Polygon: Indie TTRPG Companies are "sitting in their own little corners of the internet and wringing their hands"

[talien]

To be honest, when you find coverage you like, share it on other platforms. More exposure is very helpful.

Also - when sites cut extensive coverage and replace it with cheap click farming, don't give them the engagement.

Prediction: Sites that expect you to ONLY read without any sort of community platform, who made a deal with the social media devil by just getting rid of their forums or comments sections (or rather, have them and ignore them so people can just yell at each other and don't actually engage with their readers) are about to be very, very sorry.

EN World is about to become a lot more popular, because as challenging as it can be sometimes to both write news and have a very active forum connected to it, it's a real community, not a borrowed one from another platform that could go away or restrict access at any minute.

We're only going to see more of this rage-baiting as these platforms' audiences begin to shrink drastically (and look, I am not immune to this, y'all know I love my dramatic headlines). Try to reinforce the positive with likes, and suffocate the negative by ignoring vs. sharing it. It's hard, I know.

 

[SlyFlourish]

It’s also pretty two-faced to be writing about the rising “enshittification” of the game when he’s also written glowing reviews of their last two products.

I think both things can be true. WOTC has put out some great products (I don't think I agree with the Polygon reviews if I recall which products they were reviewing) and they can also steer their business towards enshittification (be great to your users, then be great to your business partners over your users, then be great to your investors over your business partners and users, then suck for everyone).

We have some specific examples of somewhat enshittified behavior:

• Changing and then reverse coursing on whether they were going to replace 2014 spells site-wide on D&D Beyond (prioritize internal business over users).
• Implementing a half-baked character building experience for Lord of the Rings 5e (support business partners over users).
• Seeming to require D&D Beyond to play in an in-person organized play program with Greyhawk Legends (push to lock in more users into D&D Beyond).

These aren't perfect point-at-the-step enshittification behaviors but they can show a drive to push for a centralized and controlled platform and draw both users and publishers to that single platform.

That said, they're on the path to break away from enshittification in at least a few big ways:

• Putting out the 5.2 SRD in the CC (they're still saying they're going to do this)
• Releasing all of D&D 2024 on Roll20 who's building a competing character builder.
• Releasing all of D&D 2024 on Foundry – a fully downloadable and competing platform.
• Continuing to release their core books and future books as physical books.

My point is, being a fan of a product and still calling out the company for potential enshittification don't have to be mutually exclusive. Both states can be true.

Whether they are true or not – that we can argue.

 

[SlyFlourish]

Prediction: Sites that expect you to ONLY read without any sort of community platform, who made a deal with the social media devil by just getting rid of their forums or comments sections (or rather, have them and ignore them so people can just yell at each other and don't actually engage with their readers) are about to be very, very sorry.

EN World is about to become a lot more popular, because as challenging as it can be sometimes to both write news and have a very active forum connected to it, it's a real community, not a borrowed one from another platform that could go away or restrict access at any minute.

We're only going to see more of this rage-baiting as these platforms' audiences begin to shrink drastically (and look, I am not immune to this, y'all know I love my dramatic headlines). Try to reinforce the positive with likes, and suffocate the negative by ignoring vs. sharing it. It's hard, I know.

That's a really good point. I removed comments from Sly Flourish many years ago and wrote this about it:

The web is a very different place than it was fifteen years ago. Online communities don't swirl around particular websites. Instead, readers post the articles they like across their social network of choice; Twitter, Facebook, or Google Plus. Communities now centralize in these social networks and our beloved articles hang off of them at the edges. Articles are now an extension of a conversation, not the beginning or end of one. Someone writes an article, readers share and comment on it on their social network of choice, other people read it and write their own articles, those articles are shared, and the cycle continues.

Now my own communities exist in two places: on Patreon and Discord; either of which could enshittify in coming months or years. Moving to a self-hosted forum is definitely something I've considered. I'm not adding open commments back on my website, but I think having a self-hosted community may become quite a bit more important.

