I was really hopeful that Kyle Brink would be the 'face' that started righting the ship around here, but after reading an interview where he insists there's no way the backlash against the OGL could have caused Wizards to actually change it's mind (along with a few other not-great answers in other interviews I've seen with him) I think it's time to face the music and realize that either they need to hire an ACTUAL public relations person or just accept that D&D is just cruddy now, made by cruddy fuddy duddies that clearly just do not get it.
Even if it were the case that the corporation couldn't 'turn on a dime' and change their minds that fast; why would you tell that to your irate audience right now? Why would you say to them "No, sorry, your actions and passion about this game? All that work you've put in this last month making sure that we heard you? Yeah none of that mattered, it had zero impact on us, we just arbitrarily decided to change our minds for no reason."
We have a few options here with this kind of thing. This statement is either true or false, either we didn't have any impact on them and they're literally just making random choices to change the OGL and then not change it for no reason, which makes them sound utterly insane - or it's false, and we did have an impact on them, but they're trying to gaslight us into thinking we didn't so that we don't do it again in the future when they piss us off, which seems rather inevitable at this point to me because good god I think a 13 year old could handle the image of this company better than these guys.
TLDR: Kyle Brink ain't doing it, he's just bringing D&D closer to the Brink - maybe hire someone with actual public relations training, someone that's not going to jam both feet in their mouth and chomp down as hard as possible.
The simple reality is that Kyle’s PR tour is working. Sure, there are some folks still looking to stir up trouble for one reason or another, but the overwhelming response to Kyle has been positive. Is he the best speaker? Probably not - but he is the face of the game and his words carry the weight of his title in a way that a faceless PR team simply cannot.
Recall that, of the legitimately concerned folks, there was a common cry of “we don’t want to hear from the PR folks, we want to hear from leadership.” It was made expressly clear by the community members worth talking to that PR alone was just going to be seen as more disingenuous spin—so they threw out someone with actual power and actual knowledge.
Overall, the OGL issue has mostly died (barring a few holdouts, many of whom have less than legitimate reasons for their complaints), and a large part of that is due to Kyle’s less scripted words giving the air of honesty from someone in a real position to effectuate change. I would bet the issue would be a lot more contested right now if there was a more-PR focused blitz since Wizards’ surrender—folks don’t tend to trust something that so obviously comes from a PR team.
What they put out before wasn't PR though - it was written by someone who I highly doubt had PR training, or if they did they need to get a refund on their degree because I don't think anyone would ever write that statement and get a passing grade in any kind of marketing or personal relations course.
I mean if it's working for you, fine I guess? You're entitled to be swayed by it I suppose - for me it's literally having the opposite effect. I was very ready to let WotC say 'Hey, sorry guys, we dun messed up, our bad!' and basically go back to business as usual - and I've seen some people say they weren't even willing to do that because now that they know the OGL is on their minds, they don't trust WotC to actually leave it alone.
Instead now I keep seeing interviews with Kyle Brink basically illustrating to me that even the core D&D people at the company just... do not understand on a basic level what they're doing, or how what they say will impact other people, and to me that is not a good person to have in a job like that. It's on par with seeing your day shift manager unable to open a plastic clamshell package, like; this is the dude you're supposed to put your faith into to manage the store and make sure everything's going ship shape? The dude struggling to do this very basic task that should be very easy and simple for almost everyone to do? Doesn't inspire a lot of faith in me.
I think there was a huge opportunity for building bridges back up, reinstalling the faith people had in D&D being the TTRPG King, and instead we're getting like... a dude who isn't making it super duper worse, I guess, but also isn't doing much to make it better either? It's a hugely wasted opportunity being squandered by someone who doesn't seem to know what to say, is what I'm driving at here. There was a chance for someone to really stick the landing on all this OGL stuff and I'm just not seeing it.
I'm seeing lots of articles talking about Hasbro's stock being down, lots of articles talking about the general disaster this has all been, but the damage was already done - like just because they managed to stop the bleeding doesn't mean they don't also need a blood transfusion, there's not much blood left after they spent nearly a month bleeding to death! That's kinda my point - I'm not seeing anything happening that's going to get blood back in the system.
Your anecdotal “this does not work for me” is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things—one need only look at the General Forum on D&D Beyond and they’ll see the front page is almost entirely covered by threads actually discussing D&D, rather than the OGL, and the few OGL threads kept limping along have seen a tonal shift from significant wrath to cautious optimism with some holdouts remaining.
