Status of D&D Game Table?

[Dire Bare]

How much did WotC sink into outsourcing the DDI and Gleemax?

I apologize for cross-examining you, but in a sea of speculation, you seem to be one of a very few people with any concrete knowledge about the situation.

Not bashing Shemeska, but he's simply speculating like the rest of us. But with more confidence!

Facts:

1) There were a variety of factors that led to the cancellation of Gleemax and then the delay with the Virtual Game Table. Anyone who proudly points at one factor as proof of the demise of the VTT is, well, speculating at best . . .

2) WotC has never announced that the VTT is dead, just that it has become a lower priority to other digital offerings. It's a reasonable assumption that there is no current work being done on a VTT, but we don't really know. It's also a reasonable opinion that the VTT is totally dead in the water, but again we don't know.

3) If we ever do get a VTT from WotC, we won't hear about it until they need beta testers, and even then we might not as they may select beta testers confidentially and sign them up on NDAs. WotC was burned by promising the moon and then not delivering it at 4e launch, and they have learned their lesson in that department.

4) At best, we might get some news at GenCon in August. But I wouldn't hold your breath . . . .

 

[El Mahdi]

deleted

 

[wayne62682]

Well, if you're able to hold your breath for one month per point of Constitution...and you have a Con of 18...then you should be able to have held your breath until just about right...(gasp)...(thump)...

Cleric!

 

[Shemeska]

How much did WotC sink into outsourcing the DDI and Gleemax?

I apologize for cross-examining you, but in a sea of speculation, you seem to be one of a very few people with any concrete knowledge about the situation.

I was quoted a figure by one of the developers, but it and a number of other specific items I'm understandably loathe to drop on a public forum because well everyone I've spoken with was under NDA and while none of them work for WotC anymore, I don't want them to fall afoul of past contractual agreements. If you dig online a few people that worked on the in-house team and the outsourcing studio alike have voiced opinions openly or in more subtle form (a disclaimer in their resume for instance in one case).

Back to my reasoning for not thinking any further VTT work has been performed: around the time my information was still current, the development staff was such that according to them, only one person was really available to work on new material versus bug fixing, builder updates, compendium updates, etc. Since that time, those people have since left and the remaining staff is smaller AFAIK, which doesn't improve the chances of massive work on a new project IMO. Also, the one person who was familiar with the VTT work that was outsourced (ie. was on that team) is no longer with WotC either.

I might be totally off base, but I'll be surprised if WotC drops the cash for a VTT anytime soon. Hasbro might not exactly look kindly on it based on the drama from the first attempt.

 

[Zaran]

I might be totally off base, but I'll be surprised if WotC drops the cash for a VTT anytime soon. Hasbro might not exactly look kindly on it based on the drama from the first attempt.

I am of the opinion that if they had said they are doing it and that they know we want it, then they should do it no matter what. There is no way they can't make money on it and it's just good business to make the customer happy.

 

[Festivus]

I think some of these third party developers of VTT should court WoTC with a solution for a cut of the DDI revenue.

(You know, RPTools folks, Fantasy Grounds, etc... people with established VTT product already that could be retrofitted to drop into the system easily)

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I think some of these third party developers of VTT should court WoTC with a solution for a cut of the DDI revenue.

(You know, RPTools folks, Fantasy Grounds, etc... people with established VTT product already that could be retrofitted to drop into the system easily)

Are any of these VTTs built on the ,Net framework? It would appear to me that WoTC have decide on .NET all the way and will not look at any product built on other frameworks.
The ones i have looked at have been built on Python or Java.

 

[Dausuul]

I am of the opinion that if they had said they are doing it and that they know we want it, then they should do it no matter what. There is no way they can't make money on it and it's just good business to make the customer happy.

"No way they can't make money on it?"

There's lots of ways they could not make money on it. They could botch it up so badly no one wants to use it; they could make it so fragile and hard to maintain that the cost of paying staff to keep it running exceeds the revenue; they could simply dump so much money into design and development that no reasonable projection of returns over time would justify the up-front investment.

Given WotC's past track record, any or all of these seems quite possible.

 

[keterys]

There is no way they can't make money on it and it's just good business to make the customer happy.

They already lost money on it. A lot of money.

Much like they lost money on the other online game offerings they did (Acquire, Roborally, Las Vegas Showdown, etc) that hardly anyone tried - even though they were free to play.

And Gleemax. Poor thing.

I'm with Shemeshka on this one. They sunk a ton of effort into something that was unstable and somewhat unusable in the state they got the "final" version from the 3rd party. They'd be faced with rewriting it entirely from scratch at that point.

I could hope that something like Maptools or FantasyGround might get tapped to make something custom, but honestly I don't see that happening and I'm not sure it would work out all that well.

 

[Asmor]

There is no way they can't make money on it

Well *that's* a failure of imagination if I've ever seen one.

If profits < expenses, then they've lost money, and I can think of a great many ways that that could be true.