distracted both me and my players from really enjoying the creative aspects of the game. People were looking at the map artwork to orient themselves more than my descriptions. I was lucky enough to know a different style I can go back to.

The worry is that the next generation won't know, and won't have the chance as the weird stuff we are doing is clearly outdated and obsolete way of doing things. After all there are no known brands associated with it, and they are doing exactly the same just augmented with the best a computer can offer - right?

How are an activity where you have to do math in your head ever going to compete with that?

 

[overgeeked]

A slight counter to Matt's pessimism is Mike Shea's practicality...

 

[Clint_L]

We'll see. Wizards is going into it with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the foot. This is a social game, and there is no word about about social tools. And it's been shown that the executives running the show don't understand the game or the community.

So, those same kids I work with? They care a lot about the OGL thing, judging from their chatter. Again, they're young. They're mostly a lot more liberal than older folks. Right now they see WotC as The Man. And they are naturally inclined to dislike The Man.

A self-inflicted gunshot wound indeed - and worse than WotC yet realizes, IMO.

 

[DarkCrisis]

They are changing D&D and I don’t like it! They are targeting some new crowd, what about us long time fans!

Uh oh, you are the Grognards now.

 

[Glade Riven]

Proud to be a 3.5 Grognard.

 

[Maxperson]

I don't have the patience to listen to 32 minutes of stuff. Do you have the Cliff Notes?

 

[see]

Even a bad WoW is going to make them more money than the best version of a TTRPG ever could.

If that were true, it would already be true of D&D Online, and nobody at Hasbro would be paying any attention to the TTRPG. Making money from MMOs is trickier than the big successes make it look.

(Similarly, having the first graphical MMO -- predating WoW by thirteen years, and the release of the World Wide Web to the public by several months -- be a D&D/Forgotten Realms license didn't remotely stop TSR from going bankrupt and D&D having to be bought out by the Wizards of Cardboard Crack.)

Which is why I also think Colville is blowing hot air. There looks like there's potential profit in the subscription online game services space, sure, but it is not remotely certain that Wizbro's model or execution will actually out-profit the happy TTRPG community they've had the last few years. After all, the last Wizbro attempt to do the online services thing with D&D failed pretty hard (at least based on the massive reduction in staff and the radical change in direction that followed a handful of years later). That they won't necessarily hit all the same pitfalls (they've already repeated the GSL mistake) doesn't mean they'll actually manage to succeed.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Here Hasbro isn't who has got the last word.

Let's imagine Hasbro gets its way and they start to make a lot of money with their exclusive VTT. Could you guess what was going to happen? Then other heavyweights from the entertaiment industry would think "if Hasbro can with their VTT then we could also with our own VTT". Then this wouldn't be Hasbro's lawyers against 3PPs but against bigger megacorporations. And these with some licences Hasbro would wish. Let's imagine Disney wanted to create a VTT for Star Wars and Marvel Superheroes. Hasbro here would be silent as a tombstone because they wanted the licence for the toys. Or if Hasbro was talking with Embracer Group for a merger, then they couldn't touch a hair about Fantasy Flight Games.

Hasbro has to forget the idea they could enjoy the monopoly of the VTTs. If the videogame studios want to follow the same steps, then Hasbro can do nothing to avoid it.

Here my good is Hasbro should to try a better relationship with the 3PPs. If these create interesting new IPs then they could become target, a relatively easy prey for entertaiment megacorporations. Then Hasbro offer some "help" so the 3PPs could stay independient. Here the D&D Beyond could work as a streaming service for the 3PPs. And if later some 3PP can survive more time and it has to be closed, WotC could buy its IPs.

If you aren't polite then you can't hope to be invited into more parties. Even if we have got the money and the wish to buy those products, we don't want to feel we are being cheated and paying more really necessary. We are geek, but not stupid, we have got our own pride. They have to forget the idea we are compulsive-consumer zombies.

Other suggestion is D&D VTT to can be used with different game styles. For example a town in Ravenloft could be used for a survival horror , arcade style as Resident Evil or Evil Within or graphic adventure as Alone in the Dark or Silent Hill. Some gamers would be enjoying creating quests and adventures as if D&D Beyond was a game creator (Little Big Planet, Sony's Dreams, Roblox, Manticore's Core, Fortnite Creative Mode..).

We aren't manchines, and in the business your strategy needs enough flexibility to adapt to upcoming changes.

 

[tetrasodium]

Here Hasbro isn't who has got the last word.

