I started this post deep in another thread but i would love an open discussion on where the current actors stand and what motivates their business decisions:
Hasbro/WotC as owners of the IPs
D&D Beyond, Roll20, FantasyGrounds as digital publishing partners
Roll20, FantasyGrounds, FoundryVTT and the extensive module ecosystem, AboveVTT, TaleSpire etc. as VTT solutions
FANDOM as the owner of D&D Beyond
With these players on the field, this is the current status regarding their digital endeavors:
Hasbro bought WotC to further drive the 2 strong IPs and make huge piles of cash: MTG & D&D. This obviously includes the digital market
WotC already tried and failed to create a digital environment for their games - the failure of project GLEEMAX is deeply engraved in their company DNA and it took them 13 years to even start talking about digital ideas again, possibly because Hasbro asked them to
looking at digital distribution of WotC material, only D&D Beyond is a one trick pony fully concentrating on D&D - Roll20 and FantasyGrounds both have more eggs in their baskets and diversified their portfolio (more systems like Pathfinder, Cthulhu but also being a VTT platform) enough to survive Hasbro/WotC launching their own digital platform - especially if they would still be a partner for digital publishing
As soon as Hasbro/WotC create their own digital platform, which was rumored when they created the trademark "Atomic Arcade" in late 2021, they would therefore totally canibalize the business model of a long lasting partner - D&D Beyond. At the same time they would disappoint all of D&D Beyonds current customers (that's us here).
D&D Beyond on the other hand is still lacking lots of digital tools. The app is awesome, period. And the services driving the app and the website are pretty stable. But they don't seem to have enough funds to staff the dev team with enough engineers to broaden and integrate the new digital tools like the encounter builder (dear DEV team, i KNOW you are doing an awesome job, don't let my ramblings drag you down!). But looking at the community created tool AboveVTT, which was done by a dozen people in their spare time over the last year shows what D&D Beyond could be if the dev team had the funds to do it.
last but not least: where does D&D Beyond 'fit' in the FANDOM business? My guess is that FANDOM would love to see Hasbro/WotC contact them and ask for D&D Beyond to join them - in exchange for an enough large amount of small coins.
My personal conclusion is: D&D Beyond as part of WotC would be a perfect start for a revamp of their digital tools and D&D Beyond would be able to get the funding to actually hire the devs needed to make that not only work, but with Hasbro behind them it would also have enough marketing power to make it a success. And no other partner would be cannibalized by this move - if you're a Roll20 or FantasyGrounds user you can still buy there and use their service and these providers would still have other systems to sell and provide.
If Hasbro/WotC would just create their own digital solution without buying D&D Beyond, it would outright kill the D&D Beyond business model. And flip off many existing D&D customers. So for Hasbro/WotC to not just launch a good digital platform but to also have lots of users on it they should just open their pockets and buy D&D Beyond off of FANDOM. WIN-WIN scenario for everyone involved, even us users.
The Hasbro policy doesn't "obviously" include the digital market.
They benefit greatly from the current situation because they are getting paid full license costs from each other digital platform, dndbeyond, roll20, fantasy grounds, etc. because people are "forced" to buy their content at full price multiple times.
The Hasbro policy doesn't "obviously" include the digital market.
They benefit greatly from the current situation because they are getting paid full license costs from each other digital platform, dndbeyond, roll20, fantasy grounds, etc. because people are "forced" to buy their content at full price multiple times.
I see this argument so many times, and the fact is it's just flat out not true. Even in sarcasm, it's not true.
The marketplaces exist AND the tools exist to do everything you want for free. EVERYTHING. The SRD is free. Discord is free. If you want to host a video call and put on an MS paint map and do it that way, it's free. Shit, D&D Beyond will let you create a free character, unpublish homebrew an entirely paid class for your own private use and then you can use that to play. That's RIDICULOUS to me.
