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1 year ago ::
Apr 27, 2012 - 7:23AM
#31
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Date Joined:
Oct 12, 2005
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But hey, keep crying I want PDFs. I'm sure that eventally WoTC will say, well, we are probably going to loose millions of dollars in sales, but it will keep some gamers happy. Until Hasbro shuts down the DnD department at WoTC.
So you turn around and try to make us all feel bad for WotC/Hasbro, that us asking for digital versions is going to some how make them go under.
Im sorry, but it's the same sob story you get from RIAA and MPAA, they lose all this money to piracy, so they need to add DRM to products and have a tight Control, oh but then iTunes came around. By 2012 song downloads are in the billions.But yeah, the record & movie industry is doing so horrible.
Nevermind it's not even hard to find cracked ebups. Does that stop ePub from outselling print as claimed by amazon.
But sure, let's keep doing things the same old way. It worked so well for 4e sales.
Welcome to ZomboniLand - My D&D Blog http://zomboniland.blogspot.com/
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1 year ago ::
Apr 27, 2012 - 7:25AM
#32
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Date Joined:
Mar 29, 2010
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I would think that for a lot of people 'we want pdfs' could also be replaced 'we want digital book delivery in some form that's not DDI'.
Wotc manages to make their novels available on e-readers after all.
And the important stuff to have isn't pictures. I'm pretty sure people (probably not all, but at least some of them) would buy digital versions of the books even without the pretty pictures. And I don't see why you couldn't put the text of the books on e.g. a kindle. Oh, sure, we'll loose a lot of the pretty formatting with those nice little coloured bars and so on ... but, frankly, are those really important? Not to me in any case.
I'm not going to lie. I have the PDFs of every book that D&D has published for 4E* and also use the compendium all the time. Truth be told, I don't want a PDF edition of the book to be available for the very reasons stated above (piracy). But this is 2012. This is the age of the Kindle and the Nook and other eReaders. I can't tell you how much more likely I would be to purchase a copy of the new D&D material if I could view it on my Kindle Fire. Here's the best part about the whole thing: errata.
I have had a couple of fictional books that were updated and downloaded to my device to correct things that had gone wrong in them. In a book full of statistics like the D&D books, when something goes awry, they can just make a quick change in the document and resubmit it to the ePublishers for resync to the owners of the books. That would without a doubt be one of the best reasons in my opinion to go digital book this next release. Especially with the proliferation of smart phones and other full color apps. I know the most recent version of the Kindle publishing format can handle all the flashiness of the D&D book styles. That seems to me to be the way to go rather than an unsecured or easily crackable PDF of the book.
*That I have already purchased a physical copy of
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1 year ago ::
Apr 27, 2012 - 7:34AM
#33
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If kindle can actually handle the layout, it seems even easier than I thought.
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1 year ago ::
Apr 27, 2012 - 7:47AM
#34
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Date Joined:
Mar 29, 2010
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If kindle can actually handle the layout, it seems even easier than I thought.
Kindle Format 8 is perfect for this. It allows for things like comic books in the correct format, children's books, etc. It would work wonderfully for Wizards. I realize it sounds like I'm an Amazon shill, but I want to point out that I'm not. Just relaying information for things I've looked into.
www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=100...
