Already seventeen minutes into it. I can say that this interviewer is vastly better than 3BH was. He's courteous, jovial, and he's clearly treating this as a dialogue rather than an inquisition. In just the seventeen minutes I've managed to get done with so far, this video has provided significantly more useful information than the entirety of 3BH's disgraceful attempt. This one is highly recommended for folks interested in actually hearing answers and getting insight; the 'BURN IT ALL DOWN' crowd can pass on it entirely since this guy is interested in sharing ideas and information rather than personally assaulting Wizards.
SO! Some general takeaways from my watch-through, in no particular order:
1.) Diversity in Wizards' staff is dealt with at the interview level, even before hiring. The priority is on ensuring that Wizards is giving a diverse and multifacted group of people the chance to prove their stuff and get themselves a Wotsee job. They don't want to talk to just a narrow slice of the broader community, but - but! - even just getting hired is based on merit, as is all advancement after merit. Wizards' HR team will ensure that a broad and diverse pool of people get their chance to talk to Kyle and others and make their pitch; it's on the individual person to make that pitch successful. The result is that naturally over time, a more diverse pool of talent is hired and through advancement that diversity filters up the ranks; Kyle's already seen an increase in diversity in beginning hires for the team.
I find this to be an acceptable process, and probably the best any reasonable company should do. Everyone deserves their chance to make their pitch; after that it's up to your pitch and your skills.
2.) Wizards was never concerned with third-party publishers like Kobold Press or even Paizo "emerging from within" to compete with D&D. In point of fact, Kyle would like for the most successful third-party creators to gain broader licenses that allow them to use a larger swath of Wizards' IP and go even further with their content. Third-party publishers are not and never have been seen as competition, not by any current WotC leadership. Kyle specifically mentions the idea that Wizards cannot serve every need of the D&D community and highlights third-party houses as the natural, logical answer. Instead, the concern was solely on what large actors - your Meta, your Amazon, your Alphabet, and the like - could do if they decided to get in on D&D in a way that's detrimental to the community. The specific example was "what if some Unknown Company made a D&D virtual space where you could play through your dungeons? What if most of the content for that virtual space was user-generated content? And what if that company's controls and policies on user-generated content were more lax than anybody likes?" He, ironically, used my "D&D Hookup App" example almost word for word in that the intent was to protect D&D from being associated with "that weird video **** game" (his words, not mine) and thus tarnishing both the brand and any player/fan of the brand.
3.) OGL 1.1 was a pressure cooker situation - the larger D&D's audience grew, the more danger Wizards felt it was in from bad-faith large actors and from hateful content and the more pressure it felt to Do Something, Quickly. D&D's large and increasingly diverse community actually makes it more vulnerable to hateful content, not less, because the amount of people that content can reach and potentially harm is much higher than it historically has been. Wizards wanted to get in front of this and make sure it had plans and protections in place to stop the sort of widespread harm that could come from a single bad actor doing something awful, but Kyle states that what they arrived at was always the wrong plan. WotC is working on a Content Policy, and it will not seek to enforce that policy on anyone else - but Kyle specifically mentions that if a creator choose to directly flaut/go against that policy, Wizards is going to be Understandably Unhappy with that creator and may not have the nicest of things to say about such content and those who peddle it. But this is the intended defense now - Wizards is intending the community to be D&D's primary shield against hatefulness, and their goal/strategy is to act as an amplifier for that community because Wizards is itself part of the D&D Community and it gets to have a say in what people do.
However. The point was made more than once that when Wizards realized that its OGL ambitions were putting it in the position of "you can have legal protections and recourse against bad actors, or you can have a robust and vibrant creatore community - pick one and only one", they could not backpedal fast enough. Losing the creator community was seen as far, far, far too great a cost for anything a new OGL, no matter what it did, could accomplish, which is why they ultimately went Creative Commons. Their goals, desires, and concerns did not change - their strategy for dealing with those things did.
4.) One D&D is not seen as a new edition internally, it's being planned and executed as an update to 5e, and they won't be publishing a brand spanking new SRD for it. The 'One D&D' SRD will be 5.2, 5.3, or whatever it ends up being, and the plan is to release it the same way the 5.1 document was released. Kyle is looking into releasing the 3.5 SRD to Creative Commons as well, but the 3.5 SRD is old as balls and Wizards has not looked at it in quite some time; they need some time to refresh their memories on what the 3.5 SRD contains and whether it has bits and pieces of Product Identity/IP that it shouldn't have and make sure that gets addressed. Kyle wants to see it happen and intends to do it if he can, but the company needs to do its homework first and make sure they're not giving away anything the lawyers will berate them for later.
5.) Much, much multitudinous insight was gained about how Wizards of the Coast operates internally, or at least how the D&D team operates internally. Part of how we ended up with this plate of fried SNAFU in the first place is that Kyle sees it as part of his task as leader for a creative team to shield the creative team from distractions and irrelevant shit. As he put it (paraphrasing), "nothing sucks the creative juices out of someone faster than a four-hour meeting about legal finances." In hindsight he believes he put up too strong a shield and in the doing ended up muffling his team more than he should have, and he mea culpa'd that. After this fiasco, everyone at the company is more aware of the design team's efforts and goals and is more willing to listen when design team speaks up. This is further bolstered by the fact that D&D now has a Senior Vice President whose job is specifically to lead and represent D&D as a brand. Kyle states, and I can believe it, that this provides D&D with a lot more weight and emphasis in a Corporate Combat sense, and puts some heavy ammo in D&D's camp for standing up against other parts of the business that may want things that don't align with the broader community. This was a wake-up call for everyone in the brand and they have no intention of forgetting it.
