This is a rantish post to expose, in my usual style, my misgivings about my favorite games and the company that manages them
Dear Wizards of the Coast,
This is a letter to share with you my worries and disappointment at the way you have (or are) handling the game brands that I care about as a gamer geek.
Before I get into this, I must thank you for having made one of my favorite games, Magic: The Gathering and for having recovered and revived my favorite game of all times: Dungeons and Dragons. I also wish to say that I really appreciate that you have a flourishing and dedicated R&D department hard at work constantly trying to make these two games better.
However, I must say that I’m worried about where you are heading with both brands. I also wish to tell you that you are on the verge of losing the loyalty of a good customer with a lot of disposable income.
First and foremost I must say that I have lost interest in purchasing new Magic the Gathering cards in the last year. While I used to be a competitive casual player that would faithfully participate in each and every pre-release tournament, play casual limited games with friends and build up collections, I have now stopped since the release of the Shadowmoor expansion.
Your new practice of publishing 4 expansions a year is just too much for me to absorb and enjoy, the same goes, to a greater or lesser extent, for my current gaming group.
In response to negative fan feedback you said that each expansion would now be made up of less cards. This is unacceptable to me because it basically translates in getting more copies of the same common and uncommon cards, often functional reprints of older cards.
Please go back to the original 1 large, 2 smaller block release model with one extra block every 2 years.
Furthermore, while I still love seeing new mechanics and themes, I can’t help but feel a certain staleness in the cards mechanics since the release of the Time Spiral expansion. Maybe it’s time to inject new blood in Magic’s upper management?
Its possible I have been too involved with this game in the last 5 years and am suffering burnout. It’s also true that most of the time I use to spend on buying and sorting cards, building decks and playing with friends has now been taken by online writing.
Still, this is the first time since I started playing the game again (at the release of the 7th edition) that my interest has seriously waned to the point of no longer wanting to buy cards.
I also, recently upgraded my Magic Online account to the Magic 3.0 client. Having tried the program extensively during it’s Beta development and having tried repeatedly to play in the last few weeks, I must say that I’m deeply disappointed.
The graphic interface of this game is awkward, too charged and user unfriendly. Navigating it is frustrating and robs me of the desire to play within minutes of starting it. Please note that I have purchased more than 10000 cards on this game (about as much as my physical collection). You can therefore understand my frustration of having to deal with an application that falls far short of expectations.
In the age of Blizzard, Facebook and cutting edge game design techniques, the Magic Online interface is an insulting joke.
In that, you lost me as a loyal customer.
In regards to Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition, I absolutely love the new game and I can see the quality of material published in the new Dragons and Dungeons E-zine. If this keeps up I would consider a paid subscription for these two products.
I must however say that the key digital parts of your online content, D&D insider, completely fails to live up to all the hype of your numerous marketing campaigns.
I find that after having been told time and again how great D&D insider would be, after reading about it in the Core Books, on their covers and online, not having it at release and being told ‘that it will be ready when it’s ready’ is completely unacceptable.
In my limited Supply Management experience, I was told that you should stick to what your company does best and abandon/outsource the elements where it is weaker.
Wizards, I have followed your digital initiatives since you launched Magic Online 1.0. I purchased the D&D 3.0 E-tool, I was there at Gleemax’s launch (and quit), I participated in multiple Betas for MTGOs 2 and 3, I played around with the ‘Rules Compendium’ and I witnessed the non-launch of D&D insider.
You have repeatedly failed to deliver on my diminishing expectations. In that, you’ll have to fight to regain my loyalty for any online services other than published content you offer.
Please take it from a concerned customer that wants his brands to be managed as best they can to guarantee their survival. Please abandon all digital initiatives or invest the appropriate amount of resources to pull it off as professionally as we should expect from a multi-billion dollar company.
Best regards.
Philippe-Antoine Ménard (The Chatty DM)
What say you, dear reader?
Well, I can’t speak to the issues with MtG (I played it fairly regularly up until the release of Ice Age, when I quit because it was becomming to expensive), I agree with you whole heartedly on the DDI front.
The Rules Compendium is lame, not only is it rife with typos and text that doesn’t appear in the final print product (and therefore, tells me they copy pasted from an inhouse draft and never proof read), the interface is terrible, there is no hyperlinking, and no real rules content beyond races, classes, and powers.
d20srd.org, by comparisson, was put together by a fan in his freetime and has become one of the most used resources for my gaming group. Seriously, WotC, drop that dude an email, send him a temporary contract, some cash, and a box full of books. You’ll probably have a fully functional Compendium in about a month.
The other DDI stuff? Well, I wasn’t really planning on using any of it, so its absence really only gets a “meh” from me. But the Compendium is unforgiveable. I mean, they don’t even have hyperlinks in the body of the text. If I’m reading the entry for “Divine Challenge” and I want to know what the status “marked” means, I’ve got to go out and research for that term speicifically. (And I won’t find it.)
