overgeeked
B/X Known World
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.
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.
