Newsgroup: it.hobby.giochi.gdr.dnd
Titolo: To OGL or not OGL?

Chris Pramas nel suo blog (molto interessanti anche le risposte)
http://freeport-pirate.livejournal.com/92159.html
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 Chris Pramas (freeport_pirate) ha scritto,
@ 2008-03-31 05:52:00
Etichette del post: game industry
Debating the OGL
Over the weekend there was a bit of a brouhaha at ENWorld because of a
quote from Liz Schuh, the Brand Director of D&D (and one of the better
marketing folk at WotC in my experience). People were asking after the
Game System License and Liz gave the following quote:
"We're still vetting our final policy regarding open gaming. As soon
as that process is complete, we'll make an official announcement. Stay
tuned for more information."
This raised some eyebrows because previously statements had been more
along of lines of, "We're working hard to finalize the GSL." If you
look at this as a carefully worded bit of PR, you might suspect that
WotC is rethinking its whole open gaming strategy. Some people began
to wonder if this might be the prelude to an announcement that there
will be no GSL or OGL of any kind for 4E, effectively closing the game
off from third party development. That could be, though it's also
possible that Liz was trying to make a neutral statement and didn't
realize how it might be interpreted.
It's not the statement I want to talk about but the ensuing debate.
What I found fascinating was the almost religious zeal of open gaming
advocates. Over and over people would assert highly debatable things
not only as facts, but also facts so obvious that a drunk blind man on
an acid trip could see them. The upshot of these posts was that if
WotC did not embrace open gaming for 4E, they were not only betraying
the community but also cutting their own throats.
Now look, the OGL has certainly been good to me, and probably only
Monte Cook has benefited from it more, but many of the oft-repeatedly
claims of the open gaming advocates are theories, not facts. No one,
including WotC, has done the market research to confirm these
suppositions. At best people offer anecdotal evidence. I think it
might be useful to run through a few of the open gaming theories and
see what the facts support.
Third Edition D&D was a success only because of the Open Game License.
This is the easiest one to debunk because I was at the epicenter of
both the 3E launch and the beginning of open gaming. When 3E came out,
open gaming was a new concept and barely anyone knew about it. The
game debuted after an intensive year-long marketing campaign. It was
the first new edition of D&D in over 10 years and people were excited
about it. By the time the first d20 products, Death in Freeport and
Three Days to Kill, were in stores, there were already at least a
quarter million Players Handbooks in retail channels. The brand power
of D&D at 3E's launch was enormous; that of the OGL was nil. I think
it's fair to say that 3E would have been a hit OGL or no.
The OGL created a safety net to catch gamers who otherwise would have
left the hobby.
The theory here is that gamers who previously would have left
roleplaying altogether when they got bored with D&D were kept around
by various OGL offerings. The sheer variety of stuff available and the
fact that the rules of many OGL variants were close enough to D&D that
they were easy to pick up kept these gamers in family. In many cases
this led folks back round to D&D, ultimately offering WotC income they
would have lost. I'm sure there are folks who fit this pattern. What
we don't know is if the number of them is statistically significant.
Without the OGL WotC would have had no talent pool for recruitment.
It is certainly true that the OGL created a pool of people who
garnered a lot of experience working with the D&D rules. That idea
that without the OGL WotC would have had difficulty finding talented
designers to hire is pretty ludicrous though. The industry has always
had more designers than it knew what to do with and TSR and WotC after
them never had any difficulty finding talent. Those D&D books that
came out for 25+ years before the OGL didn't write themselves.
The OGL made WotC money.
I think this is the most highly debatable belief of the open gaming
advocates. The argument from the beginning has been that the OGL would
help WotC sell their core books and the PHB in particular. I must
admit I always found this idea dubious. It is entrenched gamers--folks
have PHBs in other words--who buy third party products. Were there
people who bought D&D core books so they could play Dragonstar or
Broncosaurus Rex? Maybe a few but there is not proof that this
happened to any great degree. When complete OGL variant games like
Mutants & Masterminds hit the market, this clouded things even
further. If you like M&M, I've got plenty of books to sell you and
none of them require you to own or even be familiar with D&D.