6.) Even though Hasbro is selling its media divisions, Kyle doesn't think this will impact D&D as much as people think it will. Hasbro's new corporate strategy is to consolidate its efforts and focus on its big-name brands, and D&D is a Big Name Brand. One way or another, D&D will be given the room and resource it needs to continue growing - and no, Wizards' in-house VTT is not expected to be the thing that generates an additional 850M in revenue by itself. What that looks like in the coming years is something we'll all get to find out together.
7.) Kyle specifically allowed the possibility that third-party books could come to DDB, but cited the primary barrier to the idea is the one all the sane DDB users knew already - it is a lot of work to implement a book properly in DDB. It takes not insignificant effort from a lot of folks to get a book working, and the community lets them know if a book does not work properly. Any third-party book would take away resources from first-party products and would have to be considered a very, very important book that a financially significant chunk of the playerbase is clamoring for - your Kickstarter one-offs fromn your favorite live play stream probably isn't gonna cut it unless your favorite live play stream is Critical Role. No mention was made of whether this process could be made easier - Rei speaking here now, not relaying from Kyle, but Kyle is specifically the executive producer for the content team, i.e. The Books People. DDB is a different team entirely, and while the various teams do communicate with each other, Kyle is not particularly privy to the nitty-gritty inner workings of the DDB team and what may or may not be possible for DDB. The impression I got was that Wizards is not at all hostile towards the idea of doing third-party DDB content, but currently it's seen as more work than it's worth (and also probably a capital-letters Licensing Issue). The idea that DDB could "easily be the Steam of TTRPGs" is simply false - it takes too much time and effort to implement a book in DDB for it to be that kind of free-for-all marketplace.
. .. ...I think that'll do for now. All right! Let's hope this thread goes better than the last one!
EDIT: Ahh! Forgot one!
8.) DDB is now seen as the "front door" to D&D online. The actual, Wizards-operated D&D website is being maintained, but the intent moving into the future is for D&D Beyond to be the one-stop-shop interface for D&D on the web. Official communications go to DDB before they go to the 'Official Website', if they go to the Official Website at all. The plan is that DDB is now, for all intents and purposes, the Official Website for D&D and at some point the original website will be allowed to shutter. Kyle mentioned that DDB was a rather spendy purchase for WotC and they plan to get their money's worth out of the website, so - Rei speaking again - theoretical plans from mobile gacha gaming goblins to replace DDB wholesale with other resources seems more far-fetched now than it did a couple of hours ago. A lot of money and effort has gone into DDB and Wizards actively sees the website as the Online Portal for D&D; this place isn't going away any time soon.
I thought it was fine. Probably a bit more focussed on the OGL debacle and issues surrounding that than the first interview which got a little more tangential (which was fine and interesting), but that's what these interviews are for.
But honestly, I don't think it's going to move the needle much. I feel like the people who still have an issue just don't believe anything that Wizards say and there's not much nothing reasonable that will change that. If I were Kyle, I'd ditch some of the business jargon phrases he's using because it just sounds way too cliched, even if true. "Hire people smarter than me" is the one that sticks out the most. It's ok, and I agree with it in principle, but I know it will strike some people as insincere.
There's a general timestamp already in the expanded info for the video.
There is and I find that useful, but I also like to know exactly which questions were asked too, it helps my own ability to parse the material 🙂
Speaking of which...
(1:35) How did you get started with D&D?
(3:22) Do you have a favorite setting?
(3:57) Favorite 3rd-Party product?
(4:24) What was your role at WotC before becoming executive director of D&D?
(6:06) How many people are on the team and how are they organized?
(6:57) How do you help everyone come together on such a large team so that even new designers have a voice?
(8:41) For designers in the past who have left WotC frustrated, do you feel like the issues that contributed to that have been corrected / improved?
(10:24) Do you have equity/diversity targets so your team is representative of the playerbase?
(13:06) Who do you report to?
(13:41) Do you get to meet with the C-Suite and do they hear your concerns?
(13:53) Do you feel you have enough visibility into what WotC and Hasbro are planning at the corporate level, and do they have enough visibility into the D&D team?
(15:33) The design team feels separate from the digital side nowadays with DnDBeyond. Where is that line between the two teams drawn? What about the incorporation of what used to be a variety of content sources (website blogs, discord posts, twitter threads) into DnDBeyond?
(17:32) How much can the DnDBeyond team affect new products from the D&D Game Studio, and how are disconnects between the two resolved?
(19:18) Changing the OGL was a surprise to the community, was it also a surprise to your team?
(20:38) You mentioned this has been in the works for quite sometime, did no one speak up to warn about the kinds of things that might happen?
(21:50) What might a large company create with the OGL that you all would have seen as a problem? Can you give an example?
(23:58) Were the royalties seen more as a growth cap for creators, or a deterrent for large companies?
