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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steel_Wind" data-source="post: 5445828" data-attributes="member: 20741">From the long-term business perspective of WotC, I think it's abundantly clear that the OGL was a mistake.But for all that, it was only a minor mistake that had other fringe benefits. It proved to be a real inconvenience in terms of marketing at a retail level. The flood of poor, substandard products in the marketplace hurt the overall brand  and WotC knew that had hurt retailers. WotC was concerned about the effect those substandard products had on the overall D&D brand image, too.  They wanted to fix it - and it wasn't wrong for WotC to want to do that.Still, from WotC's perspective, the negatives of the OGL were minor only; they were not a major disaster. Unless WotC did something stupid, that negative wouldn't mature and crystallize into a major disaster, either. But, as it turns out -- WotC DID do something stupid. As long as WotC kept up with the OGL with each new edition of the game, that minor mistake would not lead to a disaster or somebody using the OGL to essentially use WotC's core IP, rebrand it, and sell it in effective competition with D&D itself.Anybody could TRY and do it. But do it effectively? Very, very hard. Impossibly hard, really. Unless WotC made it possible through their own errors. Turns out - WotC made it possible.I submit three things allowed a minor mistake to crystallize into a MAJOR mistake.1) The Ticking Time Bomb: The OGL was a time bomb, but one that would never go off as long as you kept hitting the refresh button. WotC chose NOT to hit the refresh button and tried to retrofit a cancel button onto the OGL with the GSL instead. There was no cancel button on the OGL, by design. They tried to add one. That was a non-starter and it was rejected because the underlying GSL was not in the commercial interests of the perpetual licensees. 2) Different Opinion on Length of Business Cycle: The OGL is incompatible with WotC's preferred length of the Business Cycle of its D&D product line. Even if the OGL couldn't be cancelled, it could be ignored as long as it was continued and re-implemented with the next edition of the game. When WotC tried to escape that effect, nobody else would sign on. This STILL would not have resulted in competition against their own IP, except for one thing: WotC wanted to revise/reset/resell the game too soon after the last version of the game was released. The value-in-use to the customer of the last version of the game was too high at the time 4E was released. This created a market opportunity that a well-positioned competitor could use to their advantage.3) You Can't License The Goodwill of an Entire Brand: WotC should NEVER have spun off their own periodicals division (now Paizo) and allowed it to communicate monthly with their core customers while Wotc remained largely silent in communicating with those same customers. When WotC allowed that to happen, it transferred the goodwill and legitimacy as "official guardians of the game" from WotC to Paizo -- PERMANENTLY. WotC believed it was just licensing this goodwill and at the end of the license, they would get it back. That was a FOOLISH business decision. The real world does not work that way. If you are a big company, sometimes you start to believe your own balance sheet is REAL. You start to think that the product you make is a trademark, IP, and a brand which has very little to do with the people who actually create your products -- or who buys them. There is truth in this view -- but only to a point.  Because ANY certified business valuator will tell you that you CAN'T RELIABLY VALUE THE GOODWILL OF AN ENTIRE BRAND AFTER IT IS LICENSED. You can SELL IT, but it is very difficult to value it after you license it. When you sell an asset -- it's gone. When you license it for a fee, you are planning on a reversion of that goodwill at the end of the license. So the terms of the deal call for the goodwill to come back to the licensor at the end of the license. A certified business valuator will tell you that is an inherently risky bet to expect that you will get back the same goodwill attached to an entire brand if you license it. You might get that goodwill back -- and you might not, too. All you can value is the short-term revenue stream of that license. Trying to value the goodwill of an entire brand as a capital asset AFTER you license it is almost impossible. So it is an inherently risky business proposition to do it. Smart companies don't do it. WotC wasn't smart. When they spun off their own periodicals division AFTER they created the OGL? They effectively licensed the entire D&D brand to another company in the minds of the customer. DUMB move.Putting those three mistakes together When the last version of the game still had significant legs in the minds of customers? That's when the time bomb that was the OGL crystallized, went active, and allowed Paizo to use it to compete effectively with WotC. Paizo was perfectly positioned to do it, because they had the goodwill of customers and legitimacy as "real owners of D&D" because WotC allowed them to acquire it with every column and article which appeared in those magazines over the course of five years.  That was a serious mistake, imo. Closing the periodicals department at WotC and spinning it off was exactly the sort of short-sighted business decision that poor key business people make. End Result: From the perspective of WotC's commercial interests, the OGL was a mistake. But it need not have been a significant mistake that cost it a lot of money. That effect was lurking, but only WotC's own subsequent business decisions could set it off. Turns out, they did set it off. When WotC tried to escape the OGL with the GSL, -- while trying to force a radically new edition of the game on customers so soon after the last one was released -- they set off the bomb.It is hard to have sympathy for WotC in these circumstances. They are entirely the architects of their own misfortune in this matter. If they could have a mulligan over the whole GSL and roll-out of the 4E rules? They'd take that mulligan  in a heartbeat. But that isn't the way the world works. You live or die by your choices. Right now, D&D is dying by them. There may be a way out of this for WotC and the D&D Brand in the long-term, but I'm not sure what that is right now.</blockquote>

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