Thoughts on charging for game table "miniatures"

[reutbing0]

3. Dragon, Dungeon and the Online Tools should be sold separately. Dragon is no use to me and I suspect the Online Tools will be of little use. Dungeon on PDF is not worth $10.

In the latest episode of Gamer Radio Zero there's an interview with Bart Carroll (a producer for DDI). He says: "The plan has always been that if you are a monthly subscriber you would get Dragon and Dungeon magazines as part of your subscription. If you were interested in purchasing an individual issue you would also have that option".

Another interesting tidbit is that there will be "a robust set of tools" for 3rd party publishers to post material to DDI.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

If I'm not mistaken, you can redeem your virtual MtG cards for physical cards.

If the DDi has this, maybe not so bad, especially with a trade center

Only if you get every single card in the set, or so I've been told. How many boosters do you have to buy to get every single card?

 

[Imban]

If you buy the Magic Online equivalent of a booster box, you'll probably have pretty close to a complete set. Almost guaranteed you won't have a complete set, but you might well be able to trade for one.

 

[xechnao]

I've got the feeling that random minis could only be mentioned at this point as a taunting teaser. That is so to create eventually a positive relief for the sake of promotion of DDI. Random virtual minis actually make no sense to a D&D: they are neither collectible nor a means of a direct competition game as MtG.

 

[Drammattex]

All electronic MM1 miniatures should be available with purchase of the Monster Manual and activation of the electronic DDI code.

If an a fee were to be charged (essentially to pay for the design & implementation of those electronic creatures), I would personally pay up to $10 (total and forever) for use of the creatures within said manual. Otherwise, there is no way.

It's not that I couldn't afford it. It's that I would find it ridiculous. I already have thousands of plastic minis. Plus, it looks like a greedy move. I believe that 4e is going to give us a quality product and can certainly justify spending money on the edition. But random virtual miniatures? HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!! HAAAA! HAAA! HAAAAA!!!

Pull the other one!

 

[Novem5er]

I think in that latest podcast, the WotC rep mentioned that the Game Table is designed to be used with any game and specificaly mentioned DDM (the collectible miniatures game).

If they are expecting people to use the table for DDM, then there is a HUGE possibility that V-minis will be random and that Rare V-minis will be priced much higher.

To be clear, DDI is not an MMO, but like another poster said, by charging a monthly fee, it directly competes with that kind of product. Thus, you have to compare what those products have to offer.

Let me state, that I think the Game Table would be awesome. I have already head a dozen local gamers express interest/excitement for 4e on the premise of online gaming alone. I want to be able to play D&D with remote friends, new players, or with friends across town who can't make it out of the house (watching a kid, broken foot, etc). I want DDI and the Game Table to work out.

But I'm really not sure if all these people will pay $15 a month. First, not every player needs access to Dungeon magazine. They aren't DMs, so they don't need adventures. Some of the players will be interested in Dragon... but not all. Dragon offers players lots of options, but over the course of a few months, more options than any one player can use in a single campaign

Also... these players have always had access to Dungeon/Dragon in the past (via the magazines), so these products are really nothing new. They're just digital now.

So the main draw for these excited players is the Game Table. Even at $10, it had better be impressive.

2D tokens are not impressive. Random V-minis are not impressive. Overly costly non-random V-minis are not impressive. Especially not compared to an MMO, which is what D&D is competing against.

If built correctly, the DDI Game Table will attract new players and sell more books. There's your cost coverage right there.

 

[captaincursor]

"The dream is ... to trade your Dungeons and Dragons Beholder miniature for a Serra Angel [Magic Online digital card]."

Ugh. Can't we just pay our damn subscription and tell our fantasy stories?

 

[broghammerj]

A yearly subscription to Dragon or Dungeon was around $45 each... for a total of $90. For both magazines, that equates to about $7.50 a month. Now, to be fair, that price was subsidized by advertisements in the magazine... something DDI won't have (I assume).

So lets trade no advertising for the fact that there is no physical printing or shipping of the product, and the fact that I need a PC to access the material. Even Steven.

So we're paying $7.50 a month for both DDI magazines. Assuming they will charge $15 for the whole package, what are we getting for the other $7.50 we are paying?

The DDI Tools, such as the character generator, the DM toolset (still not sure what this is), and the Gaming Table.

I like your logic with Dungeon and Dragon being supplemented by advertising vs. decreased cost of shipping and printing. It really simplifies the discussion to call it Even Steven. However, I would argue it probably comes out better for WotC's bottomline otherwise they wouldn't have done it. Advantage: WotC

As much as it simplifies the discussion from a cost standpoint it is problematic from a bundled package standpoint. I wasn't nor am currently really interested in either Dragon or Dungeon, but I am extremely interested in the gaming table. Now WotC is charging me for product I don't want....ie I can't pay just $7.50 for the table because it's part of a package subscription deal. $15 to WotC, not $7.50. Advantage: WotC

Now I have fiver other players in my group who need to have subscriptions to DnD Insider in order to even play together. $15x5=75. Advantage: WotC

Fast forward....now I am using the wonderful 4E ruleset with the new gaming table embraced by my group. MMII comes out. I can either play with the miniatures I have currently or spend more money to keep my gaming table up to date. Advantage: WotC

This seems like an ever increasing price to the consumer with very little increase in production cost. The consumer advantage: Get nickled and dime to death and cancel subscription.

 

[broghammerj]

All electronic MM1 miniatures should be available with purchase of the Monster Manual and activation of the electronic DDI code.

Bingo! This is how the system should be set up. You buy the book you get the miniatures. Otherwise I am spending money on a "cup of coffee" priced book activation to get a simple PDF. A nice convenience, but again how much is that really costing WotC in production values. I would assume they can generate a PDF just based on sending a book to the printers. Certainly all the pirates can do it very inexpensively.

At the very minimum, I would accept free tokens depicting the artwork from the MM for unlocking the book. Then perhaps I would pay $5-$10 for 3-D renderings for the entire MM or entire DnD Minis set.

 

[Dormammu]

Bingo! This is how the system should be set up. You buy the book you get the miniatures. Otherwise I am spending money on a "cup of coffee" priced book activation to get a simple PDF. A nice convenience, but again how much is that really costing WotC in production values. I would assume they can generate a PDF just based on sending a book to the printers. Certainly all the pirates can do it very inexpensively

Yeah, since all book layout is now done on computers it's not like they even need to scan anything. It's just save in one format for your printer and another for the pdf... or possibly they even use pdf for both!