D&D 5E WotC Dungeons & Dragons 2020 Product Survey

[Ruin Explorer]

That said, of course it's possible to envision a scenario in the future where they roll out an edition that has a digital platform at launch. We'll see if that's 'soon'. And whether they don't just do it with a partner or by buying a partner.

Possible to envision? It was literally the goal with 4th Edition (go back and watch the original 4E adverts if you've forgotten). Events prevented that from happening, but this isn't just something you might imagine WotC doing, it's something they tried before, and the reasons to try it then are only far stronger now.

Do you mean the tens of millions in video games? Because I'll buy that there are 10's of millions to be made there hypothetically, which is why I suspect they've started buying and setting up video game studios. But in the 'character and campaign management' space? Seems like for the tabletop side most of the money is in selling the content, and they clearly have a lot of control over that part in their licensing agreements (based on frequent comments made by the DDB team about how they can't really change pricing, what is sold on their site, what is displayed on their site, and how they bundle things without WotC approval). I just think the margins for the campaign management side are probably so much narrower that it's not a slam dunk to set up your own in house coding team for it. I mean, they've tried it in the past, and while Insider was presumably successful, I never got the impression they were rolling around in dough.

Yeah what's publicly known is mostly video games studios, but it's not trivial to successfully make AAA video games, and they're going for not one but two AAA studios. Why? Why not license out D&D's brand or whatever? Because they can make enormously more money if they do it themselves. Whether it'd be enough to make it worthwhile remains an open question but they certainly though it was in 2008, so it seems unlike that they would think it wasn't in 2020.

With Beyond/Roll 20/etc. there are three issues which mean the profitability is limited for everyone involved:

1) Marketing reach is limited. None of the companies who currently do this stuff are WotC. Their marketing reach is very short. Beyond with even moderate marketing, got I suspect a lot further than Roll 20 or the like ever has, in terms of picking up players. If WotC were doing it themselves, this would not be the case. Adverts and links could be in every physical book, and the site could be fully integrated into WotC's own sites. The uptake difference could thus be pretty huge. So that's one way to improve profitability.

2) Everyone only gets a percentage and WotC doesn't get a subscription. We don't know what that percentage is, but Beyond charges a subscription (for the DM at the very least) and charges for every book, and I would suspect WotC only get a cut of the charges for each book. Whether that's 30%, 50% or what I don't know. But it's a percentage, and I very much doubt they get any of the subscription for any of these services. If WotC did it themselves, they'd take on the costs, but they'd also get 100% of the sales, and any subscription fee, which realistically is likely to dwarf the costs (people typically wildly overestimate the development/support costs for things - for example, in the period in which WoW made its first $10bn, they spend $200m on development and support - and yes that included developing two entire expansions, countless bits of content, supporting hundreds, I think thousands worldwide, of CSRs - as well as the rest of the staff - and all the servers and bandwidth). So that would be a huge profitability boost. Yes, some people will complain that they can't use the existing services, but the key thing is to match and beat what they offer - which would not be hard, technically.

3) Competition. Beyond, Roll 20 and Fantasy Grounds are all competing against each other, and to some extent, against WotC. This doesn't really seem to be helping anyone, either. The end result is just a somewhat split market and reluctance to use other products. There's no intentional cross-marketing (I mean, a lot of use an app to make Beyond and Roll 20 work together, but I'm sure neither side is happy about it. Certainly it's not boosting profits.

There's a lot of other stuff as well, like IP control. I mean, Beyond presents the WotC IP incredibly well, but they have also gone rogue a bit and included non-WotC stuff (which seemed to get cracked down on with one recent thing so...), but Roll 20 doesn't present it nearly as well, and I doubt Fantasy Grounds does either.

DDI was only a moderate success because they didn't invest enough, and because of a murder, which lead to them providing a small fraction of the tools originally planned. It's not actually expensive or difficult to do, but it required experience they didn't have then, but clearly do have now. Further they were kind of ripping themselves off. I can be honest now and say I bought significantly fewer 4E products because of the DDI. If they'd had a "virtual book" system as well as the sub they could have made a lot more money (though they'd needed to have lowered the sub a bit - but we had like seven people using that one sub so it wasn't too bad).

Further, D&D has several times as many players now as it did in early 4E, not just because they defeated the split, but also because they managed, albeit with some luck, to build 5E into this massive brand. The more players you have potentially using this, the better the cost/profit ratio becomes, because the development costs are largely fixed, and the support costs only increase gently.

Sorry I know I'm going on about this! It's not a certainty, I just think it's highly likely. If I was WotC, I'd probably be really looking hard at how well Beyond does with their VTT, and it's great, whether I could buy them.

 

[lkj]

Possible to envision? It was literally the goal with 4th Edition (go back and watch the original 4E adverts if you've forgotten). Events prevented that from happening, but this isn't just something you might imagine WotC doing, it's something they tried before, and the reasons to try it then are only far stronger now.



