New Digital Games Studio announced by the president of Wizards of the Coast

Interesting. I look forward to seeing what comes of this - some thrilling ideas, no doubt, but I'm keeping myself reserved so as not to be let down should those thrilling ideas be brought into less-than-thrilling existence.

 

[ArchfiendBobbie]

IP owned by Microsoft. Microsoft ended up owning the video game rights for most of the FASA Properties when they aquired FASA Interactive, and Harebrained is licencing Shadowrun from them.

Catalyst on the other hand is licencing all the rest of the Shadowrun IP from Topps, they don't own anything either, just like Harebrained.

I just checked and, welp... Time for me to go drinking. That is a copyright nightmare I want to erase from my memory.

 

[Staffan]

@Staffan, I see no point in discussing theft as a legitimate business option. A consideration, yes, an option, no.

My point is that pirates' gonna pirate. Pirated PDFs exist. That is a fact, regardless of the ethics of copyright infringement (a discussion which would be political and thus not welcome on this site). I could, if I wanted to, acquire a PDF of Volo's Guide to Monsters in less than 5 minutes, and Wizards wouldn't make a cent off that. It would probably be easier for me to do that than buying it off the DM's Guild (had I been able to), where there'd be login and checkout procedures, and the download taking extra time because the files have to be watermarked and whatnot.

In the face of that fact, it makes little sense not to sell PDFs yourself for piracy reasons. That frigate has already sailed. You might as well offer the PDFs for sale to those who desire PDFs and are willing to pay for them.

Now, there may be other reasons not to offer PDFs for sale. Perhaps your retailers don't like it when you sell directly to your customers, and are pressuring you not to. That kind of makes sense, particularly for a company that relies so much retailers doing things that aren't just selling stuff (Magic tournaments are kind of big, I hear). But not selling PDFs because of piracy is cutting off your nose to spite your face.

 

[Morrus]

In the face of that fact, it makes little sense not to sell PDFs yourself for piracy reasons.

This is not why they don't sell PDFs, and hasn't been for years.

Now, there may be other reasons not to offer PDFs for sale. Perhaps your retailers don't like it when you sell directly to your customers, and are pressuring you not to.

This is much more likely.

 

[slygeek]

Maybe you're right, but frankly I just can't see a hobby store having the balls to put any sort of pressure on WOTC. I'm pretty sure they don't put 'pressure' on companies like Cubicle 7 and Modiphius who sell pdfs.

This seems like an equally strange reason to me.

Why they won't sell the PDFs remains a mystery and thus far WOTC have been very good at dodging the question with long winded answers for years.


Although my money is on the fact that statistics show their books sell better as is when there is no pdf for it.

That being said, I just use the OGL and Basic pdfs, and in fact they work better because most tablets don't handle large pdfs well anyway. Its much easier to flip through a small pdf with little graphics.

And they have released just about all their other products on pdf now (out of print stuff), so really I am just happy we got that.

 

[Parmandur]

Maybe you're right, but frankly I just can't see a hobby store having the balls to put any sort of pressure on WOTC. I'm pretty sure they don't put 'pressure' on companies like Cubicle 7 and Modiphius who sell pdfs.

This seems like an equally strange reason to me.

Why they won't sell the PDFs remains a mystery and thus far WOTC have been very good at dodging the question with long winded answers for years.


Although my money is on the fact that statistics show their books sell better as is when there is no pdf for it.

That being said, I just use the OGL and Basic pdfs, and in fact they work better because most tablets don't handle large pdfs well anyway. Its much easier to flip through a small pdf with little graphics.

And they have released just about all their other products on pdf now (out of print stuff), so really I am just happy we got that.

Individual hobby stores not so much, but as a group: and WotC, unlike other companies, needs stores that run Magic games for their main revenue stream: D&D products are a value-add to being part of their network.

 

[slygeek]

Individual hobby stores not so much, but as a group: and WotC, unlike other companies, needs stores that run Magic games for their main revenue stream: D&D products are a value-add to being part of their network.

So then, they want to make sure people are using books and not pdfs in order to support hobby stores, which in turn ensure their products (Magic included) keeps selling?

 

[Parmandur]

So then, they want to make sure people are using books and not pdfs in order to support hobby stores, which in turn ensure their products (Magic included) keeps selling?

That seems to be part of it, along with your suggestion of relative sales when other options are around.

With the premium reprints, they put them up as PDFs for sale...once they were out of print. Seems unlikely Volos Guide will be available in PDF while it is in print.

 

[Jhaelen]

Past experience with WotC doing digital has left me skeptical/jaded. I want them to succeed but I am not sure they know how to as past offerings were either terrible, poorly handled or ruined once eventually come good.

+1. I have no hope of anything good or interesting coming out of this. "A planeswalker throwing fireballs in an MMO", "Augmented Reality"? Someone's been smoking too much dope.

 

[Schmoe]

They could probably do a good DnD game if they subcontracted. BeamDog is proving adept at handling the Baldur's Gate series, and Harebrained Schemes is increasingly proving capable of delivering games massively above the quality standard you'd expect from a studio so small and has proven themselves adept at using Kickstarter to fund their projects.

I would definitely suggest they add Harebrained and do more with BeamDog.

But if I were them, I'd definitely nix their own games department. Hasbro just doesn't understand video game development.

I know I'm a little late to the party, but I would absolutely love Harebrained Studios to make a D&D game using the same engine they used for Shadowrun. Their game SR: Dragonfall blew me away.

 

[metaDM]

This job req just went up on the hasbro site. https://jobs.hasbro.com/job/Renton-...&eid=303-201716180516-9199935000&locale=en_US

"[FONT=&quot]Creation and management of franchise plans for specific product IP with a focus being games made for the mass market or “casual” gamer based on WOTC IP"

I hope casual games doesn't mean Drizzt Tower Defense games on Facebook.[/FONT]