Please keep doing these cuts. They are very good for people that dont watch the full episodes

@FabioBittar

8 ай бұрын

Agreed!

This is spot on. Public ownership turns all companies into the same culture.

D&D will not die. Hasbro/WotC may die, but the game will live on. This is why I always buy the tangible paper books and real metal/plastic minis and dice (and have since 1980), not merely digital products that I wouldn't actually own. The game will live on.

@kaijuultimax9407

8 ай бұрын

Sure, but it's likely going to live on in the hands of another corporate conglomerate. I know we'd all prefer for the game to just become the TTRPG equivalent of abandonware, but that's not likely to happen within our lifetimes.

@FabioBittar

8 ай бұрын

Agreed. I keep saying this to people and the younger crowd always roll their eyes at me. Digital is transitory. You only own it as long as it's stored somewhere you have access to. If the server or storage is gone, the digital goods are as good as gone. And they'll say "oh paper can be set on fire!" - yeah, well, I own books from the 70s. Do you think your digital goods will still exist in 50 years? I doubt it. The companies come and go.

@trikepilot101

8 ай бұрын

@@kaijuultimax9407 I play D&D 3.5 It was abandoned years ago and so was the Pathfinder follow up. There is more material there than I can ever play. Technically both of those are still owned by corporations, but they can't stop me from playing the way I want to play: around the table with friends and tons of house rules.

@TheStephaneAdam

8 ай бұрын

Yup! Ultimately the vast majority of people play DnD like they play monopoly, among friends, with their aging, fraying out of date books and same old sets of dice and their own interpretations of the rules. The whole industry could just disappear this week and most people in the hobby won't notice.

@commandercaptain4664

7 ай бұрын

@FabioBittar It’s not necessarily all that is digital that is temporary , it’s mainly about streaming and subscriptions. Once either of those go away, that’s the end of access. But downloads can be as everlasting as physical products, as long as there is energy to power them and they are backed up to compatible devices (RIP floppies). A huge advantage of digital is they take up so little space, which is handy for those who can’t afford the space needed for a plethora of physical products.

Huge companies become acquisition experts, they leave the R&D to smaller companies and when these reach top hype and popularity, they buy them off and enter extreme monetizing mode. Five years later, if the brand drops, they will still have made a good profit and they killed off competition to boot. It's predatory capitalism, it's a nuisance.

@zivosthrintolimgren3513

8 ай бұрын

Predatory capitalism should be made illegal, in all forms.

Glad to see Discourse Minis on! She's not wrong! No one represents the interests of the customer anymore, or we're at the bottom of the list.

@commandercaptain4664

7 ай бұрын

Traded companies usually rely on a larger casual base which is cheaper to acquire instead of maintaining loyalty with the niche, since the niche already have what is needed, require more in addition to what they have (which invariably costs way more than it’s worth), and have shown a tendency to rebel against corporate decisions… which is ironic considering that such rebellion stems from the decisions made by corporations, but it’s not like corporations ever know that.

Going public means that the wallets that really matter are those of the shareholders, not the consumers. Thus, more money to pr and marketing instead of the people who make the product good.

@commandercaptain4664

7 ай бұрын

Quality isn’t guaranteed based on the amount spent. Usually any vast budget is given to CEOs through a dummycorp racket, and the cheapest workers are hired regardless of any modicum of skill.

Discourse pitched a home run with this clip

Public ownership makes shareholders into the worst kind of fair-weather friends. If you're making money, they love you, but if the company starts to tank, they can jump ship immediately with zero repercussions and they are incentivized to do so! It's the fast food of finance. A quality end product is good for the long-term health of a company and the employees involved in creating it. For shareholders, there's no impact on their reputation or future employment prospects; all that matters is that short-term sugar rush of making cash.

@douglasburtt4901

8 ай бұрын

Has it always been like this, though? Old as I am, I seem to recall that long ago, stocks were seen as a *long-term* investment - something you sank money into with the idea that your heirs would get them decades later with a higher value than when you bought them. But starting in the 90s, it shifted towards "How much am I getting in dividends RIGHT NOW??"

The requirement of the stockmarket is simple: "Burn your reputation and longterm earnings for short term profits."