That isn’t a “working for me” thing - that’s a reality of how the conversation has shifted, which you are choosing to ignore in favour of your own, personal feelings.
Now, I don’t want to accuse you of only posting this to stir up trouble because you are upset about the fact most folks have moved on, and your anger at Wizards is increasingly seen as obsolete. But it is pretty hard to come to any other conclusion when your diction is still very much geared toward anger, when you try to dismiss the reality that the general tone of the conversation has shifted, and you are accusing Wizards of “gaslighting” when (a) they never actually said the thing you are accusing them of saying (they have acknowledged player backlash was a factor in their decision to keep OGL 1.0) and (b) you literally tried to argue on another thread that player backlash was irrelevant to Wizards’ decision (so you look a little bit hypocritical trying to blame Wizards for something they never said, while ignoring the fact you actually said things akin to what you fabricated Wizards as saying).
This fight is basically over. Realise you won and stay with the game or move on. Trying to stir up trouble where none actually exists reflects poorly on you and does not actually help move the needle forward on any real issues.
I was really hopeful that Kyle Brink would be the 'face' that started righting the ship around here, but after reading an interview where he insists there's no way the backlash against the OGL could have caused Wizards to actually change it's mind (along with a few other not-great answers in other interviews I've seen with him) I think it's time to face the music and realize that either they need to hire an ACTUAL public relations person or just accept that D&D is just cruddy now, made by cruddy fuddy duddies that clearly just do not get it.
What interview is this that you're referring to? Cuz in every interview I've seen with the guy he's made it pretty damn clear that is was the public outcry of the fans that caused them to drop changing the OGL.
I think it’s more that saying the DDB cancellations didn’t influence the decision which is probably being a little economical with the truth. I doubt the interviews change opinions either way.
Would you rather have a fellow member of the D&D community and player addressing our concerns, or would you rather have a tight lipped and formal PR team writing legalese for us?
People already went into a frenzy about the somewhat legal use of the word draft, but there would be plenty more terms like that if we had an actual public relations official representing Wizards. Honestly, if you dislike the answers Kyle gave, then you would almost certainly like the answers of an official like this even less.
Kyle's words have meaning because he is a member of our community and creator for us. A random spokesman's words would have no weight at all.
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The simple reality is that Kyle’s PR tour is working. Sure, there are some folks still looking to stir up trouble for one reason or another, but the overwhelming response to Kyle has been positive. Is he the best speaker? Probably not - but he is the face of the game and his words carry the weight of his title in a way that a faceless PR team simply cannot.
Recall that, of the legitimately concerned folks, there was a common cry of “we don’t want to hear from the PR folks, we want to hear from leadership.” It was made expressly clear by the community members worth talking to that PR alone was just going to be seen as more disingenuous spin—so they threw out someone with actual power and actual knowledge.
Overall, the OGL issue has mostly died (barring a few holdouts, many of whom have less than legitimate reasons for their complaints), and a large part of that is due to Kyle’s less scripted words giving the air of honesty from someone in a real position to effectuate change. I would bet the issue would be a lot more contested right now if there was a more-PR focused blitz since Wizards’ surrender—folks don’t tend to trust something that so obviously comes from a PR team.
Please provide citations for your statements that his PR tour has been "overwhelmingly positive".
Mmm most people with 'overwhelmingly positive' corporate PR tours, especially for something as innocuous as family-fun-games like D&D don't 'have to' protect their tweets as a direct result of things blurted out during said tour!
I even think most people off the street with zero training could manage an innocent and uncontroversial Q&A or talk while remaining positive and inclusive about their favourite gaming hobby - heck dozens of D&D youtubers manage it every day!
The forums at DDB are in no way an accurate measure of what most in the hobby think or feel. This should not come as a surprise to you given many who started posting about the whole OGL debacle are either new to DDB or had been here for even years but had never posted on the forums. Forums for the most part for any hobby or any thing have a tendency to be echo chambers used more by people within those hobbies or things who exhibit certain behaviors and attitudes than they are by the general population. I trust the general consensus around here about as much as I trust that on Reddit or Twitter.
Please provide citations for your statements that his PR tour has been "overwhelmingly positive".
