Yep. It is kind of easy to focus on the current negatives, and discount the past couple of decades of positives.
OGL The Moral of the Story Is....Maybe there's such a thing as (D&D being) too big
- Thread starter Mercurius
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Yep. It is kind of easy to focus on the current negatives, and discount the past couple of decades of positives.
MNblockhead
A Title Much Cooler Than Anything on the Old Site
I find it strange to talk about D&D being too big given the small size of the hobby as a whole compared to other forms of entertainment. Personally, I think D&D is still just getting started and I'm more upset that WotC created this unnecessary distraction just as they were poised to break into the mainstream again in a much better environment for growing the hobby than the 1980s.
This is not a dig against smaller publishers and less popular games. Some of my favorite games make other systems look huge. I mean, Dialect or InSPECTres anybody? I can continue to enjoy TTRPGs in my little circle regardless how popular it is. Buy it was exciting to see what looks like a good movie come out, a TV series in the works, Balder's Gate III is exactly what I've been looking for in CRPG, and I've really enjoyed 5e and am have been liking what I seen of One D&D. I'm even guardedly excited about their VTT plans.
Then they had to crap all over it. Sigh.
This is not a dig against smaller publishers and less popular games. Some of my favorite games make other systems look huge. I mean, Dialect or InSPECTres anybody? I can continue to enjoy TTRPGs in my little circle regardless how popular it is. Buy it was exciting to see what looks like a good movie come out, a TV series in the works, Balder's Gate III is exactly what I've been looking for in CRPG, and I've really enjoyed 5e and am have been liking what I seen of One D&D. I'm even guardedly excited about their VTT plans.
Then they had to crap all over it. Sigh.
And the thing is... I do not in any way blame people for thinking that their time in the creek could continue indefinitely. There were few reasons at all to think that this whole thing would blow up like it did (the same way YouTubers have little reason to think their jobs on YT are potentially at risk.) So to find it happening is indeed shocking as all get out, and I'm sure panic has set in for a lot of people. And I do not envy their positions nor discount their feelings. I just personally can't match the anger that other people have for the situation because I'm not in it and never really wanted to be.
Well... better for them to crap on it now while they were still 18+ months away from their 50th Anniversary celebration than to do it in the middle of it. That still gives everyone time to digest the fallout and see where everyone's attitudes are about the whole thing when GenCon '24 probably has a big ta-do about the 50th and the new books are released.
Vaalingrade
Legend
Susan makes sure they are harshly reminded every month or so.
To the point that it's stunning the Nebula is the only successful break away.
Don't know who this Susan is you are referring to... but I am a Nebula subscriber myself as a number of YouTube folks are on it that I subscribe to (Wendover Productions, Lindsay Ellis, Legal Eagle) and I appreciate their content.
If only Corridor Digital was on Nebula too rather than their own company video service, I'd be a happier camper.
Vaalingrade
Legend
YouTube S&P head, IIRC. The face of all the stupid rules and changes that roll out at random and blindside creators in the name of advertisers, none of who want to advertise to adults according to YouTube.
Gotcha. Yup, makes sense.
MGibster
Legend
While I do think having one game/company be synonymous with an entire hobby isn't great, I would have to agree with you. I would go a bit further to say that the last twenty years or so have been pretty good for gaming as a whole. There are a lot of good games, really, really niche games, that probably wouldn't have ever saw the light of day back in 1998 but can find an audience today.
gamerprinter
Mapper/Publisher
Honestly, I've been discovering that the majority of content I create, while I published it as OGL, only some of it was really OGL, I never needed the license to sell most my wares, just particular ones. Most of what I do is custom not connected to the SRD in any way. I did it more as a marketing tool for meeting audience expectations. I'm about to release a major product on DM's Guild under One D&D, that's the license I'll be working under on any D&D content, not the OGL. So I'm becoming less and less concerned about it. And as I mentioned in an earlier post in this thread my RPG business is doing good, not under eminent threat, like so many others seem to be. It is still a dangerous market, so I have to maintain my market situational awareness, and put more trust into my intuition, which has kept me competitive all these years. Of course most of my products are maps/map symbol sets, which require no license at all (and has none).
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gamerprinter
Mapper/Publisher
My one time experience contracting for Brady Games Publishing at Activision Video Game Studio, Santa Monica, CA. There were about 400 QA testers working on CoD:AW, all fresh out of college. But from my understanding, once the QA session was over, they were all fired (as standard operational procedure). I only met a handful of engineers on the job. So QA testing might not be the permanent video game job...
Charlaquin
Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)
Err… Streamers and lets players do not make money playing video games all day. That’s the most visible part of their job, sure, but there’s a ton of production work that goes on off-camera. You’re absolutely right that it wouldn’t be a viable career path without social media platforms like YouTube and Twitch, but I just wanted to clarify that as with any job in entertainment, there’s a lot more to the job than the audience sees.
Uhh, no. Folks working in “new media” are intensely aware of how fragile their position is. They all remember what happened with Vine (in fact, many of the most successful are former Vine celebrities), and they are constantly under threat of their platforms changing their algorithms or ad revenue policies in a way that kills their livelihoods, or having their content demonetized.
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