Yeah what's publicly known is mostly video games studios, but it's not trivial to successfully make AAA video games, and they're going for not one but two AAA studios. Why? Why not license out D&D's brand or whatever? Because they can make enormously more money if they do it themselves. Whether it'd be enough to make it worthwhile remains an open question but they certainly though it was in 2008, so it seems unlike that they would think it wasn't in 2020.

With Beyond/Roll 20/etc. there are three issues which mean the profitability is limited for everyone involved:

1) Marketing reach is limited. None of the companies who currently do this stuff are WotC. Their marketing reach is very short. Beyond with even moderate marketing, got I suspect a lot further than Roll 20 or the like ever has, in terms of picking up players. If WotC were doing it themselves, this would not be the case. Adverts and links could be in every physical book, and the site could be fully integrated into WotC's own sites. The uptake difference could thus be pretty huge. So that's one way to improve profitability.

2) Everyone only gets a percentage and WotC doesn't get a subscription. We don't know what that percentage is, but Beyond charges a subscription (for the DM at the very least) and charges for every book, and I would suspect WotC only get a cut of the charges for each book. Whether that's 30%, 50% or what I don't know. But it's a percentage, and I very much doubt they get any of the subscription for any of these services. If WotC did it themselves, they'd take on the costs, but they'd also get 100% of the sales, and any subscription fee, which realistically is likely to dwarf the costs (people typically wildly overestimate the development/support costs for things - for example, in the period in which WoW made its first $10bn, they spend $200m on development and support - and yes that included developing two entire expansions, countless bits of content, supporting hundreds, I think thousands worldwide, of CSRs - as well as the rest of the staff - and all the servers and bandwidth). So that would be a huge profitability boost. Yes, some people will complain that they can't use the existing services, but the key thing is to match and beat what they offer - which would not be hard, technically.

3) Competition. Beyond, Roll 20 and Fantasy Grounds are all competing against each other, and to some extent, against WotC. This doesn't really seem to be helping anyone, either. The end result is just a somewhat split market and reluctance to use other products. There's no intentional cross-marketing (I mean, a lot of use an app to make Beyond and Roll 20 work together, but I'm sure neither side is happy about it. Certainly it's not boosting profits.

There's a lot of other stuff as well, like IP control. I mean, Beyond presents the WotC IP incredibly well, but they have also gone rogue a bit and included non-WotC stuff (which seemed to get cracked down on with one recent thing so...), but Roll 20 doesn't present it nearly as well, and I doubt Fantasy Grounds does either.

DDI was only a moderate success because they didn't invest enough, and because of a murder, which lead to them providing a small fraction of the tools originally planned. It's not actually expensive or difficult to do, but it required experience they didn't have then, but clearly do have now. Further they were kind of ripping themselves off. I can be honest now and say I bought significantly fewer 4E products because of the DDI. If they'd had a "virtual book" system as well as the sub they could have made a lot more money (though they'd needed to have lowered the sub a bit - but we had like seven people using that one sub so it wasn't too bad).

Further, D&D has several times as many players now as it did in early 4E, not just because they defeated the split, but also because they managed, albeit with some luck, to build 5E into this massive brand. The more players you have potentially using this, the better the cost/profit ratio becomes, because the development costs are largely fixed, and the support costs only increase gently.

Sorry I know I'm going on about this! It's not a certainty, I just think it's highly likely. If I was WotC, I'd probably be really looking hard at how well Beyond does with their VTT, and it's great, whether I could buy them.

Hey, no worries about going on! I get that you're feeling pretty strongly about this as a prediction, and I-- unintentionally-- keep poking you by responding. And I will stop doing so! I'm a usual lurker on these messageboards because, in the end, while I enjoy in person debates, I don't so much enjoy the text versions of them (though I understand the fun theoretically). I could reply again with my responses, but I'd pretty quickly get tired and then just leave you hanging.

So I'm fine with leaving this at 'I see what your saying. We'll see how it goes.'

Cheers,
AD

 

[eyeheartawk]

2) Everyone only gets a percentage and WotC doesn't get a subscription. We don't know what that percentage is, but Beyond charges a subscription (for the DM at the very least) and charges for every book, and I would suspect WotC only get a cut of the charges for each book. Whether that's 30%, 50% or what I don't know. But it's a percentage, and I very much doubt they get any of the subscription for any of these services.

That doesn't make sense. If that's the case why not just sell PDFs of the books? They would keep to keep a much bigger percentage of the sale that way. While, I think they certainly do get a cut of the book sales on those services there is almost certainly a cut of the subscription revenue and/or a yearly fee. Otherwise it doesn't make financial sense.

 

[jerryrice4949]

That doesn't make sense. If that's the case why not just sell PDFs of the books? They would keep to keep a much bigger percentage of the sale that way. While, I think they certainly do get a cut of the book sales on those services there is almost certainly a cut of the subscription revenue and/or a yearly fee. Otherwise it doesn't make financial sense.

Much more difficult to pirate a DND Beyond book than a PDF.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

That doesn't make sense. If that's the case why not just sell PDFs of the books? They would keep to keep a much bigger percentage of the sale that way. While, I think they certainly do get a cut of the book sales on those services there is almost certainly a cut of the subscription revenue and/or a yearly fee. Otherwise it doesn't make financial sense.