Hyperlinks, folks, simple Boccob-blessed {A HREF} tags. This ain’t high tech, its not Web 2.0… Hell, its Web 0.00.01……
ARGH!
(P.S.: Mac. Macintosh. Apple. OSX. Grrr.)
You actually expected WOTC to put out a decent software tool? I admire your optimism. Their track record is rife with a lot of marketing talk and a poor product when finally released. WOTC could not even put together a very rudimentary character tracking software for the “Legacy of the Green Regent” campaign. The buggy, clumsy interface drove me from that campaign. I expected no less from the 4th Edition tools.
Trask, The Last Tyromancer
Trasks last blog post..Software Review: Herolab by Lone Wolf Development
Just FYI, as I understand it, the digital stuff actually is outsourced. They have a preferred company that they work with.
I also don’t want them to abandon the digital initiative. I think they missed the boat by not wowing everyone at launch with everything they promised, but obviously there’s call for those kinds of tools. I think the better call would be to do more efforts to support 3rd party/open source software that is already working and usable, rather than doing passive-aggressive weirdness with the GSL.
Dave T. Games last blog post..Fanboy is now a real word, OK to call people it
@Trask: I’m not optimist.. I just chose to remain polite and call it as I see it from a concerned customer’s stand point.
@Dave: As I said a few lines before, I’m willing to be brought back in the fold, the historical track record does not make me believe they’ll pull it off. My optimism as a client has limits and they were crossed.
I’ve got two major grievances with Magic as it stands today. 3.0, as you note, is a disaster. I’ve played one game with it, and haven’t even loaded it since. I keep trying to psyche myself up to try it again, but I just can’t. It was absolutely horrendous.
The other issue is their introduction of a new rarity to “keep up with the Joneses.” That just annoys the hell out of me. Common, uncommon and rare is fine!
I really don’t have a problem with the 4 sets a year thing… Actually, I like it (or would, if I was still active). A larger and fresher pool is always nice, and money’s only a problem if you buy packs. Once I finally managed to convince myself only to buy singles, everything worked out beautifully. Just buy the cards you need.
I don’t really have any problems with D&D Insider. I didn’t expect it to come on launch day and I don’t expect it to work right when it gets here, because I’ve got plenty of experience with WotC’s software. In the mean time, they’re delivering Dragon and Dungeon as promised, doing a remarkably good job at it, and keeping it free. What’s not to like?
Asmors last blog post..Treasure Trove
I think asking Wizards and their software supplier to rush the DDI applications to market is just asking for another fiasco like e-Tools. While I’m sure Wizards would have loved to have DDI up and going for the 4E launch, I think it’s more important that the applications are usable and relatively bug-free. If that takes longer, I’m willing to wait. Look at Blizzard’s track record; they take an “it’ll be done when it’s done” attitude and the polish always shows in their games.
That said, the Compendium certain isn’t up to snuff. It’s okay if you’re looking for a specific term, but there’s lots of rough edges that could use smoothing out.
I also agree that opening things up for 3rd party and open source solutions would also help. They could probably get people to develop DDI for them if they do it open source.
I started playing MTG right before the launch of the Weatherlight set, and played up until Apocalypse. I stopped playing when it stopped being fun, because it changed from a time-consuming battle of wits (which is the best card to play in the situation I’m in), into a contest of who has the most money to buy the best combos. I basically gave away all my cards when someone I was playing against said to me: “You should have beaten me before my third turn, because now I’m going to play these 3 cards together, and you lose.”
I turned to Pokémon cards for awhile, since it was much better at giving me the style of game that I wanted – until it became too expensive of a hobby.
I share your concerns with D&D. I only really started playing D&D late in the life of 3.0, and fell in love with the game, but (being a programmer), I immediately saw the opportunity of combining D&D with code to create something amazing… unfortunately, I’m still waiting to see this happen… I leapt into the PC Generator that came with the PHB, and was greatly disappointed… I snatched up e-tools, and found it to be better, but still missing something. Neverwinter Nights promised an open-ended universe of possibilities, but the learning curve was too steep, even for me… and PCGen, as wonderful as it was, seemed to have trouble allowing for new content (or perhaps I’m just too creative with the Templates… Gargantuan Were-lemurs, anyone?) When I heard about D&DI, I was excited, but now that it’s been weeks? a month? since D&D4’s launch, I’m sensing that familiar flavor of disappointment…
I have yet to see WotC release a software tool that doesn’t wholly and utterly suck. As a web developer and user interface designer, every time I see a WotC program I cringe.
That said, I’m cautiously optimistic about D&DI. We have yet to see an attractive, user friendly online tabletop (OpenRPG, I cast dark looks in your direction), and if WotC doesn’t screw it up, the D&DI tabletop program could be worth a subscription.
The character creator I’m less enthused about, but we’ll see. There are going to be plenty of fan-made chargen programs.
The Compendium I’m not likely to use, ever. It’s not comprehensive enough to be useful.