You can say you don't trust Twitter or this here forum or any other social media platform, but there isn't really any other recourse for the lay person to gauge. Moreover the OGL conflagration played out entirely over social media, so the fact that said social media is overwhelmingly cool to D&D in midst apology tour is an improvement to where D&D's standing was in the midst of the OGL uprising or whatever you want to call it.
There are studies that show trends on social media and forums are an inaccurate representation of broadly held opinions and that they're unreliable because of the reasons provided. This is why so many people on social media were thrown into states of shock upon the election of someone on one side of the Atlantic and following the results of a referendum on the other.
So what you're saying is that there might not have been a need for the apology in the first place because the social media which showed the level of frustration and anger over OGL 1.1 is unreliable in representing the general trend of feelings and so most people might well have been fine with it?
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It's an article on Wargamer, I watched a few videos talking about it [Renfail over on youtube has a video on it], from what I can tell it was part of the three black halflings interview he did - though I also watched half of his interview with Ginny Di and saw quite a few responses on his statement of how 'white men can't get out of gaming fast enough', and while I understand contextually he didn't mean it 'that way' (aka literally) it just is another showcase on how he's not actually doing damage control, he's just not doing quite as MUCH damage as WotC were doing to themselves before. Far from healing them either, too, which is what I think an actual basic PR person would be managing to do at this point.
Even in the interview itself he seems to go back and forth on just how much he actually wants to accredit the change to the fans reaction / outcry vs. how much he wants to insist that it was never going to happen because they knew it was bad and they wanted to change it internally. He's very much trying to have his cake and eat it too.
No one that we've talked about / heard of made any of the decisions, it "wasn't anyone on his team". They just want to find a way to make the anger at WotC's actions on the OGL kerfuffle to slide by them, not actually take any ownership or admit that they messed up - they're ALL just passing the buck, even internally. That's not good PR in my book.
'white men can't get out of gaming fast enough', and while I understand contextually he didn't mean it 'that way' (aka literally)
He did not mean it that way literally or figuratively or any other way. This is flagrant misinformation and mischaracterisation that could be disproven by just listening to the interview.
But at least you have shown what your true intent with this thread is - and with all the other threads where you are trying to keep the outrage against Wizards going. Hopefully folks will see these posts for the dog whistling they are and realise they can be easily ignored.
Nothing I said in my post implied that I thought my opinions applied to more than just me; however, as a D&D gamer I have an opinion on it, and this is a forum, where people like me share their opinions. Which is what I was doing.
You can have any opinion you like, but from what I have seen, Kyle Brink's Apology Tour has been... middlingly successful at best? Lukewarm would be a generous statement, and it's getting colder and colder every time he seems to open his mouth and do another interview. I watch pretty much all of the youtubers that talk about D&D news, Ginny Di's interview with him was... Mildly positive? and she's literally the most positive D&D person out there, so for her response to his answers to be so measured and cautious I think that's a big read. More than that though, I'm taking my opinion largely based on what I've seen - several annoyed videos coming out about how they didn't like hearing him say "white men can't get out of TTRPG's fast enough", etc. The conversation that I've been witnessing has been far from splendiferously positive.
"Now, I don’t want to accuse you of only posting this to stir up trouble" - Good, then don't, because that's not at all what I'm doing. I'm stating my opinion, on a public forum. If you want to malign that as 'stirring up trouble' then you can try and do that but it doesn't change reality.
" because you are upset about the fact most folks have moved on" - Where are you getting this stuff? Where did I say anything in my post about 'being upset', or where did I supposedly imply that people have moved on? Because from what I've seen they very much haven't, so you can stop cramming words and opinions in my mouth now, thanks.
"and your anger at Wizards is increasingly seen as obsolete" - again, where is the anger? Where is this ire that I'm supposedly spewing? because I can promise you if I was angry it'd be written as a LOT different post than what I did write! Anger has... angry words. What I wrote was critical, I was passing a judgment on Kyle Brink's lackluster performance so far and WotC's inability to right the ship after crashing it into the rocks. That's not anger, that's just an objective observation of reality, and I'm sorry that you can't seem to see the forest for the trees on that one because if you live in a world where anything critical is 'anger' then YIKES. Being critical is how we improve things, it's how things get made better - if no one pointed out the flaws in anything, we'd all still be living in caves wearing pelts for clothes. Improvement is a good thing, guys!
"This fight is basically over. Realise you won and stay with the game or move on. Trying to stir up trouble where none actually exists reflects poorly on you and does not actually help move the needle forward on any real issues." - Once again you fail to read or comprehend the basics of what I'm saying, and have just arbitrarily decided that this is about the OGL when it's actually about their handling of the aftermath of the damage they caused.
