Ryan Dancey - D&D in a Death Spiral

[nnms]

Wait, what?! I must have missed that. What happened?

http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...ds-coast-employee-commits-murder-suicide.html

 

[malraux]

Okay, that is consistent with someone having screwed up royally. Color me somewhat less skeptical.

The excess money spent was enough to justify a specific mention in the HAS 10-K for that year. That's a report that often just mentions the fact that WotC exists. It had to have been huge for that to occur.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Mind you, hardware is cheap, by comparison to people. I've had occasion to work in MIT's IT shop - fully half their budget is simply salaries and employee benefits. The other half is everything else. Hardware costs are only one piece of that everything else.

FWIW, that's typical of a LOT of businesses and institutions: take a look at the bottom line for the US Army or the NFL and you'll see likewise.

For small businesses, it can be an even higher percentage. My Dad's main expense in his medical practice is staff. My law practice is likewise.

 

[LuckyAdrastus]

Giving up the unified system with Essentials and Arcana Unearthed? Done

Leaving aside Essentials threadwaring, I don't see the complaint against Arcana Unearthed as it has been announced and implemented so far. It's clearly labeled as experimental and speculative material and isn't included in the character builder. The only way I could see for it to "negatively" effect 4e is if they stopped producing new material because they were only producing Arcana Unearthed stuff. Clearly that isn't happening -- we've had, what, one Arcana Unearthed Article in the weeks since they announced it?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Giving up the unified system with Essentials and Arcana Unearthed? Done

and

Leaving aside Essentials threadwaring, I don't see the complaint against Arcana Unearthed as it has been announced and implemented so far. It's clearly labeled as experimental and speculative material and isn't included in the character builder. The only way I could see for it to "negatively" effect 4e is if they stopped producing new material because they were only producing Arcana Unearthed stuff. Clearly that isn't happening -- we've had, what, one Arcana Unearthed Article in the weeks since they announced it?

(emphasis mine)
That should be "Unearthed Arcana"- "Arcana Unearthed" is an alternative 3Ed PHB/Setting from Malhavoc Press, designed by Monte Cook, that eventually became Arcana Evolved (essentially, its 3.5 revision).

 

[AllisterH]

If so, that is a direct consequence of not making part of the new material OGC, and hence usable, by 3pp.

If more of the later materials had been made OGC, 3pp would have used that material, which would have essentially been advertisement for the WotC book it was from.


RC

Except that this "competing" started even BEFORE 3.0 was officially released. Remember the Scarred Lands Monster book came out BEFORE the 3.0 books did.

I distinctly remember people chuckling that WOTC was being upstaged.

Personally, while paizo has shown that adventures CAN sell, rules supplements seem to be an EASIER sell.

Of course, if DDI was available back then, I also believe that rules supplements would be as dead as a doornail as they are now for 3pp in 4e.

 

[vegaserik01]

Nope, Mr. Dancey wasn't right, so far. Or rather, his predictions are about as right as a typical random prediction by Nostradamus.

Oh I'm sure Nostradamus did predict the complete collapse of rpg's in 2011!


4E seems to be doing just fine in my neck of the woods - yeah there are a few people who won't touch it saying it's not D&D, but I'm sure there are those types everywhere.

 

[WizarDru]

The idea that MMORPGs will become the inevitable victors over pen-and-paper RPGs certainly didn't help Realtime Worlds and APB very much. DDO wasn't terribly profitable until it changed it's financial model last year. Star Trek: Online and Champions: Online are struggling. The fact of the matter is that unless you're World of Warcraft, Lineage II or maybe SW: The Old Republic, you're not turning very big numbers at all.

It also assumes that D&D and other pen-and-paper RPGs were EVER more than a niche entertainment. Other than the outlier caused by the early 1980s, RPGs have never been mainstream or huge. For many, they're as dated as Hammer Pants.

 

[kenmarable]

I find it... incomprehensible, to be honest.

Take your typical Full Time Employee (FTE). Let's think about their salary and benefits for one year, and find a round number for it - $100K for our "back of the envelope" consideration.

Spending $30 million would have been paying for 300 person-years of effort - that's like a team of 30 people working on it for a decade!

I do not believe it possible that WotC, which has otherwise shown some solid comprehension of economics, would spend such money on the online initiatives.

If they had... well, I think several upper management would have needed to be fired.

I believe this was originally outsourced, so the cost would go up dramatically. Back when I did software development on a client basis, my employers would typically charge $100-150 per hour for my time (of course, I sure wasn't making that much per hour by a long shot but it still cost clients that much for my time).

It is still a heck of a lot of money, but could easily be more like 100 person years. If it was uinder development for a couple years under that, and had a large team of programers, artists (and there was a lot of 3d work and support that was developed but never finished), db admins, project managers, etc - it can add up fast.

I'm not saying it isn't way too much money, and they certainly didn't seem to get their money's worth, but outsourced projects like this that go on for years can add up REAL fast especialy if the client keeps changing or adding onto the requirements.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Except that this "competing" started even BEFORE 3.0 was officially released. Remember the Scarred Lands Monster book came out BEFORE the 3.0 books did.

I distinctly remember people chuckling that WOTC was being upstaged.

Personally, while paizo has shown that adventures CAN sell, rules supplements seem to be an EASIER sell.

Of course, if DDI was available back then, I also believe that rules supplements would be as dead as a doornail as they are now for 3pp in 4e.

(Shrug)

So?

I still bought the Monster Manual. Everyone I know who played the game bought the Monster Manual. From my understanding, the Monster Manual sold well.

It was when WotC greenlighted the Tome of Horrors, and then put out competing stats for some of the same monsters, that problems began. Not only was ToH truer to the orignals, but it was OGC, so that others could use them. Had WotC put out official OGC versions, it would probably have beaten the ToH....but as things stood, ToH became the single most useful 3pp book out there! (IMHO of course)

Likewise, there were tons of environmental books before WotC jumped into the arena, some of them were much better than the WotC books, and they had OGC so that other 3pp could build off of them. Had there been official OGC -- had WotC even simply made official the OGC they thought best -- I feel certain those books would have sold better.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I know that a major factor in 3pp purchases for me was the % of OGC that I could rework, and a major factor in my decision to bypass several WotC offerings was the lack of same.



RC