I’m with you, Phil. Not about Magic (because I’ve never played it), but I agree that WotC certainly delivers MUCH better print material than software/website material. By a long shot. You’d think with all the code monkeys out there that are gamers, that it would be a snap to find qualified software professionals…
Geek’s Dream Girls last blog post..Personal Ad Makeover: Austin (DURING)
Wow, bang on the money in terms of MTG. I played the paper version from fallen empires to ravnica and then went online when WoW decimated the reliability of our weekly playgroup.
While it had it’s warts, I was able to have fun playing mtgo 2.0. Then earlier this year I had two months offline while working on a personal project and when I went back and tried 3.0 I was sorely disappointed. Interface is horrible – the design fails in the two biggest areas for me – ease of play and the social/chat aspect. I sadly had to say goodbye to a game I’d played for 14 years.
Couple years ago when fantasy grounds came out, my playgroup made a bit of a rally against Wow and we at least had some semi-regular D&D sessions. With 4e we’re quite pumped and at least 3 of us are going to regularly DM in both Pen and Paper and online games. We’re not holding our breath for the DDi though – WOTC’s track record with software is just embarassing. They will redeem themselves if the character creator allows me to embed my characters if my web page though… 🙂
I have to say that I’m equally disappointed with the non-starter release of D&Di. The impression they gave throughout the entire life cycle of D&D 4e development was that D&Di and all its online apps/tools would be released simultaneously with the core books. They didn’t even have the Compendium up. That’s just ridiculous.
They would have been much better off had they followed a standard game or MMO model: show alpha and beta footage, but allow select users to playtest beta and provide feedback. Then open it for open beta and allow even more users to help in troubleshooting. Why not use a vast QA resource; aka, the player base? That was foolish on their part. Even with a beta version of the tools, people would be less pissed that Wizards of the Coast failed on a tacit promise and would feel included in the process.
Rafes last blog post..Uncle Figgy’s Guide to Roleplaying
I’m just thankful that Wizards didn’t actually make the bone-headed decision of making their D&D 4e content dependent on the digital stuff (the way that numerous Chicken Littles where screaming about a year ago).
And Wizards has a terrible track record with electronic products no matter what they do – outsource, insource, outsource again, insource again – it doesn’t matter. Hasbro’s record is equally horrible, so I suspect there’s a bit of “corporate culture” going on behind the scenes. Barring the outright purchase of an electronic web game development company by Hasbro or Wizards, I have zero hopes for any kind of web-based or other “digital” initiatives from them anytime in the near future.
I will say this though – they’ve impressed me with Dragon magazine and (to a lesser degree, admittedly) Dungeon. They’re almost at the point where I’d be willing to pay $10 a month just for those. And I don’t subscribe to “web magazines” ever, so that kinda says something to me. I’ll be interested to see if they can keep it up over the next few months – if they treat it like a real product with real deadlines (and not like a computer software product where everyone in the industry knows that “deadlines are for other people”) then they might do alright. But that’s only if they can stuff the genie back in the bottle and convince people to pay for something they’ve been getting for free for a few months. I have my doubts about that one, but we’ll see.
I agree with you about MTG and MTGO. In particular the online interface is incredibly clunky. Not a fan of outsourcing but I think you are right — pay someone else to create and run this!
I’m deep into the long “Shackled City” D&D campaign, so except for the release day game I have not tried 4E.
Blizzard take 2 Zeds 😉
What is truly bizare is that the “look and feel” of their print products has always been outstanding; as was/is Dragon and Dungeon both before and after they handed it to Paizo. The content of the magazines is much better now than it was pre-Paizo.
But, ye tap dancing gods, they have the ugliest webpage on the `net. Frget the 3D game table, character designer, and all that rot. Just give me a website I can find stuff on!
While it would be easy to say outsource or buy an software group to write the digital initiative, I have to wonder if the real problem doesn’t fall on management. I’ve been apart of wonderful software projects that were run into the ground due to mismanagement.
Here we have a company that built itself on print/material products. They may not have management that knows how to successfully launch a software product. In fact after looking at what they have put out, it is pretty obvious they don’t.
They also bit-off and promised too much with their digital initiative. Gleemax was a wonderful idea, but should not have been launched even in alpha form if D&D Insider needed all the development muscle it could get. Heads should be rolling with all the references the core books make to D&D Insider and software should be in a “no new features finish functionality” state so at least a 1.0 can get out the door.
I won’t be able to keep up with individual comments as I am at work today… 🙂
But do know that I read each and every one and find myself in agreement so far.
I’m starting to understand what Shamus Young has gone through when things took off for him.
I was really bummed when they killed Dungeon and Dragon in favor of pulling them in as PDF’s. They have always had a major problem with forum management, and Gleemax was a step back from that. Their beta’s of online content have seemed more like early alpha’s. They are never smart about the tools they offer. Instead of maintain a current tool until they release a new one, they just orphan it and then maybe go with something new down the road (DnD tools, not Magic, I never went online with my Magic habits.)
