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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jer" data-source="post: 3475333" data-attributes="member: 19857">Well for starters, Dragon and Dungeon are a pre-existing network of D&D players that WotC is cutting off in one fell swoop while they create their Digital Initiative.  By maintaining both the print magazine and their new digital platform simultaneously, Wizards could still maintain that player network while building their new player network.  By canceling the magazines up front, Wizards cuts off that player network entirely.Some of those folks will, of course, move to the new network.  Some of them will move blindly, just trusting that Wizards will provide a good digital product.  Others will wait-and-see if the new site is going to be worthwhile.  But some of us probably won't bother at all, and that's one less connection to these gamers that Wizards has.  As Wizards loses contact points with this group of gamers, it becomes easier for them to move to other games, move out of the hobby altogether, or, just as bad for Wizards, not bother to "upgrade" to the next version of the game when it comes out.I disagree with this - I agree that the ENnies are a lose-lose situation for Wizards (and therefore its a good idea that they don't submit anything and let it be an award for the rest of the market), but this is a completely different story.  If the DI fails, well these online pay-for-subscription sites haven't been successful for anyone (other than the porn sites, I guess), so really there's no egg on anyone's face -- its just that the digital model (still) isn't ready for primetime yet.OTOH, if the DI succeeds wildly and Dragon and Dungeon become unprofitable to maintain because of the competition, well it would be PAIZO who would be canceling them, not Wizards.  Paizo would not renew the license, and Wizards would just say "well, magazines just don't work any more, so with a heavy heart we find that we need to cancel the magazines altogether - but hey, we're still doing stuff on-line so check us out".  Paizo would be the ones taking all of the risks in this scenario, not Wizards.Indeed, it seems like Wizards is taking an unnecessary hit in the PR department here.  If they'd built their site first, had some content up for a while (say a year) and allowed word of mouth and reviews to build up BEFORE cancelling Dragon and Dungeon, people might be more comfortable with the move to the digital format.  Instead, they announced it suddenly, without any forewarning, and haven't been able to show what kind of content they'll be replacing it with or how much it's going to cost.</blockquote>

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