(25:55) Are royalties now dead?
(26:59) Another concern was hateful content. The biggest examples of that recently have unfortunately been from WotC themselves, same with NFTs and Hasbro. What is the community failing to understand related to what WotC wanted to do with content protection?
(29:38) WotC shied away from content standards in the past, Adventurer’s League was going to have one and now it has none, what’s WotC’s strategy towards content protection going forward?
(31:12) Wanted to ask about Share-Alike; the OGL drafts that were shared didn’t seem to contain Share-Alike, and even the CC license WotC chose doesn’t have that. Was that intentional? Does WotC see Share-Alike as a problem?
(33:19) People want to understand the difference between WotC and Hasbro and the design team, and where the idea of revising the OGL began in earnest, was that at the Hasbro executive level, the WotC executive level, the design team level… where was that happening?
(34:48) There’s a feeling that if you speak up, it can come at personal cost. Is that something that is happening at WotC and what are you doing to change that?
(37:17) Did anyone sign the 1.1 Draft?
(38:10) What about feedback from third parties like Kobold Press? Why did they feel they weren’t being listened to or that their feedback wasn’t being acted on?
(39:32) 1.2 had a number of improvements but still tried to deauthorize 1.0a. Why was that?
(42:02) WotC has a reputation for being tough negotiators, do you think that’s been in WotC’s best interests?
(43:06) WotC asked for a 1.2 survey, then the plug was pulled on the OGL and we went all the way to Creative Commons, how was it that we got to that place?
(45:17) There were so many goals around royalties, protecting against large companies etc, are all those shelved until later? Is WotC willing to say “we will not deauthorize 1.0a?”
(47:02) 5.1 is in Creative Commons, that’s great, but we will see it get updated for OneD&D and things like the Artificer?
(48:15) Will you add the 3.5 SRD to CC?
(49:04) Concerning VTTs, will WotC continue to work with Roll20 and Foundry? Are they seen as partners or competitors?
(50:54) What about third-party content inside DnDBeyond and your VTT, will that be possible?
(52:15) Will the staff get to see the D&D movie early?
(52:33) Though the movie and tv show are coming - with Hasbro selling off eOne, and WotC scaling back on video games, will D&D meet its growth targets? Will too much emphasis be placed on the VTT to deliver something unprecedented?
(53:33)Has what has happened with the OGL affected the strategy for OneD&D?
(54:14) Will OneD&D be the final edition of D&D?
(55:52) The OneD&D playtest is behind schedule; Will the timeline shift for OneD&D past 2024?
(56:38) The feedback in the playtest videos seems to be considerably more positive than feedback from reviewers. Is there a disconnect there, and would an independent outside firm helping with survey design and measuring what people like and don’t like help resolve that? (Comparison to DnDNext playtest here as well.)
(59:47) What has WotC learned from this experience to prevent this from happening in future?
The Share-Alike stuff was especially interesting here. I had read the Dancey article about how they might have picked the wrong CC and this answered that definitively.
I was also very interested to hear their plans for 3.5 and other VTTs.
I like and agree with the approach of making DDB the D&D website. Went through that myself (switching to a better online platform) and it is a slow painful process. I suspect it will be more difficult with the need to add the parts and pieces to the function.
OGL: In house team was pissed (politely said), and "oops", lol. The PoV winning section is like me when I do my State and federal meetings, lol. I can totally see that (money people talk loudly). LOL!!! Talked entirely around the **** stuff until one point,and bam, hit my point about **** being a problem. It already is a problem (cannot describe how many times people have shown me DD ****, knowing that I don't do **** at all). It was in development over two years ago!
Content Policy is coming and is going to be an ugly fight given some of the stuff I have seen recently (here on DDB, that is).
oh, it won't be 6e, it will be 5.5e...
pretty good interview, I liked it.
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Content Policy is coming and is going to be an ugly fight given some of the stuff I have seen recently (here on DDB, that is).
Why? He said that the policy would only apply to Wizards and that it would have no legal weight. So long as he honors that promise, what's there to complain about?
Content Policy is coming and is going to be an ugly fight given some of the stuff I have seen recently (here on DDB, that is).
Why? He said that the policy would only apply to Wizards and that it would have no legal weight. So long as he honors that promise, what's there to complain about?
If WotC publishes something saying "this is what we think is racist/sexist/otherwise bigoted" the bigots that lurk on this site will lose their minds and "misinterpret it" in the absolute worst way in order to try and score internet points/help radicalize "normies".
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
There's a general timestamp already in the expanded info for the video.
There is and I find that useful, but I also like to know exactly which questions were asked too, it helps my own ability to parse the material 🙂
Speaking of which...
(1:35) How did you get started with D&D?
(3:22) Do you have a favorite setting?
(3:57) Favorite 3rd-Party product?
(4:24) What was your role at WotC before becoming executive director of D&D?
(6:06) How many people are on the team and how are they organized?
(6:57) How do you help everyone come together on such a large team so that even new designers have a voice?
(8:41) For designers in the past who have left WotC frustrated, do you feel like the issues that contributed to that have been corrected / improved?
(10:24) Do you have equity/diversity targets so your team is representative of the playerbase?
(13:06) Who do you report to?