Wizards was bad with online and Hasbro is worse, the two together spelled doom for me. BTW has anyone else thought Wizards website has ALWAYS navigated like a piece of shit? Does no one there listen?
What does it say about the management of a project when a company tells the public “It will be ready when its ready?”
Don’t you have deadlines, Wizards? Don’t you have a project plan?
Even releasing Beta versions of the tools would have been a have been preferable to the current state of D&D Interactive.
While I’m not a big fan of the “release now, patch later” policy of some game publishers, that even remains an option for a digital initiative like this one.
So why have we not seen the game table and character generator? Why does the rules compendium look like it was cobbled together overnight?
I think Wizards has lived up to their promises concerning the rule set, Dragon, and Dungeon. So why not D&DI?
Both Blizzard and Bungie, in the software world, and Kevin Smith and Neil Gaiman, in the comc book world, have maintained “it will be done when its done” release schedules.
Of course, Starcraft and Green Arrow: Quiver were products that were worth the wait. WotC plays this game of expectations with their software offerings, and always fails to deliver.
The simplest thing to do, imho, is to just ignore everything electronic that they do… hurts a lot less. ^_^
@Ish: True, but Blizzard no longer gives set release dates. While I don’t specifically recall WotC saying that D&Di would be available upon release, I had the feeling it would be.
What say you, dear reader?
I say, as person in the software industry (and not games) for the past 18 years, this is being pulled off as professionally as can be expected for a multi-billion dollar company.
From all my experience, software development competence and professionalism scales inversely with the size of the parent company.
‘”On time”, “on budget”, “on spec”: Pick 0’ is what you inevitably get.
Gleemax was a wonderful idea, but should not have been launched even in alpha form if
What is that idea? I was at GenCon when they launched it and I still don’t get the point. I never got to try it out for myself because when they launched it they required us to manually migrate ourselves (way to make the default option ‘lose a customer’) and my username and password wouldn’t work. So I was like “screw you guys, I’ll never join.”
the design fails in the two biggest areas for me – ease of play and the social/chat aspect.
Chat used to be like this: you started typing, and it went in the chat box.
Now you hit enter, (not documented) and a dark black window with no frame around it pops up, and you type in that. Except it loses the focus a lot so you have to click and then type. It got worse. Also sometimes it bugs and the game play text starts showing up in your chat hole in all different colors.
MTGO 3 didn’t make a single thing better as far as I can tell.
While it would be easy to say outsource or buy an software group to write the digital initiative, I have to wonder if the real problem doesn’t fall on management. I’ve been apart of wonderful software projects that were run into the ground due to mismanagement.
Management is hard. People like the Dilbert cartoonist don’t even realize. Or they do realize, but aren’t impressed enough that all projects don’t end up like Dilbert.
Still, I have rarely seen a company embarrass itself so publicly as Wizards has with MTGO. So many announced deadlines, so often failed. It must be a really disfunctional place to work.
I DO agree that releasing a polished project in the long run has a much higher value than sticking to a release schedule no matter what. Ask any MMO publisher (Vanguard is the most glaring example) what happens when the product you release is crap.
I got out of M:tG (dead tree edition) about the time 4th edition came out for exactly those same reasons. My friends and I still have our old cards and every couple of years we make a few decks and play some. Seems like things haven’t changed much there.
I can’t speak much to the D&D complaints. I haven’t gotten any 1-on-1 with the books yet, but the more I hear about D&D 4th, the more I like GURPS 4th.
Khorboths last blog post..Session 1 Part 3: 4-5/08
After the eTools fiasco (it’s a character generator! it’s a game master tool! it’s a floor wax! it’s a desert topping! it’s never going to ship!), I decided that the only way to get decent computer tools for D&D was to roll my own and beg/borrow/steal from others who do the same. So I do that now. Also, the Hypertext D20 is the bombardier beetle. It’s simple, it’s easy to use and it’s comprehensive. The trifecta is achieved.
An earlier poster asked a valid question as to why with all the software geeks who play D&D can WotC not find decent computer help. The answer is twofold: 1) WotC has a pretty bad reputation as a company for which to work. This can be attributed mainly to Hasbro, but the reputation is there and it’s a barrier for any serious software professional to go to work for a company that treats its people like they do. 2) They aren’t paying the money necessary to get the good people to work for them. Salaries starting 20k to 30k below what comperable positions at other companies are paying are not going to attract the talent. I’m a huge D&D player — 25 years now, in fact — and I’m a software pro with over 10 years in the biz. There’s no way I’m taking that kind of paycut to go work for a company that’s known for its software incompetence and poor treatment of its employees.
That said, it seems that after all this hype and build up the 4.0 electronic initiative is turning into pretty much what I thought it would: A half-assed attempt to do what the fanbase accomplished with 3.x. Only the fanbase did it better, faster and cheaper with greater customer satisfaction.
I’m starting to turn into a grognard. I’ll take their 3.x rules and make a game and tools to support it myself. I’ve already got the framework for remote play in place using a couple of $20 webcams and free copy of TeamSpeak. I’ve got the hypertext D20 rules at my fingertips. WotC can byte me.
