Eric Tillemans wrote:
In the last couple of months we learned through the Fantasy Grounds message boards that Paizo had refused to allow Fantasy Grounds II to official suppport Pathfinder RPG due to FG II not being able to run in a native mac environment. While many of us were disappointed, Doug from FG 2 had stated that Paizo was looking to their laywers to come up with something that would allow FG 2 to move forward in some sort of 'limited capacity'. Any word on this?
I'm frustrated with Paizo's decision and don't really understand why Fantasy Grounds can't have official support of the Pathfinder RPG. To take care of mac customers, Paizo could support a second VTT which does run in a native mac environment. Hero Lab is a windows only application, yet it is fully supported while Fantasy Grounds is not - why is that?
If it's truly the lack of Mac support that lead to this decision, then I would agree with the other posters that it was a dumb decision on Paizo's part.
I don't want my gaming company trying to force my technology decisions on me. If they want to encourage greater cross-platform support, then maybe they should be reaching out to the technology companies (Apple, Microsoft, and the plethora of Unix/Linux distributors) requesting that they work on providing a cross-platform development environment to allow smaller software companies to support them all? That would seem to be a better strategy for supporting your chosen technology platform than trying to force your own customers to use your particular technology choices.
In my opinion, Paizo should be reaching out to all the vendors offering technology that helps the game and working with them to release officially licensed versions (and reaping the benefits of free advertising in addition to the licensing fees). I happen to be a Paizo customer BECAUSE of Fantasy Grounds, and I think that they are really shooting themselves in the marketing foot by not embracing these companies. It's a credit to their customers that they are willing to put forth the effort that Paizo isn't and support an entire segment of the gaming market that Paizo has seemingly chosen to completely ignore.
If Paizo had given any legitimate reason for not supporting Fantasy Grounds, I think pretty much everyone would shut their mouth and move on, however refusing to support software simply because it doesn't support a niche player in the technology world seems like zealotry to me.