(13:41) Do you get to meet with the C-Suite and do they hear your concerns?
(13:53) Do you feel you have enough visibility into what WotC and Hasbro are planning at the corporate level, and do they have enough visibility into the D&D team?
(15:33) The design team feels separate from the digital side nowadays with DnDBeyond. Where is that line between the two teams drawn? What about the incorporation of what used to be a variety of content sources (website blogs, discord posts, twitter threads) into DnDBeyond?
(17:32) How much can the DnDBeyond team affect new products from the D&D Game Studio, and how are disconnects between the two resolved?
(19:18) Changing the OGL was a surprise to the community, was it also a surprise to your team?
(20:38) You mentioned this has been in the works for quite sometime, did no one speak up to warn about the kinds of things that might happen?
(21:50) What might a large company create with the OGL that you all would have seen as a problem? Can you give an example?
(23:58) Were the royalties seen more as a growth cap for creators, or a deterrent for large companies?
(25:55) Are royalties now dead?
(26:59) Another concern was hateful content. The biggest examples of that recently have unfortunately been from WotC themselves, same with NFTs and Hasbro. What is the community failing to understand related to what WotC wanted to do with content protection?
(29:38) WotC shied away from content standards in the past, Adventurer’s League was going to have one and now it has none, what’s WotC’s strategy towards content protection going forward?
(31:12) Wanted to ask about Share-Alike; the OGL drafts that were shared didn’t seem to contain Share-Alike, and even the CC license WotC chose doesn’t have that. Was that intentional? Does WotC see Share-Alike as a problem?
(33:19) People want to understand the difference between WotC and Hasbro and the design team, and where the idea of revising the OGL began in earnest, was that at the Hasbro executive level, the WotC executive level, the design team level… where was that happening?
(34:48) There’s a feeling that if you speak up, it can come at personal cost. Is that something that is happening at WotC and what are you doing to change that?
(37:17) Did anyone sign the 1.1 Draft?
(38:10) What about feedback from third parties like Kobold Press? Why did they feel they weren’t being listened to or that their feedback wasn’t being acted on?
(39:32) 1.2 had a number of improvements but still tried to deauthorize 1.0a. Why was that?
(42:02) WotC has a reputation for being tough negotiators, do you think that’s been in WotC’s best interests?
(43:06) WotC asked for a 1.2 survey, then the plug was pulled on the OGL and we went all the way to Creative Commons, how was it that we got to that place?
(45:17) There were so many goals around royalties, protecting against large companies etc, are all those shelved until later? Is WotC willing to say “we will not deauthorize 1.0a?”
(47:02) 5.1 is in Creative Commons, that’s great, but we will see it get updated for OneD&D and things like the Artificer?
(48:15) Will you add the 3.5 SRD to CC?
(49:04) Concerning VTTs, will WotC continue to work with Roll20 and Foundry? Are they seen as partners or competitors?
(50:54) What about third-party content inside DnDBeyond and your VTT, will that be possible?
(52:15) Will the staff get to see the D&D movie early?
(52:33) Though the movie and tv show are coming - with Hasbro selling off eOne, and WotC scaling back on video games, will D&D meet its growth targets? Will too much emphasis be placed on the VTT to deliver something unprecedented?
(53:33)Has what has happened with the OGL affected the strategy for OneD&D?
(54:14) Will OneD&D be the final edition of D&D?
(55:52) The OneD&D playtest is behind schedule; Will the timeline shift for OneD&D past 2024?
(56:38) The feedback in the playtest videos seems to be considerably more positive than feedback from reviewers. Is there a disconnect there, and would an independent outside firm helping with survey design and measuring what people like and don’t like help resolve that? (Comparison to DnDNext playtest here as well.)
(59:47) What has WotC learned from this experience to prevent this from happening in future?
The Share-Alike stuff was especially interesting here. I had read the Dancey article about how they might have picked the wrong CC and this answered that definitively.
I was also very interested to hear their plans for 3.5 and other VTTs.
By the way, your response got buried behind, ah, other stuff before I read it so I didn't have much chance to say, but kudos to you for providing this service to the community. It's a fair amount of work, so you deserve some gratitude for making the interviews so easy to parse and reference.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
If Hasbro's strategy is about the management of brands... why not to acquired later new brands? For example a merger with Embracer Group, or acquiring Onyx Path/Paradox Entertaiment.
If Hasbro's strategy is about the management of brands... why not to acquired later new brands? For example a merger with Embracer Group, or acquiring Onyx Path/Paradox Entertaiment.
Onyx Path doesn't own anything. They're a licensee of CCP games that got the rights to all the old White Wolf stuff when CCP Games realized they couldn't turn it into Eve Online for Goths. And Paradox is a video game company, which Hasbro has avoided like the plague. Hasbro only wants "BIllion Dollar" Brands. Anything smaller than that they don't give a crap about.
SO! Some general takeaways from my watch-through, in no particular order:
1.) Diversity in Wizards' staff is dealt with at the interview level, even before hiring. The priority is on ensuring that Wizards is giving a diverse and multifacted group of people the chance to prove their stuff and get themselves a Wotsee job. They don't want to talk to just a narrow slice of the broader community, but - but! - even just getting hired is based on merit, as is all advancement after merit. Wizards' HR team will ensure that a broad and diverse pool of people get their chance to talk to Kyle and others and make their pitch; it's on the individual person to make that pitch successful. The result is that naturally over time, a more diverse pool of talent is hired and through advancement that diversity filters up the ranks; Kyle's already seen an increase in diversity in beginning hires for the team.
