Why doesn't WotC license older editions?

[haakon1]

There is an example of companies that do just this: video game copanies. Valve, for example, still sells Half Life on the shelves and through digital distribution, even though there's Half Life 2 and newer games. They license the engine and allow professional mods using the engine.

It makes a lot of sense for PnP RPGs, in fact, because ultimately what is an RPG but a game engine ready for your modding?

Comparing video games and RPG's seems like an apt comparison to me.

Video games often come out for multiple consoles/operating systems: e.g., for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, with a later version coming out for PC. Or PC games sometimes eventually come out for Mac if they are highly successful. And PC games inevitably run for many different flavors of Windows, like XP, Vista, or 2000.

I believe how the video game console maker gets their money is licensing fees from 3rd party game companies: like $1 per copy of a game made for its console. They also make some first party games for their own system, to try to make a killer app that makes their console special (e.g., Halo).

Some of this went on in the d20/OGL era: I have a dual stat'd Harn/3e game, and there were Troll Lords games published for d20/C&C.

What's interesting with the 4e GSL is that WotC is saying you can't make a game that can run on other "operating systems". I dunno if it's only anti-3e, or anti-all other game systems, but if it's the latter -- "if you want to work with the big dog with the dominant market share, you can't work with the little guys like Pathfinder, C&C, etc." that's really uncool and fishy.

The other interesting software analogy is backwards compatibility. I've seen a demo that Windows Vista can run Visicalc, an ancient DOS spreadsheet program (Diaglo may use it for character sheets!). And I know Apple OS X has a built-in emulator to run OS 9 (and much earlier) applications, even though the chip and the OS are completely different now.

Obviously, that's more complicated with books, but still . . . some effort at backwards compatibility would have been nice. The official WotC view seems to be: "toss out your old campaign, your old characters, and all your old books -- you need to upgrade or get out, because our new ideas are so great that everything old is useless".

The car analogy doesn't work for me as well . . .

 

[Squizzle]

The more accurate video game analogy isn't the software, it's the hardware: "Why doesn't Sony let other companies build PS2s, if they're focusing on the PS3? The other companies could even improve on the PS2!"

The answer is that creating your own competition and diluting brand definition is tremendously dumb.

 

[tenkar]

The more accurate video game analogy isn't the software, it's the hardware: "Why doesn't Sony let other companies build PS2s, if they're focusing on the PS3? The other companies could even improve on the PS2!"

The answer is that creating your own competition and diluting brand definition is tremendously dumb.

Yep, that is why WotC doesn't want another half dozen branded versions of D&D out in the market.

The car analogy doesn't work because RPGs don't need an official channel of parts to keep them running. All you need are players and a DM and one copy of the original rules or a suitable clone and your imagination.

It seems the original poster wants "official" products released for the older D&D lines. There is no need of this. It would be cost prohibitive for any company to license the trademark to create a competitor for D&D 4e. As for licensing the rules, run with OGL and have fun. Judging by the number of quality clones for the earlier editions I can't understand why ANY publisher would want to go and license the earlier editions when the OGL can be tweaked for free..

Games never die. As long as someone is playing them they live. The publication may cease but the game goes on.

 

[El Mahdi]

... People who stick to older games aren't doing it out of necessity; they're doing it out of preference. ...

And licensing previous editions would allow you to still sell to, and make money off of, those with that preference. You aren't making money off of these people anyways, with licensing you can. Makes sense to me. It doesn't cost you (the license holder) anything. The expenses would all be on those who buy the license and print the material. How is this not a win-win? Nobody seems to have put forth an argument yet that counters that? (And competing against yourself is not a logical argument - the people who would buy these products aren't buying your current products anyways.)

 

[Mistwell]

And licensing previous editions would allow you to still sell to, and make money off of, those with that preference. You aren't making money off of these people anyways, with licensing you can. Makes sense to me. It doesn't cost you (the license holder) anything. The expenses would all be on those who buy the license and print the material. How is this not a win-win? Nobody seems to have put forth an argument yet that counters that? (And competing against yourself is not a logical argument - the people who would buy these products aren't buying your current products anyways.)

I think it is a logical argument. Despite you underlining and bolding it.

Eventually, most people switch. Maybe it is because they cannot find new players to play with and the old players drop off. Maybe it is because they long for new material. Maybe it is because the people they do like play a newer edition. Whatever the reason, eventually most people do switch, despite a few stragglers here and there.

As for not costing anything, that is unrealistic. Here is just a small part of what happens when you license this sort of stuff, off the top of my head:

1) Come up with guidelines for what parts of the brand they cannot use because they are in important IP use elsewhere and their use by someone else would dilute that brand. This requires a line by line review of the material in question.
2) Come up with guidelines for what is appropriate use of the part you are allowed to use. This is mostly a line by line review.
3) Come up with the license agreement itself. This is a lawyer's time.
4) Monitor the use by others. This is a line by line review of everyone else's stuff.
5) Account for uses of others. There is accounting overhead involved here.

