And, who knows - maybe if and when this happens again, they might make different choices. The real unknown is whether the annoyance of digital players about the delay will hurt sales more than the benefit to game stores of delaying both. But they are not going to know that right now - Book of Many Things gave them data on the other side of the coin, this will give them data on what happens if you delay both. That is a sensible experiment to run, given all the factors at play.
The real interesting data point will be the next time this happens. That is unfortunately likely given the fact the printing industry is a mess right now. This and BoMT are experiments - the next time likely will be the results of those experiments.
I guess that's what I'm getting at. It's a reasonable experiment for them to run, I agree with that. It's just more than a little annoying to get stuck being one of the subjects of said experiment until it concludes months from now.
Not print media. Local game shops. Which have always been unstable businesses with a lot of churn.
But they're also where the money comes from.
They're the feeder system. Digital may be fine for playing stuff you're already into, but it's crap for the kind of random pickup play that gets people into games to start with. Most people aren't going to download MtG online, or make a DDB account on a lark. They do it because they're already interested, and a big source of prior interest is encountering it in the wild.
And yet, Baldurs Gate 3 got millions of people into D&D through a digital lens. So did liveplays like Critical Role. I think the accepted thinking that FLGS is the primary route into the hobby (and especially that it's the fastest-growing one) and every other avenue needs to be inconvenienced for their benefit is worthy of challenge.
BG3 was a big gamble that they put little faith in and only paid attention to after it bore them unexpected fruit, and as for CR, they had not been kind to it and other avenues outside their direct control during the OGL incident.
Sticking with FLGS is the more sure bet until they can mend some fences from the actions or previous leadership, and the FLGS have been the longest running source of steady revenue. If they were going to go all in on digital, that time is not now, it was Pre-OGL fiasco or it is down the road when they have mended those fences. Still, i think they are trying to not alienate any route so they don't have their eggs in one basket. The world is uncertain and trying to keep as many customers as possible is prudent. Which is ultimately why i think they chose this course of action. Don't 'play favorites' and 'everyone gets it at the same time' is most likely to irritate one sector or the other.
Personally, i would still have done the Digital release on time, and remunerated the physical pre-orders in a different way, like a discount or bonus stuff. I can see why they are taking this course of action even if i don't agree with it.
Lets also not forget that Digital is easier to pirate, no mater what safe guards are in place. They might be worrying that they will loose physical sales to leaked digital materials.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player. The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call To rise up in triumph should we all unite The spark for change is yours to ignite." Kalandra - The State of the World
Doesn’t even have to be leaked; someone shares the book here, people save PDFs of the pages, and it’s all pretty aboveboard and a decent approximation of a physical book.
And, who knows - maybe if and when this happens again, they might make different choices. The real unknown is whether the annoyance of digital players about the delay will hurt sales more than the benefit to game stores of delaying both. But they are not going to know that right now - Book of Many Things gave them data on the other side of the coin, this will give them data on what happens if you delay both. That is a sensible experiment to run, given all the factors at play.
The real interesting data point will be the next time this happens. That is unfortunately likely given the fact the printing industry is a mess right now. This and BoMT are experiments - the next time likely will be the results of those experiments.
I guess that's what I'm getting at. It's a reasonable experiment for them to run, I agree with that. It's just more than a little annoying to get stuck being one of the subjects of said experiment until it concludes months from now.
It's not like they're doing it purely in the name of scientific inquiry. Once the books were defective, they had to do something, and whatever it is will annoy some of their players.
Not print media. Local game shops. Which have always been unstable businesses with a lot of churn.
But they're also where the money comes from.
They're the feeder system. Digital may be fine for playing stuff you're already into, but it's crap for the kind of random pickup play that gets people into games to start with. Most people aren't going to download MtG online, or make a DDB account on a lark. They do it because they're already interested, and a big source of prior interest is encountering it in the wild.
And yet, Baldurs Gate 3 got millions of people into D&D through a digital lens.
"Millions" seems unlikely. The game sold a lot, sure, but we're talking low tens of millions. To get anything close to "millions" would mean you're looking at something like a 10% conversion rate; in practice you're talking much higher, because a significant percentage of people who bought BG3 already play D&D.
So did liveplays like Critical Role.
BG3 and CR are one-offs beyond WotC's control. They can't just assume that they'll keep happening. If they do, it's great, but abandoning the day-to-day grind of player acquisition because of them would be a poor choice.
I think the accepted thinking that FLGS is the primary route into the hobby (and especially that it's the fastest-growing one) and every other avenue needs to be inconvenienced for their benefit is worthy of challenge.
To challenge it meaningfully, you'd need more data.