Paragraph 12: It’s “its” not “it’s”.
Todd Bradleys last blog post..do you have what it takes to be a software tester?
Gah, I always mix these two…
I also corrected Blizzard and disappointment.
Thanks!
It would be interesting to know if any Wizards employees actually read this, and what their reaction would be… Defensive? “We’re doing the best we can.” Or do you think they would actually try to address the problem(s) in the future?
Chatty:
Have you actually sent this in to WotC? I know that some of those folks from there poke around the interwebs, but there’s no guarantee that they’ll get here. Of course, then comes the question of “To whom does one send it?” I just really feel like WotC needs to hear this, or something like it, and you’ve said it better than I could.
My friends and I are talking about writing up our own character generator using Adobe AIR, and hopefully making it as flexible as PCGen (but using XML as the underpinnings). It’s kinda sad that just over a month after release I’m taking this step. As far as I’m concerned, character generation software should have been priority 1 (or priority 2 if it depends on the compendium).
I know that some of my posts have bubbled up and have been read by WotC R&D personnel, which alas aren’t the ones targeted by this letter.
I’m also pretty sure that they (i.e WotC’s R&D) are well aware of the issues I bring up here.
I might send it to Customer Service or To Hasbro’s, although I doubt it’s worth it.
However, the letter is now online and visible by my now sizable readership. Like Shamus Young, I don’t delude myself that i can make a difference, but I sure as hell can use my nascent authority to share my thoughts publicly.
I also wanted to experiment with the firm but polite complaints letter. That’s why I appreciate those who chimed in with my typos.
Bottomline, I’ll sleep on it about sending it directly to WotC.
I was a MtG player but I stopped after Time Spiral, I sed to play tribal in MtGO 2 but had to leave as my new computer was a dual core and you had to do some manipulations to make it work(not that I wouldn’t have been able). With MtGO 3 on the horrizon I told myself, I’ll wait it out. one year later it finally shipped then I played once or twice and couldn’t stand it. the interface was doing everything it could to be unfriendly and get in my way.
For the DnD side it was actually DnD Insider that got me involved with Fantasy Grounds 2. It might not have all the 3D of DnDI but it is pretty cool and I don’t have to pay monthly for it. As a matter of fact I am going to try 4e this coming friday over FG2 and teamspeak.
The module is fan made but is very professional as is a lot of fan made content. I have tried their rule compendium and was disapointed, it is alright if you are looking for somewhat in particular but the d20 srd was so great that I use it to plan my spells with my druid by browsing through it, something I can’t do now.
Anyway great blog, I like what you do.
PS : I just realized you have the same surname as my mother. 😀
If you’ve ever done any professional web publishing you soon develop a sixth sense about a company’s web site. It’s like staring into the window to their soul. And if you stare into WotC’s soul, be it through wizards.com or gleemax you can see the tortured battles that must be raging up in Seattle. The problem in their digital tools lies not with any failing on the part of the DDI team, but with the battles that take place in the board room where the Veeps meets and jealously guard their various fifedoms.
The DDI team feels like HAL in orbit of Jupiter, trying desperately to execute their corporate mandates to the best of their ability, and only succeeding in suffocating the crew and locking Dave outside the ship. Gleemax seems to have been created not to forge a bold new brand, but to not step on anyone’s toes. They wanted to connect all their gamers with all their games, but the magic team doesn’t want to give up control of their web site, the D&D brand doesn’t want to blend with the other magical fantasy properties, and they want to hype online all their card games, but can’t make a real electronic presence for half of them because those rights are owned or signed away to other companies. In fact I suspect that the limp offerings of the game table have more to do with licensing rights that were signed away to Atari than to any lack of desire or ability of the team.
It seems that the bold vision of the OGL was a blip in their corporate history, and the book publishers have taken control of the company once again with an iron grip. It has resulted in some amazing books. I really like the fourth edition as it exists in print. They are some fine books. But by treating their digital products like they were a physical product they are coming across like the naive forays of so many companies in the 90’s. Like so many companies have had to learn, if you want to succeed online, give up control and prosper.
So we’re left with a game we love playing, and no tools or realistic online support for it. In fact we have less tools and support than we had before since there is no chance of a d20srd.org site, and not even a PCgen (which I don’t really like, but at least it worked).
Captain Cursors last blog post..Hoija Fullop, Halfling Knight of the Realm
@Captain: I really like your insights in this issue and wonder if such is the case. I completely agree that Digital products need to be marketed under different philosophies (paradigms?) than physical ones.
I hope the GSL creates a whiplash that forces WotC to return to something more akin to the OGL.
@Captain: Well there is pretty much nothing to add after that… 😉 I agree completely with you on this.
I’ve got use for the DDI tools, but little hope that they’ll turn out right. I don’t know about $15/mo for two high-quality .pdf magazines and the rental of a bunch of broken tools that I can live without, but I would gladly pay a slightly lower amount just for the magazines. Even if I never use any content in them, I really like reading them, they give me ideas and inspiration.