I find this to be an acceptable process, and probably the best any reasonable company should do. Everyone deserves their chance to make their pitch; after that it's up to your pitch and your skills.
I think this is a really great approach. While far from being controversy free, the Rooney Rule in the NFL made it mandatory for all teams to interview at least one minority candidate for a head coach position. It lead (for a time) to a large uptick in minority hiring for these positions. Of course, it also shows that simply putting a rule like that out there may not meet long term hopes so it can't just be just another bit of red tape that people have to go through (17 years after its implementation the number of minority head coaches went back down to the number they were in 2003 when the rule was inacted). On the assumption Brink is sincere here, and this kind of attitude sustains and lives even if he leaves and is replaced, then this is a good sign as far as minority hiring goes.
If Hasbro's strategy is about the management of brands... why not to acquired later new brands? For example a merger with Embracer Group, or acquiring Onyx Path/Paradox Entertaiment.
Onyx Path doesn't own anything. They're a licensee of CCP games that got the rights to all the old White Wolf stuff when CCP Games realized they couldn't turn it into Eve Online for Goths. And Paradox is a video game company, which Hasbro has avoided like the plague. Hasbro only wants "BIllion Dollar" Brands. Anything smaller than that they don't give a crap about.
Managing a brand takes money; acquiring a brand takes money. Presently, Hasbro is not exactly cash flush - it has been a hard couple years for Hasbro, starting with the implosion of Toys-R-Us a couple years ago and continuing through the pandemic (specifically supply chain disruption in China, a major producer of Hasbro products), and now with inflation meaning folks have less money to spend on toys.
Hasbro has not really changed its business model to keep up - for years it has had a “throw brands at the wall and see what sticks” approach, with them producing a couple hundred different brands. Brands that all need specialised molds to make parts for, employees managing them, advertising dollars, etc. Many of these brands have a low rate of return - and when you are not exactly flush with cash, you want to make sure every dollar is being used to its maximum.
Which is why Hasbro is changing to their brand focus - rather than have a few big brands and a couple hundred little, low return brands, they are going to focus on their high return brands. That way their cash on hand can go further as it is being focused on things like D&D, Magic, MLP, GI Joe, Monopoly and other classic games, and Transformers.
It also means they are unlikely to have any big acquisitions like you propose - they don’t want to spend money on acquiring a new brand (which they would also have to continue to support financially) when they are in the process of consolidation and narrowing their focus. Sure, they might make big purchases like building Magic Arena or purchasing D&D Beyond, but those were both investments in their existing brands.
I also wanted to respond to the point about Hasbro avoiding video games like the plague - that is simply wrong. WotC actually had a game development wing for a number of years - they had a few in house projects in the work, including a new space IP helmed by former BioWare developers (who knew Wizards from Baldur’s Gate 1 and hated working for EA-helmed BioWare). This division was closed down about a month ago after years of work - making AAA games is extremely cash and manpower intensive, while also being incredibly risky (a few bugs and/or bad reviews can tank a game’s profits and utterly destroy the company making them). As such, Hasbro pulled the plug on the entire WotC gaming development wing.
So, while it is fair to say Hasbro is not currently looking to explore the video game market, it is not accurate to say they have avoided it like the plague - they actively embraced it until they decided the risk-reward math did not work out.
I would argue that one of the reasons they created the OGL in the first place is so they could have a lot of those little low return brands do their thing and attract players to the game (who would buy the Core Books) without costing Hasbro a cent. It certainly worked on me back in 2000/2001 since the Creature Collection and Relics & Rituals (both 3PP products that were popular at the time and came out simultaneously with 3.0) are what got me into wanting to run the system far more than the bland DM's guide.
I watched the interview all the way through. Kyle handled it better, he said he’d seen the questions in advance so that helped avoid any disasters. After the OGL debacle the creative team seems to have more of a say which can’t be a bad thing. Said all the right things Corporatewise as you might expect. Little mention of the digital side and how monetisation might work. Seems it’s full speed ahead with OneDND, that’s a mistake IMHO (5E is mostly Ok). He said it was 5.5E, but really if you have to buy a new set of core books it’s a new edition, so be useful for someone to ask him that.
Much enjoyed that more than the 3BH interview. Felt like I learnt far more about how the ****ed so badly & how WotC have rearranged internally to stop it happening again instead of going off on tangents about what 3rd parties were involved and suchlike.
Content Policy is coming and is going to be an ugly fight given some of the stuff I have seen recently (here on DDB, that is).
Why? He said that the policy would only apply to Wizards and that it would have no legal weight. So long as he honors that promise, what's there to complain about?
If WotC publishes something saying "this is what we think is racist/sexist/otherwise bigoted" the bigots that lurk on this site will lose their minds and "misinterpret it" in the absolute worst way in order to try and score internet points/help radicalize "normies".
I think you’re absolutely right. But if it were me, I’d still go with the WotC approach. I’d rather be damned for trying to do the right thing. Otherwise, you’re letting the trolls silence you.
