In under a week we have gone from 'nothing to see here' because it's perfectly normal for software developers to be let go as soon as a project has been brought to completion to having to acknowledge that a leaked internal memo says Wizards of the Coast just weren't fulfilling what they had overpromised and so the project won't be as a large as initially intended and because of this they had to let people go ...
So basically the 'doomsayers' were right. Again.
It's a fan forum, the fans are always going to defend and present the best-case scenario no matter what the reality actually is. In their defense, I was rooting for them.
The reality however is that this was probobly never going to end well, none of it will most likely. D&D as a franchise is struggling right now if even half of what is being leaked is true and from the stories it has a lot less to do with the actual game a lot more to do with the company and how they are handling the business at the moment. Hopefully, it's a temporary glitch and they will correct it, but if the information out there about the realities behind the scenes is true, D&D is in a lot of trouble right now, quite possibly worse than 4e days.
Only time will tell what happens next, but WotC has been very quiet about the situation up to this point and I suspect we won't get any official information about the plan going forward anytime soon. We'll have to wait and see what happens.
can someone explain something to me, is sigil the Schrodinger's cat of dnd??
i ask since it seems to be both dead and alive at the same time... alot of people say its dead, yet its also transitioning to be a feature of dndbeyond they want available to players...
so are you all sure that its actually dead and not just moved to a lower priority?? could it be that the part of sigil that died is just the monetization path that was planned??
People keep saying that Maps and Sigil were competing products. That is far from the case. They are similar products but aimed at two different markets.
Maps is a web based basic product that can be used on a phone or tablet, whereas Sigil was a more immersive 3D based product that required a somewhat powerful PC to use.
can someone explain something to me, is sigil the Schrodinger's cat of dnd??
i ask since it seems to be both dead and alive at the same time... alot of people say its dead, yet its also transitioning to be a feature of dndbeyond they want available to players...
so are you all sure that its actually dead and not just moved to a lower priority?? could it be that the part of sigil that died is just the monetization path that was planned??
Technically, it's still alive. Reality is not so positive. If the reports are to be believed, they've essentially abandoned the original plan for it, which seems to have been some kind of video game. What they've made so far will be available for players and might be cannibalised for other projects. In short, I don't think we'll see much more than what's in front of us in the "beta".
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
was just starting to wonder if due to being transitioned towards being a feature if it would essentially be a longer trail period for people to muck around with it and possibly revisited at a later date (a years time) once they have released more dnd24-5e content
Maybe. To be honest, I'm wondering about what else is happening...or will stop happening.
It's been revealing so far.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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.
was just starting to wonder if due to being transitioned towards being a feature if it would essentially be a longer trail period for people to muck around with it and possibly revisited at a later date (a years time) once they have released more dnd24-5e content
heres to hoping :)
I mean, never say never, right? They’ll have the user data and know how much use it gets. If it starts to develop some crazy cult following and they decide they’re leaving money on the table, they might revisit it. But I think the odds there are pretty slim. To me this reads like a great business school case study on what happens when you develop a product without first figuring out your market— and throw in a healthy dose of poor communication. Maybe someone will unpack it all for us in a few years.
The traditional monetization path of D&D has always been in publishing and auxiliary products (dice, miniatures, etc). Publishing makes money but is, honestly, not terribly lucrative per player -- for comparison, a fair number of video games manage upwards of $100 per year per active player, and very few players buy the 2-3 books per year that would require. Auxiliary products have typically been made in cooperation with third parties such as WizKids, and miniatures collectors can spend quite large amounts of money, but are also rather uncommon.
Hence, when Cynthia Williams called D&D 'undermonetized', it's pretty clear that they were targeting games-as-service money numbers. The death of Project Sigil pretty much marks the end of any such dreams. This is not great for Hasbro... but given the degree to which the market shrugged at the news about Project Sigil, its failure was probably already expected and priced in.
Maybe. To be honest, I'm wondering about what else is happening...or will stop happening.
It's been revealing so far.
What is happening, no idea. What will stop happening, probably not much. Sigil was a side project, an attempt to tap into an adjacent market. Hasbro and Wizards have been in the business for a while, and while their PR judgement of late has been hit or miss- albeit, also besieged by a notable bad faith demographic out for clicks or just internet outrage for one reason or another, imo- it would be fallacious to assume- despite the arch assertions some will no doubt make to the contrary- that they put any substantial number of eggs into the basket they were sending out into new waters.