I think everyone can see exactly who is here to 'stir up trouble' and who isn't.
For everyone else; Usually a PR team doesn't require it's own PR team to go and try and smooth over their PR statements, but Kyle has needed a few of those so far and I think that illustrates clearly that he's maybe not well suited for being the answer-man in this situation. Maybe he's great at his actual job, I have no idea, but as far as consistently saying things that don't rub people the wrong way I think there are probably many folks who would be far better suited for the task.
The simple reality is that Kyle’s PR tour is working. Sure, there are some folks still looking to stir up trouble for one reason or another, but the overwhelming response to Kyle has been positive. Is he the best speaker? Probably not - but he is the face of the game and his words carry the weight of his title in a way that a faceless PR team simply cannot.
Recall that, of the legitimately concerned folks, there was a common cry of “we don’t want to hear from the PR folks, we want to hear from leadership.” It was made expressly clear by the community members worth talking to that PR alone was just going to be seen as more disingenuous spin—so they threw out someone with actual power and actual knowledge.
Overall, the OGL issue has mostly died (barring a few holdouts, many of whom have less than legitimate reasons for their complaints), and a large part of that is due to Kyle’s less scripted words giving the air of honesty from someone in a real position to effectuate change. I would bet the issue would be a lot more contested right now if there was a more-PR focused blitz since Wizards’ surrender—folks don’t tend to trust something that so obviously comes from a PR team.
Please provide citations for your statements that his PR tour has been "overwhelmingly positive".
Mmm most people with 'overwhelmingly positive' corporate PR tours, especially for something as innocuous as family-fun-games like D&D don't 'have to' protect their tweets as a direct result of things blurted out during said tour!
I even think most people off the street with zero training could manage an innocent and uncontroversial Q&A or talk while remaining positive and inclusive about their favourite gaming hobby - heck dozens of D&D youtubers manage it every day!
Exactly - from where I'm sitting, this 'apology tour' should have been a cakewalk - especially since he seems to be getting away with basically offloading the blame onto everyone else. No one on his team made any of the choices, no one on his team had enough voice at the table etc. so it's not THEM, don't be mad at him or his team, it was just like, someone ELSE in the company! And no one is even annoyed at this sort of offloading of guilt or lack of real contrition - so basically there's no reason he should be floundering, in that, the community was already entirely willing to let go of everything and move on.
Instead every day I check my morning youtube and see another few videos from various D&D news people talking about yet another Kyle Brink interview where he's like, not totally blown it up or said anything -hugely- controversial, but also he's not done much to help smooth down feathers or make people feel excited to come back to D&D - and that is really what they need right now.
Kyle Brink is a wet blanket on a fire. Sure, the fire isn't spreading, and I guess that's 'good' in some books. However, an actual fire extinguisher would have had the fire out AND it would have stopped the burning inside the wood and cooled things off MUCH faster and allowed us to get back to normal. I'm not saying he's doing like, literally the worst job ever? I'm just saying he's not doing a bang up job. There ARE more grading options than just A and F, I'd say he's getting a solid C- right now. I think a real PR person would be getting an A+, because frankly I think the community is really ready to go back to loving D&D and are just annoyed that people at WotC keep making it so freakin' hard.
There are studies that show trends on social media and forums are an inaccurate representation of broadly held opinions and that they're unreliable because of the reasons provided. This is why so many people on social media were thrown into states of shock upon the election of someone on one side of the Atlantic and following the results of a referendum on the other.
So what you're saying is that there might not have been a need for the apology in the first place because the social media which showed the level of frustration and anger over OGL 1.1 is unreliable in representing the general trend of feelings and so most people might well have been fine with it?
Sure. If that was a risk they were prepared to take.
Perhaps I was overly subtle with my point, since I think you missed it. Let me show an example.
Let's say Bob comes up to us and says "You've really upset my wife, we're both very, very angry". You apologise and make things right. Bob accepts the apology, visibly changes and shows he's happier, says his wife will accept it and leaves. I claim that well, Bob is a liar so we can't trust what he says, we can't say your apology worked.
Can't you see the problem? If Bob is a liar and not trustworthy enough to say his wife is probably mollified by the apology, then we can't say his wife was ever upset in the first place. The same source that says she's mollified is the same person who says they were upset.