I watched the interview all the way through. Kyle handled it better, he said he’d seen the questions in advance so that helped avoid any disasters. After the OGL debacle the creative team seems to have more of a say which can’t be a bad thing. Said all the right things Corporatewise as you might expect. Little mention of the digital side and how monetisation might work. Seems it’s full speed ahead with OneDND, that’s a mistake IMHO (5E is mostly Ok). He said it was 5.5E, but really if you have to buy a new set of core books it’s a new edition, so be useful for someone to ask him that.
Publishing new core books is what they did for 3.5e.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRVkrWvqKTQ
Already seventeen minutes into it. I can say that this interviewer is vastly better than 3BH was. He's courteous, jovial, and he's clearly treating this as a dialogue rather than an inquisition. In just the seventeen minutes I've managed to get done with so far, this video has provided significantly more useful information than the entirety of 3BH's disgraceful attempt. This one is highly recommended for folks interested in actually hearing answers and getting insight; the 'BURN IT ALL DOWN' crowd can pass on it entirely since this guy is interested in sharing ideas and information rather than personally assaulting Wizards.
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Thanks for the link, this one was indeed great. I'm finalizing the timestamp list and will post shortly.
There's a general timestamp already in the expanded info for the video.
SO! Some general takeaways from my watch-through, in no particular order:
1.) Diversity in Wizards' staff is dealt with at the interview level, even before hiring. The priority is on ensuring that Wizards is giving a diverse and multifacted group of people the chance to prove their stuff and get themselves a Wotsee job. They don't want to talk to just a narrow slice of the broader community, but - but! - even just getting hired is based on merit, as is all advancement after merit. Wizards' HR team will ensure that a broad and diverse pool of people get their chance to talk to Kyle and others and make their pitch; it's on the individual person to make that pitch successful. The result is that naturally over time, a more diverse pool of talent is hired and through advancement that diversity filters up the ranks; Kyle's already seen an increase in diversity in beginning hires for the team.
I find this to be an acceptable process, and probably the best any reasonable company should do. Everyone deserves their chance to make their pitch; after that it's up to your pitch and your skills.
2.) Wizards was never concerned with third-party publishers like Kobold Press or even Paizo "emerging from within" to compete with D&D. In point of fact, Kyle would like for the most successful third-party creators to gain broader licenses that allow them to use a larger swath of Wizards' IP and go even further with their content. Third-party publishers are not and never have been seen as competition, not by any current WotC leadership. Kyle specifically mentions the idea that Wizards cannot serve every need of the D&D community and highlights third-party houses as the natural, logical answer. Instead, the concern was solely on what large actors - your Meta, your Amazon, your Alphabet, and the like - could do if they decided to get in on D&D in a way that's detrimental to the community. The specific example was "what if some Unknown Company made a D&D virtual space where you could play through your dungeons? What if most of the content for that virtual space was user-generated content? And what if that company's controls and policies on user-generated content were more lax than anybody likes?" He, ironically, used my "D&D Hookup App" example almost word for word in that the intent was to protect D&D from being associated with "that weird video **** game" (his words, not mine) and thus tarnishing both the brand and any player/fan of the brand.
3.) OGL 1.1 was a pressure cooker situation - the larger D&D's audience grew, the more danger Wizards felt it was in from bad-faith large actors and from hateful content and the more pressure it felt to Do Something, Quickly. D&D's large and increasingly diverse community actually makes it more vulnerable to hateful content, not less, because the amount of people that content can reach and potentially harm is much higher than it historically has been. Wizards wanted to get in front of this and make sure it had plans and protections in place to stop the sort of widespread harm that could come from a single bad actor doing something awful, but Kyle states that what they arrived at was always the wrong plan. WotC is working on a Content Policy, and it will not seek to enforce that policy on anyone else - but Kyle specifically mentions that if a creator choose to directly flaut/go against that policy, Wizards is going to be Understandably Unhappy with that creator and may not have the nicest of things to say about such content and those who peddle it. But this is the intended defense now - Wizards is intending the community to be D&D's primary shield against hatefulness, and their goal/strategy is to act as an amplifier for that community because Wizards is itself part of the D&D Community and it gets to have a say in what people do.
However. The point was made more than once that when Wizards realized that its OGL ambitions were putting it in the position of "you can have legal protections and recourse against bad actors, or you can have a robust and vibrant creatore community - pick one and only one", they could not backpedal fast enough. Losing the creator community was seen as far, far, far too great a cost for anything a new OGL, no matter what it did, could accomplish, which is why they ultimately went Creative Commons. Their goals, desires, and concerns did not change - their strategy for dealing with those things did.
4.) One D&D is not seen as a new edition internally, it's being planned and executed as an update to 5e, and they won't be publishing a brand spanking new SRD for it. The 'One D&D' SRD will be 5.2, 5.3, or whatever it ends up being, and the plan is to release it the same way the 5.1 document was released. Kyle is looking into releasing the 3.5 SRD to Creative Commons as well, but the 3.5 SRD is old as balls and Wizards has not looked at it in quite some time; they need some time to refresh their memories on what the 3.5 SRD contains and whether it has bits and pieces of Product Identity/IP that it shouldn't have and make sure that gets addressed. Kyle wants to see it happen and intends to do it if he can, but the company needs to do its homework first and make sure they're not giving away anything the lawyers will berate them for later.
