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D&D Microtransactions

Started by Mistwell, August 22, 2023, 01:49:12 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Ratman_tf

A magazine subscription is a magazine subscription.

Microtransactions involve a host of tactics to prey on people's psychological weaknesses to optimize how much money the company can squeeze out of them. Well past the point of good businsess practices and into the realm of exploitation.



The notion of an exclusionary and hostile RPG community is a fever dream of zealots who view all social dynamics through a narrow keyhole of structural oppression.
-Haffrung

Spinachcat

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on August 22, 2023, 01:55:20 PM
Why would you pay $20/mo to play a game you can go down to your hobby shop and play for free?

Because the shamdemic has trained many gamers that going outside and interacting with other gamers is scary and dangerous. Much safer to just sit in your room and play online.

And there could be patriarchy and White supremacy hiding at that hobby shop!!! How dare you not protect the LGBWTF and POCs!!!

VisionStorm

Quote from: Ratman_tf on August 23, 2023, 01:38:32 AM
A magazine subscription is a magazine subscription.

Microtransactions involve a host of tactics to prey on people's psychological weaknesses to optimize how much money the company can squeeze out of them. Well past the point of good businsess practices and into the realm of exploitation.

Also, there's a difference between paying for an optional magazine subscription, and having to pay in perpetuity to gain full access to a game on top of paying for microtransactions. Add to that the fact that WotC has always failed at digital, and they're just begging for this whole thing to flop.

Ghostmaker

Quote from: Theory of Games on August 23, 2023, 01:03:03 AM
They'll have different monetary tiers based on how much material you want probably. $4.99/mo. foot-in-the-door fee all the way up to $19.99/mo. for the powergamers who want it all. This'll take shopping for gear to another level with gamers dishing out real $$$ for masterwork and magic items. Compared to the trickle of money WoTC's making off selling books, selling a video game that drains gamers of their money is just great business.

You have gamers spending thousands a year (individually) on video game micro-transactions in order to get an edge. WoTC'd be stupid for missing out on this and the shift would revitalize the company.


I agree WotC and Hasbro want to get in on that action. I question if they can. The sentiment against microtransactions is pretty harsh, and to make matters worse there are alternatives to using their money-extracting walled garden. They really needed to be rolling this out like 5-10 years ago -- now, I think they're too late to capitalize.

honeydipperdavid

Quote from: Ghostmaker on August 23, 2023, 08:48:11 AM
Quote from: Theory of Games on August 23, 2023, 01:03:03 AM
They'll have different monetary tiers based on how much material you want probably. $4.99/mo. foot-in-the-door fee all the way up to $19.99/mo. for the powergamers who want it all. This'll take shopping for gear to another level with gamers dishing out real $$$ for masterwork and magic items. Compared to the trickle of money WoTC's making off selling books, selling a video game that drains gamers of their money is just great business.

You have gamers spending thousands a year (individually) on video game micro-transactions in order to get an edge. WoTC'd be stupid for missing out on this and the shift would revitalize the company.


I agree WotC and Hasbro want to get in on that action. I question if they can. The sentiment against microtransactions is pretty harsh, and to make matters worse there are alternatives to using their money-extracting walled garden. They really needed to be rolling this out like 5-10 years ago -- now, I think they're too late to capitalize.

Dude, its Hasbro, they are almost always behind the curve.  They decided to use writers based on genital hole preference and genetics than hiring game designers and they have been seeing a marked decrease in sales.  Meanwhile, Disney has been doing this for about 4 years and are now experienced a $2B loss this year (movies + hotel).  Even when Disney does put out good content, people won't buy it because the Disney brand is now dog crap.  And that dog crap covers up any attempt Disney now makes to recover sales.  Hasbro is at risk if they don't wake up, they might never be able to recover their brands like Disney.

I'm expecting D&D 6E to experience a number of culture related issues impacting sales.  People are sick of woke and just won't buy it now.  If Hasbro believes a bunch of broke race marxists are going to buy their content, they are mistaken,  those same broke race marxists will happily pirate and play the game for free entertainment because they don't have jobs.