Social media is the same. The people we know about that got upset are the same people who, on the whole, said that the apology worked. You're right that maybe it only mollified the social media crowd because we only have evidence that they are mollified - but then, we only have evidence that there was any controversy at all from those same people, the very same people who accepted the apology. It's precisely as reasonable to say that the apology for the controversy was accepted as that there was a controversy in the first place.
The evidence that the apology worked is the same as that there was a controversy in the first place - social media demonstrating it. Trying to say that one did work while the other didn't would be merely showing bias. Saying that the apology didn't work or that we don't know if it had further effect beyond the surface is to say that, to the same extent, that the the "controversy" didn't really happen or we don't know if it did either.
Either way, D&D and WotC, so far as we can tell according to the evidence we've been given, are doing fine now, so long as they stay the course.
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I think it's a great idea to hire an actual PR team for Brink. It would help to get the word out about the game and create more awareness. Having a professional team to handle the marketing and promotion of the game could really help to increase its popularity and reach more potential players.
Please actually read the thread you are posting to.
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I think it's a great idea to hire an actual PR team for Brink. It would help to get the word out about the game and create more awareness. Having a professional team to handle the marketing and promotion of the game could really help to increase its popularity and reach more potential players.
Exactly, thank you. I'm not saying the guy's the devil, just clearly not trained in PR management. Hell, I'm not even trained in PR, I've just done enough advertising and marketing to basically hear the professors that taught me flipping out when I see his interviews telling me all the reasons why you should never ever say something like THAT to your audience, least of all an audience you're trying to sway or convince to come to your side of things.
I'm not sure why that's such a controversial take, I honestly thought it was pretty obvious, especially what with everyone's responses to him online being pretty... middling. But I guess for some people the lack of an absolute disaster means that someone being mediocre looks... good? to them? IDK. I don't get it.
There's actually specialized PR crisis management companies but... how do you know that Wizards isn't using one? Having a PR team doesn't necessarily mean that the PR team is the people who actually appear in front of the cameras. Wizards was never going to get an amazing response, the goal was firefighting and it seems to have generally done the job?
I think it's a great idea to hire an actual PR team for Brink. It would help to get the word out about the game and create more awareness. Having a professional team to handle the marketing and promotion of the game could really help to increase its popularity and reach more potential players.
Please actually read the thread you are posting to.
I am really coming around to the chatbot theory.
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I was really hopeful that Kyle Brink would be the 'face' that started righting the ship around here, but after reading an interview where he insists there's no way the backlash against the OGL could have caused Wizards to actually change it's mind (along with a few other not-great answers in other interviews I've seen with him) I think it's time to face the music and realize that either they need to hire an ACTUAL public relations person or just accept that D&D is just cruddy now, made by cruddy fuddy duddies that clearly just do not get it.
Even if it were the case that the corporation couldn't 'turn on a dime' and change their minds that fast; why would you tell that to your irate audience right now? Why would you say to them "No, sorry, your actions and passion about this game? All that work you've put in this last month making sure that we heard you? Yeah none of that mattered, it had zero impact on us, we just arbitrarily decided to change our minds for no reason."
We have a few options here with this kind of thing. This statement is either true or false, either we didn't have any impact on them and they're literally just making random choices to change the OGL and then not change it for no reason, which makes them sound utterly insane - or it's false, and we did have an impact on them, but they're trying to gaslight us into thinking we didn't so that we don't do it again in the future when they piss us off, which seems rather inevitable at this point to me because good god I think a 13 year old could handle the image of this company better than these guys.
TLDR: Kyle Brink ain't doing it, he's just bringing D&D closer to the Brink - maybe hire someone with actual public relations training, someone that's not going to jam both feet in their mouth and chomp down as hard as possible.
The simple reality is that Kyle’s PR tour is working. Sure, there are some folks still looking to stir up trouble for one reason or another, but the overwhelming response to Kyle has been positive. Is he the best speaker? Probably not - but he is the face of the game and his words carry the weight of his title in a way that a faceless PR team simply cannot.
Recall that, of the legitimately concerned folks, there was a common cry of “we don’t want to hear from the PR folks, we want to hear from leadership.” It was made expressly clear by the community members worth talking to that PR alone was just going to be seen as more disingenuous spin—so they threw out someone with actual power and actual knowledge.