5.) Much, much multitudinous insight was gained about how Wizards of the Coast operates internally, or at least how the D&D team operates internally. Part of how we ended up with this plate of fried SNAFU in the first place is that Kyle sees it as part of his task as leader for a creative team to shield the creative team from distractions and irrelevant shit. As he put it (paraphrasing), "nothing sucks the creative juices out of someone faster than a four-hour meeting about legal finances." In hindsight he believes he put up too strong a shield and in the doing ended up muffling his team more than he should have, and he mea culpa'd that. After this fiasco, everyone at the company is more aware of the design team's efforts and goals and is more willing to listen when design team speaks up. This is further bolstered by the fact that D&D now has a Senior Vice President whose job is specifically to lead and represent D&D as a brand. Kyle states, and I can believe it, that this provides D&D with a lot more weight and emphasis in a Corporate Combat sense, and puts some heavy ammo in D&D's camp for standing up against other parts of the business that may want things that don't align with the broader community. This was a wake-up call for everyone in the brand and they have no intention of forgetting it.
6.) Even though Hasbro is selling its media divisions, Kyle doesn't think this will impact D&D as much as people think it will. Hasbro's new corporate strategy is to consolidate its efforts and focus on its big-name brands, and D&D is a Big Name Brand. One way or another, D&D will be given the room and resource it needs to continue growing - and no, Wizards' in-house VTT is not expected to be the thing that generates an additional 850M in revenue by itself. What that looks like in the coming years is something we'll all get to find out together.
7.) Kyle specifically allowed the possibility that third-party books could come to DDB, but cited the primary barrier to the idea is the one all the sane DDB users knew already - it is a lot of work to implement a book properly in DDB. It takes not insignificant effort from a lot of folks to get a book working, and the community lets them know if a book does not work properly. Any third-party book would take away resources from first-party products and would have to be considered a very, very important book that a financially significant chunk of the playerbase is clamoring for - your Kickstarter one-offs fromn your favorite live play stream probably isn't gonna cut it unless your favorite live play stream is Critical Role. No mention was made of whether this process could be made easier - Rei speaking here now, not relaying from Kyle, but Kyle is specifically the executive producer for the content team, i.e. The Books People. DDB is a different team entirely, and while the various teams do communicate with each other, Kyle is not particularly privy to the nitty-gritty inner workings of the DDB team and what may or may not be possible for DDB. The impression I got was that Wizards is not at all hostile towards the idea of doing third-party DDB content, but currently it's seen as more work than it's worth (and also probably a capital-letters Licensing Issue). The idea that DDB could "easily be the Steam of TTRPGs" is simply false - it takes too much time and effort to implement a book in DDB for it to be that kind of free-for-all marketplace.
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...I think that'll do for now. All right! Let's hope this thread goes better than the last one!
EDIT: Ahh! Forgot one!
8.) DDB is now seen as the "front door" to D&D online. The actual, Wizards-operated D&D website is being maintained, but the intent moving into the future is for D&D Beyond to be the one-stop-shop interface for D&D on the web. Official communications go to DDB before they go to the 'Official Website', if they go to the Official Website at all. The plan is that DDB is now, for all intents and purposes, the Official Website for D&D and at some point the original website will be allowed to shutter. Kyle mentioned that DDB was a rather spendy purchase for WotC and they plan to get their money's worth out of the website, so - Rei speaking again - theoretical plans from mobile gacha gaming goblins to replace DDB wholesale with other resources seems more far-fetched now than it did a couple of hours ago. A lot of money and effort has gone into DDB and Wizards actively sees the website as the Online Portal for D&D; this place isn't going away any time soon.
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I thought it was fine. Probably a bit more focussed on the OGL debacle and issues surrounding that than the first interview which got a little more tangential (which was fine and interesting), but that's what these interviews are for.
But honestly, I don't think it's going to move the needle much. I feel like the people who still have an issue just don't believe anything that Wizards say and there's
not muchnothing reasonable that will change that. If I were Kyle, I'd ditch some of the business jargon phrases he's using because it just sounds way too cliched, even if true. "Hire people smarter than me" is the one that sticks out the most. It's ok, and I agree with it in principle, but I know it will strike some people as insincere.There is and I find that useful, but I also like to know exactly which questions were asked too, it helps my own ability to parse the material 🙂
Speaking of which...
The Share-Alike stuff was especially interesting here. I had read the Dancey article about how they might have picked the wrong CC and this answered that definitively.
I was also very interested to hear their plans for 3.5 and other VTTs.
My thoughts...
I like and agree with the approach of making DDB the D&D website. Went through that myself (switching to a better online platform) and it is a slow painful process. I suspect it will be more difficult with the need to add the parts and pieces to the function.
OGL: In house team was pissed (politely said), and "oops", lol. The PoV winning section is like me when I do my State and federal meetings, lol. I can totally see that (money people talk loudly). LOL!!! Talked entirely around the **** stuff until one point,and bam, hit my point about **** being a problem. It already is a problem (cannot describe how many times people have shown me DD ****, knowing that I don't do **** at all). It was in development over two years ago!
