Dungeons and Dragons and a New Business Model?
by chris on Apr.13, 2009, under Gaming, IT, Technology
I don’t know how Wizards of the Coast expects to comepte in a digital market using the same old books as a model for delivering content. Everythying ‘new’ they’ve tried up til now has been either half-hearted (as in the case of D&D 4th edition) or the ultimate in VaporWare (as with NeverWinter Nights, promising to be an online campaign delivery mechanism). And let us not forget those DM tools that were promised in 3rd edition, sourced out and played out to the max, the software title Temple of Elemental Evil which was riddled with errors, or the MMORPG which receieved lukewarm reviews at best.
From Ars Technica: Wizards of the Coast fails saving throw against pirates
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/04/wizards-of-the-coast-fails-saving-throw-against-pirates.ars
April 15th, 2009 on 4:22 am
What this tells me is that PDF is probably not a good way for WotC to deliver these books online. There are a number of smaller publishers releasing gaming material online, but the high profile of the Core D&D brand is going to attract a lot more file sharing than even a licensed D&D product by Kenzer & Company or a compatible product by Pazio or any number of other publishers. Plus, I daresay more die-hard gamers are going to have a conscious about stealing from a smaller publisher than from Hasbro-owned WotC.
Perhaps Amazon Kindle is the way to go. (don’t really know how much, if any, support for the various diagrams & such there is here) Maybe a web based subscription model is the way to go. Maybe they just stop trying to monetize the rules altogether and focus on revenue stream from miniatures and other ancillary products.
April 15th, 2009 on 8:09 am
Good points. The kindle file format is easily copied and moved over to another kindle or P2P-stolen. This just speaks to your point about revenue streams that support the content. I would love to see a web platform that delivered the content and some functionality for remote play. I know for many purists this goes against the grain of what paper-based gaming is about, but it would be nice to run through solo-quests via computer, be able to recall information easily (perhaps from smartphone). Hell, I would love to just see a stable game that captured what D&D is all about.