DracoSuave
First Post
No, and if you think that was the argument, then I'm completely certain you never understood the argument to begin with.
WotC should make an online SRD....
- Thread starter Otterscrubber
- Start date
No, and if you think that was the argument, then I'm completely certain you never understood the argument to begin with.
This.
There are only 3 known facts about WotC not selling PDFs.
1) They tried it and pulled the plug.
2) Some people in the community still want them and can't buy them.
3) If they were to start selling them again they would get some revenue from said sales.
What we do NOT know.
1) Was it profitable for WotC to sell PDFs? NOTE: Profit <> Revenue.
In the end the answer to this question is the ONLY answer that matters. We can speculate about the contributing factors that influence the answer to this question such as:
* Do book sales drop more than the gained sales from PDFs?
* Are there any contracts or obligations that WotC has with distributors or vendors that may be affected by said reduction in book sales?
* What additional problems (litigation, Cease & Desist) crop up as a result of legal copies of their IP being readily available? Note: This refers to pirating that would not have happened if they were not selling their own PDFs as some level of pirating will always happen.
* Other issues I didn't think of in the 10 minutes I took to write this post.
One last thought. Maybe it was profitable for them to sell PDFs. The gain in profit could have been so small that it wasn't worth the trouble of any of the issues I present above.
Wishful thinking and speculation is not going to prompt WotC to suddenly release to the public what their reasoning was behind the decision that was made. Whatever the reason, it was not profitable (effort vs. profit ratio) for WotC to sell PDFs of their material.
DracoSuave
First Post
This.
Remember, here in our point of view, we have much speculation and anecdote.
However Wizards has -data-. We can't really use speculation or anecdote and call someone using actual data irrational.
This is where I think you are wrong. I have kids of that age and I have alot of friends with kids 20 years old or younger. They are used to digital, they DEMAND digital.
It is more likely that 12 year old Timmy sees and ad or hears about D&D from his online games then going to a book store. All of my kids as well as almost all of the people's kids I know are doing everything digital. If they can't get it digital they either don't do it or they make it digital. What WoTC is doing is akin to what the RIAA did with MP3s. the younger generation does not have the attitudes of you, or anyone else arguing that it is a good decision in the long run for any companie to not offer a digital offering. It is going to cost them. The head of WoTC is a HASBRO person (Greg Leeds), he is used to different circumstances, and you can tell in the business decisions since he has been part of WotC.
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DracoSuave
First Post
I'm not arguing about this.
But how do you -market- the product in a digital sense, without making it a video game?
Now, that might change when digital Game Tables start appearing as D&D offered services. At -that- point, the whole thing changes and you'll have digital distribution being something you can -demonstrate- rather than something you can just write a blurb about.
Yeah, kids want digital, but kids also want an experience. The experience is how you sell the product; how do you give the kid the experience that gets them to buy the product?
D&D has -always- been sold based on the experience.
Again, you're claiming their lack of PDF shows their lack of future-forward thinking... the Game Table (if it ever comes out) is far more future-forward than any singular 'pdf' distribution model could demonstrate.
They're ahead of -you-.
I am not sure you are getting what I am saying. My kids do not want books. They want to view it on their iPads, or whatever digital device that holds a couple of hundred books. That is the difference. They carry around the equivailant of 100 CDs with them if they want. They don't want to carry around those 100 CDs like we had to. They don't want to take a stack of books in a bookbag, they want to take their kindle, iPad, iPhone, netbook, or whatever it is.
That is the problem. It is the medium. It has to be available to them somehow, or they just won't bother, or if they really want it, they will get it.
They do not care about the companies profits. They hear about it, or see it on the WotC site and in this day and age expect to be able to buy it digital, and then download it NOW and start reading about it. They do not want to order it from Amazon and get it in a week or get their parents to take them to the local store to get it. (Heck, I can't even get parents to drive their kids over to my house (I live in a ruralish area) and pick them up. We go and get them and then take them home!)
