Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5486009" data-attributes="member: 42582">This, on the other hand, I can't really get behind. Whereas the Dungeon Delver's response turns precisely on the contrast between a personal communication and a communication from the representative of a commercial entity, this response seems not to appreciate that difference.In particular, what is this "credibility" thing? I've played games (ICE games, to be precise) where whole lines have gone out of sale and support because an IP holder (Tolkien Enterprises) severed its connection to the company. Does this mean that Tolkien Enterprises has "lost credibility" with me and I boycott Peter Jackson's movies? No. It's a commercial entity making commercial decisions. This is the reality of an environment where the materials with which we entertain ourselves are privatised and commodified.WotC, in building in the so-called "poison pill", and in its dealings with the PDFs, and in placing restrictions on the RPGA - it's inhouse gaming club - is simply making commercial decisions about how to best make use of its primary asset, namely, its IP. WotC is under no greater moral obligation, in my view, to make its IP available via a more generous GSL, or via online PDFs, or via a more liberal policy with the RPGA, than is Tolkien Enterprises to make its IP available to ICE for producing MERP RPGs and ME:TW CCGs.It might be disappointing that a form of entertainment that once was available now is not. But painting this as akin to a moral failing on the part of WotC, when WotC is under no moral duty (that I'm aware of) to deal with its IP in anything other than a commercial fashion, just doesn't work for me.As for WotC's need to "rebuild credibility" - the somewhat ironic thing here is that the only reason they would have for doing so is the commercial benefit that might accrue to them from making new sales to old fans. It seems strange to me that some people would take a sort of moral or personal validation from what would, in fact, be merely a commercial decision, driven by exactly the same considerations as drove the decisions to which the same people earlier objected. It wouldn't be as if WotC (or its designers) had actually formed a different view, for example, about the merits of one form of D&D over another.More bluntly - why would an individual care about the opinion that some commercial entity - be it WotC or whomever else -  has of that individual's hobbies and passtimes.</blockquote>

Verification