Content Policy is coming and is going to be an ugly fight given some of the stuff I have seen recently (here on DDB, that is).
oh, it won't be 6e, it will be 5.5e...
pretty good interview, I liked it.
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Why? He said that the policy would only apply to Wizards and that it would have no legal weight. So long as he honors that promise, what's there to complain about?
If WotC publishes something saying "this is what we think is racist/sexist/otherwise bigoted" the bigots that lurk on this site will lose their minds and "misinterpret it" in the absolute worst way in order to try and score internet points/help radicalize "normies".
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By the way, your response got buried behind, ah, other stuff before I read it so I didn't have much chance to say, but kudos to you for providing this service to the community. It's a fair amount of work, so you deserve some gratitude for making the interviews so easy to parse and reference.
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If Hasbro's strategy is about the management of brands... why not to acquired later new brands? For example a merger with Embracer Group, or acquiring Onyx Path/Paradox Entertaiment.
Onyx Path doesn't own anything. They're a licensee of CCP games that got the rights to all the old White Wolf stuff when CCP Games realized they couldn't turn it into Eve Online for Goths. And Paradox is a video game company, which Hasbro has avoided like the plague. Hasbro only wants "BIllion Dollar" Brands. Anything smaller than that they don't give a crap about.
I think this is a really great approach. While far from being controversy free, the Rooney Rule in the NFL made it mandatory for all teams to interview at least one minority candidate for a head coach position. It lead (for a time) to a large uptick in minority hiring for these positions. Of course, it also shows that simply putting a rule like that out there may not meet long term hopes so it can't just be just another bit of red tape that people have to go through (17 years after its implementation the number of minority head coaches went back down to the number they were in 2003 when the rule was inacted). On the assumption Brink is sincere here, and this kind of attitude sustains and lives even if he leaves and is replaced, then this is a good sign as far as minority hiring goes.
Managing a brand takes money; acquiring a brand takes money. Presently, Hasbro is not exactly cash flush - it has been a hard couple years for Hasbro, starting with the implosion of Toys-R-Us a couple years ago and continuing through the pandemic (specifically supply chain disruption in China, a major producer of Hasbro products), and now with inflation meaning folks have less money to spend on toys.
Hasbro has not really changed its business model to keep up - for years it has had a “throw brands at the wall and see what sticks” approach, with them producing a couple hundred different brands. Brands that all need specialised molds to make parts for, employees managing them, advertising dollars, etc. Many of these brands have a low rate of return - and when you are not exactly flush with cash, you want to make sure every dollar is being used to its maximum.
Which is why Hasbro is changing to their brand focus - rather than have a few big brands and a couple hundred little, low return brands, they are going to focus on their high return brands. That way their cash on hand can go further as it is being focused on things like D&D, Magic, MLP, GI Joe, Monopoly and other classic games, and Transformers.
It also means they are unlikely to have any big acquisitions like you propose - they don’t want to spend money on acquiring a new brand (which they would also have to continue to support financially) when they are in the process of consolidation and narrowing their focus. Sure, they might make big purchases like building Magic Arena or purchasing D&D Beyond, but those were both investments in their existing brands.
I also wanted to respond to the point about Hasbro avoiding video games like the plague - that is simply wrong. WotC actually had a game development wing for a number of years - they had a few in house projects in the work, including a new space IP helmed by former BioWare developers (who knew Wizards from Baldur’s Gate 1 and hated working for EA-helmed BioWare). This division was closed down about a month ago after years of work - making AAA games is extremely cash and manpower intensive, while also being incredibly risky (a few bugs and/or bad reviews can tank a game’s profits and utterly destroy the company making them). As such, Hasbro pulled the plug on the entire WotC gaming development wing.
So, while it is fair to say Hasbro is not currently looking to explore the video game market, it is not accurate to say they have avoided it like the plague - they actively embraced it until they decided the risk-reward math did not work out.
I would argue that one of the reasons they created the OGL in the first place is so they could have a lot of those little low return brands do their thing and attract players to the game (who would buy the Core Books) without costing Hasbro a cent. It certainly worked on me back in 2000/2001 since the Creature Collection and Relics & Rituals (both 3PP products that were popular at the time and came out simultaneously with 3.0) are what got me into wanting to run the system far more than the bland DM's guide.
I watched the interview all the way through. Kyle handled it better, he said he’d seen the questions in advance so that helped avoid any disasters. After the OGL debacle the creative team seems to have more of a say which can’t be a bad thing. Said all the right things Corporatewise as you might expect. Little mention of the digital side and how monetisation might work. Seems it’s full speed ahead with OneDND, that’s a mistake IMHO (5E is mostly Ok). He said it was 5.5E, but really if you have to buy a new set of core books it’s a new edition, so be useful for someone to ask him that.
Much enjoyed that more than the 3BH interview. Felt like I learnt far more about how the ****ed so badly & how WotC have rearranged internally to stop it happening again instead of going off on tangents about what 3rd parties were involved and suchlike.
I think you’re absolutely right. But if it were me, I’d still go with the WotC approach. I’d rather be damned for trying to do the right thing. Otherwise, you’re letting the trolls silence you.
Publishing new core books is what they did for 3.5e.