Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 toddreifsteck Nov 04, 2008 21:47:07	A coworker and I discussed D&DI a bit today and how boggling the current plan is for charging. After a bit of brainstorming, we came to a conclusion. The current plans are ridiculous in the face of the following assumptions! Assumptions: Most D&D profit comes from books meant for players Some profit comes from books meant for GMs Most players/GMs will buy books IF they see a good reason to It would be useful for the online tools to break even and potentially generate profit. If online tools are "account" based and give unlimited access to rules, players WILL share accounts even if EULA does not allow it. Given this list of assumptions, the key questions are: How can WOTC use it's online services to sell more books? How can WOTC use it's online services to find new customers? How can WOTC use it's online services to ensure that it keeps new customers after it has gotten them? Given that most D&D customers are players, the key question is: What tools would players use? FREE Character Generator Paid Enhanced Character Generator New character contents (Powers/Items/Feats/Classes/etc) Some type of game-finding/player-finding tool (especially for new players or player groups short 1-2 players.. This would also be very useful for game-stores having game-days to advertise). To sell more books, what should the features of the FREE Character Generator be if its purpose is to help players find groups and help them find which books to buy? Allow building characters using all released rules (All released rules so players have reason to buy books if they see books they weren't aware of might have rules for their character) Do NOT include rules in this character generator. All rules are references to books. (If rules were included, there would be no reason to buy books.) Allow storage of characters online somewhere. Integrate with Living campaign system so players can find games their characters would qualify for. Allow this tool to build qualify characters in a VERY easy way. Web-based techology! (HTML/Flash/Silverlight.. something that will run on Macs AND Windows at the very least. This would require a connection for live use, but players are likely to print their character sheets during play so an acceptable limitation.) AFTER this Free Character Generator is created, consider "Premium" Add-Ons to this "Free" tool. The trick here is that you keep the true purpose of the tool in mind, selling real books. The current plans I've seen make it very likely that 1 player in each group will subscribe and share their account.: Service to generate a PDF with full rules included for a particular character if the character has been "upgraded" for a fee. Full integration with Living Campaigns for reward and item "certification". The problem with the current Business Plan is the "subscription" which is VERY separate from the "nonsubscription" books. A person can join the "subscription" program 3 years late and instantly have access to all player-rules using the Character Generator. Why would a player bother to buy the 30 books they don't yet have with this model? Going to discontinue my writing as I think I've made my point even though I have not yet completed all of the loose ends. I'm posting this as I very much enjoy D&D and would love to see WOTC do well now and in the future. I'd love to hear ideas and continuation to hear how WOTC can make their online business both useful AND profitable. Thanks, Todd
#2 asmodeuslore Nov 04, 2008 23:02:25	I think you've got the makings of a great discussion here. Thank you for starting this thread. The main thing that I think you are missing is in your very first assumption. You state that most D&D profit comes from book sales. I think that is an accurate statement if you make it past-tense. However, technology has changed the landscape a bit, and non-digital media sales are dropping rapidly across the board. Trying to fight that trend is a losing battle. They need to embrace the digital era completely. WotC is looking forward, and trying to adapt their business plan for the new business environment. One of the key pieces of that is to not focus solely on increasing book sales, but on finding new revenue streams. Now, I can't say I think they are doing the best job of that, yet. But at they are on the right track.
#3 toddreifsteck Nov 05, 2008 0:52:04	Well.. the real question is how fast nondigital media ceases to exist and how fast sales are declining. :-) It also depends on marketting numbers I'm not privy to such as: What % of customers are repeat customers? What % of customers are new customers? What % of players in any group will purchase which books? Subscription vs. Microtransaction buy-through for online content. Who will buy one vs. the other? What are the profit margins for online content and book content and what % of customers will purchase one or both? My main point is that although the future of much of their profit MAY be online services, it would be useful to figure out a way to build the services now so they support WOTC's major profit centers. (Game-table is an example of something that could be VERY useful in the future to connect players virtually, but an integrated Living campaign game-locator is probably MORE useful to most players and hundreds of times easier and less costly to create for helping players find other players.) Online content is by NO means free to produce. It requires developers who are more expensive than writers. It requires datacenters and operations folks on call 24x7 if outages occur and they don't want customers upset. It ALSO requires the same writers that the books require. It requires internet bandwidth. It requires some type of security model and for WOTC to support "direct sales" to customers in some way. The other thing we have to look at is the profit lost if the character gen program gives players enough content that they choose NOT to buy books. Perhaps the subscription prices are already planned for this, but in my group we currently have 4 of 6 playes that buy every book and 2 that only buy the books they personally use. I guarantee that when the character generator is available, 1 of us will subscribe for it and 2-3 of us will try it with our characters in our current campaign. I am NOT sure that all of us will choose to subscribe, but we MAY choose to share a login to the same char creation tool. The moment that occurs we will STOP all buying each new book... as we can limit our information browsing for our characters to the information the char creation tool gives us if we choose. THAT is the concern I have for the tools WOTC is currently hinting that they are producing. They may replace 4 purchases of 6 books a year with 1 subscription from 1 person in the group. :-) I also worry that rather than shipping a character generator 100% functional with PHB content, there may be work going on to get it fully AV and FR-ready. As a software developer, I know that the surest way to ship early is to cut "extra" features as long as the foundation is built well. This is especially true with "software as a service" where the software is guaranteed to have future updates and where the customers actually anticipate and expect updates. I also agree that they are trying to adapt their business plan, but I see far too many execution gaps to trust that things are going to succeed in the near term [6-12 months] or even in the long term [2-5 years]. If I were an investor (or an overarching owner also know as Hasbro), I would start to ask some hard questions about the current online program. D&D is a PRIME target for software as a service to succeed. The other question is whether the intent of online is to add MORE products and revenue from the same customes or to add NEW customers and players or to keep and attract back OLD players to keep the game fresh for them. All are worthwhile goals, but the current strategy I can see externally makes me question if WOTC internally has a strategy for their online plans. :-) I'd love to hear some more thoughts (especially from anyone "on the inside"). :-) Keep things coming! Todd