The Economics of Open Gaming - An Open Letter To WotC

[Orcus]

There is not such a thing as a perfect general universal roleplaying system.
If it were the rpg industry would be doomed.
How would you keep the production going on? Wouldn't it arrive at a point of saturation?
Even in the case you go on by updating one system with new editions your production plan would be based on reupdating stuff from the previous editions. Not a good customer plan in the roleplaying business in the long run. IMO now it is time OGL rests in peace for the benefit of the rpg industry overall. It is time for the industry to expand by embracing a plan of bigger variety. Another massive OGL movement may be again beneficial in the future for a certain period of time -but for now it has to step back.

I know you have an agenda that wants to push variety and more systems. But the bottom line is that Wizards has determined in prior market research that more systems is bad for them and bad for D&D.

 

[xechnao]

I know you have an agenda that wants to push variety and more systems. But the bottom line is that Wizards has determined in prior market research that more systems is bad for them and bad for D&D.

The hobby is a bigger priority for me than Wotc. But even if what you say has been true for Wizards' solution regarding a period of time it does not mean that this has to be their everlasting flag. Dynamic markets need a dynamic production and thus your methods and solutions change in time.

 

[mxyzplk]

I think WotC is run by people who know how to run a business--they probably have MBAs and other business degrees--but they don't have degrees in Economics, and don't understand how a growing industry helps them. That's a situation more common than you'd expect.

Yeah. It entertains me how people idolize MBAs and "businessmen" when the nightly news shows how well that works out. Must be people that have never worked for a company where they had any back office interaction. There are people whose job it is to do something, they allegedly are trained to do it, and have done it for years, and still are rank incompetents - I think the company I work for is pretty strong in that way but there's still some people in key positions with massive blind spots.

As companies grow from small to large, the commonly accepted practices they follow have to change. One of the biggest hurdles, and I've seen this first hand several times, is changing one's business mentality from when you're nothing, then as you become more of a "player" in a given industry, to when you are on top. There are plenty of "qualified businesspeople" that have to get turned over as a company goes from small to medium to large because their area of expertise is in a differently sized corporation. I've seen small business owners try to adapt to the world of mergers and acquisitions and it's not a pretty sight - one of the main things that sends people out of business when they should be "established."

Anyway, there's nothing wrong with having a skill set that's not 100% what your company needs at the time. Doesn't make you a bad person. But I'm not really seeing any right-sized economic leadership at WotC right now. Gen Con is going bankrupt - that's a separate company now technically, sure, but it just goes to show. (http://www.gencon.com/2008/corporate/news-pr/releases/2008/2008.02.15.Press.aspx for anyone so out of it that they don't know this.)

Even established old-line companies are figuring out that openness, engaging heavily with your customers, etc. is a good idea. I'm not goign to engage in a new media primer for everyone that doesn't know what I'm talking about. But the very closed nature of how WotC has been confucting itself - not just with rescinding the OGL but with how they've conducted themselves over the last number of years - is not an encouraging sign to someone on the outside looking for generally accepted "they get it" signs of how to successfully do business nowadays.

Many of you have made the point that I'm just "some guy on the Internet." True. Successful companies nowadays try to engage the "guy on the Internet." They have better than average discretionary income and have the means and desire to evangelize your products for you. And sometimes, they have professional knowledge besides "16 year old gadfly" and have good ideas worth listening to.

 

[Henry]

If there are a lot of buyers like me, then all the OGL does is make it easier for customers to move from playing D&D - and buying products from WotC - to playing an OGL game - and spending their money on another companies products.

The problem in my opinion is that this picture stops with the semicircle, and doesn't acknowledge the circle. Most people who continue to play (who don't drop out of the hobby), after gaming those other systems, eventually come back to D&D. It's been the case with every group I've interacted with in local groups, conventions, and gamedays, EVER.

Whether it takes those groups months or years, they keep coming back full circle. Now, how big that circle is influences how well the market leader (D&D) does. If the circle is smaller, because of more OGL games and fewer non-OGL games, then those cycles are shorter. What the OGL does is put mechanics out there that have seen repeated use, have been battle-tested, and brings them into common usage. I'm not just talking about classes and races, I'm talking about everything from turn orders, to vitality measuring systems, to the very attributes themselves that give a character shape and form.

