Ambivalent, poor word choice. Apathetic, better word choice.
Ryan Dancy's original argument for OGL, was that the best margins belonged to the core books and that the business model needs to be built around selling those books. Everything else was lower margin and served to drive the sales of more core books.
WotC seems to keep forgetting that. With 3.0 adventures were out immediately, and it fueled core book sales. With 3.5 WotC took years of rehashing splat books before releasing new adventures, and sure enough, core sales went up afterward.
Now, though, they seem determined to switch D&D to the Magic business model: The core serving to drive sales of the perpetually new product, not the other way around. That is not inherently a bad model: I spend plenty on Magic. It's fun. But Magic and D&D are different beasts. I know it, you know it, every game designer in the world knows it. But do the accountants and managers at Hasbro know it?
or they heard too many industry leaders claiming they didn't like the way they think the GSL would go and WotC is retooling it to take those areas out.Or they heard industry leaders claiming they didn't like the way they think the GSL would go and WotC is retooling to put more of those areas in. ;D
Damn you Mike! I am trying to keep my speculations and conspiracies to a minimum, and you go and speak my mind for me! :-D
I do hope we are wrong about that thought though. I don't like what that would do to the whole industry...
Also, I hope you're feeling better Watcher.
In more 'Hasbro Overlords' conspiracy news, Hasbro is putting the squeeze on Magic now, too. Sales are down (slightly), but now WotC is putting outside ads on the Magic website and cancelling high-paying tournaments. Seems like WotC had been happy with the performance of D&D and Magic but Hasbro is looking at WotC and saying 'we want better revenues' all of a sudden.
Also, I hope you're feeling better Watcher.
Oh yeah. Much better. I think I went into the flu dehydrated to start with, because after not eating for a few days and drinking nothing but water, frequently, I feel better in other respects. Slept better, some joints ache less.
I'm scared like hell to read the previous pages of this thread now though! :D I got that old "Big Shot" by Billy Joel feeling happening...
At what point does that part of the licensing agreement diminish in value, because the ability to put out a quality 4th edition product has been hamstrung by not getting the rules promptly?What you were discussing is "Will products produced by the early adopters be balanced, quality, and ultimately worth the 5K considering it's been a month since WotC had the confrence phone call and no one has the rules yet?"How do you see these as different?
EDIT: Different perspective, but the same topic. You're asking if the 5K should be lessed to 3K (WotC's perspective). My take on it was if a 3rd party company/freelancer should just walk away from 4E until the phase 2 release (3rd party's perspective). But ultimately, the same topic.
Okay.. not intending to beat a dead horse, but this was exactly what I intended on addressing in that post that got eaten up by the board.
And my intended tone is relaxed. I'm feeling better. We're all cool. I hope.
It's a very subtle distinction DM McCoy, but to me an important one. To someone else, they might see it as quibbling over semantics. But I'm a detail guy who loves language, so these things stick out to me.
Here we go:
I look at where the ultimate onus of responsibility lies in your statement. "Will products produced by the early adopters be balanced, quality, and..."
If I was a (potentially) early adopter like Paizo, that would make me feel defensive- because who wouldn't want to make a balanced quality product? There is an implied judgment in your version that hangs over the future third party publisher, and not WOTC. :)
It might be splitting hairs (I freely admit!), but I was aiming for something more like:
"Can early adopters be reasonably expected to produce products which are balanced, quality, and ultimately worth the 5K spent for the right to produce them? Considering it's been a month since WotC had the confrence phone call and no one has the rules yet?"
You see, in my version, I've shifted a lot more responsibility on to WOTC, and off of the Third Party Companies. And I think that's fair. Third Party Publishers need time to produce a good product for GenCon. Time to write and playtest, on top of all the actual publishing logisitics (art, printing, shipping, etc).
Ultimately, DM McCoy, the original post was a polite WOTC slam. I won't deny that now. However, if the rules aren't ready, then WOTC has made the right decision to keep them in house in order to get them right. But they set a timetable, with a licensing fee, with a limit to when people could bring their own products to market. Unlike some posters, I've never completely disagreed with deal as it stood a month ago. It made sense to me from WOTC POV, even if it was self-serving on their part. Business.
But back to the subject line of the thread, is it okay deal now? Nah.. It's stale. Like stale food at the grocery store. "Sell by date." The deal doesn't retain it's value as the time to forward to August Gencon grows closer and closer.
But I guess that's obvious to most folks. Anyway, I hope I answered your question!
I look at where the ultimate onus of responsibility lies in your statement. "Will products produced by the early adopters be balanced, quality, and..."
If I was a (potentially) early adopter like Paizo, that would make me feel defensive- because who wouldn't want to make a balanced quality product? There is an implied judgment in your version that hangs over the future third party publisher, and not WOTC. :)
It might be splitting hairs (I freely admit!), but I was aiming for something more like:
"Can early adopters be reasonably expected to produce products which are balanced, quality, and ultimately worth the 5K spent for the right to produce them? Considering it's been a month since WotC had the confrence phone call and no one has the rules yet?"
You see, in my version, I've shifted a lot more responsibility on to WOTC, and off of the Third Party Companies. And I think that's fair. Third Party Publishers need time to produce a good product for GenCon. Time to write and playtest, on top of all the actual publishing logisitics (art, printing, shipping, etc).