Scooter

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on August 23, 2023, 09:05:34 AM

I'm expecting D&D 6E to experience a number of culture related issues impacting sales.  People are sick of woke and just won't buy it now.  If Hasbro believes a bunch of broke race marxists are going to buy their content, they are mistaken,  those same broke race marxists will happily pirate and play the game for free entertainment because they don't have jobs.

Agree 100%.  Bud, Target and others are discovering that the woke weary/hating public has the majority of the buying power over the jobless, basement dwelling socialists that would rob them blind if given the opportunity.
There is no saving throw vs. stupidity

honeydipperdavid

Quote from: Scooter on August 23, 2023, 11:20:48 AM
Quote from: honeydipperdavid on August 23, 2023, 09:05:34 AM

I'm expecting D&D 6E to experience a number of culture related issues impacting sales.  People are sick of woke and just won't buy it now.  If Hasbro believes a bunch of broke race marxists are going to buy their content, they are mistaken,  those same broke race marxists will happily pirate and play the game for free entertainment because they don't have jobs.

Agree 100%.  Bud, Target and others are discovering that the woke weary/hating public has the majority of the buying power over the jobless, basement dwelling socialists that would rob them blind if given the opportunity.

Technically the race marxists do have money, student loans while in college.  So, for a 8 year window for them to get their bachelors in Antarctic studies they will have some spend.  But a lot of their money is going to fentanyl and vegan water.  So that will take away their spend.

What Hasbro should do is simply go to the conventions and just look at the people who go there, check their age, they tend to be their dungeon masters.  Look at the paid subscriptions, they have their billing information.  They can get 3rd party data to get the customers age and demographic information.  The whales are going to skew older and when they look at their politics, its going to be moderate with a "wtf is their women have cocks" being the most common social media post.  It would be akin to putting in Mohammed and the Hadiths into D&D, people don't want it the same way they don't want the race marxist bs being put into the game as well.

Scooter

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on August 23, 2023, 11:34:31 AM
Quote from: Scooter on August 23, 2023, 11:20:48 AM
Quote from: honeydipperdavid on August 23, 2023, 09:05:34 AM

I'm expecting D&D 6E to experience a number of culture related issues impacting sales.  People are sick of woke and just won't buy it now.  If Hasbro believes a bunch of broke race marxists are going to buy their content, they are mistaken,  those same broke race marxists will happily pirate and play the game for free entertainment because they don't have jobs.

Agree 100%.  Bud, Target and others are discovering that the woke weary/hating public has the majority of the buying power over the jobless, basement dwelling socialists that would rob them blind if given the opportunity.

Technically the race marxists do have money, student loans while in college.  So, for a 8 year window for them to get their bachelors in Antarctic studies they will have some spend.  But a lot of their money is going to fentanyl and vegan water.  So that will take away their spend.

What Hasbro should do is simply go to the conventions and just look at the people who go there, check their age, they tend to be their dungeon masters.  Look at the paid subscriptions, they have their billing information.  They can get 3rd party data to get the customers age and demographic information.  The whales are going to skew older and when they look at their politics, its going to be moderate with a "wtf is their women have cocks" being the most common social media post.  It would be akin to putting in Mohammed and the Hadiths into D&D, people don't want it the same way they don't want the race marxist bs being put into the game as well.

If Hasbro had good market research skills they wouldn't be Hasbro.   ;D
There is no saving throw vs. stupidity

Thor's Nads

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on August 22, 2023, 01:55:20 PM
WotC is going to whiff so hard on the VTT, this is going to make D&D look like Joe's diaper after Taco Tuesday at Camp David.  Video game developers focus on graphics and voice acting because its EASY.

I worked in video games for nearly 20 years, I mean big studios like EA and Disney Interactive as an art lead and art director. Graphics are not easy, but they are the easiest to critique, while game design is hard to critique until the game is done. So artists rarely get away with screwing up their job, but game designers (and producers) get away with shoddy work up til the end.

I get your point though, story is one of the harder aspects of game design.
Gen-Xtra

honeydipperdavid

Quote from: Thor's Nads on August 23, 2023, 02:17:50 PM
Quote from: honeydipperdavid on August 22, 2023, 01:55:20 PM
WotC is going to whiff so hard on the VTT, this is going to make D&D look like Joe's diaper after Taco Tuesday at Camp David.  Video game developers focus on graphics and voice acting because its EASY.