You can argue that third party products kept people playing D&D when
otherwise they would have moved on to another game and I think that's
a fairly reasonable assertion. The question is whether the revenue
generated by those people was enough to offset the money spent by D&D
fans on third party products? Again, evidence is lacking. What we do
know if that at the height of the d20 boom, an enormous number of
books were sold to D&D fans and WotC saw not one cent of the revenue
generated. Green Ronin alone sold books in the hundreds of thousands.
Now add in Malhavoc and FFG and Atlas and Necromancer and Privateer
and Goodman and how many books are we talking about (never mind the
booming business of PDFs)? People love to say that WotC has no real
competition in the RPG field, but I think it's easy to see how the
aggregate effect of the OGL might be perceived as detrimental to
WotC's bottom line.
For the folks at WotC trying to figure out a strategy for open gaming,
that is a serious decision. They have to weigh the sales of well over
a million books to their fans under a royalty free license vs. a bunch
of theories that claim this was of benefit to them but have never been
tested by real market research. Then there are the PR implications and
the possibility of market fragmenation to worry about. It's a tough
spot to be sure and the longer this drags out the more difficult it
becomes.
I've said before that I was surprised that WotC was going to continue
with open gaming in the 4E era. If they come through with the GSL and
open gaming in some form continues for D&D, great. If they are
rethinking their strategy and they do decide to make 4E closed, I
wouldn't blame them either. The OGL has indeed been good to me, but
WotC doesn't owe me or any other publisher anything more.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Scrivi un nuovo commento)
bookkeeper
2008-03-31 03:42 pm UTC (link)
Two constants in the universe - Death and Internet Hysteria.
I, for one, would like to see WotC pursue a patent line of thinking,
in the same fashion as drug companies. The face a similar problem on a
smaller scale: Any pharmaceutical company will tell you - the first
pill costs millions, the second ten cents. Patents allow Big Pharma to
recoup all the R&D cost.
WotC faces a similar situation: they've put a lot of work into
developing 4E and are, understandably, eager to make some money off of
years of effort. Exclusivity would give them that opportunity, but we
can easily fall into too much of a good thing. Third party products
may not produce statistically significant advantages, but I would
wager that said advantages can become more significant over time. If
Wizards of the Coast gave itself a year or two to sell products and,
more importantly, see if the online initiative is really going to take
off as a new revenue stream, I think they can adequately shield their
bottom line.
The risk is twofold: First, WotC risks what any new product risks -
that it flops. If 4E turns out to be a dud, that exclusivity eats them
up while people flock to Pathfinder. This is, admittedly a terribly
unlikely scenario, but WotC is not the only game in town. Pathfinder
has just made the 4E switch a gamble on market share.
Second, exclusivity could lead to other companies deciding to pursue
their own agendas and, when a new form of open gaming appears, it's
the party no one comes to. This one is also unlikely, but a vacuum in
the market is an opportunity. Only those with real (read: proprietary)
data can know how profitable an opportunity.
I would be really surprised if 4E comes out the door with open gaming
as part of the package. Derivative products can definitely hurt the
opening numbers (How many gamers might end up buying Advanced Player's
Guides instead of Complete Warrior II: Electric Boogaloo?). But I
think the long-term strategy will support an eventual return to open
gaming in some form.
(Rispondi)
waitingforgo
2008-03-31 03:49 pm UTC (link)
I haven't been following the debate, but I note that one of the things
the OGL was supposed to do was create the social backdrop against
which the entire hobby was presupposed. This was my understanding of
what Ryan Dancey wanted. In this regard, I believe the OGL was a
"success," although whether or not that has resulted in an appreciable
number of sales for WotC, I cannot say.
When I first took over Pyramid, in 2000, there were still many, many
RPG choices out there. White Wolf was strong (with its World of
Darkness lines and Trinity/Aberrant settings), Deadlands was still
going along, Call of Cthulhu still had a sizable fanbase, Rifts still
sold huge when it released books, WEG's Star Wars was only a couple
years dead, etc. Although Dungeons & Dragons was the predominant
force, it was not synonymous with roleplaying by those with more than
a passing interest in the hobby.
Since the d20 System's success, however, it seems that all discussion
begins with the assumption of "How does it fit into the d20 System
niche," or "How is this product reacting against the d20 System?"
Consider the questions a potential gamer would have in 2000:
Do I want to play Star Wars?
