As someone who's worked in tech for many, many years, I'd like to issue a word of caution to Wizards. Trying to close open source doors *always* backfires.
Consider Microsoft. They relentlessly advocated for closed source software and pushed anti-competitive practices through the early 2000s. Meanwhile, the Python, Javascript, Ruby and PHP ecosystems stayed fully open. In that time, the Microsoft ecosystem lost massive ground. Today, virtually no major tech company uses the Microsoft stack, and they were ultimately forced to adopt an open source model - one which has been extraordinarily successful for them.
Consider Oracle. They attempted to monetize their implementation of Java. So Google just reverse engineered the JVM. Oracle cried to the courts and the courts laughed in their faces.
Consider, perhaps most importantly, operating systems. Windows had complete dominance in the OS market. But people dedicated to the idea that software should be free decided to write Linux. Do you know what percentage of servers run Linux now? 96%. Do you know what percentage of cell phones run Linux? 85%.
This is important to understand, because DnD is not a video game. Players don't go to it to play in your world. In 15 years of play, I have *never* used an official campaign setting. People use DnD to create their own worlds. It's a platform for game creation, not a game. DnD is fundamentally an operating system.
If you make it hard for people to write software for your operating system, they don't keep writing software for your platform... and will invent their own platforms just to get away from you.
You can't monopolize industries with low barriers to entry. All it takes to create a new gaming system is a computer, an idea, and some website help. And all that needs to happen is for one of these systems to catch on as the alternative to DnD.
Don't be Oracle. Don't be Microsoft. Don't learn the lesson the hard way. You mess with open source, and you lose, every time.
While I may not agree with your statistically numbers (you would need more *baseball specific type stats* to reach to those specific numbers) and the Oracle / Java / Google mess was a bit messier than you noted.
That said, overall I definitely agree with you and your sentiment of "Don't be that guy"
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Info, Inflow, Overload. Knowledge Black Hole Imminent!
We certainly need an open source take on Dndbeyond, Hasbro will wait till this all cools off before rolling it out anyway.
The analogy to an OS is spot on, d&d isn't even a particularly good OS it's just got a decent ecosystem. If they kill their ecosystem they'll just be stuck with windows and office, and it'll take them another 20 years to get back into the swing of things.
They've already basically refused to put out a decent API which is utterly essential to modernizing the hobby, tool building and unleashing peoples creativity.
If we had an oss web app with dice rolling, encounter building etc but was generic enough to be a platform for creators to bring their own systems it'd be a big step towards opening the creative flood gates.
It's not out of the realm of possibility, look at something like homeassistant which is a massive small scale web app effort that the community coalesced around.
I feel bad for the people who built this product, it's good, it truly is, but we've got to do what's best for the hobby and the c-level suite of a publicly traded company just doesn't seem to get it.
Give us a self hosted containerized version too ;)
You said nice thoughts and I don't understand why people don't talk about it. Honestly, I think I learnt from forums and other additional sources much more than from the uni... Thanks to them I easily do all quizzes here https://quizzes.studymoose.com/flashcards/computer-programming/ and happy with growing my knowledge. But it unfortunates me a lot that I can't get really useful information from the university I pay for...
Unfortunately:
They've already basically refused to put out a decent API which is utterly essential to modernizing the hobby, tool building and unleashing peoples creativity.
Such an API might develop this business so fast, but mabe they don't get it yet...
It honestly amazes me how many people refuse to learn the lessons that are so broadly painted so many times over. I'm not in any of these industries [arts for me, largely, bit of teaching] and yet I literally remember readinga bout the Microsoft and Linux stuff back when it was happening. I've seen it happen in many industries; try and make a walled garden and you inevitably kill any interest you have in that thing. I remember being in Unbuntu and Linux forums in real time listening to people's open source arguments, it was all fascinating.
Ultimately humans require a certain amount of freedom and social interest for anything to thrive, and one company holding all the cards, controlling it and penny pinching? That won't ever work in tandem with truly flourishing human activities. Think of literally anything, and while people can make money on it, there's probably also a free or easy to access version of it as well somewhere else right?