They made an attempt at diversification. It fell through. I'm quite certain it's not going to move the needle by any substantial degree on their bread and butter with D&D, the books. The only big impact I can see for the next few years is no other big in-house ventures like this while they rebuild the war chest for the next side project. I was curious to see if Sigil would be an interesting play option, but I was also realistic- it was a boondoggle and attempt to carve a slice of the VTT market for themselves. Quite an understandable business plan, but one that has about as much "implication" for the game itself as that novel they published for MtG a while ago had for that game- potentially drawing some new customers if it did well, but largely irrelevant to the existing customer base if it fails.
This is a good outcome in my opinion. Was definitely the wrong direction to be taking the game in, just like all the decisions being made lately that are taking the game further and further away from the intent of its original creators. The downside is that the funding wasted chasing what is now vaporware could have been better spent on finishing off all the unfinished features on the site, or on a better roll out of the 2024 rules that kept them isolated from original 5e for those that don't want to use an inferior product. Undoubtedly, if Sigil had been successful, it would have been monetised to an unreasonable extent.
Theoretically the funding could have, but more likely it would have been spent on a different side venture instead. Touch-ups on Beyond aren't gonna yield a ton of additional revenue compared to what a successful side venture will. The money had to have been earmarked for "develop something new to sell" well ahead of the work for the 2024 update to the site.
And frankly, they couldn't have monetized Sigil to anything like an "unreasonable extent" since it's a late-comer to the VTT field. Go heavy on the pay gates and people will just pass because they don't want to invest a bunch of money just to try it out. Sure, they could have had a whole shop of little minis, props, and such, but they've been doing that for the physical tabletops for decades and somehow the playerbase has endured.
Fixing things on DDB may not generate a ton of additional revenue, but if they don't address some of the issues people will just move on from here as well. Sunk costs will only keep people around so long. The way Sigil was marketed, and the perks that can only be used on Sigil that were used to entice pre-orders aren't very useful now. Couple that with the way they are shelving it and add how they have implemented the new rules, plus the uncertainty of where a tool tip is going to take you, and there isn't a lot of incentive to spend money on this platform.
It gets clumsier to use with every addition,they won't fix glaring issues that have been complained about for years, encounters as been in beta for years and seemingly abandoned for building encounters in the maps tool, which is objectively worse than the 6 year old beta version of encounter builder. All of these things have better options from other vendors just like Sigil did.
This site could and should be the pinnical D&D tools not the half finished group of projects that get abandoned or neglected at the expense of chasing new projects to drw new customers while doing little to nothing to address existing customers complaints.
Please stay on topic folk. We understand that people want to share their concerns for project Sigil and the Team and have questions, and that is perfectly allowed to be discussed but be sure to double check sources for information.
Let's try not to get side tracked by discussions of 5th edition as a whole or other matters.
It's a fan forum, the fans are always going to defend and present the best-case scenario no matter what the reality actually is. In their defense, I was rooting for them.
The reality however is that this was probobly never going to end well, none of it will most likely. D&D as a franchise is struggling right now if even half of what is being leaked is true and from the stories it has a lot less to do with the actual game a lot more to do with the company and how they are handling the business at the moment. Hopefully, it's a temporary glitch and they will correct it, but if the information out there about the realities behind the scenes is true, D&D is in a lot of trouble right now, quite possibly worse than 4e days.
Only time will tell what happens next, but WotC has been very quiet about the situation up to this point and I suspect we won't get any official information about the plan going forward anytime soon. We'll have to wait and see what happens.
can someone explain something to me, is sigil the Schrodinger's cat of dnd??
i ask since it seems to be both dead and alive at the same time...
alot of people say its dead, yet its also transitioning to be a feature of dndbeyond they want available to players...
so are you all sure that its actually dead and not just moved to a lower priority??
could it be that the part of sigil that died is just the monetization path that was planned??
People keep saying that Maps and Sigil were competing products. That is far from the case. They are similar products but aimed at two different markets.
Maps is a web based basic product that can be used on a phone or tablet, whereas Sigil was a more immersive 3D based product that required a somewhat powerful PC to use.