How about a World of Darkness game?
Or Deadlands?
Perhaps Call of Cthulhu?
In all those cases, today, the second question would immediately be
"Do we want to play the d20 System version?"
In this regard, we might view 2000 tabletop gaming as being
early-1980s-era home video games, with the Atari 2600, Atari 5200,
Colcovision, Intellivision, etc. all vying for attention. In
comparison, 2005-era tabletop gaming is more late 1980s video games,
where "playing Nintendo" became synonymous with "playing video games."
Now, I note that Nintendo got a cut of the action whenever someone
made a new cartridge (for the most part), and that may make a big
difference to WotC's bean-counters.
Whether the rise of the d20 System has been good or bad for the
industry, I can't say. In much the same way that Nintendo's dominance
narrowed focus and hampered innovation for a number of years ("No
blood! Lots of cute characters!"), I believe the rise of the d20
System hasn't done much for the group of potential gamers who might
like RPGs, but for whom the d20 System will never click. (I believe
this to be a big chunk of people.)
I also tend to feel it's led to a bit of a "scorched earth" in the
game store. What's the last new (non-sequel, non-new-edition) non-OGL/
d20 System RPG setting that really hit it big as a continuing line?
The best I can come up with is Deadlands, which is ancient by this
point.
But in the end, if the original goal of the d20 System was to make it
darn-near the first thing that popped to mind when the term "tabletop
RPG" was tossed out, I think it was quite successful.
(Rispondi)(Thread)
bruceb
2008-03-31 04:13 pm UTC (link)
There's Exalted, which debuted five years after Deadlands and which
has been (to put it mildly) successful. Really, really successful.
Slightly less spectacularly but still very solid was the Buffy RPG,
which went under thanks to the weight of licensing problems but helped
put the Unisystem solidly on the map; when Eden can get a book out, it
sells. 7th Sea and Legend of Five Rings both had some solid runs too,
and I wonder if they'd maybe have done better without d20
distractions.
It also seems overwhelmingly likely to me that some settings would
have come out anyway. In the wake of the Lord of the Rings movies'
success, something like Midnight seems inevitable, for instance.
My impression is that d20 Deadlands was a ghastly failure, done by
people who didn't like it and it showed. Star Wars wasn't on the
market in any form in 2000, was it, nor had it been for a while? d20
CoC, meanwhile, gets continued attention despite having been out of
print now substantially longer than it was in because it's really
good, not so much because it's d20.
Honestly, I think you're overstating the impact of d20 at this point,
just as I think d20 boosters often underestimate the serious harm the
d20 glut did to the commerce side of things.
(Rispondi)(Parent)(Thread)
waitingforgo
2008-03-31 04:30 pm UTC (link)
I'd forgotten Exalted, and, yes, that definitely counts; so does
Buffy, for that matter. (My views get a bit skewed because of the mix
of articles I receive; for whatever reason, I've only received, like,
two Exalted articles ever. We've gotten lots of Buffy articles,
however.)
We're all limited by our personal experiences and perceptions. For
example, I helped run the largest LARP in Tallahassee for a number of
years (from 2000-ish to 2004), and many folks there (33% or so) had no
real opinions or even knowledge of Dungeons & Dragons before the d20
System came out. A year or two after its release, everyone had an
opinion of it. Some were running d20 System games, some hated what the
d20 System stood for, some didn't have any opinions beyond the
annoyance that the stuff was crowding out their beloved White Wolf
books.
As for your last point -- my overstating the impact of the d20 System
-- well, I honestly don't know what you mean by that. If you dispute
that you couldn't swing a dead cat in a game store without hitting two
shelves of d20 System product, or that most gamers have heard of and
have an opinion about the system, then I guess we'll have to agree to
disagree. :-)
(Rispondi)(Parent)(Thread)
bruceb
2008-03-31 04:47 pm UTC (link)
I think that if there weren't an OGL, most of that shelf space would
have gone to WotC products, is what I mean, and much of the rest to
stuff in the older style of "let's see how close we can get without
getting sued" compatibility, plus some actually licensed products. I'm
assuming here a history in which D&D 3rd comes out and is
substantially the same game, and that the overall production history
(d20 Modern, 3.5, etc.) is likewise the same in its overall form. It
seems a safe bet that WotC would farm out its defunct settings as it
did with Ravenloft and the like, and so forth and so on.