Let's imagine Hasbro gets its way and they start to make a lot of money with their exclusive VTT. Could you guess what was going to happen? Then other heavyweights from the entertaiment industry would think "if Hasbro can with their VTT then we could also with our own VTT". Then this wouldn't be Hasbro's lawyers against 3PPs but against bigger megacorporations. And these with some licences Hasbro would wish. Let's imagine Disney wanted to create a VTT for Star Wars and Marvel Superheroes. Hasbro here would be silent as a tombstone because they wanted the licence for the toys. Or if Hasbro was talking with Embracer Group for a merger, then they couldn't touch a hair about Fantasy Flight Games.

Hasbro has to forget the idea they could enjoy the monopoly of the VTTs. If the videogame studios want to follow the same steps, then Hasbro can do nothing to avoid it.

Here my good is Hasbro should to try a better relationship with the 3PPs. If these create interesting new IPs then they could become target, a relatively easy prey for entertaiment megacorporations. Then Hasbro offer some "help" so the 3PPs could stay independient. Here the D&D Beyond could work as a streaming service for the 3PPs. And if later some 3PP can survive more time and it has to be closed, WotC could buy its IPs.

If you aren't polite then you can't hope to be invited into more parties. Even if we have got the money and the wish to buy those products, we don't want to feel we are being cheated and paying more really necessary. We are geek, but not stupid, we have got our own pride. They have to forget the idea we are compulsive-consumer zombies.

Other suggestion is D&D VTT to can be used with different game styles. For example a town in Ravenloft could be used for a survival horror , arcade style as Resident Evil or Evil Within or graphic adventure as Alone in the Dark or Silent Hill. Some gamers would be enjoying creating quests and adventures as if D&D Beyond was a game creator (Little Big Planet, Sony's Dreams, Roblox, Manticore's Core, Fortnite Creative Mode..).

We aren't manchines, and in the business your strategy needs enough flexibility to adapt to upcoming changes.

I don't think that hasbro can unring the bell this whole OGL thing set off. Paizo Kobold Press & MCDM aren't going to walk away from ORC blackflag & this while similar holds true for the many other 3PP already acting in self defense.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

If you are a 13 year old wanting to play D&D you either join a game by someone already experienced in it, who is often older and in many cases will not be getting you plugged into the digi-D&D experience, or you buy the materials hoping to get a group together, during which time, if you have that sort of engagement, you probably watch some liveplays or something with people modeling some facsimile of what D&D has traditionally been, or you join your school's D&D club run by some teacher whose super into the game and unlikely to steer students towards expensive digital habits.

I'm not saying digital services aren't going to capture a disproportionate number of the young, but I think the Colville scenario of "and all the kids just grow up believing D&D is X" is basically nonsense.

The underlying bit of truth is that WotC may well go ahead and kill their brand as the monolithic center of tabletop gaming in order to build a hybrid digital-tabletop MMO monstrosity we barely recognize but that bleeds the cash from the substantially smaller user base it retains much more effeciently than D&D historically has the bulk of its customers. But without the nonsense myth that they also somehow kill all knowledge of ttrpgs in the era where what such things actually are is much more familiar to the general public than it ever has been before, what we actually see in this scenario is a giant opening for non-D&D ttrpgs to make up some ground.

It's a tremendous and lamentable waste, and I will certainly be upset with WotC if they so stupidly destroy a brand that matters to me. But I think I went through the various stages of grief over the last few months as I came to accept that 5.5 was not going to be a game for me, and at this point I am just excited that my comfort-zone of 5e will probably get a minor stay of execution as everyone's enthusiasm to immediately jump ship to 5.5 shrivels up, that there will be a panoply of other games catering to 5e refugees like me on the near horizon, and that the ttrpg hobby in general has a golden opportunity to break one would-be-monopolist's stranglehold.

 

[ValamirCleaver]

They see that as the goal, the promise. Oh they see us as WoW! Winning.

Even a bad WoW is going to make them more money than the best version of a TTRPG ever could.

Aren't there already 2 D&D MMOs? In comparison to WoW how are they doing? Do they charge anything close to $30/month? Since 2000 how well has D&D digital initiatives fared?

 

[UngeheuerLich]

As much as I feel with 3pp, the hyperbole is strong with this one.

 

[Bagpuss]

To paraphrase: I don’t care I’m still free, they can’t take the dice from me.

Stealling that.

And I'm cancelling that after one season.