WotC, really? No...really? You can't maintain a publishing schedule?

[catsclaw227]

Well, first, sure it is. Journalists don't have to worry about balanced mechanics or playtesting. Hell, for the bulk of their work, they don't even have to worry about research or fact-checking. They just run with whatever comes over the wire.

But second, and more importantly, news agencies cancel and rearrange stories all the time. Far more than WotC or the DDI do, in fact. You just never see it because they don't distribute calendars of the coming month's stories in advance.

This.

I shouldn't be shocked that, with the Ampersand announcement and Trevor's blog entry, the interwebz are alight with rampant speculation and doom mongering.

Looking without emotion at the announcements, it appears to me:

• They are moving away from a print magazine type schedule and calendar. They should have done this a long time ago. The digital medium is not well designed for strict editorial calendars and people expect information to flow faster and more fluidly. Print Magazines and Newspapers generally don't print their monthly content calendar because they change daily.
• They are trying to reduce error and increase quality in the online articles by putting them through the same vetting format as the books.
• Couple this with a reduction in the print offerings for 2011 and it seems obvious to me that they are simply moving that content into DDI. It will still exist, just not as a bound publication.
• They want to increase the quality AND quantity of the DDI content to make it more appealing and to win back some lapsed subscribers.
• With the VTT in development, they expected that mini sales will drop even more in the next year as users begin to integrate the VTT into their F2F tabletop game. No more reason for minis if the plan is to draw them into the VTT as their "medium". They can make cheaper tokens, put them in box sets and reduce internal costs significantly, and reuse the images for the VTT.

None of this seems that bad to me, so I guess I wonder what all the fuss is?

 

[catsclaw227]

My guess (and this is completely a guess) is that we will find out more information at DDXP.

Yep. I hope they can better get their message out.

I am not convinced the sky is falling on D&D, but their PR machine is way broken right now.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

@ Catsclaw:

I agree with some of what you've said there, in some ways similar to the post mudbunny quoted.


However, the "we won't bother to keep a publishing schedule" seems very shortsighted. I don't understand why they can't have a month's advance production (or even *gasp* a WHOLE WEEK'S) so that they can simply reliably put out a steady stream of content.

Additional forethought that this seems to indicate they may not have: if they did a good job 1) knowing what products they were going to release, 2) had the D&DI materials fairly far in advance, and 3) bothered to nicely coordinate their print and digital, this could help both of their offerings.

But, sadly, the way they run D&DI seems to be "what've we got today, let's publish it."


The "no publishing deadlines" seems a lot like the "no monthly compilation". It seems like they want to spin it as something good. In my opinion, both are just scaling back their own responsibilities without actually offering ANYTHING more to the customer.

WotC has said "We're doing less." I don't really see any positive spin on that.

 

[catsclaw227]

However, the "we won't bother to keep a publishing schedule" seems very shortsighted. I don't understand why they can't have a month's advance production (or even *gasp* a WHOLE WEEK'S) so that they can simply reliably put out a steady stream of content.

They've admitted to gaffes in the scheduling process and there are certainly times when things outside their realm of control cause an article to be pushed back (writer has a car accident, wave of sickness hits the office, art doesn't arrive on time, error in a rules interpretation by a freelancer, etc).

The thing is, though, when they print an article name on the website and it doesn't show up on time, WOTC gets lambasted for it.

I don't blame them for yanking the schedule and only giving a short idea of what will be coming up.

But, sadly, the way they run D&DI seems to be "what've we got today, let's publish it."

I think you would be shocked to see how often this happens in a print magazine or even an online news source.

And these other print mags and online news sources don't need to balance crunch, cross check powers and abilities, make sure the maps match the writers' descriptions, maintaining consistent fluff canon, etc.

There's a lot more moving parts to a DDI article than a typical blog article or magazine article on something like eating healthy veggies.

The "no publishing deadlines" seems a lot like the "no monthly compilation". It seems like they want to spin it as something good. In my opinion, both are just scaling back their own responsibilities without actually offering ANYTHING more to the customer.

WotC has said "We're doing less." I don't really see any positive spin on that.

I don't think they said or even implied that they're doing less. Heck, if anything they admit to their scheduling errors, they're cutting back on crunchy books and they're planning to add more to the online offerings by moving these elements into DDI articles and the CB/Compendium.

Looks to me like they are finally trying to work smarter, not harder.

 

[avin]

4E is over.

Waiting for 5E.

 

[Alzrius]

I think you would be shocked to see how often this happens in a print magazine or even an online news source.

I don't think an online news source is comparable. News outlets don't get to create the stories, they just report them. Now, once something has happened, they can try and plan out different angles for covering it (e.g. interviewing the eyewitnesses, the government response, expert opinions, etc.) but they have a very small timetable for planning these out, and things can change rapidly as new information comes to light and new developments happen.

News outlets can't give you their schedule a month in advance - they don't make the news.

An online publication of original content regarding a company's wholly owned IP, however, has as much time as they want to work on a given article, and can build up a sizable backlog of material. If we see print magazines announcing next month's content in advance, and keep that schedule - like the way the print Dragon and Dungeon did - then there's no reason why an online magazine can't do that for the current month.

Saying "but it's hard" isn't an excuse. Doing it in print is hard; having more flexibility and less firm deadlines due to the instantaneous nature of online publishing...to say nothing of having to worry less about things like layout, page count, and advertising...is easier.

I don't see any problem with holding WotC to a high standard in this regard. I do, however, have a problem with letting them hold themselves to a lower one.

 

[shadzar]

None of this seems that bad to me, so I guess I wonder what all the fuss is?

Consumer decides what quality of service they are willing to pay for. Quality goes up they might be willing to pay more, quality goes down they don't expect to be paying the same price, they expect to pay less for getting less.

Company can make claims it is more, but this is never quantitative, because the "more" is subjective even if letter/word count is objective.

The fus then is probably based on the value of the consumers dollar as compared to the quality of product they are getting and how it is viewed that that products quality has dropped.

 

[avin]

Is this a move towards counters?

It's a move towards the end, IMO...

 

[Umbran]

When you're talking about web-publishing, I don't think it is a matter of "can't" so much as, "have embraced the online medium, where strict schedules make much less sense".

Welcome to the internet era, where having people come to your website repeatedly, to check for new content, isn't just acceptable, but is an explicit part of the business plan.

 

[mudbunny]

And combine that with RSS feeds, email alerts, etc.

I never get to the artciles by navigating the WotC website. I get to them from my RSS feed.