📝 *The funniest thing is wizards of the coast & Hasbro are moving Dungeons and Dragons into the video gaming space at the time massive video gaming developers & publishers are going out of business because video gamers are becoming increasingly more hostal to micro transactions , pay to win & substandard games & DLC.*

@commandercaptain4664

7 ай бұрын

That’s why corporations overall are looking to satisfy the coveted “riche niche” base to supply their coffers. Videogames didn’t use to cost $60+, but the market allowed that pricing to flourish, so one corps are dipping heavily into milking more from them until it becomes an exclusively elitist hobby. It’s happening with LP collectors, concerts, and sports venues, and soon all entertainment will kowtow to the riche niche. And that’s being optimistic…

It's not that companies didn't prioritize money before going public, but that in doing so, they stopped caring about long-term income, and switched to short-term income and that in turn hastens their demise. The Worst companies focus on high-cost, short-term income, utilizing low effort, extremely quickly reproducible products, at as low of a cost as possible, by cutting all the cornners.

I really like these small cuts of the long form video. I was also wondering are the long form audio uploaded anywhere, I can’t seem to find it on the RFC podcast?

Baron de Ropp in a hoodie? Took me half the video before I realized who he even was.

@user-jq1mg2mz7o

8 ай бұрын

he's now Bro de Ropp

The drive to make money ultimately drives away the top creative talent (e.g. Bizzard founders). You may retain some "good" talent, but you lose the geniuses, the visionaries. And then this company that was built on creative output grinds itself into undeath. Money people who are smart about managing creative talent know their job is to greenlight projects and set budget constraints, rather than squeeze all they can from a popular franchise. Trust the creatives to know what fans will love, but don't let the creative run away with the budget on pie-in-the-sky ideas. Too many corporations fail at this. Disney & Blizzard are poster-children for this mistake.

@commandercaptain4664

7 ай бұрын

“Pie-in-the-sky ideas” are the very basis of being a visionary.

@GreylanderTV

7 ай бұрын

@@commandercaptain4664 Agreed. Just don't let them run away with the budget. For every grand vision that takes off and is a hit, there will be a dozen that either go nowhere or flop on release. When 20th Century Fox gave George Lucas the green light, nobody (including George) had any idea it would be a once-in-a-lifetime hit that changed movies forever. And they gave him a very small budget. Great art does not need a big budget. Just look at the new Godzilla Minus One, looks like it is going to be a critical and box office smash. Yet the budget was only 15 million.

0:50 - ha! yeah... @piratesoftware was talking about that literally yesterday. How he worked for 2 years straight OT as part of the SC2 dev team and that horse microtransaction blew starcraft revenue off the spreadsheet.

They choose to please the share holder's vs the people that buy the product, it goes down hill.

@Puzzles-Pins

8 ай бұрын

They are obligated to the shareholders, not the customers.

@saparapatepete

8 ай бұрын

ironically this downfall will make the shareholders sad

"Why Going Public Was The Death of WoTC Dungeons & Dragons" TSR Dungeons and Dragons is immortal.

The horse armor argument is concerning to me, because in MMOs, purchasable vanity products are optional. My fear is that Hasbro will force aesthetic changes to be purchases, and take it too far. Meaning that yes, you can have some options to customize your VTT mini, like changing your hair color or skin tone, but only in limited ways. You want a green-skinned elf, or blue hair, or a secondary highlight color in your hair? Throw some money at us. And then when your character upgrades their armor, and they want that represented on their mini? Shell out more money so your player can have it, or you're a bad DM. Is it optional to upgrade minis like this? Of course it is. But players want to be able to see the growth of their characters via their gear. MMOs don't charge real money for you to change your character whenever you get a gear upgrade, but I'm worried that Hasbro will, and will also push it further by locking actual character customization beyond the most basic options behind a subscription or something insane like that.

@commandercaptain4664

7 ай бұрын

It’s the “or else you’re a bad DM” part that concerns me. That’s how the division of fanshaming perpetuates, and it’s not like it didn’t exist before from splatbloat.

Not only making money. Short term money.

@PatRiot-le7rd

8 ай бұрын

Corporations often lack patience, so they expect ROI within 18 months, max, in most cases.

Companies are mostly dead to me once they go public. Because remember kids, the CEO has a LEGAL obligation to make the shareholders money when the company is public. If the CEO of Hasbro came out tomorrow and said "eff the shareholders, we're doing what's best for the consumers" they could actually be sued and potentially even imprisoned for doing so.