My perspective from my corner of the gaming biz is that d20 really was
the 800-gorilla in everyone's office for several years, but that it's
been on a diet and sedatives ever since, oh, 2004 or so. There was a
time when decisions like "this is neat but it wouldn't work as a d20
product, so we're passing" were common, but that time's several years
back now.
(The biggest locus of creative innovation has been in the "indie"/
small press scene for the last several years, and some of those games
are selling in numbers that rival what long-established publishers are
seeing - Dogs in the Vineyard, for instance, competes in sales numbers
with the latter ends of Changeling and Trinity, and outperforms a
significant chunk of what comes out from folks like Mongoose. I may
(and do) have a profound contempt and loathing for Ron Edwards and a
few others in that scene, but darned if they're not getting the stuff
out and finding some audiences.)
(Rispondi)(Parent)(Thread)
calcamp
2008-03-31 05:53 pm UTC (link)
From the numbers I've heard you're either overestimating DitV, or the
sales for Mongoose and White Wolf products are a heck of a lot lower
than I would have believed. Now I'm curious which it is.
I really can't imagine either of them bothering with books that sell
in the triple digits, especially with the hit they'd take going
through distribution. 'Course DitV has apparently been selling in
those triple digits steadily for several years, so maybe it's making
the difference up in longevity. Or maybe I'm the one overestimating
White Wolf and Mongoose.
(Rispondi)(Parent)(Thread)
bruceb
2008-03-31 05:57 pm UTC (link)
The latter. Cthulhutech shipped 1000 preorders; Changeling and Trinity
were under 3K, myabe under 2K. A lot of mainstream gaming is 1-2K or
less this decade.
(Rispondi)(Parent)(Thread)
calcamp
2008-03-31 06:37 pm UTC (link)
So...
Cthulhutech had more pre-orders than DitV sold in the first year*, and
Changeling sold two to three times (total I assume, since you didn't
say you were talking about pre-orders for that one) what DitV did.
(And, if kept in print, those games should continue to add a few more
sales every year just like DitV - so I'm not sure how much the
longevity factor really helps, probably some but how much?) Yeah,
overall that sounds a little more like what I thought.
I mean, it's really impressive that a little indie game is selling
that well, sure. I guess I just don't see how something like 1/3 the
sales quite qualifies as "rivaling". No biggie, though, I was just
curious if my feel for the numbers was right.
*I can only find numbers for sales-to-date from 2005 (which was about
800 copies), I don't know what the total sales up to now are. I know
Vincent has said it continues to sell.
(Rispondi)(Parent)(Thread)
bruceb
2008-03-31 06:46 pm UTC (link)
I thought I recalled reading that DitV was at or close to 2K total
sold. If I'm wrong, disregard the specific mention and scribble in
something about potential, in crayon. :)
(Rispondi)(Parent)(Thread)
calcamp
2008-03-31 08:07 pm UTC (link)
Oh, it might well be by now.
The data I found was from '05, a little over a year after it came out.
At that point it was at around 800 copies. I'm sure it's significantly
higher now. (Of course to compare properly, we'd have to look at
Changeling in three years too - which is what makes this stuff so
hard, even when you can get numbers, they're never the "right" numbers
to compare side-by-side)
It's always fun to collect new numbers though, so thanks!
(Rispondi)(Parent)(Thread)
calcamp
2008-03-31 08:12 pm UTC (link)
Oh, and I notice Spirit of the Century is well on it's way to the 3000
mark (2673 and counting), and Evil Hat is often considered at least
semi-indie. So there's DEFINITELY potential outside the mainstream.
(Rispondi)(Parent)
bruceb
2008-03-31 06:02 pm UTC (link)
Sorry, meant to add: yes, longevity is a big factor in games outside
the traditional distribution chain. It really, really, really adds up.
(Rispondi)(Parent)(Thread)
calcamp
2008-03-31 06:39 pm UTC (link)
I wonder how long that will continue to be true, with the growth of
online sales. I mean, these days, there's no real reason the products
from a "mainstream" company shouldn't be able to be just as evergreen
as anything else.