WotC has to get to where the music industry is somehow. PDFs is one way, or DDI is another. If you go the DDI way - the entire book has to be available and it has to be available on multiple devices. iPhones, iTouchs, iPads, Android phones and tablets I think are the future. The book industry is going to feel the pain the music industry did if they do not co-operate and give the new generation what they want.
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DracoSuave
First Post
Here's the problem, so you can understand what I'm trying to explain.
Step 1: Make PDFs.
Step 2: ??????
Step 3: PROFIT!
The issue is not the demand for PDFs. The issue is how to make digital distribution profitable, and a reasonable way to make it so that digital distribution can be -marketed- so that the product the medium is used to convey can be sold.
Notice-- Digital Distribution. Not PDFs, necessarily.
So far, you've got the 'make PDFs' part down, and clearly, the goal is profit.
But how do you get the digital product into the hands of people who do not know it exists, and have no emotional connection to the product?
How do you -sell- it? Digital distribution requires digital money. Are these kids going around with credit cards? I have no idea, but I doubt Citibank's handing those things to anyone who makes 20 bucks a week allowance. Or whatever it is these days. Do online sources take Interac?
How do you get people to -want- your product? How do you introduce them to the idea? The kids -are- going into stores to buy their Magic cards or Yugi-oh or whatever.
The easiest way to sell a game is to have someone play it. To do that requires someone to play it with them, and that's an advantage a computer screen does not have.
So, I agree. Digital Distribution is a great idea and concept.
How do you -monetize- it? How do you -sell- it, and how do you use it to open up new markets? That last one is the most important point, and necessary for the entire industry. If WoTC goes down, so goes down the rest of the industry unless something can take its place.
For the record - I don't really care. It is not my job to figure out how to make money off of it. I am only telling you what the future is and what my kids, and alot of the kids in todays age want and expect.
There were a few good ideas in this thread about how to do that.
WotC are competing with themselves at this point in time with DDI. I have not bought 1 book since I have been a member.
There are a ton of kids with xbox live accounts, iPhones, Itouchs, Ipods, etc - they all require some form of payment attached to the device.
I also pointed out that it could be done with DDI. Throw us a bone. Let those of us that sign up for DDI be able to buy a digital version of the books that are put out during our subs for $10-15 a book.
Sometimes, you have to provide a service that you do not make a ton of money off of to sell your product. Most successful companies know this. They plan for this, and it is part of their costs of doing business.
It is not always about making money off of something you sell, sometimes it is giving your customers what they want at a reasonable price, while covering your costs.
Also, there are alot of companies providing digital copies of music, movies, books, etc that are way bigger than WotC, they have figured it out and it must be "worth" it to them.
So how many kids is that? 5? 10? 20?
What age range are they in? 4-6? 7-10? 11-14? 15-20?
Do all of them go for this kind of game or are some of them perhaps not part of WotC's demographics for D&D?
Did you do surveys about opinions of these kids or is this just a generic "they DEMAND digital"?
Was said survey (if you did one) unbiased?
All I'm trying to get at here is your sample is no where near big enough to make such a wild assertion about any given demographic of kids in any age range. Get back to us when you have some actual valid market research and not just your opinion based on a few of your friends.
rjdafoe said:
A comparison between the book industry and the music industry is not a valid comparison. Music has always required a device to play it on such as an 8-track, cassette player, CD player and now computers/iPods/etc. The only thing that has changed is the preferred device. A book has never required an external device to read it (unless you count a magnifying glass for those with poor vision). The future of digital book devices is still not set in stone and may not be for quite some time. Do you feel sorry for those companies that made beta tape players? How about Laser Disks? WotC is a game company. They are not about to be the trend setter in digital books. They will leave that up to industry companies like Random House and other publishing giants.
We will agree to disagree then. I do not have to do surveys, I have seen the envirnment change at the local colleges and gaming stores. I am sure that WotC did not do one either.
There are plenty of companies that went by the wayside when they did not keep ahead of the curve. Others stayed behind the curve, did business as usual and had to be saved by the government.
I am sorry you feel so strongly that a segment of the market should go unserved by the major player in the gaming market. Unfortunately for those of us that like technology, WotC tends to agree with you.
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