What you pay for is the simplification of the process. D&D Beyond enables that via character creation, and honestly, I don't see them stepping into the VTT business. Why bother? Even Adam Bradford, who is currently doing Demplane and THREE different(so far?) systems has no plans on VTT. That(VTT) market has so many entries in it that it doesn't make sense. Roll20 and the virtual tabletops try to enable the real-life person feeling but ultimately rely in some form on other platforms to handle other pieces. When you buy products through them, you make it easier to facilitate that game.
I've VERY vocal about some of the missteps with D&D Beyond, but I've also given it all of my money for all of the content here except the tactical maps, to include every set of dice, etc. The character builder is very good at what it does and provided your game isn't going ultra insane with some homebrew, it can handle what you need. I would like to see more flexibility in optional rules like Spell Points, but at the same time, I get it. Why focus development on that when it's so rarely used?
Gleemax is interesting, but also a terrible history lesson. The guy who was the lead developer killed his wife/himself and the project never recovered. You can point to this as honestly one of the death knells of the entire 4th edition. It did a lot of things wrong, but trying to go digital was the right play, and Wizards as a whole just didn't do proper management. He kept everything way too close to the chest so he wasn't replaceable, and when the tragedy struck, they couldn't pick up the pieces. I don't feel it's fair to compare Gleemax at any point to any part of their strategy since what happened truly was just absolutely out of the pale. I don't feel it's fair to compare Gleemax to ANYTHING other than how it affected Wizards approach for digital tools, aka they said screw it and got into the license selling business.
I think what it really boils down to is that from a development standpoint, there aren't enough people from the development side trying to explain what their vision is, what their expectations are, and what their goals are. The Dev updates try, but I'll be goddamned if I want to see the dev crew answer what their favorite pizza toppings are or favorite dinosaur. They are totally human, I don't want to dehumanize them but what little facetime we get should be used in that fashion. The tools do what they should do, but people have this grandiose IT NEEDS TO DO EVERYTHING FOR ME and that just isn't the case.
So for Hasbro/WotC to not just launch a good digital platform but to also have lots of users on it they should just open their pockets and buy D&D Beyond off of FANDOM. WIN-WIN scenario for everyone involved, even us users.
That might not actually be possible--at least not in a practical matter. In many ways, building a new system from scratch is easier and less expensive than buying an existing system. Why? You have to deal with the existing architecture of the service. FANDOM is unlikely to transfer their proprietary technology--they will want to keep that with themselves. That means Wizards/Hasbro would, essentially, be building everything from scratch anyway--they are unlikely to have a working system without the tech that FANDOM does not provide Wizards. Even if a working system was transferred, Hasbro would not have staff trained in that system, and would need to poach employees from FANDOM.
After acquiring the tech, Hasbro has to actually run it. That means building or renting server, paying costs to run the servers (huge amounts of electricity; a lease for somewhere to house them), hiring an entire new staff, including senior staff (which can be costly in the tech field). All of that is going to be expensive and take a while to set up, and they are not likely to have a working product during this transition time.
All told, it likely easier, cheaper, and better for the consumer to simply keep the status quo.
So for Hasbro/WotC to not just launch a good digital platform but to also have lots of users on it they should just open their pockets and buy D&D Beyond off of FANDOM. WIN-WIN scenario for everyone involved, even us users.
That might not actually be possible--at least not in a practical matter. In many ways, building a new system from scratch is easier and less expensive than buying an existing system. Why? You have to deal with the existing architecture of the service. FANDOM is unlikely to transfer their proprietary technology--they will want to keep that with themselves. That means Wizards/Hasbro would, essentially, be building everything from scratch anyway--they are unlikely to have a working system without the tech that FANDOM does not provide Wizards. Even if a working system was transferred, Hasbro would not have staff trained in that system, and would need to poach employees from FANDOM.