Overall, the OGL issue has mostly died (barring a few holdouts, many of whom have less than legitimate reasons for their complaints), and a large part of that is due to Kyle’s less scripted words giving the air of honesty from someone in a real position to effectuate change. I would bet the issue would be a lot more contested right now if there was a more-PR focused blitz since Wizards’ surrender—folks don’t tend to trust something that so obviously comes from a PR team.
What they put out before wasn't PR though - it was written by someone who I highly doubt had PR training, or if they did they need to get a refund on their degree because I don't think anyone would ever write that statement and get a passing grade in any kind of marketing or personal relations course.
I mean if it's working for you, fine I guess? You're entitled to be swayed by it I suppose - for me it's literally having the opposite effect. I was very ready to let WotC say 'Hey, sorry guys, we dun messed up, our bad!' and basically go back to business as usual - and I've seen some people say they weren't even willing to do that because now that they know the OGL is on their minds, they don't trust WotC to actually leave it alone.
Instead now I keep seeing interviews with Kyle Brink basically illustrating to me that even the core D&D people at the company just... do not understand on a basic level what they're doing, or how what they say will impact other people, and to me that is not a good person to have in a job like that. It's on par with seeing your day shift manager unable to open a plastic clamshell package, like; this is the dude you're supposed to put your faith into to manage the store and make sure everything's going ship shape? The dude struggling to do this very basic task that should be very easy and simple for almost everyone to do? Doesn't inspire a lot of faith in me.
I think there was a huge opportunity for building bridges back up, reinstalling the faith people had in D&D being the TTRPG King, and instead we're getting like... a dude who isn't making it super duper worse, I guess, but also isn't doing much to make it better either? It's a hugely wasted opportunity being squandered by someone who doesn't seem to know what to say, is what I'm driving at here. There was a chance for someone to really stick the landing on all this OGL stuff and I'm just not seeing it.
I'm seeing lots of articles talking about Hasbro's stock being down, lots of articles talking about the general disaster this has all been, but the damage was already done - like just because they managed to stop the bleeding doesn't mean they don't also need a blood transfusion, there's not much blood left after they spent nearly a month bleeding to death! That's kinda my point - I'm not seeing anything happening that's going to get blood back in the system.
Your anecdotal “this does not work for me” is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things—one need only look at the General Forum on D&D Beyond and they’ll see the front page is almost entirely covered by threads actually discussing D&D, rather than the OGL, and the few OGL threads kept limping along have seen a tonal shift from significant wrath to cautious optimism with some holdouts remaining.
That isn’t a “working for me” thing - that’s a reality of how the conversation has shifted, which you are choosing to ignore in favour of your own, personal feelings.
Now, I don’t want to accuse you of only posting this to stir up trouble because you are upset about the fact most folks have moved on, and your anger at Wizards is increasingly seen as obsolete. But it is pretty hard to come to any other conclusion when your diction is still very much geared toward anger, when you try to dismiss the reality that the general tone of the conversation has shifted, and you are accusing Wizards of “gaslighting” when (a) they never actually said the thing you are accusing them of saying (they have acknowledged player backlash was a factor in their decision to keep OGL 1.0) and (b) you literally tried to argue on another thread that player backlash was irrelevant to Wizards’ decision (so you look a little bit hypocritical trying to blame Wizards for something they never said, while ignoring the fact you actually said things akin to what you fabricated Wizards as saying).
This fight is basically over. Realise you won and stay with the game or move on. Trying to stir up trouble where none actually exists reflects poorly on you and does not actually help move the needle forward on any real issues.
What interview is this that you're referring to? Cuz in every interview I've seen with the guy he's made it pretty damn clear that is was the public outcry of the fans that caused them to drop changing the OGL.
I think it’s more that saying the DDB cancellations didn’t influence the decision which is probably being a little economical with the truth. I doubt the interviews change opinions either way.
Would you rather have a fellow member of the D&D community and player addressing our concerns, or would you rather have a tight lipped and formal PR team writing legalese for us?
People already went into a frenzy about the somewhat legal use of the word draft, but there would be plenty more terms like that if we had an actual public relations official representing Wizards. Honestly, if you dislike the answers Kyle gave, then you would almost certainly like the answers of an official like this even less.
Kyle's words have meaning because he is a member of our community and creator for us. A random spokesman's words would have no weight at all.
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HERE.Mmm most people with 'overwhelmingly positive' corporate PR tours, especially for something as innocuous as family-fun-games like D&D don't 'have to' protect their tweets as a direct result of things blurted out during said tour!
