Minority Opinion: Why is the loss of the magazines just fine?

[delericho]

Dragon did that to 50,000 readers or so, out of a player base of, um, 1 million?

1) That's 5% of the player base, including a large number who are in prison/in the armed forces/otherwise without internet access. Now, you may not consider those latter categories significant, since they probably don't buy much, but for the vast majority there will come a time when they get out/get home/etc, and then they might. (Oh, and my apologies to anyone offended by my juxtaposition of folks in prison with those in the armed forces - it's just that this time they have something in common.)

2) There is a difference between the number who bought Dragon and the number who read it - magazines have a habit of being shared round a group, so I suspect the readership was perhaps 1.5 times the sales figures.

3) Similarly, for each copy sold at the newsstand (not subscriptions) there were probably one or two other people who considered buying it each month and decided against. These people are still connected to the hobby by that decision, even if they ultimately don't buy.

4) The customer base is rather smaller than the player base. I would wager that of that 1,000,000, more people don't even own a PHB than do own any given book outwith the Core Rulebooks.

Yep, it was the thread keeping the hobby alive.

It's not the thread keeping it alive, but it is a thread. Internet message boards (notably ENWorld and Wizards.com) comprise a second, the FLGS a third, and the player network a fourth. There are probably one or two others I've omitted as well.

This move cuts one of those threads, and further harms an already ailing FLGS. If the Digital Initiative works, it will massively strengthen the internet link, and all will be well. But if the DI fails, as I fear and expect it will, the game could well be in real trouble.

So, yes, I think this is a big mistake.

I'm also somewhat concerned that the Wizards management (but not the design team) may have come to see their customer base in much the same terms as the Warhammer/Magic bases (and perhaps World of Warcraft as well, but I don't really know about that one), where they expect a complete churn of the customer base every two years. Under that model, you get the newbie in, you sell him a lot of stuff very quickly, you make your money, and then in eight months you never see him or hear from him again. The problem with that view, especially online, is that D&D has a much higher 'buy-in' (in terms of reading rules, assembling a group, creating characters and adventures...) than these other things. It's just so much easier to get into WoW that I don't know if large numbers of people will keep coming into the game.

 

[Wombat]

Since I haven't played straight-up D&D in years and since I never used or much cared for any of the "official" campaign settings, the loss of these magazines makes very little impact on me except on the broader geek-cultural end.

 

[Ghendar]

It is not a problem because there is bugger all we can do about. Adapt, move on, and hope that the new thing WotC does works well.

You honestly believe there is nothing we can do about it? Protest does sometimes result in reversals of decisions.

 

[Jarrod]

Because I'm an optimist.

Dungron magazne was nice. Good source of (often) decent adventures, sometimes stellar. Realistically, I will never run a good three-quarters of what I received; wrong levels, wrong world, wrong this, wrong that. It was a good read, and a source of material to mine.

Dragon magazine... I never had a subscription, but the occasional read was good *for me*. The rest of my group never read it, and so I was left in a vacuum. Mentioning background from the magazine got met with blank stares, since everyone else had started with 3rd edition. Demonomicon of who? Ecology of what? It's disappointing and frustrating, butit's the trurh. And don't get me started on "broken crunch from Dragon".

And now Wizards wants to try something new. I'm curious to see what it will be. Will it be something accessible to my friends who never read Dungeon or Dragon? I sure hope so. Will it make it easier for them to play the game? I sure hope so. Right now there's the "dedicated group of rules mongers" and the "rest of the players". I'm hoping to see something for the rest.

I don't see this as a (to quote) "soulless killing of Dungeon and Dragon". On the other hand, I never had the connection to the magazines professed by the others - they were nice, sure, but they weren't my wife and family.

 

[Mistwell]

Mojo,

So is Heroin, Crack and most drugs. Doesn't mean we want people using em.

I think your idea that most people do not have a credit card, or do not do online purchasing with them, has been firmly proven false in the last decade. That was the belief at the beginning of the internet boom days...but now, it's pretty standard really.

