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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kenmarable" data-source="post: 3739059" data-attributes="member: 40359">Not sure if this has appeared elsewhere (or is General Discussion rather than 4e, but DDI and 4e are pretty tight.) Some of my worries about DDI are somewhat lessened now. I think I rambled more about it on the Paizo boards, but I just have worries from my own IT background of a company trying to build a large new online initiative in-house can easily crash and burn from management not having enough IT experience. (My favorite example - taken from my own experience is 1997 Borders bookstores CEO laughs about how "Amazon still hasn't turned a profit because online retail is a bad business model", 1998 Borders CEO announces new Borders.com initiative to be developed and run in-house as a "bold new strategy", 2001 Borders CEO announces "refocusing on our core business", Amazon takes over Borders.com and entire online division laid off).So I obviously worry when I see a business gambling millions of dollars in an online initiative and managing it in-house. Management without IT experience (and the WotC management might have extensive IT experience, obviously that's an assumption on my part) can easily sink even the best teams.However, from a comment in <a href="http://forums.gleemax.com/showpost.php?p=13579469&postcount=4" target="_blank">this blog</a>, I saw the name "Radiant Machines" mentioned. So I did a quick Google and it appears at least some of Gleemax and D&D Insider are being developed by an <a href="http://www.radiantmachine.com/index.html" target="_blank">outside IT company</a>. That makes me more confident in the result. However, the existance of the company was <a href="http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/prnewswire/LATU04128082007-1.htm" target="_blank">just announced yesterday</a> and these are their first projects. So my confidence drops back down some. But they are just a new division of an <a href="http://www.solutionsiq.com" target="_blank">existing IT company</a>. So it perks back up some (even if the parent company's website is horribly bland, and the division's website is framed and horribly orange).Needless to say, I think bringing in an outside company is a good idea. It's easier for management to hear "that's a bad idea" when it is coming from an outside vendor with a specific area of expertise than it is to hear it from a subordinate. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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