I concur…
Could the game table just be done with http://www.lively.com/ instead of waiting for WotC?
While pondering if I should send this letter to WotC, Graham popped in Gtalk and suggested I print a copy and go tack it, dressed in Renaissance regalia, somewhere in the WotC booth at Gen Con.
I retorted I should pay someone dressed as a Bard to go there and read it in public.
Here’s what he proposed to start it with…
“Hear ye! Hear ye! I bring a message from the overlord of our fair realm, of Crunchovia! Today, on the seventeenth day of the month of Flufftober, I bring this royal decree from our overlordship”
It’s crazy and cool enough for me to seriously consider.
Tell you what, if someone can find me a willing subject with good oratory skills, I will fork over cash to have this done!
@Andre –
With a longer-term subscription, it’s only $10/month. Well worth it, IMO, for the two magazines, based on the content thus far.
Wow, Chatty. If I were going to GenCon, I would actually volunteer for that. Oh well.
What Felonius said. I’d love to do that! I just, y’know. Won’t be there.
Kavondes last blog post..What I’ve Learned About 4th Edition
$10 a month for a pair of PDF magazines? You folks have got to be kidding me. I am not going to pay $120 per annum to receive the privilege of downloading some documents. I paid approximately $150 a year (newstand) to reveive both magazines in hardcopy under both WotC and Paizo…
Yeah, yeah, yeah…. costs rise, the magazine was a niche market, distribution channels. Still, I refuse to pay anything close to the cost of a physical product for a purely electronic one. $12 a year? Maybe. $12 a month? Give me real magazines.
@Ish
$10 a month for a pair of Ad-Free magazines, with solid content. Keep in mind, there are two things that happen with print magazines to subsidize the costs. (1) Advertisers (2) Subscribers. They work together, too. The more subscribers you have, the more advertising revenue you can generate (subscribers represent a ‘captive’ audience).
Dungeon and Dragon Magazines still cost as much to produce, content wise, as they always have. Writers need to be paid. Editors need to paid. Artists need to be paid. Layout specialists need to be paid. Etc. (I work for a publisher, you’d think I’d have a better handle on what these jobs are called). They save money on printing, but bandwidth isn’t free. Dragon 364 is 8MB. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who downloaded it. (Side note: I actually really like the Landscape lay-out of Dragon and Dungeon now… Odd advantage of not being print).
I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me, but $10/month for two magazines doesn’t seem too bad. Of course, I also have an eBook reader, so my ideas on digital publishing may not quite align with the norm.
Based on the quality of both issues, I would consider paying a 10$ fee per month. I paid a monthly fee for Pyramid magazine way before E-zines were in vogue and it was worth it.
Same here- in fact, Pyramid published my first game!
Dave T. Games last blog post..I can’t hold off any longer: Rock Band 2 is coming
$6.99 for a hardcopy magazine that doesn’t go *poof* and disappear when something goes wrong with my hardware, but requires me to turn a page every now and again to bypass an advertisement…
Or $5.99 for a digital magazine that doesn’t have advertisements. That requires more effort on my part to access, read, archive, and so on and so forth.
An electronic magazine is dependent on equipment to be read, it can be affected by faults in external hardware or software, such as hard disk drive failure.
An e-zine requires electrical power. Electrical power is unreliable, prone to faults, and not exactly portable.
Formats may become obsolete and incompatible with future hardware.
If an e-zine’s storage device is stolen, lost, or broken beyond repair, all e-zines stored on the device may be lost.
I have had computers broken, stolen, power surged to death, and all those other maladies. I’ve seen formats that were considered too widely installed to ever be rendered obsolete rendered such.
Meanwhile, I’ve got magazines from 1916 in tupperware boxes in my basement, and my gaming bookself contains just about every Dragon magazine from issue #22 forward.
Sounds like you take better care of your paper than you do your electronics. Fire, mildew… Not worried? You’ve had more problems, by far, than I have. Have I had hard drives die? Yes. Two of them. Ever.
Again, my views on the matters of digital paper are skewed. I have an eBook reader, so I have a certain level of freedom from the wall outlet. I find that if there are errors in the electrical power in my house, I don’t notice them when I’m using the ebook reader. The ebook reader is also makes electric power highly portable once it’s charged, and a charge lasts at least a day. My particular ebook reader also allows me to mark up my media without actually damaging the original.
I also tend to store my digital media in more than one place (redundancy, which you can’t have in print without spending the cost of the magazine twice). How is it more difficult to archive a digital copy than a hard copy? Digital sure as heck takes up a lot less physical space. Fewer tupper-ware containers, by far.
There’s one thing I know about the formats in use right now: They work with the software and hardware that I have right now. At the very least, I don’t expect that to change. And I expect my hardware to be around for a while.