@saparapatepete

8 ай бұрын

Unless you justify it as a long term investment. One could use the story of Wizards of the coast's and Unity's scandals as examples.

Discourse + Baron = pure awesomeness!

The 3.5 books are a bit of a bad example, because the culture around that edition of the game was (and remains) one where you really do use it as a toolkit, taking options from here there and everywhere. Themed sourcebooks lend themselves to collectability in a way 5e's generic ones don't. You do want the seafaring book to have ships in one arc of your campaign etc. So it's no exaggeration to say that most people playing 3.5 will have used maybe 75% of the books, and the ones that don't get used are the really niche ones like incarnum. That said , few of those players have bought every book. Piracy was rampant, so that inclusive toolbox style of play may not have translated into sales...

I did a small/medium business course- they said you concentrate on making good products/services, and the money will come. If you just focus on making money, the company will fail, as the company probably won't be creating competitive things.

Yeah, brands can kill themselves by saturating the market. I stopped playing MTG when they started making new decks every 4 months. Could only play tournaments with last 2 releases, so less than a year were your cards usable and that shit wasn't cheap. There was a time where I did see every Star Wars, Marvel or DC movie or show but now I'm lost because they keep pumping out new content too fast.

Outstanding insights by Discourse!

I have been mostly ignoring the WOTC news as I have a lot of pods to cast, but when I see Dungeons and Discourse/Discourse Minis, I feel compelled to click.

Remember: It's not about profit. It's not about making money. It is about seeing EXPONENTIAL GROWTH, year after year. If a company does not make more profit than the year before, it is considered a loss to shareholders. Companies will lay off employees by the truckload, they will pulp entire products for tax purposes, they will do anything they can to make that line go up a little more regardless of what it means to the consumer or the people who are the product.

The big problem with TTRPG is that (most) people think that they NEED to switch to the latest version, every time. D&D 3.x still has more content then 4e and 5e together.

Let's be realistic when we talk about that optional horse making more money than StarCraft 2. There are two things that need to realistically be talked about as part of it. Inflation has made things higher priced than when Star Craft 2 came out and often they don't adjust the amount made from Star Craft 2 into current amounts, and second. The markups on that optional horse are almost rediculous. Plenty of them cost a quarter of what the entire game of Star Craft 2. So of course it's going to make more money if it sells well at all because the markups on that item to the point they are selling it for are making such large profit margins that it can't help but make a lot more and easier money than a whole game does. If they charged realistically just for that one item, then it would make a lot less money, even though sales would probably increase even more.

@braedenmclean5304

8 ай бұрын

And thirdly, the fact that with a game like StarCraft 2 you get fans and people who stick around to buy future products. Without well made games no one would be around to buy the horse armour

@Quandry1

8 ай бұрын

@braedenmclean5304 that is usually something that is brought up. Unlike the 2 I mentioned.

This is accurate of nearly all companies. Once they go public, instead of the goal to make a better product, the goal becomes exclusively to advance share price.

I've always said Gygax was responsible for both HIS OWN and D&D's demise. Going public isn't always the best avenue.

@douglasburtt4901

8 ай бұрын

Actually, Gygax was dead set against non-gamers having business control over D&D. Unfortunately, his own poor business decisions led to that exact thing happening... but as far as his initial insight, he wasn't wrong.

Discourse is really good in this vid.

"Blizzard was making billions, yes. But what about second billions?" --Actiblizz shareholders

Oh look, you finally got my subscription...

Spending money on furniture, shirts, cars, anime merchandise, etc, sounds all silly to me :'D

Art suffers under capitalism? You don't say!

@samdoorley6101

8 ай бұрын

It certainly can. And yet many works of art from the renaissance period that are considered touchstones of western European culture were commissioned pieces.

Well, I'm one of those casual players in WoW now. I play once in a while, maybe 4 or 5 times a month.

The problem is this brutality capitalism. It's not just you have to make profit every quarter, it's that you have to GROW every quarter. Nothing really has infinite growth. It's impossible to maintain.

Fully agree.

Discourse spittin' fackts!

Who are the major investors in a poublic company? Those investors are extremely powerful in tnat company.