(Rispondi)(Parent)
bruceb
2008-03-31 03:56 pm UTC (link)
The thing amuses me about some of the more zealous pro-OGL ranting is
the way it assumes that there wouldn't be anything else going on, if
not for this. But of course there would be, and whatever it was, it'd
be appealing to some folks and not others, too.
(Rispondi)
pond823
2008-03-31 04:11 pm UTC (link)
That could be, though it's also possible that Liz was trying to make a
neutral statement and didn't realize how it might be interpreted.
what she said was exactly, almost word for word, what the license
manager has told me, so I don't think it's an interpretation.
(Rispondi)
mechanteanemone
2008-03-31 04:43 pm UTC (link)
I agree with your overview of the arguments against those various
"evident" statements. However, on the last one, my personal case is of
one who bought the core rule books from WotC entirely so I could play
other companies' games. I still agree with you, though -- I think I was
in the minority.
(Rispondi)
stannex
2008-03-31 05:06 pm UTC (link)
The OGL made WotC money.
I think this is the most highly debatable belief of the open gaming
advocates. The argument from the beginning has been that the OGL would
help WotC sell their core books and the PHB in particular.
Actually, I believe that the theory that motivated the 3E Brand team
was not that OGL would directly help sell core books. Rather, it was
tied to your previous note of OGL creating better retention of gamers
in the hobby ... and the theory that a larger number of active gamers
would benefit WotC (the core theory being "all activity in a given
market provides benefit to the market leader" ... or "a rising tide
may float all boats, but the biggest boat floats the highest").
Of course, anything sold with a d20 logo on it WOULD produce some
direct support for WotC products ... but the immediate success of the
d20 initiative was a surprise to the Brand Team. They had expected for
other game producers to be leery of "helping WotC take over gaming."
They expected the first products released to be OGL, for it to take a
while for that market to grow, and for other companies to eventually
see the benefit to them of using the d20 logo.
As it turned out, though, things went the opposite way ... companies
IMMEDIATELY jumped onto the d20 bandwagon (quite likely inspired by
the visionary leadership of Green Ronin and Atlas) and didn't switch
to doing purely OGL products until much later in the business cycle.
Now, this didn't surprise ME ... but it DID surprise the Brand Team
(at least in my recollection it did). But I don't think ANYONE would
have correctly predicted the course that the industry took from
2000-2003. The release of 3.5 changed the playing field again (and I
don't think anyone, particularly WotC, correctly predicted THOSE
effects either).
The current D&D Brand Team does not seem to subscribe to the economic
theories that Ryan & Co. used to "sell" the OGL and d20 System to WotC
management. So it doesn't surprise me that the road to 4E-based open
gaming is a troubled one. I think that eventually they WILL get around
to it ... but I think at first they are going to try different
versions of SEMI-open gaming (like the GSL).
And for what it's worth, I have a very high opinion of Liz Schuh. And
my personal interpretation of her comment is that she was saying the
only thing that she's ALLOWED to say on the subject ... a carefully
crafted statement drafted (or at least vetted and approved) by the
WotC Legal Dept.
(Rispondi)
 Not the first time
anoxos
2008-03-31 05:17 pm UTC (link)
I looked at the OGL, from the beginning, as a way for WotC to help
expand and revitalize a niche hobby. I think it did that. I don't in
any way think it was the 'only' reason they succeeded with 3.x D&D. I
do think it contributed to their success. I believe they got a whole
new generation interested in D&D.
In my belief (with admittedly no data to back it up) I think they set
out to create a lot of noise, which they did. They created brand
identity, they got themselves noticed (again). It may or may not have
helped in the short term, but I believe it very much will help in the
long term.
Now it is time (for them) to move to ver 4. All those kids who grew up
with console games and CCGs are trained to 'upgrade' to whatever the
newest release/version is. I would be surprised if WotC went through
with GSL/OGL/whatever for ver 4. I don't think they have to anymore.
This isn't the first time, folks. In my vast and ancient gaming
library I have "3rd Party" books for AD&D 1st edition, and for the
original Traveller game. In my eyes, this is just one point in a
cycle. "OGL" has happened before. It is a way to infuse life and
passion in a new (or reinvisioned) game that needs attention. But it
isn't a permanent thing.