Technically, it's still alive. Reality is not so positive. If the reports are to be believed, they've essentially abandoned the original plan for it, which seems to have been some kind of video game. What they've made so far will be available for players and might be cannibalised for other projects. In short, I don't think we'll see much more than what's in front of us in the "beta".
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.
makes sense
was just starting to wonder if due to being transitioned towards being a feature
if it would essentially be a longer trail period for people to muck around with it
and possibly revisited at a later date (a years time) once they have released more dnd24-5e content
heres to hoping :)
Maybe. To be honest, I'm wondering about what else is happening...or will stop happening.
It's been revealing so far.
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.
I mean, never say never, right? They’ll have the user data and know how much use it gets. If it starts to develop some crazy cult following and they decide they’re leaving money on the table, they might revisit it. But I think the odds there are pretty slim.
To me this reads like a great business school case study on what happens when you develop a product without first figuring out your market— and throw in a healthy dose of poor communication. Maybe someone will unpack it all for us in a few years.
The traditional monetization path of D&D has always been in publishing and auxiliary products (dice, miniatures, etc). Publishing makes money but is, honestly, not terribly lucrative per player -- for comparison, a fair number of video games manage upwards of $100 per year per active player, and very few players buy the 2-3 books per year that would require. Auxiliary products have typically been made in cooperation with third parties such as WizKids, and miniatures collectors can spend quite large amounts of money, but are also rather uncommon.
Hence, when Cynthia Williams called D&D 'undermonetized', it's pretty clear that they were targeting games-as-service money numbers. The death of Project Sigil pretty much marks the end of any such dreams. This is not great for Hasbro... but given the degree to which the market shrugged at the news about Project Sigil, its failure was probably already expected and priced in.
What is happening, no idea. What will stop happening, probably not much. Sigil was a side project, an attempt to tap into an adjacent market. Hasbro and Wizards have been in the business for a while, and while their PR judgement of late has been hit or miss- albeit, also besieged by a notable bad faith demographic out for clicks or just internet outrage for one reason or another, imo- it would be fallacious to assume- despite the arch assertions some will no doubt make to the contrary- that they put any substantial number of eggs into the basket they were sending out into new waters.
They made an attempt at diversification. It fell through. I'm quite certain it's not going to move the needle by any substantial degree on their bread and butter with D&D, the books. The only big impact I can see for the next few years is no other big in-house ventures like this while they rebuild the war chest for the next side project. I was curious to see if Sigil would be an interesting play option, but I was also realistic- it was a boondoggle and attempt to carve a slice of the VTT market for themselves. Quite an understandable business plan, but one that has about as much "implication" for the game itself as that novel they published for MtG a while ago had for that game- potentially drawing some new customers if it did well, but largely irrelevant to the existing customer base if it fails.
This is a good outcome in my opinion. Was definitely the wrong direction to be taking the game in, just like all the decisions being made lately that are taking the game further and further away from the intent of its original creators. The downside is that the funding wasted chasing what is now vaporware could have been better spent on finishing off all the unfinished features on the site, or on a better roll out of the 2024 rules that kept them isolated from original 5e for those that don't want to use an inferior product. Undoubtedly, if Sigil had been successful, it would have been monetised to an unreasonable extent.
Fixing things on DDB may not generate a ton of additional revenue, but if they don't address some of the issues people will just move on from here as well. Sunk costs will only keep people around so long. The way Sigil was marketed, and the perks that can only be used on Sigil that were used to entice pre-orders aren't very useful now. Couple that with the way they are shelving it and add how they have implemented the new rules, plus the uncertainty of where a tool tip is going to take you, and there isn't a lot of incentive to spend money on this platform.
It gets clumsier to use with every addition,they won't fix glaring issues that have been complained about for years, encounters as been in beta for years and seemingly abandoned for building encounters in the maps tool, which is objectively worse than the 6 year old beta version of encounter builder. All of these things have better options from other vendors just like Sigil did.
This site could and should be the pinnical D&D tools not the half finished group of projects that get abandoned or neglected at the expense of chasing new projects to drw new customers while doing little to nothing to address existing customers complaints.
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ModeratorPlease stay on topic folk. We understand that people want to share their concerns for project Sigil and the Team and have questions, and that is perfectly allowed to be discussed but be sure to double check sources for information.
Let's try not to get side tracked by discussions of 5th edition as a whole or other matters.
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