Going public ruined pro wrestling too.

You're very last comment here is exactly why I stopped playing video games and how I like to do crafting and I want physical books and other physical things now.

Yes, That what killed CDProject Red.

Wow subs are over 8.3 million now, don’t get it twisted.

I'm sorry but going public is how I found out about ttrpg and stuff.

WoTC has been owned by Hasbro for what, 22 years? TSR was privately owned, did that really lead to better games and stewardship in comparison? I wouldn’t say that. I think the analysis that public ownership = capitalism = bad game is shallow.

Oh I recall D&D 3 quite well. Every doofus and their aunt had a book offering. No real consistency. It killed the game as dead as dead can get. But they released 4th, and that didn't help (even if I liked 4th) and then 5th the repeat buying. They have over marketed the game to death. The game didn't need to continue after Rules Cyclopedia. One book, all in one place. But clearly there's little money in that notion. 1st came out, books were well binded. 2nd came out, books were dreadfully lousy products at the physical level. And then 3rd and OGL and they basically gave the game away. D&D to me, is Rules Cyclopedia or BECMI. I stupidly bought 2nd, I skipped 3rd, I again stupidly bought fourth. I felt betrayed. I have 5th. Anyone with internet can download. I don't care what 2024 offers. They can call it anything they want. I might download it out of curiosity. But I've seen the Gen Alpha writing on the wall too. No one will be needing books for much longer. No one is likely interested in reading D&D 6th.

You make "Starcraft II" becuase you are creating a new marketplace. A new marketplace to sell new space armor and make even more money. These games/worlds are now capital investments. They are literally a capital asset, that is, an asset used for productvity

Going public has been the death of a lot of things. Mainstream Kills ☠️

Public ownership comes in many forms. Hasbro was public but controled by the Hassenfeld family, as is true with many other companies - especially Hershey Foods. It is what the structure around leadership that affects the goals. Take Hershey. Milton Hershey's Will, which is inviolate under PA law, left his shares - his controlling shares - to the trust of the Hershey School. A school for disadvantages childern. It is now the most well-funded private school and due to his will their Trustees have controlling shares in Hershey Foods. Now consider Silicon Valley and their inbred Boards ( as is true in teh Finance industry and many others within teh US) and how they are able to maintain focus development and not "just" profit. Wealth of the owners is the goals, not simplly proffit.

Part of the problem is acceptance and tolerance of whales. As long as we have a live and let live attitude with the people who pump money into micro transactions it will only get worse. We need to get and reinforce a stigma for this concept. Make it to where nobody wants to be seen as a whale or they get bullied and abused for it. Attack the business model...by attacking whales.

@braedenmclean5304

8 ай бұрын

It’s a good thing that othering someone for something they do with their own money isn’t totally toxic and psychotic or anything

@Spartan1312

8 ай бұрын

@@braedenmclean5304 Toxic...yes, and proud of it. You will never stop this business model with anything less. Psychotic, nah I just realize where the pressure point on this predatory business model is... and its not the company its the consumer. A consumer who normally already has self esteem issues and a addictive personality. Which makes them a easy target. Best part is the devs will kill their own game banning people to "protect the whales" but whales need other people to play with and show off their very spiffy drip (that cost a small fortune) or else they too leave the games. Start being toxic to the whales and get the artery of this issue.

@TheRodentMastermind

8 ай бұрын

I once said if you want to boycott Overwatch due to their excessive monetisation. The only way to do it is for everyone to just wear the default skin and make everyone that has a paid skin feel like they are scabs. Just leaving the game won't do anything.

If WoTC wants to stay focused on both stewardship of the IP of DnD and the long-term hard profits promised by digital products, the ought to license the paper-side and to some extent the lore. This promises fixed license fees for the least profitable portion and drives the licensee to be creative in their development of their domain.

I am starting to avoid clicking videos if they're about WotC. I don't care about WotC news. Let me know when they admit they were wrong and apologize or go bust.

#33rd🎉🎉🎉

Just need NFT’s, exclusivity and name branding and you will solve the digital divide between the physical world and the digital.

D&D never "went public". TSR was a private corporation that was purchased by another private corporation Wizards of the Coast. That corporation was purchased by Hasbro which was a publicly traded corporation. That was over 20 years ago. In that time, D&D has done quite well.