About 1% of all D&D players bought Dungeon and Dragon, and that number was actually falling a little year by year it seems (I think the circulation was down to 43,000). Part of the problem is mailing fees and distribution. D&D isn't a US-Only game, but the magazines cannot efficiently distribute to all countries that have players. Taking the magazine online will allow it to reach a much larger audience overall. Now we don't know if that audience will buy it, but the potential is there for a substantial increase in sales, not decrease.

And even if it decreased by a lot, the savings on printing and distribution and returns is so great that even a big hit can easily be absorbed.

Sorry, but I am betting this was a great idea for Wizards. They will make more money, and probably eventually sell more copies and reach a wider audience.

As for the benefits of being online:

1) You will probably get access to ALL issues with your subscription, like Pyramid. So the longer it publishes online, the more content you get for your money.

2) Much easier to copy and paste material into your own game.

3) More potential for an actual, interactive, online initiative. For example, there is the potential that eventually you will be able to enter the level of the characters you want to adventure in a Dungeon adventure, and it will auto-tailor the adventure to fit those levels.

4) Access anywhere I bring my laptop. With my laptop and wireless connection, I can view my entire collection of online magazines. I cannot however bring my entire collection with me on vacation.

5) Easier to print out individual sections of material rather than the entire thing. If I need a new monster from a magazine, and I want a hard copy, I can just print it (even in color). Sure, you could always photocopy it before, but fewer people have a photocopy machine in their house than a printer (and public photocopy machines often stopped you from photocopying such material due to copyright law).

 

[Enforcer]

Other: Because it's just a magazine. Wizards of the Coast didn't cancel food and water, nor, despite some protests, kill a friend or family member. They took their license back. Unless you own stock in Hasbro, you pretty much have no say in the matter, but please feel free to vote with your wallets if it's that important to you.

Advantages that I see for the online distribution model as it relates to my wants and needs:
-100% official content, without debate.
-Searchable and indexable.
-Easily shared (I can just print a one-page article or a new feat or prestige class or whatever and hand it out to my group; also I can print to PDF on my Mac, though to be fair PC users can't do this without paying for a full version of Acrobat).
-No shelf space bloat. Yes, I know people love collecting things, but for me I'd rather be able to find the needle in the haystack with a quick keyword search rather than have to dig through several magazine issues.
-Quality. Why do I say quality? Because I envision articles of the caliber of Keith Baker's Dragonshards or Mind's Eye, that's why. Wizards has already shown that they can produce quality stuff online and if they want this to succeed they'll continue to do so.

 

[painandgreed]

To play Devil's Advocate, and to be honest, I bought and read Dungeon and Dragon and have since Dragon #32 with a break during 2E, but I don't think I've ever used anything from them in any of my games. They're neat to read and I'm sure I've gotten ideas from them, but the effort to write up house rules is about as much as copying bits from the magazines and organizing them so they can be used regularly in an ongoing game. I've sat down with my stack of Dungeons before and been unable to find anything I could use for upcoming games. Finding something for the level I was looking for was hard enough, and then they usually didn't fit into my games.

 

[The Thayan Menace]

RE: Axing the Mags (Other)

Let me be clear, I do not support this marketing decision.

That being said, it is acceptable ... because we have no other rational choice than to accept it (i.e., I seriously doubt that Ha$bro sweats ENworld griefers).

-Samir Asad​

 

[Vigilance]

D&D isn't a US-Only game, but the magazines cannot efficiently distribute to all countries that have players. Taking the magazine online will allow it to reach a much larger audience overall. Now we don't know if that audience will buy it, but the potential is there for a substantial increase in sales, not decrease.

If I can successfully sell PDFs to people in Japan, Israel and Russia, something tells me Wizards can pull it off.

Also, everyone complaining that they hate to read online, who has more than 10 posts about this today, grab a ruler and smack your own hand

Chuck

 

[delericho]

Also, everyone complaining that they hate to read online, who has more than 10 posts about this today, grab a ruler and smack your own hand

Curiously, I find reading message board posts online very different to reading documents online. It's something to do with the formatting, I think, or perhaps to do with the length of each individual unit of information.

Even so, wading through the pages of posts and multiple threads on this topic has been quite a strain.