After acquiring the tech, Hasbro has to actually run it. That means building or renting server, paying costs to run the servers (huge amounts of electricity; a lease for somewhere to house them), hiring an entire new staff, including senior staff (which can be costly in the tech field). All of that is going to be expensive and take a while to set up, and they are not likely to have a working product during this transition time.
All told, it likely easier, cheaper, and better for the consumer to simply keep the status quo.
Buying DDB would entail buying the proprietary tech; it would never just be the brand without the functionality. Otherwise you're correct though, especially since Fandom themselves have been attempting to overhaul their DDB setup for years anyway and will be using all they've learned from their mistakes here to build a better version for PF2. WotC/Hasbro would do much better starting from scratch as well: even without direct view of the shop, so to speak, they must have picked up on a number of the issues Fandom ran into with DDB and would have a bit of a head start in that regard too.
But with WotC's aversion of selling current-edition books in .pdf format, their relationship with brick & mortar retailers and the inevitable clamoring for physical+digital book sales I don't think they'd be inclined to switch to an in-house model regardless of the technical challenges anyway. Partnering with others for digital functionality has definite business advantages for them.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
But with WotC's aversion of selling current-edition books in .pdf format, their relationship with brick & mortar retailers and the inevitable clamoring for physical+digital book sales I don't think they'd be inclined to switch to an in-house model regardless of the technical challenges anyway. Partnering with others for digital functionality has definite business advantages for them.
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if that was a license contingent thing. People ask all the time but let's be real, once the cat is out of the bag with readily available PDFs, a lot of use for sites like this goes out the window. Not having easy PDFs means those sites that have sold you content can continue to generate traffic to this site for future purchases, creating repeat customers. Some not by "choice" in their eyes because now that they have X content through here, it just makes sense to buy FUTURE content through here despite what misgivings they may have.
It's smart business. It's not the most customer-friendly, but it is smart.
But with WotC's aversion of selling current-edition books in .pdf format, their relationship with brick & mortar retailers and the inevitable clamoring for physical+digital book sales I don't think they'd be inclined to switch to an in-house model regardless of the technical challenges anyway. Partnering with others for digital functionality has definite business advantages for them.
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if that was a license contingent thing. People ask all the time but let's be real, once the cat is out of the bag with readily available PDFs, a lot of use for sites like this goes out the window.
Not sure that's correct: if you buy on Amazon the physical books are pretty much the same price as the digital versions here, so the real draw of the site is the functionality around content. There's portability, but I don't think that's a big deal compared to the character builder and the compiled databases. Regardless, if WotC brought things in-house rather than licencing them out that same argument would arguably apply to them too.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
So for Hasbro/WotC to not just launch a good digital platform but to also have lots of users on it they should just open their pockets and buy D&D Beyond off of FANDOM. WIN-WIN scenario for everyone involved, even us users.
That might not actually be possible--at least not in a practical matter. In many ways, building a new system from scratch is easier and less expensive than buying an existing system. Why? You have to deal with the existing architecture of the service. FANDOM is unlikely to transfer their proprietary technology--they will want to keep that with themselves. That means Wizards/Hasbro would, essentially, be building everything from scratch anyway--they are unlikely to have a working system without the tech that FANDOM does not provide Wizards. Even if a working system was transferred, Hasbro would not have staff trained in that system, and would need to poach employees from FANDOM.
After acquiring the tech, Hasbro has to actually run it. That means building or renting server, paying costs to run the servers (huge amounts of electricity; a lease for somewhere to house them), hiring an entire new staff, including senior staff (which can be costly in the tech field). All of that is going to be expensive and take a while to set up, and they are not likely to have a working product during this transition time.
All told, it likely easier, cheaper, and better for the consumer to simply keep the status quo.
Buying DDB would entail buying the proprietary tech; it would never just be the brand without the functionality. Otherwise you're correct though, especially since Fandom themselves have been attempting to overhaul their DDB setup for years anyway and will be using all they've learned from their mistakes here to build a better version for PF2. WotC/Hasbro would do much better starting from scratch as well: even without direct view of the shop, so to speak, they must have picked up on a number of the issues Fandom ran into with DDB and would have a bit of a head start in that regard too.