So as an update on refunds, I'm 100% giving the credit to LaTiaJacquise (and Spamandtuna chased it up too) to getting Customer Support to pull their act together, and issue a refund.
Another case of the D&D Beyond Team being lightyears ahead in community building than the D&D group as a whole. We shouldn't need community managers to get customer support to follow their own instructions, but the team here on Beyond got it done.
Those of you who keep quoting the 70:30 split of revenue from print copy versus digital seem to be missing, in my opinion, a pretty important point here: that that 30% (which is nearly half of 70%) didn’t exist 10 to 15 years ago. That means that they’ve grown their business significantly through digital and is evidence of a transition as people move away from printed copies to a digital way of playing. If that’s where the market is going then you need to prioritise that part of the market if you want to capture growth moving forwards, otherwise you’re you’re just catering to a loud base and not thinking about the future. Lets not get sidetracked by sigil etc,
Those of you who keep quoting the 70:30 split of revenue from print copy versus digital seem to be missing, in my opinion, a pretty important point here: that that 30% (which is nearly half of 70%) didn’t exist 10 to 15 years ago. That means that they’ve grown their business significantly through digital and is evidence of a transition as people move away from printed copies to a digital way of playing. If that’s where the market is going then you need to prioritise that part of the market if you want to capture growth moving forwards, otherwise you’re you’re just catering to a loud base and not thinking about the future. Lets not get sidetracked by sigil etc,
The question is whether that’s continuous growth, or if it filled out as the segment of the community interested in it invested in the first couple years and now it’s leveled out.
Live plays like CR and D20 seem like pretty good advertisements for playing in person over digital to me
Both of them are also moving to at least a partial live event model
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Active characters:
Edoumiaond Willegume "Eddie" Podslee, Vegetanian scholar (College of Spirits bard) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator (Assassin rogue) Peter "the Pied Piper" Hausler, human con artist/remover of vermin (Circle of the Shepherd druid) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Those of you who keep quoting the 70:30 split of revenue from print copy versus digital seem to be missing, in my opinion, a pretty important point here: that that 30% (which is nearly half of 70%) didn’t exist 10 to 15 years ago. That means that they’ve grown their business significantly through digital and is evidence of a transition as people move away from printed copies to a digital way of playing. If that’s where the market is going then you need to prioritise that part of the market if you want to capture growth moving forwards, otherwise you’re you’re just catering to a loud base and not thinking about the future. Lets not get sidetracked by sigil etc,
The question is whether that’s continuous growth, or if it filled out as the segment of the community interested in it invested in the first couple years and now it’s leveled out.
If you're suggesting it will stop dead at 30% for the rest of time... no, I don't think that'll be the case.
You're barking up the wrong tree, pointing out any flaw with Wizbro on this site brings out the dogpile, we just can't express any disappointment here. It is verboten.
I'm expressing my disappointment on this site just fine.
Those of you who keep quoting the 70:30 split of revenue from print copy versus digital seem to be missing, in my opinion, a pretty important point here: that that 30% (which is nearly half of 70%) didn’t exist 10 to 15 years ago. That means that they’ve grown their business significantly through digital and is evidence of a transition as people move away from printed copies to a digital way of playing. If that’s where the market is going then you need to prioritise that part of the market if you want to capture growth moving forwards, otherwise you’re you’re just catering to a loud base and not thinking about the future. Lets not get sidetracked by sigil etc,
The question is whether that’s continuous growth, or if it filled out as the segment of the community interested in it invested in the first couple years and now it’s leveled out.
If you're suggesting it will stop dead at 30% for the rest of time... no, I don't think that'll be the case.
I don't think anyone is suggesting that the demographics are going to stay static, but trying to force a preference for digital now probably wouldn't be a smart decision. Especially since they already have a recent case of delaying a physical book and not the digital version blowing up in their face
Those of you who keep quoting the 70:30 split of revenue from print copy versus digital seem to be missing, in my opinion, a pretty important point here: that that 30% (which is nearly half of 70%) didn’t exist 10 to 15 years ago. That means that they’ve grown their business significantly through digital and is evidence of a transition as people move away from printed copies to a digital way of playing. If that’s where the market is going then you need to prioritise that part of the market if you want to capture growth moving forwards, otherwise you’re you’re just catering to a loud base and not thinking about the future. Lets not get sidetracked by sigil etc,
The question is whether that’s continuous growth, or if it filled out as the segment of the community interested in it invested in the first couple years and now it’s leveled out.
If you're suggesting it will stop dead at 30% for the rest of time... no, I don't think that'll be the case.