That's the big picture I've always seen with D&D, it's one that's played out in my personal group, and seems to have played out in most of the people I've talked with at games and gamedays. In my personal experience, OGL has kept us playing Spycraft, Mutants and Masterminds, Star Wars, and Grim Tales instead of Shadowrun, Warhammer, and World of Darkness, or worse, not playing at all. It did its job.

 

[xechnao]

The problem in my opinion is that this picture stops with the semicircle, and doesn't acknowledge the circle. Most people who continue to play (who don't drop out of the hobby), after gaming those other systems, eventually come back to D&D. It's been the case with every group I've interacted with in local groups, conventions, and gamedays, EVER.

Whether it takes those groups months or years, they keep coming back full circle. Now, how big that circle is influences how well the market leader (D&D) does. If the circle is smaller, because of more OGL games and fewer non-OGL games, then those cycles are shorter. What the OGL does is put mechanics out there that have seen repeated use, have been battle-tested, and brings them into common usage. I'm not just talking about classes and races, I'm talking about everything from turn orders, to vitality measuring systems, to the very attributes themselves that give a character shape and form.

That's the big picture I've always seen with D&D, it's one that's played out in my personal group, and seems to have played out in most of the people I've talked with at games and gamedays. In my personal experience, OGL has kept us playing Spycraft, Mutants and Masterminds, Star Wars, and Grim Tales instead of Shadowrun, Warhammer, and World of Darkness, or worse, not playing at all. It did its job.

Production needs to re-circle. The more you shorten one circle the faster you have to close it and open a new one. There is a limit that would be too short so for the circles to be smoothly ridden and fully acknowledged.

 

[Henry]

Production needs to re-circle. The more you shorten one circle the faster you have to close it and open a new one. There is a limit that would be too short so for the circles to be smoothly ridden and fully acknowledged.

Can you explain what you mean by "production" or "smoothly ridden and fully acknowledged"? I'm not talking about one specific edition, here, I'm talking about the market leader -- D&D -- regardless of edition. Unless they do something to royally screw up their position (and I don't see how they could, hell, TSR went BANKRUPT and the game was still #1!) then it'll be market leader no matter what. Therefore, its health is tied to how often people cycle back to it from other games -- the quicker, the more products they sell no matter the edition. No GSL, or too limited a GSL, in my opinion, just makes the circle larger and takes longer.

 

[xechnao]

Can you explain what you mean by "production" or "smoothly ridden and fully acknowledged"? I'm not talking about one specific edition, here, I'm talking about the market leader -- D&D -- regardless of edition. Unless they do something to royally screw up their position (and I don't see how they could, hell, TSR went BANKRUPT and the game was still #1!) then it'll be market leader no matter what. Therefore, its health is tied to how often people cycle back to it from other games -- the quicker, the more products they sell no matter the edition. No GSL, or too limited a GSL, in my opinion, just makes the circle larger and takes longer.

If the circle is too short the leader or the whole market may not be able to adjust offer and demand at the desired levels so it functions as it should (smoothly ridden and fully acknowledged).

 

[catsclaw]

If the circle is too short the leader or the whole market may not be able to adjust offer and demand at the desired levels so it functions as it should (smoothly ridden and fully acknowledged).

You realize, I don't think there's a single person on here who understands what you mean by that.

 

[xechnao]

You realize, I don't think there's a single person on here who understands what you mean by that.

Yeah I am not that good a communicator -sorry about that. It is not simple enough for me to analyze what I am talking about here and I am afraid that if I jump to examples and partial explanations without giving a full analysis I could complicate my message setting it off course -so I believe I better try to be laconic.

So lets agree that offer and demand it is how economy works in the most general picture here. I was not necessarily only talking about copies of books here but mostly about the need of new material, new information of commercial value. Again I use the word "information" here with its broader sense.

 

[dmccoy1693]

I know you have an agenda that wants to push variety and more systems. But the bottom line is that Wizards has determined in prior market research that more systems is bad for them and bad for D&D.

Their prior research doesn't matter at all if they ignore it. They thought they could squash their older system by putting out a "better" game. Well their PR machine kept rolling critical fumbles and Paizo, who has been excellent in terms of PR, is putting out a game that is for all tense and purposes their old game. They created their own worst enemy. They're going to feeling the effects of it for years to come.

And frankly, if there is one thing that is going to speed up 4.5 or 5E or whatever is poor sales of the current edition. And their own screwups appears to the number 1 thing that encourages poor sales.