I worked in video games for nearly 20 years, I mean big studios like EA and Disney Interactive as an art lead and art director. Graphics are not easy, but they are the easiest to critique, while game design is hard to critique until the game is done. So artists rarely get away with screwing up their job, but game designers (and producers) get away with shoddy work up til the end.

I get your point though, story is one of the harder aspects of game design.

Story and mechanics are the most important part to most games, at EA it was graphics, graphics, graphics.  I saw an Alpha for Dragon Age 2 and its mechanics and story was bad, but that's EA make as much sleazy money as possible.  Frank Gibeau forced DA 2, blame that turkey.  My boss was like "you loved DAO, what you think?", I stated "Bioware is no longer on my pre-buy list".

Mistwell

Quote from: David Johansen on August 23, 2023, 12:53:39 AM
Hopefully 6e will flop so badly that the entire economy of China and France will collapse.

It's basically impossible to be following what's been happening in the playtest and still call it 6e. They ditched all the new innovative stuff from the beginning of the playtest. It's now genuinely backwards compatible, and essentially like Tasha's Cauldron of Everything V2. Mostly just some additional subclasses and feats, only a couple of new things, but mostly the same old 5e.

They didn't even keep some of the most basic changes, like making every class gain their subclass stuff at the same levels. Even that reverted back to the 2014 version.

Mistwell

Quote from: Ratman_tf on August 23, 2023, 01:38:32 AM
A magazine subscription is a magazine subscription.

Microtransactions involve a host of tactics to prey on people's psychological weaknesses to optimize how much money the company can squeeze out of them. Well past the point of good businsess practices and into the realm of exploitation.

It's kinda looking like they're talking about a package deal with all those things like a magazine.

Mistwell

Quote from: VisionStorm on August 23, 2023, 04:35:23 AM

Also, there's a difference between paying for an optional magazine subscription, and having to pay in perpetuity to gain full access to a game on top of paying for microtransactions.

Right, and they do not seem to be talking about that later type. They seem to be talking about a bunch of non-essential optional additional content like you'd find in a magazine. It does not seem to be the access to the game itself. But we shall see.

Omega

Quote from: Mistwell on August 22, 2023, 01:49:12 PM
To me, a lot of this looks like optional content like you'd find in Dragon and Dungeon magazine years ago, with some added digital aspects. TSR and later WOTC would release what can fairly be described as a subclass (or prestige class in 3e or kits in 2e or alternative classes in 1e, depending on the edition) to Dragon Magazine. Those were microtransactions where you bought the magazine to gain access to the subclass for a few bucks. It wasn't digital, but it was a microtransaction to access optional rules.

So your idea of microtransactions is meaningless if buying a magazine = microtransaction!

The stuff in Dragon and Dungeon was never official. Not even Polyhedron was. The magazines acted more as playtest platforms.

Exploderwizard

Quote from: Mistwell on August 24, 2023, 01:47:49 AM
Quote from: David Johansen on August 23, 2023, 12:53:39 AM
Hopefully 6e will flop so badly that the entire economy of China and France will collapse.

It's basically impossible to be following what's been happening in the playtest and still call it 6e. They ditched all the new innovative stuff from the beginning of the playtest. It's now genuinely backwards compatible, and essentially like Tasha's Cauldron of Everything V2. Mostly just some additional subclasses and feats, only a couple of new things, but mostly the same old 5e.

They didn't even keep some of the most basic changes, like making every class gain their subclass stuff at the same levels. Even that reverted back to the 2014 version.

They probably had all these pie in the sky ideas but no time allowed to actually make them work so they were scrapped because the overlords demand rollouts on THEIR timetables. It is the same reason late TSR put out so much crapola. They had already promised X number of products to the book sellers by a specific date then scrambled to find someone to write them who could meet the deadline.
Quote from: JonWakeGamers, as a whole, are much like primitive cavemen when confronted with a new game. Rather than \'oh, neat, what\'s this do?\', the reaction is to decide if it\'s a sex hole, then hit it with a rock.

Quote from: Old Geezer;724252At some point it seems like D&D is going to disappear up its own ass.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;766997In the randomness of the dice lies the seed for the great oak of creativity and fun. The great virtue of the dice is that they come without boxed text.