www.Tobold.com
Tobold@GMail.com
A blog with my thoughts regarding games I am playing and other stuff in life. Please read my Terms of Service
Wednesday, December 14, 2022
Under-monetized D&D
In a recent investor call, Wizards of the Coast CEO and president Cynthia Williams said, “D&D has never been more popular, and we have really great fans and engagement. But the brand is really under monetized.”. Williams mentioned that while dungeon masters comprise roughly 20% of the D&D player base, they make up “the largest share of our paying players”. An investment in digital, she posits, will allow Wizards of the Coast to “unlock the type of recurrent spending you see in digital games”.
That didn't go down well with some D&D players, presumably because they consider being under-monetized to be a feature of D&D, not a flaw. I could run a whole D&D campaign for years with a single copy of just the Player's Handbook, with the DM's Guide and Monster Manual being already optional. Hasbro / WotC would rather sell me more books with adventures, more rules, or world settings. But in the current form of the game, even if I bought every single D&D book they release, they still don't sell more than the occasional Player's Handbook to the players, because they don't need all those other books, and some of them would be spoilers for them, so they are discouraged from buying those books. I could even play a campaign of D&D without spending anything at all, just using the free Systems Reference Document SRD. You can see how this situation is great for players, and a problem for the executives of the company.
So their idea for the future, as told in their One D&D reveal trailer, is pushing D&D more towards digital. I just received the first "digital/physical bundle" of a D&D campaign book, Dragonlance - Shadow of the Dragon Queen. But the future is "D&D Digital", a full virtual tabletop online service, where WotC can milk players as well as the DM for access fees.
Besides the cost aspect, the other reason D&D players aren't too happy about this is that it will probably lead to a more standardized form of Dungeons & Dragons. If you play on a virtual tabletop, and there is software doing some of the work that a DM usually does, e.g. determining whether your sword attack hits that orc, there will be less room for house rules. I play on a virtual tabletop already, Roll20, and most of the time I just use the already existing material on that platform; it is possible to make orcs different for a campaign of mine, but it involves me manually editing stuff. In the pen & paper form there is a much larger variety of how Dungeons & Dragons is played by different groups. So fans of variants of D&D like OSR feel somewhat threatened.
Me, I am quite open towards D&D Digital. One thing it should help with is finding other people to play with. Making it easier to run a game for the DM might even solve the reported DM shortage problem. And if somebody wants to play a heavily house-ruled variant of D&D offline, he can still do so, even if "mainstream" D&D is going digital.
- posted by Tobold @ 3:05 PM Permanent Link
Comments:
<< Home
Newer› ‹Older
Compared to older editions the current one is already over priced imo. $50 for one of the core rulebooks is already too much. They are also pushing players hard towards maps and miniatures style play. I greatly prefer "theatre of the mind" style games where if you even have a map it's hand drawn by the GM as you go to give you a better idea of what you are seeing. Tweaking rules that I think need improvement or cobbling up things my players want is also a major item of enjoyment for me in games I run, and a digital platform will not lend itself to that at all.
The current game I am running is Basic from the late 80s and early 90s. You need the Rules Cyclopedia and perhaps a module and you are good to go. It has some issues, but it's also a stripped down system that is incredibly easy to learn. It's also much more flexible than most people realize, with skills to customize your character (mainline D&D didn't get that until 3rd edition if I'm not mistaken) and a detailed weapon proficiency system that's actually better than anything later editions ever came up with.
The current game I am running is Basic from the late 80s and early 90s. You need the Rules Cyclopedia and perhaps a module and you are good to go. It has some issues, but it's also a stripped down system that is incredibly easy to learn. It's also much more flexible than most people realize, with skills to customize your character (mainline D&D didn't get that until 3rd edition if I'm not mistaken) and a detailed weapon proficiency system that's actually better than anything later editions ever came up with.
Excuse my ignorance but will they have some sort of subscription or are you still expected to buy all the books and add ons piecemeal? I would expect a sub if they are pushing digital hard.
Just exactly what does "under-monitized" mean in this case? Are their developers going hungry or not able to pay their bills? Are gamers just supposed to accept this as some form of normalcy considering all of the other asshattery that's been attempted monitization wise over the past few years?
I think "under-monetized" is corporate-speak for not having pressed your customers like lemons for the last possible cent.
This is the same company that is very close to poisoning the well on the MTG side of things. They are releasing too many sets per year (4-5 sets when they have enough good ideas for maybe 2), and a lot of what they are releasing is absurdly overpriced. Single 15 card booster packs that cost $20 or more new. If they apply the same philosophy to D&D, it will not be good for the long term health of the game.
If the monetization goes too far, WoTC is either going to drive people to Pathfinder (again) or they're going to drive people to being even more strict about how they spend their money. (Such as the DM buying the books, grabbing the web pages to the hard drive, and never going back for whatever monthly fee WoTC tries to apply.)
Post a Comment
<< Home