You make some fair points. But you see, I am a freelancer and I have no control over what WotC does. But I have complete control over what I do and what jobs I take/pitch to companies. Would I like my name on an early 4E product? At first glance, yes. But I also know that with this much of a delay in the rules, as well as how long it will take me to learn the new rules and then write a product, there's not going to be much time left for normal quality control measures (aka playtesting, editting, etc) that we have come to expect and they will get shorted. Knowing that, do I want my name on the next Creature Collection? Its not so appealing.
Granted it is different for fulltime companies/writers. They do have more time to work on products and make them quality. But even the Paizians have been talking about how time is running out for them. They've moved the date a number of times. Each time they move the date, something is being impacted. I doubt if they'd let quality be impacted, but I really, really do hope that sleep, quality time with their familes, etc isn't/won't be impacted either.
You're on the right track, but you haven't taken it far enough down the line. The book trade's catalogs are quarterly, so the lead times are even longer—we had to give them product info for May through August way back in mid-October, and we have to give them our September through December release info before the end of February.
[snip]
So the natural question, then, is what if we want to come out with a new product in August, and we decide that today? Well, we still can, but we have to do what's called a "short solicit," and our orders almost certainly won't be as high.
It also means that you could do 4e products for August and forward, only with the caveat that you would have to rely on GenCon and Paizo.com sales, since you'd have missed the book trade catalog deadlines, right? These products could then be put in with the next "batch" of products for distribution from January onwards.
[EDIT]As such, such products would in theory "only" have to break even during the first couple of months and then the "real" sales would start from the next round of distribution.
In more 'Hasbro Overlords' conspiracy news, Hasbro is putting the squeeze on Magic now, too. Sales are down (slightly), but now WotC is putting outside ads on the Magic website and cancelling high-paying tournaments. Seems like WotC had been happy with the performance of D&D and Magic but Hasbro is looking at WotC and saying 'we want better revenues' all of a sudden.
This became pretty much inevitable when Peter Adkison made his disastrous decision to sell out to Hasbro.
"Fun" and "Soulless Megacorp" are two incompatible concepts.
Hasbro wants games that you can learn in 5 minutes by reading the inside of the box top. They never really did want D&D--it's just not what they do. Unfortunately, though they may kill the game, the brand is worth too much for them to ever sell it.
This became pretty much inevitable when Peter Adkison made his disastrous decision to sell out to Hasbro.
"Fun" and "Soulless Megacorp" are two incompatible concepts.
Hasbro wants games that you can learn in 5 minutes by reading the inside of the box top. They never really did want D&D--it's just not what they do. Unfortunately, though they may kill the game, the brand is worth too much for them to ever sell it.
Andrew's post has made me recall a television commercial I saw the other day, and it sort of speaks to my feelings on Hasbro, as opposed to WOTC.
Basically two attractive but harried mothers of busy families bump into each other outside of the mall, and one mother is carrying several packages. The other exclaims, "Wow 'Stacy'! That sure is a lot of games and toys you have in that bag!" And the bag is stuffed with CandyLand, Chutes and Ladders, and Connect Four. And the rest of the commercial is the one Mom telling the other about Hasbro's New Frequent Toy Buyer Program. Hasbro offers a credit for more of their products based on the number of their merchandise purchased. Inspidly, the commercial ends with the one mother pledging to run out and buy lots of toys and games right this minute; and lol and behold, yet a third mother walks up to the scene and exclaims, "Wow! That sure is a lot of toys and games in that bag!" Our original Mother grins impishly at the camera as if to tell us the viewer, "OMG! Here we go again!"
Hasbro has no soul.
They probably wish DnD didn't have so many pages so they could sell more of it, cheaply. I doubt their executives would understand that I found their commercial vaguely embarrassing, even in the privacy of my own home. Yep, that's me. Hasbro Consumer. :(
So, in a way, I feel sorry for WOTC having been tied to them.
Offically, I'm not Anti-4th Edition, but sometimes I wonder if DND as we know it has a future with Hasbro around. Maybe departure is for the best. That's mostly emotion speaking, but it's how I feel at the moment.
Chief Technical Officer
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You're on the right track, but you haven't taken it far enough down the line. The book trade's catalogs are quarterly, so the lead times are even longer—we had to give them product info for May through August way back in mid-October, and we have to give them our September through December release info before the end of February.
[snip]
So the natural question, then, is what if we want to come out with a new product in August, and we decide that today? Well, we still can, but we have to do what's called a "short solicit," and our orders almost certainly won't be as high.It also means that you could do 4e products for August and forward, only with the caveat that you would have to rely on GenCon and Paizo.com sales, since you'd have missed the book trade catalog deadlines, right? These products could then be put in with the next "batch" of products for distribution from January onwards.
[EDIT]
As such, such products would in theory "only" have to break even during the first couple of months and then the "real" sales would start from the next round of distribution.
It doesn't quite work like that. You can't just say "We missed your deadline, so we're going to give you the product late, too." I can guarantee you won't earn good sales from that approach. The majority of a product's sales usually happen in the first month, so when we offer a product to one outlet that has already been selling in a different outlet, they usually order less (if they order at all).
Like I said above, if the product announcement is too late for the catalog, you can do a "short solicit," but sales suffer. And that's what these delays are potentially forcing us to do.