They have shown for nearly two entire editions (very early 4E had a few PDFs) that they have zero interest in providing PDFs for in-print editions. Long before Beyond or Roll 20 or the like were providing decent digital copies. The reason for that, if we go on what they've said, largely seems to be piracy, together with PDFs being a totally crap way to present their product.

 

[eyeheartawk]

They have shown for nearly two entire editions (very early 4E had a few PDFs) that they have zero interest in providing PDFs for in-print editions. Long before Beyond or Roll 20 or the like were providing decent digital copies. The reason for that, if we go on what they've said, largely seems to be piracy, together with PDFs being a totally crap way to present their product.

Yes, and that was and has been super successful from stopping PDFs being available for free within minutes a book's physical release.

Also, there are many people who do like PDFs, but that's really a separate conversation.

I'm simply saying that financially, they are getting more than just a cut of the book sales.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

They have shown for nearly two entire editions (very early 4E had a few PDFs) that they have zero interest in providing PDFs for in-print editions. Long before Beyond or Roll 20 or the like were providing decent digital copies. The reason for that, if we go on what they've said, largely seems to be piracy, together with PDFs being a totally crap way to present their product.

I'm pretty sure one of the big names has said during the 5e years that piracy isn't one of the considerations.

And it's good to know that they understand that. Because the pdfs will be pirated whether WotC makes them or not, selling them can only reduce piracy and make them money from the people that only pirate them because they can't get them legally.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

I'm pretty sure one of the big names has said during the 5e years that piracy isn't one of the considerations.

And it's good to know that they understand that. Because the pdfs will be pirated whether WotC makes them or not, selling them can only reduce piracy and make them money from the people that only pirate them because they can't get them legally.

I'm pretty sure this is a myth, the idea that "Making PDFs available for sale makes them more likely to be bought instead of pirated."

Truth is, whether or not Wizard's makes PDFs available, their going to be pirated; but probably not at the same levels. Yes if you look hard enough you can find a PDF copy of the latest release, but that's still a little more complicated than someone buying a PDF copy and then sending that copy to his friend, who sends it to his friends, etc etc.

The committed pirate will always get that free PDF if they look hard enough. But most folks aren't really committed like that, and find delving in obscure websites dodgy and unethical. But sharing a copy with a friend, that doesn't seem unethical.

It's like HBO. Game of Thrones was the most pirated TV show of all time; but did HBO give up and say, "We aren't able to stop pirates, so let's make this available for free with ads"? No. They did their cost-benefit analysis and found that yes, pirates gonna pirate, but many folks don't pirate for various reasons, and that's going to make more money in subscription $ than making it free with ads.

No doubt WotC has done that same cost-benefit analysis with PDFs and found it isn't valuable enough to do.

TLDR: Piracy is an expected cost in business, but that doesn't mean that making PDF sales available outweighs the reduced piracy.

 

[Parmandur]

I'm pretty sure one of the big names has said during the 5e years that piracy isn't one of the considerations.

And it's good to know that they understand that. Because the pdfs will be pirated whether WotC makes them or not, selling them can only reduce piracy and make them money from the people that only pirate them because they can't get them legally.

I'm pretty sure this is a myth, the idea that "Making PDFs available for sale makes them more likely to be bought instead of pirated."

Truth is, whether or not Wizard's makes PDFs available, their going to be pirated; but probably not at the same levels. Yes if you look hard enough you can find a PDF copy of the latest release, but that's still a little more complicated than someone buying a PDF copy and then sending that copy to his friend, who sends it to his friends, etc etc.

The committed pirate will always get that free PDF if they look hard enough. But most folks aren't really committed like that, and find delving in obscure websites dodgy and unethical. But sharing a copy with a friend, that doesn't seem unethical.

It's like HBO. Game of Thrones was the most pirated TV show of all time; but did HBO give up and say, "We aren't able to stop pirates, so let's make this available for free with ads"? No. They did their cost-benefit analysis and found that yes, pirates gonna pirate, but many folks don't pirate for various reasons, and that's going to make more money in subscription $ than making it free with ads.

No doubt WotC has done that same cost-benefit analysis with PDFs and found it isn't valuable enough to do.

TLDR: Piracy is an expected cost in business, but that doesn't mean that making PDF sales available outweighs the reduced piracy.

Yup, Nathan Stewart made it pretty clear, and repeatedly, that customer experience was the main issue: PDFs can be very handy, but most people don't like just using the raw PDF.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Yup, Nathan Stewart made it pretty clear, and repeatedly, that customer experience was the main issue: PDFs can be very handy, but most people don't like just using the raw PDF.

And the cost of making it a cool pdf with links and whatnot wouldn't be justified by the profit from added purchases.

Which is fair. I do hope they put up raw pdfs when the books go out of print, in case people don't want to switch or want to go back, but I can see why they'd decide it ain't worth it right now.