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1 year ago ::
Apr 27, 2012 - 8:05AM
#35
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Date Joined:
Mar 24, 2002
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Dane_McArdy, you are exhibiting a narrow and regressive POV regarding digital sales. You've been saying the same thing in every thread about PDFs that has come up. But you're as wrong-headed in your view as WotC is. Yes. ONCE UPON A TIME, WotC put together a digital distribution model, someone found a way to exploit it, and WotC got burned by it. And they sued that soneone, and they settled (apparently). The question is, what is the more rational reaction to such an incident? Reaction #1: "Our digital distribution model was flawed. We need to reconsider our options and find a better, more secure way to move into the digital age. Other retailers are figuring out ways to do it; surely there are other options. Maybe we could talk to Amazon, see how their model works. After all, it's the wave of the future. We'd better figure it out before we become obsolete." Reaction #2: "OH NOES! Someone figured out a way to steal our digital books! DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION IS EVIL AND WE'RE NEVER GOING TO DO IT AGAIN!!! LONG LIVE PRINT EDITIONS!!!" "But boss, bookstore chains are dying and all of our competetors are moving into digital sales." "I DON'T CARE! I CAN STILL FEEL THEIR HANDS ON MY DIGITAL COPIES OF PHB 2! Please, make the bad feelings go away ... " Any sensible company trying to succeed in publishing in the 21st century would choose Reaction #1. WotC has chosen Reaction #2 up to this point. And frankly, it's an increasingly indefensible position, given the direction that ALL PUBLISHED AND RECORDED MEDIA is moving. The ownership of digital media consumption products is growing exponentially. iPads are huge, the Kindle is Amazon's top seller, and it's been nearly a year since ebook sales first outpaced print book sales at Amazon. WotC needs to get with the times, or D&D will die even faster than it is now.
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1 year ago ::
Apr 27, 2012 - 8:21AM
#36
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If there is a demand, it's up to the company to find a solution, otherwise someone else will find a solution.
So, it can be deduced... If people want PDF's, it's up to Wizards to provide them to the people, otherwise people will find a different source for the PDF's.
It is that simple.
It has nothing to do with people "crying" or whatever other derogatory term is used. It is, plain and simple, people vocalizing what they want to spend their money on. If Wizards wants to make money from this medium, they will find a solution.
Reflavoring: the change of flavor without changing any mechanical part of the game, no matter how small, in order to fit the mechanics to an otherwise unsupported concept.
Retexturing: the change of flavor (with at most minor mechanical adaptations) in order to effortlessly create support for a concept without inventing anything new.
Houseruling: the change, either minor or major, of the mechanics in order to better reflect a certain aspect of the game, including adapting the rules to fit an otherwise unsupported concept.
Homebrewing: the complete invention of something new that fits within the system in order to reflect an unsupported concept.
Default module =/= Core mechanic.
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1 year ago ::
Apr 27, 2012 - 8:35AM
#37
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Date Joined:
Dec 12, 2011
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I'm really sick of corporate apologists. As has been stated and proven many times over--piracy is going to happen regardless of wither a company offers electronic formats or not. Trying to claim the epub (or other formats) have any effect at all is rediculous as no matter what type of DRM and/or file format you use pirates will overcome it and you'll still see it online. Piracy happens--if you can't accept, adapt to and account for that then you should just go out of buisiness because you will never stop it. Welcome to the 21st century: Evolve or die. There is demand for pdfs/e-formats and there are people who will pay for it if it is available. Not offering it because of something that is going to happen whether you offer it or not is both insane and voluntarily losing revenue that could otherwise be earned.
Playtest or get off the playtest boards.
---
I want justice for the voice that can't be heard
Vindication for every suffering and hurt
Let retribution hold dominion over earth
--Nemesis, VNV Nation
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1 year ago ::
Apr 27, 2012 - 9:24AM
#38
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I want to give WoTC my money. What kind of logic is that? Oh, it's not logic, it trying to use finacial blackmail to get WoTC to see YOUR logic.
Welcome to capitalism and free markets.
Heres what WoTC thinks. Well, do we put PDFs out there, and get ripped off again in the millionsjust so we can get Gamer #23,691 20-30 bucks?
You're way overestimate the damage done and ignoring the fact that it's done anyway without WotC doing anything.
Sorry, but part of the business models of all gaming companies is based on knowing how much money gamers will spend on gaming over other things.
And Wotc is doing a bad job at the moment as evidenced by their current overall distressed state
PDFs are NOT safe in any sense of the word.
Which would be an agrument it PDFs of every book would not start to circulate within days. It's all about catching some part of that lost revenue without increasing the losses in any way.
For WoTC, it's just lossing money.
No, it's recapturing a little of what's otherwise lost anyway (without increasing what's otherwise lost anyway).