(Rispondi)(Thread)
 Re: Not the first time
david_chunn
2008-03-31 09:56 pm UTC (link)
Truth. OGL was just this century's version of Judges Guild and Arduin
and so forth.
(Rispondi)(Parent)
dungeon_grrrl
2008-03-31 05:32 pm UTC (link)
My instinct tells me there will be no meaningful open game license. If
the GSL exists at all, it will be in the form of an expensive license
for exisitng companies to do specific, approved products.
(Rispondi)(Thread)
righteousfist
2008-03-31 06:07 pm UTC (link)
I am not sure this would really be a bad thing, personally.
(Rispondi)(Parent)(Thread)
stannex
2008-03-31 06:49 pm UTC (link)
I'M sure it would be a bad thing. Say what you will about the OGL or
d20 ... but it expanded the hobby and gave small companies ACCESS to
an audience that would never even NOTICED them before.
THAT audience is still there (you can't UNLEARN something), but all
the NEW people coming into the hobby (and D&D will CONTINUE to bring
new people into the hobby) will not have the same advantage. Small-
and even mid-sized game companies will have a SIGNIFICANTLY smaller
audience 3 years from now if there is no Open Gaming version of 4E.
(Rispondi)(Parent)(Thread)
righteousfist
2008-03-31 06:57 pm UTC (link)
I'm not convinced. The d20 phenomenon had a significant upside for
manufacturers, but the retail chains that bought into the d20 boom in
a significant way got left holding the bag on thousands of dollars of
second tier product. I'm not sure they'll be willing to buy in to non-
WOTC D&D product again, and if they don't buy in, you have a lot of
publishers literally tossing money down a rathole.
(Rispondi)(Parent)(Thread)
stannex
2008-03-31 08:51 pm UTC (link)
I draw a distinction between the "d20 phenomenon" and the "d20 glut."
You're correct, I think, that retailers will not let themselves be
caught in the same trap again, buying ANYTHING that comes out that is
compatible with 4E. However, that doesn't mean that SMART companies
(like GR, Atlas, Goodman, etc.) COULD still get their products into
the channel and onto store shelves. Smaller local companies could get
their material into regional stores ... and ANYONE can still get their
material onto the Internet.
The KEY is to find a way to educate the store owners (something that
is MUCH more difficult than that sentence would indicate). And for the
companies that DO get onto store shelves to take a LONG TERM approach
and maintain high standards of quality ... not just pump out as much
crap as possible while the floodgates are open.
But ... game companies exercising restraint, quality standards, and
long term thinking? Now I AM talking crazy!
(Rispondi)(Parent)
badmojo74
2008-03-31 07:12 pm UTC (link)
The thread has been moved the OGL forums, AKA the place where EnWorld
threads go to die. That should pretty much kill the discussion on
EnWorld.
Even though 4E is slowly, step by step, "losing me", I was kind of
looking forward to see if there would be any adventures by 3rd party
companies that would be just too good to skip. If the GSL is
completely shot down, as a player, I can't imagine buying in to 4E
knowing that my only source of adventures are the handful produced by
Wizards.
(Rispondi)(Parent)(Thread)
bookkeeper
2008-03-31 07:20 pm UTC (link)
I'm holding out due to a promise they've made to make the DM's life
easier.
One of the reasons I run a lot of pre-written material for 3.5 is that
it takes roughly a geologic epoch to generate all the necessary
materials to run a low-level adventure, never mind something in the
mid- to high-tier. Encounter cards, maps, minis...and that's all after
we've done the CR calculus.
If Wizards can simplify adventure creation, then I'll likely construct
my own game world to play with. I've always been lukewarm on Eberron
and the changes they're making to the Realms make me want to keep the
game in 3.5 (or Pathfinder).
Mind you, that's still kind of a big "if" at this point.
(Rispondi)(Parent)
 Success of the OGL
rcade [
typekey.com
]
2008-03-31 08:54 pm UTC (link)
I think you're being too modest here. Green Ronin's D20 books were as
good as any of the supplements produced by WOTC for the Third Edition.
Good supplements help drive sales of a game's core books. If you sold
"hundreds of thousands" of books, as you state, it logically follows
that you helped WOTC move some Player's Handbooks.
