Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="rollingForInit" data-source="post: 6579786" data-attributes="member: 6793360">That really depends on how invested they are in seeing it work, and what resources in terms of domain experts they're willing to invest in the development. There's a lot more to creating a software than just saying &quot;we want a great D&amp;D character creation tool&quot;. You gotta do requirements. Requirements are important, critical, and also extremely difficult to get right. They'd have to have people who really know D&amp;D be a part of the development, someone who's used to working with software development, someone who knows what can and can't be done, etc. And who can make sure that the product is exactly what WotC wants, not what the development company believes WotC wants. As someone mentioned earlier, if WotC launches a product, people are going to expect a whole lot more from it than they would from a fan-made, free product. And they have to make sure that the product ends up meet all of those demands, otherwise it'll cause bad-will against the D&amp;D franchise. That's actually very common in software development. An absurd portion of all software development ends up being what's called &quot;shelfware&quot;, that is, software that's developed but never actually released, because the owners end up believing that it's not good enough, or the timing wasn't right, or it wouldn't really be what people wanted. I'm certainly not saying that they couldn't produce a decent piece of software. I really hope that they do produce a decent piece of D&amp;D software. It's just that, there's a whole lot more to it than just hiring a firm to produce something. The cost aside, if they want something good that'll meet the expectations, they're going to have to be invested in it.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="rollingForInit, post: 6579786, member: 6793360"] That really depends on how invested they are in seeing it work, and what resources in terms of domain experts they're willing to invest in the development. There's a lot more to creating a software than just saying "we want a great D&D character creation tool". You gotta do requirements. Requirements are important, critical, and also extremely difficult to get right. They'd have to have people who really know D&D be a part of the development, someone who's used to working with software development, someone who knows what can and can't be done, etc. And who can make sure that the product is exactly what WotC wants, not what the development company believes WotC wants. As someone mentioned earlier, if WotC launches a product, people are going to expect a whole lot more from it than they would from a fan-made, free product. And they have to make sure that the product ends up meet all of those demands, otherwise it'll cause bad-will against the D&D franchise. That's actually very common in software development. An absurd portion of all software development ends up being what's called "shelfware", that is, software that's developed but never actually released, because the owners end up believing that it's not good enough, or the timing wasn't right, or it wouldn't really be what people wanted. I'm certainly not saying that they couldn't produce a decent piece of software. I really hope that they [i]do[/i] produce a decent piece of D&D software. It's just that, there's a whole lot more to it than just hiring a firm to produce something. The cost aside, if they want something good that'll meet the expectations, they're going to have to be invested in it. [/QUOTE]

Verification