I even think most people off the street with zero training could manage an innocent and uncontroversial Q&A or talk while remaining positive and inclusive about their favourite gaming hobby - heck dozens of D&D youtubers manage it every day!
You can say you don't trust Twitter or this here forum or any other social media platform, but there isn't really any other recourse for the lay person to gauge. Moreover the OGL conflagration played out entirely over social media, so the fact that said social media is overwhelmingly cool to D&D in midst apology tour is an improvement to where D&D's standing was in the midst of the OGL uprising or whatever you want to call it.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
So what you're saying is that there might not have been a need for the apology in the first place because the social media which showed the level of frustration and anger over OGL 1.1 is unreliable in representing the general trend of feelings and so most people might well have been fine with it?
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.
It's an article on Wargamer, I watched a few videos talking about it [Renfail over on youtube has a video on it], from what I can tell it was part of the three black halflings interview he did - though I also watched half of his interview with Ginny Di and saw quite a few responses on his statement of how 'white men can't get out of gaming fast enough', and while I understand contextually he didn't mean it 'that way' (aka literally) it just is another showcase on how he's not actually doing damage control, he's just not doing quite as MUCH damage as WotC were doing to themselves before. Far from healing them either, too, which is what I think an actual basic PR person would be managing to do at this point.
Even in the interview itself he seems to go back and forth on just how much he actually wants to accredit the change to the fans reaction / outcry vs. how much he wants to insist that it was never going to happen because they knew it was bad and they wanted to change it internally. He's very much trying to have his cake and eat it too.
No one that we've talked about / heard of made any of the decisions, it "wasn't anyone on his team". They just want to find a way to make the anger at WotC's actions on the OGL kerfuffle to slide by them, not actually take any ownership or admit that they messed up - they're ALL just passing the buck, even internally. That's not good PR in my book.
He did not mean it that way literally or figuratively or any other way. This is flagrant misinformation and mischaracterisation that could be disproven by just listening to the interview.
But at least you have shown what your true intent with this thread is - and with all the other threads where you are trying to keep the outrage against Wizards going. Hopefully folks will see these posts for the dog whistling they are and realise they can be easily ignored.
Nothing I said in my post implied that I thought my opinions applied to more than just me; however, as a D&D gamer I have an opinion on it, and this is a forum, where people like me share their opinions. Which is what I was doing.
You can have any opinion you like, but from what I have seen, Kyle Brink's Apology Tour has been... middlingly successful at best? Lukewarm would be a generous statement, and it's getting colder and colder every time he seems to open his mouth and do another interview. I watch pretty much all of the youtubers that talk about D&D news, Ginny Di's interview with him was... Mildly positive? and she's literally the most positive D&D person out there, so for her response to his answers to be so measured and cautious I think that's a big read. More than that though, I'm taking my opinion largely based on what I've seen - several annoyed videos coming out about how they didn't like hearing him say "white men can't get out of TTRPG's fast enough", etc. The conversation that I've been witnessing has been far from splendiferously positive.
"Now, I don’t want to accuse you of only posting this to stir up trouble" - Good, then don't, because that's not at all what I'm doing. I'm stating my opinion, on a public forum. If you want to malign that as 'stirring up trouble' then you can try and do that but it doesn't change reality.
" because you are upset about the fact most folks have moved on" - Where are you getting this stuff? Where did I say anything in my post about 'being upset', or where did I supposedly imply that people have moved on? Because from what I've seen they very much haven't, so you can stop cramming words and opinions in my mouth now, thanks.
"and your anger at Wizards is increasingly seen as obsolete" - again, where is the anger? Where is this ire that I'm supposedly spewing? because I can promise you if I was angry it'd be written as a LOT different post than what I did write! Anger has... angry words. What I wrote was critical, I was passing a judgment on Kyle Brink's lackluster performance so far and WotC's inability to right the ship after crashing it into the rocks. That's not anger, that's just an objective observation of reality, and I'm sorry that you can't seem to see the forest for the trees on that one because if you live in a world where anything critical is 'anger' then YIKES. Being critical is how we improve things, it's how things get made better - if no one pointed out the flaws in anything, we'd all still be living in caves wearing pelts for clothes. Improvement is a good thing, guys!