Football - there's the NFL, but the NFL doesn't make proprietary footballs that no one can play with and keep the rules of the game under lock and key, charging people if they want to play a friendly neighborhood football match, right?
Hell even the video games I can think of that were massive were in a sense not in walled gardens - the original Halo was massive, but it also had no hypermonetization and you could just play all of it once you bought the game, and you could play with as many friends as you wanted on that game - no pay to unlock multiplayer or pay for each friend that wants to play or any of that nonsense they're trying to nickel and dime us with today. Then they started doing things like battle passes and Microsoft accounts and all that stuff that you had to pay for and the community and general populace's interest in Halo pretty much dried up overnight. Like people still like it and are interested, but I remember how that game went from a cultural zeitgeist of it's own accord to just... another 60$ game like any other. And that's partly due to competition cropping up, but also partly due to them not making it possible for people to play future iterations of the game in the same free and fun way they had been enjoying before, so therefore fewer fans came over to the new stuff.
The more intense it is to 'access' a thing, the fewer people that you're gonna have accessing it. It's pretty basic social sciences.
You don't even have to look at tech. 4e was an attempt to go their separate ways from the OGL and while that wasn't the only issue people had with it, I think it encouraged the community at large to just shift to something else. And I say this as someone who loved 4e.
All excellent observations, and that doesn't even add in the market share they have already lost to Pathfinder and similar games.
Tbh DnD has always had a precarious balance between playability and what passes for 'realistic." (The whole Hit Point metric is the best example)
Making access difficult will push innovation in solving those issues outside the tent; someone will eventually unlock algorithms that feel seamless, and the system will be instantly obsolete.
Like the evolution of game engines, magic systems and combat systems will improve. Either Hasbro supports and catalyzes that, and keeps their hand in, or it grows elsewhere, and they lose out.
There are already four major VTT providers and WotC is trying to move into said space. It would not benefit them to limit access to their platform let alone closing D&D. D&D as a company is wounded by the OGL debacle. I believe after looking at their 5.5E sales, they realized that good will from the customer is what makes a company money. So there is no need to close source their game engine (OS) as well.
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As someone who's worked in tech for many, many years, I'd like to issue a word of caution to Wizards. Trying to close open source doors *always* backfires.
Consider Microsoft. They relentlessly advocated for closed source software and pushed anti-competitive practices through the early 2000s. Meanwhile, the Python, Javascript, Ruby and PHP ecosystems stayed fully open. In that time, the Microsoft ecosystem lost massive ground. Today, virtually no major tech company uses the Microsoft stack, and they were ultimately forced to adopt an open source model - one which has been extraordinarily successful for them.
Consider Oracle. They attempted to monetize their implementation of Java. So Google just reverse engineered the JVM. Oracle cried to the courts and the courts laughed in their faces.
Consider, perhaps most importantly, operating systems. Windows had complete dominance in the OS market. But people dedicated to the idea that software should be free decided to write Linux. Do you know what percentage of servers run Linux now? 96%. Do you know what percentage of cell phones run Linux? 85%.
This is important to understand, because DnD is not a video game. Players don't go to it to play in your world. In 15 years of play, I have *never* used an official campaign setting. People use DnD to create their own worlds. It's a platform for game creation, not a game. DnD is fundamentally an operating system.
If you make it hard for people to write software for your operating system, they don't keep writing software for your platform... and will invent their own platforms just to get away from you.
You can't monopolize industries with low barriers to entry. All it takes to create a new gaming system is a computer, an idea, and some website help. And all that needs to happen is for one of these systems to catch on as the alternative to DnD.
Don't be Oracle. Don't be Microsoft. Don't learn the lesson the hard way. You mess with open source, and you lose, every time.
As someone who has worked in tech and publishing I have to say your post is spot on! Well said.
While I may not agree with your statistically numbers (you would need more *baseball specific type stats* to reach to those specific numbers) and the Oracle / Java / Google mess was a bit messier than you noted.
That said, overall I definitely agree with you and your sentiment of "Don't be that guy"
Info, Inflow, Overload. Knowledge Black Hole Imminent!