But with WotC's aversion of selling current-edition books in .pdf format, their relationship with brick & mortar retailers and the inevitable clamoring for physical+digital book sales I don't think they'd be inclined to switch to an in-house model regardless of the technical challenges anyway. Partnering with others for digital functionality has definite business advantages for them.
That is not how tech purchases work - Fandom almost certainly reuses the same architecture across websites, which means D&D Beyond almost certainly contains elements Fandom would not wish to sell to a third party. Likewise, Wizards might academically know issues that came up with D&D Beyond, but not the behind the scenes coding reasons why something went wrong.
There’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes with sitebuilding, much of which is non-transferable. Either the assets are being used elsewhere and would not be disseminated to a third-party, or it is simply institutional knowledge that remains in the minds of the employees, and the knowledgable employees are remaining with the original company.
I started this post deep in another thread but i would love an open discussion on where the current actors stand and what motivates their business decisions:
With these players on the field, this is the current status regarding their digital endeavors:
My personal conclusion is: D&D Beyond as part of WotC would be a perfect start for a revamp of their digital tools and D&D Beyond would be able to get the funding to actually hire the devs needed to make that not only work, but with Hasbro behind them it would also have enough marketing power to make it a success. And no other partner would be cannibalized by this move - if you're a Roll20 or FantasyGrounds user you can still buy there and use their service and these providers would still have other systems to sell and provide.
If Hasbro/WotC would just create their own digital solution without buying D&D Beyond, it would outright kill the D&D Beyond business model. And flip off many existing D&D customers. So for Hasbro/WotC to not just launch a good digital platform but to also have lots of users on it they should just open their pockets and buy D&D Beyond off of FANDOM. WIN-WIN scenario for everyone involved, even us users.
/discuss
The Hasbro policy doesn't "obviously" include the digital market.
They benefit greatly from the current situation because they are getting paid full license costs from each other digital platform, dndbeyond, roll20, fantasy grounds, etc. because people are "forced" to buy their content at full price multiple times.
I see this argument so many times, and the fact is it's just flat out not true. Even in sarcasm, it's not true.
The marketplaces exist AND the tools exist to do everything you want for free. EVERYTHING. The SRD is free. Discord is free. If you want to host a video call and put on an MS paint map and do it that way, it's free. Shit, D&D Beyond will let you create a free character, unpublish homebrew an entirely paid class for your own private use and then you can use that to play. That's RIDICULOUS to me.
What you pay for is the simplification of the process. D&D Beyond enables that via character creation, and honestly, I don't see them stepping into the VTT business. Why bother? Even Adam Bradford, who is currently doing Demplane and THREE different(so far?) systems has no plans on VTT. That(VTT) market has so many entries in it that it doesn't make sense. Roll20 and the virtual tabletops try to enable the real-life person feeling but ultimately rely in some form on other platforms to handle other pieces. When you buy products through them, you make it easier to facilitate that game.
I've VERY vocal about some of the missteps with D&D Beyond, but I've also given it all of my money for all of the content here except the tactical maps, to include every set of dice, etc. The character builder is very good at what it does and provided your game isn't going ultra insane with some homebrew, it can handle what you need. I would like to see more flexibility in optional rules like Spell Points, but at the same time, I get it. Why focus development on that when it's so rarely used?
Gleemax is interesting, but also a terrible history lesson. The guy who was the lead developer killed his wife/himself and the project never recovered. You can point to this as honestly one of the death knells of the entire 4th edition. It did a lot of things wrong, but trying to go digital was the right play, and Wizards as a whole just didn't do proper management. He kept everything way too close to the chest so he wasn't replaceable, and when the tragedy struck, they couldn't pick up the pieces. I don't feel it's fair to compare Gleemax at any point to any part of their strategy since what happened truly was just absolutely out of the pale. I don't feel it's fair to compare Gleemax to ANYTHING other than how it affected Wizards approach for digital tools, aka they said screw it and got into the license selling business.