Licensing is not free for the licensor. There is a lot of legal and accounting cost involved. It is not "Step 1 permit use, Step 2 collect money".

 

[malraux]

And licensing previous editions would allow you to still sell to, and make money off of, those with that preference. You aren't making money off of these people anyways, with licensing you can. Makes sense to me. It doesn't cost you (the license holder) anything. The expenses would all be on those who buy the license and print the material. How is this not a win-win? Nobody seems to have put forth an argument yet that counters that? (And competing against yourself is not a logical argument - the people who would buy these products aren't buying your current products anyways.)

Some would.

Moreover, it does cost something. At a minimum, it costs WotC something to employ a person to handle all the paperwork, legal approval, content review, etc that the license would require. That's not free. And its not like WotC has legal and content reviews just twiddling their thumbs. Unless you mean something like the OGL, in which case I'd point you to the ogl.

 

[El Mahdi]

I think it is a logical argument. Despite you underlining and bolding it.

Eventually, most people switch. Maybe it is because they cannot find new players to play with and the old players drop off. Maybe it is because they long for new material. Maybe it is because the people they do like play a newer edition. Whatever the reason, eventually most people do switch, despite a few stragglers here and there.

As for not costing anything, that is unrealistic. Here is just a small part of what happens when you license this sort of stuff, off the top of my head:

1) Come up with guidelines for what parts of the brand they cannot use because they are in important IP use elsewhere and their use by someone else would dilute that brand. This requires a line by line review of the material in question.
2) Come up with guidelines for what is appropriate use of the part you are allowed to use. This is mostly a line by line review.
3) Come up with the license agreement itself. This is a lawyer's time.
4) Monitor the use by others. This is a line by line review of everyone else's stuff.
5) Account for uses of others. There is accounting overhead involved here.

Licensing is not free for the licensor. There is a lot of legal and accounting cost involved. It is not "Step 1 permit use, Step 2 collect money".

Using the premise that it's "competing against yourself" is not a logical argument. Most of your argument was that it isn't cost effective (as Malraux basically said also). That is a valid, logical argument. But, the argument that one is competing against themself isn't valid if those people (i.e. your "stragglers") aren't going to buy your products anyways. You are targeting, marketing to, and selling to, those very stragglers you are talking about. This is not competing against yourself. It's selling a desired product to a niche market that you would otherwise not have as a customer. I can understand not doing that if it isn't cost effective, but it is not competing against yourself. No matter how many times this is said, it's not going to make it true.

 

[Mistwell]

Using the premise that it's "competing against yourself" is not a logical argument. Most of your argument was that it isn't cost effective (as Malraux basically said also). That is a valid, logical argument. But, the argument that one is competing against themself isn't valid if those people (i.e. your "stragglers") aren't going to buy your products anyways. You are targeting, marketing to, and selling to, those very stragglers you are talking about. This is not competing against yourself. It's selling a desired product to a niche market that you would otherwise not have as a customer. I can understand not doing that if it isn't cost effective, but it is not competing against yourself. No matter how many times this is said, it's not going to make it true.

The first part of my response was a direct response to your "competing against yourself" issue.

As I explained, people eventually switch over time, if there is no competing new content for the edition they like. If you give them that competing content, those people will not switch. And sometimes it takes many years for their group to drift away and for them to realize they cannot replace the group with new people unless they play the only supported edition.

The "stragglers" comment you took out of context. I said a few stragglers, but most end up switching because of lack of support for their preferred edition. And it takes a long time of lacking support for some to switch, but those who do switch because of the long lack of support would be lost customers to WOTC if those people got the support.

Hence, it is competing against themselves to license the material. And therefore, it's a logical argument, again despite you underlining, bolding, and italicizing it. Maybe you should try all caps and a bigger font, and that will feel more persuasive to you?

 

[malraux]

Using the premise that it's "competing against yourself" is not a logical argument. Most of your argument was that it isn't cost effective (as Malraux basically said also). That is a valid, logical argument. But, the argument that one is competing against themself isn't valid if those people (i.e. your "stragglers") aren't going to buy your products anyways. You are targeting, marketing to, and selling to, those very stragglers you are talking about. This is not competing against yourself. It's selling a desired product to a niche market that you would otherwise not have as a customer. I can understand not doing that if it isn't cost effective, but it is not competing against yourself. No matter how many times this is said, it's not going to make it true.

What if the market for licensed old systems is half people who will only buy old stuff, half people who would prefer to buy the old system if licensed but will buy the new stuff made by WotC otherwise? In that case, they would be competing against themselves.

 

[Glyfair]

But, the argument that one is competing against themself isn't valid if those people (i.e. your "stragglers") aren't going to buy your products anyways.

That makes sense, if this license ONLY serves those who "aren't going to buy your products." If the license serves some who prefer a system that is "supported," but prefer to stick to an older system (as long as it has support) then that competition shows up again.

The reality is that a lot of roleplayers want to play a system that is actively supported. The way the RPG market has behaved over the years shows that behavior.