As one of the publishers that benefited most from the OGL, Green Ronin
ought to be out there selling the gaming industry on the superlatives
of open gaming. If WOTC closes the door on it now, it closes the door
on future Green Ronins springing up.
(Rispondi)
david_chunn
2008-03-31 10:00 pm UTC (link)
I suspect the hold-up is because they want to protect their newly
crafted fantasy IP. That's my uneducated theory. OGL challenges IP.
I'm not sure what to think about it. OGL was certainly great for the
hobby, and I think it helped D&D's popularity and was a good risk as a
marketing gimmick when first conceived, at a time when no one was sure
how people would react to the new edition.
3.5 ensured my departure. I didn't like 3.0 and I wasn't going to
learn an updated form of it. I stopped buying pretty much all OGL
products at that point too, unless I was extremely motivated. And if I
could get those OGL stats out of my Thieves' World books I'd be much
happier!
(Rispondi)
mxyzplk.wordpress.com
2008-04-01 12:53 am UTC (link)
As one of the chief hysterics ("Open Letter Guy"), I thought I'd chime
in. (I might note that Clark Peterson from Necromancer Games is the
other main hysteric; this isn't just "some excitable kids" at work.)
I think you're a little too modest in terms of Green Ronin's
contribution as well. I bought my copy of Death in Freeport at Gen
Con, the same Gen Con where I was helping launch D&D 3e as one of the
Living Greyhawk Triads. It was the first adventure of any sort on the
market for 3e, and it plunged me and my gaming group into fervent
Freeport followers for many years. Just on an anecdotal level, it
definitely helped convince our local gamers to switch to 3e and to do
it quickly. We didn't run any WotC 3e adventure till that thing with
the twigblights came out, and we weren't impressed.
Anyway, obviously no one has access to any real data on the issue, so
we can only go by what we hear and observe and by generally accepted
business practices.
My main point is that the OGL quite clearly helped revitalize the RPG
industry outside D&D 3e itself, which only benefitted WotC directly.
It went from TSR, White Wolf, Steve Jackson, Palladium, and Jack Shit
to a large and dynamic industry. A business truism, true in other
industries so I have trouble believing it's not that way in RPG
publishing, is that the bigger and healthier the overall sector, the
better everyone in it does. It helps create skilled workers, demand
for more product, and desirability of that niche over other
possibilities (i.e. do I watch SciFi, watch a movie, play a MMORPG,
play a RPG, play a CRPG, etc...). This applies even for companies that
didn't do any OGL. I can't prove this, admittedly, as a non-RPG
industry insider I don't have access to any of the necessary numbers.
Yes, this is a cycle - but the previous open->closed cycle seems to
have ended with TSR in the shitter and needing to get bailed out by
the people that built it back into a force to be reckoned with on the
back of 3e and the OGL, right?
Anyway, I'm no RPG industry insider, but I'm reasonably well placed in
my own industry, which in my opinion is pretty analogous - it's a
niche sub-industry within the larger computer industry. Here's what I
see.
o Our company posts record revenue. All our competitors post losses.
Our stock drops. Why? Because investors correctly see that if most
people in a sector are losing money, that sector is unhealthy. If you
talk to any VCs, they'll tell you that they are very hesitant to
invest in a sector unless there's already competition. Competition
means demand, and demand means greater profits despite - or even
BECAUSE OF - the competition.
o We always open up major standards we create. Does this mean some
Asian companies can crank out cheap knockoffs of our products? Yes.
But it also means that people are motivated to create other products
compatible with ours. Hardware. Software. Books. This creates a rich
ecosystem surrounding our products, and then (as long as we don't
suddenly start producing sucky products, but that would only happen if
we turned our back on our culture of innovation and openness) we
profit all the more. It's not a zero sum game. Just because someone's
making money with a knockoff does NOT mean that money's coming out of
our pocket! Anyone who's read a business book written in the last 10
years knows this.
o We go to a lot of trouble to give away our products and get them
incorporated into college curriculums. This doesn't directly profit
us. But it does then provide us with people who know about our
products - people we can hire, people our customers can hire (and thus
they want to buy from us), people that can go into business being
solution providers using our products, and even people our competition
can hire which strive to uptake our standards and concepts. (I don't
remember anyone claiming that without the OGL there woudn't be any
game designers - but there would be fewer and less experienced, just
because the industry would be smaller and less profitable.)