We certainly need an open source take on Dndbeyond, Hasbro will wait till this all cools off before rolling it out anyway.
The analogy to an OS is spot on, d&d isn't even a particularly good OS it's just got a decent ecosystem. If they kill their ecosystem they'll just be stuck with windows and office, and it'll take them another 20 years to get back into the swing of things.
They've already basically refused to put out a decent API which is utterly essential to modernizing the hobby, tool building and unleashing peoples creativity.
If we had an oss web app with dice rolling, encounter building etc but was generic enough to be a platform for creators to bring their own systems it'd be a big step towards opening the creative flood gates.
It's not out of the realm of possibility, look at something like homeassistant which is a massive small scale web app effort that the community coalesced around.
I feel bad for the people who built this product, it's good, it truly is, but we've got to do what's best for the hobby and the c-level suite of a publicly traded company just doesn't seem to get it.
Give us a self hosted containerized version too ;)
You said nice thoughts and I don't understand why people don't talk about it. Honestly, I think I learnt from forums and other additional sources much more than from the uni... Thanks to them I easily do all quizzes here https://quizzes.studymoose.com/flashcards/computer-programming/ and happy with growing my knowledge. But it unfortunates me a lot that I can't get really useful information from the university I pay for...
Unfortunately:
Such an API might develop this business so fast, but mabe they don't get it yet...
It honestly amazes me how many people refuse to learn the lessons that are so broadly painted so many times over. I'm not in any of these industries [arts for me, largely, bit of teaching] and yet I literally remember readinga bout the Microsoft and Linux stuff back when it was happening. I've seen it happen in many industries; try and make a walled garden and you inevitably kill any interest you have in that thing. I remember being in Unbuntu and Linux forums in real time listening to people's open source arguments, it was all fascinating.
Ultimately humans require a certain amount of freedom and social interest for anything to thrive, and one company holding all the cards, controlling it and penny pinching? That won't ever work in tandem with truly flourishing human activities. Think of literally anything, and while people can make money on it, there's probably also a free or easy to access version of it as well somewhere else right?
Football - there's the NFL, but the NFL doesn't make proprietary footballs that no one can play with and keep the rules of the game under lock and key, charging people if they want to play a friendly neighborhood football match, right?
Hell even the video games I can think of that were massive were in a sense not in walled gardens - the original Halo was massive, but it also had no hypermonetization and you could just play all of it once you bought the game, and you could play with as many friends as you wanted on that game - no pay to unlock multiplayer or pay for each friend that wants to play or any of that nonsense they're trying to nickel and dime us with today. Then they started doing things like battle passes and Microsoft accounts and all that stuff that you had to pay for and the community and general populace's interest in Halo pretty much dried up overnight. Like people still like it and are interested, but I remember how that game went from a cultural zeitgeist of it's own accord to just... another 60$ game like any other. And that's partly due to competition cropping up, but also partly due to them not making it possible for people to play future iterations of the game in the same free and fun way they had been enjoying before, so therefore fewer fans came over to the new stuff.
The more intense it is to 'access' a thing, the fewer people that you're gonna have accessing it. It's pretty basic social sciences.
You don't even have to look at tech. 4e was an attempt to go their separate ways from the OGL and while that wasn't the only issue people had with it, I think it encouraged the community at large to just shift to something else. And I say this as someone who loved 4e.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
All excellent observations, and that doesn't even add in the market share they have already lost to Pathfinder and similar games.
Tbh DnD has always had a precarious balance between playability and what passes for 'realistic." (The whole Hit Point metric is the best example)
Making access difficult will push innovation in solving those issues outside the tent; someone will eventually unlock algorithms that feel seamless, and the system will be instantly obsolete.
Like the evolution of game engines, magic systems and combat systems will improve. Either Hasbro supports and catalyzes that, and keeps their hand in, or it grows elsewhere, and they lose out.
There are already four major VTT providers and WotC is trying to move into said space. It would not benefit them to limit access to their platform let alone closing D&D. D&D as a company is wounded by the OGL debacle. I believe after looking at their 5.5E sales, they realized that good will from the customer is what makes a company money. So there is no need to close source their game engine (OS) as well.