You're barking up the wrong tree, pointing out any flaw with Wizbro on this site brings out the dogpile, we just can't express any disappointment here. It is verboten.
I'm expressing my disappointment on this site just fine.
Not necessarily "stop dead", but if it's down to a trickle rather than a pretty steady stream then even if it's growing it's not worth completely reprioritizing the business model over.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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I guess that's what I'm getting at. It's a reasonable experiment for them to run, I agree with that. It's just more than a little annoying to get stuck being one of the subjects of said experiment until it concludes months from now.
And yet, Baldurs Gate 3 got millions of people into D&D through a digital lens. So did liveplays like Critical Role. I think the accepted thinking that FLGS is the primary route into the hobby (and especially that it's the fastest-growing one) and every other avenue needs to be inconvenienced for their benefit is worthy of challenge.
BG3 was a big gamble that they put little faith in and only paid attention to after it bore them unexpected fruit, and as for CR, they had not been kind to it and other avenues outside their direct control during the OGL incident.
Sticking with FLGS is the more sure bet until they can mend some fences from the actions or previous leadership, and the FLGS have been the longest running source of steady revenue. If they were going to go all in on digital, that time is not now, it was Pre-OGL fiasco or it is down the road when they have mended those fences.
Still, i think they are trying to not alienate any route so they don't have their eggs in one basket.
The world is uncertain and trying to keep as many customers as possible is prudent. Which is ultimately why i think they chose this course of action. Don't 'play favorites' and 'everyone gets it at the same time' is most likely to irritate one sector or the other.
Personally, i would still have done the Digital release on time, and remunerated the physical pre-orders in a different way, like a discount or bonus stuff. I can see why they are taking this course of action even if i don't agree with it.
Lets also not forget that Digital is easier to pirate, no mater what safe guards are in place. They might be worrying that they will loose physical sales to leaked digital materials.
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player.
The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call
To rise up in triumph should we all unite
The spark for change is yours to ignite."
Kalandra - The State of the World
Doesn’t even have to be leaked; someone shares the book here, people save PDFs of the pages, and it’s all pretty aboveboard and a decent approximation of a physical book.
It's not like they're doing it purely in the name of scientific inquiry. Once the books were defective, they had to do something, and whatever it is will annoy some of their players.
"Millions" seems unlikely. The game sold a lot, sure, but we're talking low tens of millions. To get anything close to "millions" would mean you're looking at something like a 10% conversion rate; in practice you're talking much higher, because a significant percentage of people who bought BG3 already play D&D.
BG3 and CR are one-offs beyond WotC's control. They can't just assume that they'll keep happening. If they do, it's great, but abandoning the day-to-day grind of player acquisition because of them would be a poor choice.
To challenge it meaningfully, you'd need more data.
So as an update on refunds, I'm 100% giving the credit to LaTiaJacquise (and Spamandtuna chased it up too) to getting Customer Support to pull their act together, and issue a refund.
Another case of the D&D Beyond Team being lightyears ahead in community building than the D&D group as a whole. We shouldn't need community managers to get customer support to follow their own instructions, but the team here on Beyond got it done.
Those of you who keep quoting the 70:30 split of revenue from print copy versus digital seem to be missing, in my opinion, a pretty important point here: that that 30% (which is nearly half of 70%) didn’t exist 10 to 15 years ago. That means that they’ve grown their business significantly through digital and is evidence of a transition as people move away from printed copies to a digital way of playing. If that’s where the market is going then you need to prioritise that part of the market if you want to capture growth moving forwards, otherwise you’re you’re just catering to a loud base and not thinking about the future. Lets not get sidetracked by sigil etc,
The question is whether that’s continuous growth, or if it filled out as the segment of the community interested in it invested in the first couple years and now it’s leveled out.
Live plays like CR and D20 seem like pretty good advertisements for playing in person over digital to me
Both of them are also moving to at least a partial live event model
Active characters:
Edoumiaond Willegume "Eddie" Podslee, Vegetanian scholar (College of Spirits bard)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator (Assassin rogue)
Peter "the Pied Piper" Hausler, human con artist/remover of vermin (Circle of the Shepherd druid)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
If you're suggesting it will stop dead at 30% for the rest of time... no, I don't think that'll be the case.
I'm expressing my disappointment on this site just fine.
I don't think anyone is suggesting that the demographics are going to stay static, but trying to force a preference for digital now probably wouldn't be a smart decision. Especially since they already have a recent case of delaying a physical book and not the digital version blowing up in their face
Not necessarily "stop dead", but if it's down to a trickle rather than a pretty steady stream then even if it's growing it's not worth completely reprioritizing the business model over.