And, at the risk of cursing Adobe, I don’t think we’ll be seeing the PDF format (or at least Postscript in general, which it’s based on) going away any time soon. I’m also going to hazard a guess that a lot of the publishers out there will update their libraries for whatever the “next big thing” may happen to be. “Oh, PDF doesn’t do it any more? People want QST files now? Ok. We’ll go back to our sources and recreate our library as QSTs instead.” The company I work for has: pdf, ps, and dvi. All hanging around. We also have the original TeX files used to generate those.
Also, two magazines at $10/month total is $5/month, not $5.99. Not a huge deal, and not something that affects my argument, but it bothers me a little bit when people skew information.
$15/mo is a little high for me… I’d still like to know for sure what you actually get with the paid account vs the free… The tool that I’m the most excited about is the character builder – I hope it’s easier to use than PCGen, since it should allow my players to work on their own characters, which staying in line with the rules, and not being overewhelmed by PCGen’s interface… all but one other person in my group are very casual D&D-ers who don’t care for too many options – they want to be able to pick some stuff and jump right back into the game, and if the Character Builder can do that, it might be worth my $15/mo. The Dungeon Builder also looks neat, but unless it’s very, very powerful and customizable, I’ll probably be making my own dungeons by hand instead. I don’t really have any use for the other tools, and the magazines are only slightly interesting to me.
What blows my mind about the whole e-tools fiasco, and character generator software thing is that Wizards licenses D&D to Obsidian Entertainment to make Neverwinter Nights 2. A game where you create a D&D character with skills and feats and stuff (granted the feats and skills were more geared for the video game).
All they had to do was extract that functionality into its own program adjust the source data to match the books, slap a print and save function on it and charge like $25 to buy it. Easy money and maybe slap a little update support on it. Ugh, they missed the ball on that one.
Wow. Makes you wonder if they listen to their fans or not. But if this is a published letter, I’m leaning more toward yes they do.
Dianes last blog post..The Next Harry Potter Movie Installment
@Felonius: I try to take of all my stuff, however, anything with moving parts is going to have a chance of breaking. Increase the number of moving parts, you increase the chance of something going wrong. I don’t liek when things go wrong.
I work for a law firm; my employer spends many a platinum peice on secure backups of all of our electronic data, and of course malpractice insurance to CYA if those backups fail, and we don’t really deal with e-discovery at all.
My personally vital data, at home, is in electronic format for ease of use. However, it is also all in secured physical storage as well. Before switching to law as a para-profession, I was a history major with delusions of becoming a historian. I like books; they last darn near forever, hardly ever break down, and don’t require any electricity. I also only have to pay for them once.
Your a computer guy, if I recall: you work with computers all day long, know how to keep them ticking, and make them work for you. I’m a paper guy. Although I work with computers and know a thing or two more than the average bear, I am at heart a paper person. I know how to keep my books, and I know how to make them work for me.
In the end, I think, that it boils down to the proverbial person with no tool but a hammer… for whom most problems look like nails.
Right on! They need to take it easy on the MtG blocks and all on the rest of us dirt poor gamers, lol. I love them, don’t get me wrong, but darn it. Take it easy on our wallets. Sheesh.
I’m just a casual MtG player at best, occasionally cracking my box o’cards open when the whim arises. So I can’t comment on the first part of your letter. Nothing surprises me though……..
As regards D&D, Wizards’ need to realize what they are. What they really, REALLY are, then do that, and nothing else.
Here’s a clue or two of what Wizards’ are:
They don’t make computer games
(they publish books)
They’re not Web 2.0 (heck, their site is barely Web 0.1!)
(they publish books)
They’re not making an MMORPG
(they publish books)
They don’t make Operating Systems
(they publish books)
They don’t make Warhammer 40,000
(they publish books)
They don’t make Second Life
(they publish books)
They don’t make films
(they publish books)
They don’t…….
Awwww heck, I bet you’ve got it by now. If only Wizards’ did the same. Publish books. Damned good ones, but they’re books whether in print or digital form (I prefer both, at the same time, for one price, but that’s another thing, not this thing). Once they realize that, they can start to do the things that book publishers do, such as:
– Release editions in different sizes and formats. Want a pocket-sized PHB? You got it! Want a softcover? Yup. Want a coffee-table edition? Sure! All the same rules, but diff’rent sizes and prices for diff’rent needs and wallets
– Sign a movie deal. A good on this time. Just once. Please?
– Book signing tours. We promise not to hit Mearls. Too hard 🙂
– Get the books in libraries. Get ’em in schools. Get ’em reviewed in the mainstream press. Get ’em advertised on TV. You’ve got access to HASBRO’S marketing team. Yeh, them what make GI Joe. They’ve got marketers who know their stuff. So use ’em and fire yours. They suck. Just publish the books already!
– Finally, USE demographics. Release a kids’ edition of the game. Kids love make-believe, Harry Potter and all the rest. Instead, you’re killing your access to that audience with your ‘net-based subscription models, loss of real-paper magazines (WHICH YOU DIDN’T EVEN MAKE YOURSELVES DAMN YOU!!!) and all the rest
Sure, Wizards’ are doing some of this to a lesser extent, but it’s being drowned out by them doing the stuff that they shouldn’t be doing. Focus, people!