 

[TiQuinn]

I think both things can be true. WOTC has put out some great products (I don't think I agree with the Polygon reviews if I recall which products they were reviewing) and they can also steer their business towards enshittification (be great to your users, then be great to your business partners over your users, then be great to your investors over your business partners and users, then suck for everyone).

We have some specific examples of somewhat enshittified behavior:

• Changing and then reverse coursing on whether they were going to replace 2014 spells site-wide on D&D Beyond (prioritize internal business over users).
• Implementing a half-baked character building experience for Lord of the Rings 5e (support business partners over users).
• Seeming to require D&D Beyond to play in an in-person organized play program with Greyhawk Legends (push to lock in more users into D&D Beyond).

These aren't perfect point-at-the-step enshittification behaviors but they can show a drive to push for a centralized and controlled platform and draw both users and publishers to that single platform.

That said, they're on the path to break away from enshittification in at least a few big ways:

• Putting out the 5.2 SRD in the CC (they're still saying they're going to do this)
• Releasing all of D&D 2024 on Roll20 who's building a competing character builder.
• Releasing all of D&D 2024 on Foundry – a fully downloadable and competing platform.
• Continuing to release their core books and future books as physical books.

My point is, being a fan of a product and still calling out the company for potential enshittification don't have to be mutually exclusive. Both states can be true.

Whether they are true or not – that we can argue.

Charlie Hall doesn’t put nearly as much work into establishing those nuances as you do.

 

[SlyFlourish]

Charlie Hall doesn’t put nearly as much work into establishing those nuances as you do.

The linked phrase in the polygon article was tied to the first on my list, the 2014 spell switcharoo. That’s not exactly a pure enshittification step but it puts internal business processes above customer purchases.

I actually think that whole episode was valuable because it shows us the shifting sands of the rented land we build our game upon on D&D Beyond.

 

[talien]

Now my own communities exist in two places: on Patreon and Discord; either of which could enshittify in coming months or years. Moving to a self-hosted forum is definitely something I've considered. I'm not adding open commments back on my website, but I think having a self-hosted community may become quite a bit more important.

WOTC got rid of their own forums, arguably for the same reasons: "social media made it unnecessary." That was true then. But for better or worse, it ties communities to platforms that we don't own.

Having a commentary platform doesn't magically make it better of course. I'm amazed by the sheer number of news outlets who have the ability to add comments, and it's clear 1) nobody ever comments, or 2) if they do, it's not moderated and the author never returns to engage. So then who are the comments for?

My favorite example of this is that Facebook decided that comments on posts are so much garbage, it has an AI summarize it for you. They threw in the towel: "look, it's not worth reading the comments, let's just summarize it for you so you don't bother." Not a good sign for the platform.

 

[Bae'zel]

My favorite example of this is that Facebook decided that comments on posts are so much garbage, it has an AI summarize it for you. They threw in the towel: "look, it's not worth reading the comments, let's just summarize it for you so you don't bother."

Judging by a lot of comment sections on Facebook... the AI summaries (if accurate) often save us from a lot of garbage.

 

[Scribe]

So then who are the comments for?

Ad Revenue.

 

[talien]

Judging by a lot of comment sections on Facebook... the AI summaries (if accurate) often save us from a lot of garbage.

Right. So in other words, FB would rather summarize than moderate, or in any way encourage comments to be useful. They of course ENCOURAGE this form of engagement, then minimize it, because it's garbage. Also, FB is reaping what it sowed here, many users can't distinguish what's on their page, on someone else's page, what's an ad, and what's a group. So they "talk" as if it's their page when it most certainly isn't, which is like 80% of the stupid arguments on FB.

 

[talien]

Ad Revenue.

BINGO. YouTube has entire countries it disqualifies as traffic from its internal metrics, but will charge customers and "count" them as clicks when it sells ads. Same here.

There are now more bots than people constituting Internet traffic, we've passed the tipping point, and it's all starting to collapse.