"This fight is basically over. Realise you won and stay with the game or move on. Trying to stir up trouble where none actually exists reflects poorly on you and does not actually help move the needle forward on any real issues." - Once again you fail to read or comprehend the basics of what I'm saying, and have just arbitrarily decided that this is about the OGL when it's actually about their handling of the aftermath of the damage they caused.
I think everyone can see exactly who is here to 'stir up trouble' and who isn't.
For everyone else; Usually a PR team doesn't require it's own PR team to go and try and smooth over their PR statements, but Kyle has needed a few of those so far and I think that illustrates clearly that he's maybe not well suited for being the answer-man in this situation. Maybe he's great at his actual job, I have no idea, but as far as consistently saying things that don't rub people the wrong way I think there are probably many folks who would be far better suited for the task.
Exactly - from where I'm sitting, this 'apology tour' should have been a cakewalk - especially since he seems to be getting away with basically offloading the blame onto everyone else. No one on his team made any of the choices, no one on his team had enough voice at the table etc. so it's not THEM, don't be mad at him or his team, it was just like, someone ELSE in the company! And no one is even annoyed at this sort of offloading of guilt or lack of real contrition - so basically there's no reason he should be floundering, in that, the community was already entirely willing to let go of everything and move on.
Instead every day I check my morning youtube and see another few videos from various D&D news people talking about yet another Kyle Brink interview where he's like, not totally blown it up or said anything -hugely- controversial, but also he's not done much to help smooth down feathers or make people feel excited to come back to D&D - and that is really what they need right now.
Kyle Brink is a wet blanket on a fire. Sure, the fire isn't spreading, and I guess that's 'good' in some books. However, an actual fire extinguisher would have had the fire out AND it would have stopped the burning inside the wood and cooled things off MUCH faster and allowed us to get back to normal. I'm not saying he's doing like, literally the worst job ever? I'm just saying he's not doing a bang up job. There ARE more grading options than just A and F, I'd say he's getting a solid C- right now. I think a real PR person would be getting an A+, because frankly I think the community is really ready to go back to loving D&D and are just annoyed that people at WotC keep making it so freakin' hard.
Viewing the like/dislike ratio is a mere addon away. His interviews are successful [redacted].
Perhaps I was overly subtle with my point, since I think you missed it. Let me show an example.
Let's say Bob comes up to us and says "You've really upset my wife, we're both very, very angry". You apologise and make things right. Bob accepts the apology, visibly changes and shows he's happier, says his wife will accept it and leaves. I claim that well, Bob is a liar so we can't trust what he says, we can't say your apology worked.
Can't you see the problem? If Bob is a liar and not trustworthy enough to say his wife is probably mollified by the apology, then we can't say his wife was ever upset in the first place. The same source that says she's mollified is the same person who says they were upset.
Social media is the same. The people we know about that got upset are the same people who, on the whole, said that the apology worked. You're right that maybe it only mollified the social media crowd because we only have evidence that they are mollified - but then, we only have evidence that there was any controversy at all from those same people, the very same people who accepted the apology. It's precisely as reasonable to say that the apology for the controversy was accepted as that there was a controversy in the first place.
The evidence that the apology worked is the same as that there was a controversy in the first place - social media demonstrating it. Trying to say that one did work while the other didn't would be merely showing bias. Saying that the apology didn't work or that we don't know if it had further effect beyond the surface is to say that, to the same extent, that the the "controversy" didn't really happen or we don't know if it did either.
Either way, D&D and WotC, so far as we can tell according to the evidence we've been given, are doing fine now, so long as they stay the course.
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.
Please actually read the thread you are posting to.
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Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.Exactly, thank you. I'm not saying the guy's the devil, just clearly not trained in PR management. Hell, I'm not even trained in PR, I've just done enough advertising and marketing to basically hear the professors that taught me flipping out when I see his interviews telling me all the reasons why you should never ever say something like THAT to your audience, least of all an audience you're trying to sway or convince to come to your side of things.
I'm not sure why that's such a controversial take, I honestly thought it was pretty obvious, especially what with everyone's responses to him online being pretty... middling. But I guess for some people the lack of an absolute disaster means that someone being mediocre looks... good? to them? IDK. I don't get it.
There's actually specialized PR crisis management companies but... how do you know that Wizards isn't using one? Having a PR team doesn't necessarily mean that the PR team is the people who actually appear in front of the cameras. Wizards was never going to get an amazing response, the goal was firefighting and it seems to have generally done the job?
I am really coming around to the chatbot theory.