Finally, /when you’ve got that right/, get people who don’t publish books to make the stuff you wish you COULD do if you weren’t book publishers. Ask Blizzard/Bioware/Ken the nice programmer down the road or whoever so make an official character generator. Make it the same one that any and all 4e computer games will use – so make it skinnable too. Just like SPORE, sell the generator for $10 and people will flock to the computer games. And from there to the print books. Which you make. Because you’re book publishers, remember?
And as for minis……..
Ok. I’ll stop now.
Rant mode off.
Sorry, Phil.
So I’ve read through the letters and all the comments. I must say, I’m impressed with the letter and could never have done that well in expressing my opinions without a few curses liberally thrown in. There are too many comments to respond individually, but I’m going to try and be as concise as I can. i know this is my first time posting on here, so please no offense is meant by anything I say here.
I haven’t played Magic in years, it grew to be too expensive and another of those games where the person with the most money was most likely to win. After a while, that grew annoying as well as trying to keep up with all the new cards, which ones were obsolete, etc. That’s why I finally gave up on it, I even tried playing about a year ago with some friends but was completely lost with all the new rules. Seeing some of their products that they’ve produced, I’m not surprised that MtG 3.0 was a flop.
I don’t know if anyone here had followed up on WotC’s podcast, but it doesn’t surprise me that DDI wasn’t introduced with the release of 4e. If I’m remembering correctly, they were still finalizing things back in February for 4th edition, which didn’t give me much hope for the new edition. I was pleasantly surprised though when it came out on how well it was done. They seem to have gotten their act together and produced a viable system. Granted, my opinions of it are still neutral since I have yet to play it, but I have high hopes for the game.
Someone had mentioned earlier that WotC needs to stay with what they excel at, producing books. I agree with that, but I think they could still do a better job at producing books. The company is really good at coming up with new and pretty things to dazzle us with, but unfortunately the majority of the books I have come across are full of errors or inconsistencies. I ran two official D&D modules, and was making my way through a third, and there were definitely things in it that needed improving. Some of it was the author’s interpretation of the rules, but I still place the blame with WotC. They need to have someone who says, no this rule doesn’t make sense, we need to go with what is written in the books, but that’s just me being anal retentive. And concerning their splat books, if you take a gander at some of their sample NPC’s, they are full of mistakes as well. It looks like someone just thought, “Well, this is what the character should have, so we’re going to give it to them, even if it doesn’t follow the rules exactly.” That’s why I never completely trust their books, but then again 3rd party publisher can be just as bad if not worse.
WotC has made a big mistake in the new licensing system they’ve developed. I understand that OGL may have been a little too open, but the new system completely cripples anything a 3rd party could produce. There was a piece of computer software out there called DM Genie, which was produced for 3.0 and 3.5, with a decent support system from the developer and fellow users. It is one of the best character generators and DM helpers that I have seen to date, and priced reasonably. Unfortunately with the new licensing, they have no way of updating the program for 4e because you are not allowed to have anything concerning character creation, leveling, etc in a 3rd party supplement. So all it would be is just a bunch of links to the core rules, which seems to be what their Compendium is. It seems that even they are suffering under the tightness of that license.
Well, I think that is enough ranting for now. I want to thank you for actually putting this into words for the rest of us, even if it goes no further than this website. Keep up the good work.
@LightningJynx: Thanks for joining us and telling us your opinion. I’m still debating about paying someone and reciting the letter at Gen Con’s WotC’s booth… it really depends on how many goons they send after me…
🙂
@LightningJynx You’re right. Wizards’ need to focus on producing books. Then – just maybe – they’ll excel at it. All this pretending to be a software house is only doing to damage them in the long term, methinks.
@LightningJynx –
While a 3rd party product can’t reprint character creation rules, using them in a character generator is not reprinting them.
That said, the license doesn’t cover/allow computer programs anyways (I can’t remember which).
As for the WotC Rules Compendium, WotC doesn’t operate under the GSL. The GSL is in no way holding them back from putting anything up.
@greywulf – amen. I worked for a publishing company for 5 years and have yet to see Hasbro do any of the basic f*cking things a publisher is supposed to do with publications – technically, promotion, anything. It’s totally ridiculous and they need to refocus their business on publishing.
mxyzplks last blog post..Vote for the ENnies! Show some love!
I wonder if the fact that they are owned by a toy company is partly responsible?
Well, I’d like to think so but it’s not like they did everything all that right under the TSR or WotC reigns either… But all of those thought of themselves more as game companies than publishers too, which may be the problem.
mxyzplks last blog post..Vote for the ENnies! Show some love!
Yeah, about that, I played a Magic the Gathering Draft at Gen Con and made it to the FInals… Yeah, I fell off the wagon again.
Please make Magic Online 3 better… like real soon.
Yan, Math: I’ll tell you about BattleCruiser Magic next Friday.