But hey, keep crying I want PDFs. I'm sure that eventally WoTC will say, well, we are probably going to loose millions of dollars in sales, but it will keep some gamers happy. Until Hasbro shuts down the DnD department at WoTC.
You're again pulling crazy figures out of nowhere. D&D is a ~30 million business, they're losing "millions" over being scammed by some sellers. Since then they might have lost a million (likely less) by stopping selling PDFs through the honest sellers.
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1 year ago ::
Apr 27, 2012 - 1:22PM
#39
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@Dane_McArdy
You just keep saying WOTC can't afford piracy. The people above you keep saying they are already suffering the full effects of piracy so why not make what money they can. You just keep stubbornly saying the same thing over and over.
In 2 hours, I can get you every 4e book ever printed in pdf form. I'd just have to find the torrent and load it in and start downloading. If I were a pirate and I am not (as Paizo will attest from my buying pdfs from them), I would just download those files. If I were a pirate it wouldn't take that long. I'm giving myself 2 hours because I really would be starting from nothing.
So all WOTC does is make people like me spend our money elsewhere. That is it. No other effect. I admit that I often buy both the hardcover and the pdf. I like to digitially cut out maps and floor plans but I also like the feel of a book. So basically WOTC is totally blowing it with me. They just aren't getting that extra money. The amount of money they make though wouldn't dip any if they provided pdfs. If you are a pirate you already are not paying.
There are MANY kinds of piracy. There's Joe gamer, taking a book, scanning it and putting on a torrent site. WoTC doesn't care about Joe Gamer.
Then there's having 20,000 copies of official PDFs being sold under the table. WoTC cares about that.
See, WoTC did sell PDFs of early 4e books. They used a company to sell them. In keeping with WoTC's policy of supporting other companies that sell other gaming merchandise, rather then sell them directly from their site, which they are fully aware they can do.
How it worked was you got an account, you logged in and downloaded the PDF. You could download the PDF to each of your computers and devices. Seems safe. Each account got a PDF with a special serial number, that way WoTC could see how many times PDFs were being downloaded.
But the company set up another company. They opened several accounts, and then sold people the user info to those accounts. Since the PDFs had already been paid for, they could be downloaded for free over and over. Some PDFs had been downloaded over 2,000 times.
Yes, WOTC sued, it was a long drawn out process, but it also probably caused Hasbro to say, Shut it down, no more PDFs of the books. That's about $500,000-700,000 in sales in a few months that WoTC didn't get. That was just a few short months.
WoTC can't ignore that so you can have a PDF of Arcane Power in PDF format.
As for being a corporate apologist. Amusing at best. I'm not a big fan of WoTC right now. I think they totally bungled DDi and weren't honest about a lot of stuff, and said they were going to do a lot of stuff knowing full well they wouldn't.
But I'm not going to pretend the reality of things isn't what it is, simply because I don't like WoTC, or because I'm an over privilaged gamer who feels they are OWED books in PDF format.
WoTC isn't in the business of making new technology to safe guard their product. They aren't in the business of only making ten percent profit on any given product.
Moderated by
Orc_Bane
on Apr 27, 2012 - 02:49PM
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1 year ago ::
Apr 27, 2012 - 1:32PM
#40
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Problems from the past equates to solutions in the future.
There is no use pretending like you know what Wizards is going to do in the future because of snap decisions in the past. If D&DNext has taught us anything, it's exactly that.
If they determine there is significant profit to be had, they will most certainly provide it.
Reflavoring: the change of flavor without changing any mechanical part of the game, no matter how small, in order to fit the mechanics to an otherwise unsupported concept.
Retexturing: the change of flavor (with at most minor mechanical adaptations) in order to effortlessly create support for a concept without inventing anything new.
Houseruling: the change, either minor or major, of the mechanics in order to better reflect a certain aspect of the game, including adapting the rules to fit an otherwise unsupported concept.
Homebrewing: the complete invention of something new that fits within the system in order to reflect an unsupported concept.
Default module =/= Core mechanic.
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