I think what it really boils down to is that from a development standpoint, there aren't enough people from the development side trying to explain what their vision is, what their expectations are, and what their goals are. The Dev updates try, but I'll be goddamned if I want to see the dev crew answer what their favorite pizza toppings are or favorite dinosaur. They are totally human, I don't want to dehumanize them but what little facetime we get should be used in that fashion. The tools do what they should do, but people have this grandiose IT NEEDS TO DO EVERYTHING FOR ME and that just isn't the case.
That might not actually be possible--at least not in a practical matter. In many ways, building a new system from scratch is easier and less expensive than buying an existing system. Why? You have to deal with the existing architecture of the service. FANDOM is unlikely to transfer their proprietary technology--they will want to keep that with themselves. That means Wizards/Hasbro would, essentially, be building everything from scratch anyway--they are unlikely to have a working system without the tech that FANDOM does not provide Wizards. Even if a working system was transferred, Hasbro would not have staff trained in that system, and would need to poach employees from FANDOM.
After acquiring the tech, Hasbro has to actually run it. That means building or renting server, paying costs to run the servers (huge amounts of electricity; a lease for somewhere to house them), hiring an entire new staff, including senior staff (which can be costly in the tech field). All of that is going to be expensive and take a while to set up, and they are not likely to have a working product during this transition time.
All told, it likely easier, cheaper, and better for the consumer to simply keep the status quo.
Buying DDB would entail buying the proprietary tech; it would never just be the brand without the functionality. Otherwise you're correct though, especially since Fandom themselves have been attempting to overhaul their DDB setup for years anyway and will be using all they've learned from their mistakes here to build a better version for PF2. WotC/Hasbro would do much better starting from scratch as well: even without direct view of the shop, so to speak, they must have picked up on a number of the issues Fandom ran into with DDB and would have a bit of a head start in that regard too.
But with WotC's aversion of selling current-edition books in .pdf format, their relationship with brick & mortar retailers and the inevitable clamoring for physical+digital book sales I don't think they'd be inclined to switch to an in-house model regardless of the technical challenges anyway. Partnering with others for digital functionality has definite business advantages for them.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if that was a license contingent thing. People ask all the time but let's be real, once the cat is out of the bag with readily available PDFs, a lot of use for sites like this goes out the window. Not having easy PDFs means those sites that have sold you content can continue to generate traffic to this site for future purchases, creating repeat customers. Some not by "choice" in their eyes because now that they have X content through here, it just makes sense to buy FUTURE content through here despite what misgivings they may have.
It's smart business. It's not the most customer-friendly, but it is smart.
Not sure that's correct: if you buy on Amazon the physical books are pretty much the same price as the digital versions here, so the real draw of the site is the functionality around content. There's portability, but I don't think that's a big deal compared to the character builder and the compiled databases. Regardless, if WotC brought things in-house rather than licencing them out that same argument would arguably apply to them too.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
That is not how tech purchases work - Fandom almost certainly reuses the same architecture across websites, which means D&D Beyond almost certainly contains elements Fandom would not wish to sell to a third party. Likewise, Wizards might academically know issues that came up with D&D Beyond, but not the behind the scenes coding reasons why something went wrong.
There’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes with sitebuilding, much of which is non-transferable. Either the assets are being used elsewhere and would not be disseminated to a third-party, or it is simply institutional knowledge that remains in the minds of the employees, and the knowledgable employees are remaining with the original company.
there, i said it! And i'm very glad i was right!
Welcome to the Party, D&D Beyond | Dungeons & Dragons (wizards.com)
Yeah yeah, you're a freakin' Nostradamus :)
Twas a good call tho