(Rispondi)(Thread)
eyebeams
2008-04-01 07:37 am UTC (link)
My main point is that the OGL quite clearly helped revitalize the RPG
industry outside D&D 3e itself, which only benefitted WotC directly.
It went from TSR, White Wolf, Steve Jackson, Palladium, and Jack Shit
to a large and dynamic industry.
This is kind of like saying that email and text messaging have
revitalized the art of letter writing. Just as a thousand people
saying "l8r d00d" is not the equivalent of Oscar Wilde's
correspondence, a bunch of guys using very accessible media and prefab
IP text to make almost no money while the total amount of monet going
around actually drops, its not "vitality." It's zombification: The
reduction of an industry to legions of half-alive demi-participants
screaming for the few unspilled brains that remain. From the
perspective of total market, the OGL and emerhing technologies gave
the Jack Shit sector a bullhorn and a bucket to shill to a shrinking
number of people once the rubberneckers, who forgot D&D existed,
bought 3e for the hell of it and then wandered away.
(Rispondi)(Parent)
mxyzplk.wordpress.com
2008-04-01 12:53 am UTC (link)
[Part 2]
For *us* - we have proof that these are the reasons we're the ones
posting the record revenues and our competitors are the ones taking it
up the ass.
Is RPG publishing different? Maybe. But I worked in publishing for 5
years before my current gig, and I don't think so. RPGs are quite
analagous to the computer industry or even manufacturing - more so
than traditional publishing - because of the need for
interoperability.
Everyone always believes their company, industry, whatever is a
"precious little snowflake" and doesn't conform to what people have
learned about other industries. That's why most of them are not as
successful as they could be.
Should we "trust that WotC knows what they're doing?" I don't know.
D&D marketing for the last 30 years has been one continuous legacy of
sucky retardation (that's a technical term). I've been around the
block enough to know that every company has some things that they are
congenitally bad at; they develop a character just like a person. And
they always have and probably always will suck at marketing.
(Rispondi)
eyebeams
2008-04-01 07:26 am UTC (link)
One thing I noticed was that after WotC's thin supplements died, the
company went back to making exactly the same things as every other
company does to support their stuff -- and of course, ot started with
retreads of the most popular topics for third party content. It seems
obvious to me that it failed in the sell PHBs alone department. At the
very least, the OGL seemed to provide some guidance about what would
sell for D&D and of course, whenever an official supplement comes out,
it pretty much eliminates the market for the third party equivalent.
The fact that WotC can sink your Cool Fighter book with Complete
Warrior drove home the problems with providing long term, third party
core support for D&D.
Certainly, there was a period where "Why not D20?" was a powerful and
legitimate question. There was a longer priod where it was pure hype.
That period is dead. Certainly, compatibility with the brand leader
doesn't matter for third party success, as M&M and True20 show. And
nobody gives a damn about playing simple D&D variants, as pretty much
every attempt at a commercial "D&D +" (including Dragonstar and WotC's
own Urban Arcana) showed.
And of course, every fan who bought the hype sold by a serial huckster
and his faux-open source commitments, and who believed that this was a
dogmatic ideal at the very top of the organization and not just
marketprop*, is now foaming at the mouth with feelings of betrayal --
or in an attempt to be hip and with it, is trying to construct some
kind of new reason to believe from whatever trickles down from
Gleemax, instead of realizing that these are just ordinary people
working hard to sell things, they are contractually obligated to not
tell you the whole story, much less anything troubling about anything,
and that maybe fans should just see if they actually like the game
this time.
* Like that dude who thinks the OGL is a clever blow against the Man
to keep D&D liberated forever. Please.
(Rispondi)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 
http://freeport-pirate.livejournal.com/92159.html
Il commento di Pramas mette in luce un problema di fondo nella
discussione: è assurdo discutere dell'opportunità per WotC di
mantenere un'OGL anche per 4e, perchè è impossibile fargli i conti in
tasca. Ciò che si può discutere è l'opportunità di avere un'OGL per il
consumatore (ma di questo Pramas non parla, e alcuni dei commenti
proseguono nella confusione fra i due concetti).
GP