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6 months ago ::
Nov 24, 2012 - 12:05AM
#1
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Date Joined:
Jul 21, 2011
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I have read flame wars and heard arguments about the merits and problems with 4e (more of the latter than the former admittedly). I have played 4e and while it has flaws I never understood the vitriol of its detractors. I have heard piecemeal tidbits about what happened: company pressure from Hasbro; a tragic death; the 3.5 shutdown. However in all this I had never heard a full, coherent story of what happened to 4e behind the scenes. Until now: www.enworld.org/forum/5765766-post205.ht...Some of you may know this already, but I think there are quite a few who, like me, knew only bits and pieces. ((enworld.org is having server problems so I am including a copy of the post)) Spoiler:
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Originally posted by RyanD:
You have to learn all the backstory that led up to that meeting to understand the context. It's a long and winding road.
After Vince Calouri was pushed out of Wizards of the Coast he was replaced by Chuck Heubner. Chuck basically had to manage Wizards on the downslope from the Pokemon salad days. Hasbro has been through many boom & bust cycles in the toy business and they have a standard response when it happens: cut headcount and reduce overhead. Since Wizards was de facto the only pat of the business that had not been rolled up into Hasbro proper it was not insulated by the successes of other things at Hasbro like GI Joe or Transformers.
While this was happening there was a big internal fight for control over the CCG business within Hasbro. Brian Goldner who was at the time the head of the Boys Toys (i.e. half the company) division of Hasbro thought that the company was missing a huge window of opportunity to follow up Pokemon with a series of mass-market CCGs linked to Hasbro's core brands GI Joe and Transformers. These battles resulted in things being escalated all the way to the C-Suite and the Hasbro Board, where Brian lost the fight and Wizards retained the exclusive ability within Hasbro to make CCGs. The downside for Wizards is that they were forced to do things with the Duelmaster brand that they did not want to do, and it never got the traction in the US that Wizards thought it could achieve. (In Japan, by contrast, it became a huge best-seller).
Chuck left after two years and Loren Greenwood, who had been the long time VP of Sales, replaced him in 2004. He was also a visible proponent of the idea that Wizards, and not Boys Toys, should set Hasbro's CCG strategy. Thus when Brian was named COO of the whole company in 2006 and CEO in 2008, Loren had a big problem on his hands. Loren guided the company through the post 3.5e crash of the TRPG market, the loss of the Pokemon franchise, and the unwinding of the Wizards retail strategy. All of this was pretty bitter fruit for hm since he'd been instrumental in building up much of what had to then be torn down. The combination of all these things led to Loren's exit and his replacement by Greg Leeds, who is the current CEO of Wizards.
Sometime around 2005ish, Hasbro made an internal decision to divide its businesses into two categories. Core brands, which had more than $50 million in annual sales, and had a growth path towards $100 million annual sales, and Non-Core brands, which didn't.
Under Goldner, the Core Brands would be the tentpoles of the company. They would be exploited across a range of media with an eye towards major motion pictures, following the path Transformers had blazed. Goldner saw what happened to Marvel when they re-oriented their company from a publisher of comic books to a brand building factory (their market capitalization increased by something like 2 billion dollars). He wanted to replicate that at Hasbro.
Core Brands would get the financing they requested for development of their businesses (within reason). Non-Core brands would not. They would be allowed to rise & fall with the overall toy market on their own merits without a lot of marketing or development support. In fact, many Non-Core brands would simply be mothballed - allowed to go dormant for some number of years until the company was ready to take them down off the shelf and try to revive them for a new generation of kids.
At the point of the original Hasbro/Wizards merger a fateful decision was made that laid the groundwork for what happened once Greg took over. Instead of focusing Hasbro on the idea that Wizards of the Coast was a single brand, each of the lines of business in Wizards got broken out and reported to Hasbro as a separate entity. This was driven in large part by the fact that the acquisition agreement specified a substantial post-acquisition purchase price adjustment for Wizards' shareholders on the basis of the sales of non-Magic CCGs (i.e. Pokemon).
This came back to haunt Wizards when Hasbro's new Core/Non-Core strategy came into focus. Instead of being able to say "We're a $100+ million brand, keep funding us as we desire", each of the business units inside Wizards had to make that case separately. So the first thing that happened was the contraction you saw when Wizards dropped new game development and became the "D&D and Magic" company. Magic has no problem hitting the "Core" brand bar, but D&D does. It's really a $25-30 million business, especially since Wizards isn't given credit for the licensing revenue of the D&D computer games.
It would have been very easy for Goldner et al to tell Wizards "you're done with D&D, put it on a shelf and we'll bring it back 10 years from now as a multi-media property managed from Rhode Island". There's no way that the D&D business circa 2006 could have supported the kind of staff and overhead that it was used to. Best case would have been a very small staff dedicated to just managing the brand and maybe handling some freelance pool doing minimal adventure content. So this was an existential issue (like "do we exist or not") for the part of Wizards that was connected to D&D. That's something between 50 and 75 people.
Sometime around 2006, the D&D team made a big presentation to the Hasbro senior management on how they could take D&D up to the $50 million level and potentially keep growing it. The core of that plan was a synergistic relationship between the tabletop game and what came to be known as DDI. At the time Hasbro didn't have the rights to do an MMO for D&D, so DDI was the next best thing. The Wizards team produced figures showing that there were millions of people playing D&D and that if they could move a moderate fraction of those people to DDI, they would achieve their revenue goals. Then DDI could be expanded over time and if/when Hasbro recovered the video gaming rights, it could be used as a platform to launch a true D&D MMO, which could take them over $100 million/year.
The DDI pitch was that the 4th Edition would be designed so that it would work best when played with DDI. DDI had a big VTT component of its design that would be the driver of this move to get folks to hybridize their tabletop game with digital tools. Unfortunately, a tragedy struck the DDI team and it never really recovered. The VTT wasn't ready when 4e launched, and the explicit link between 4e and DDI that had been proposed to Hasbro's execs never materialized. The team did a yoeman's effort to make 4e work anyway while the VTT evolved, but they simply couldn't hit the numbers they'd promised selling books alone. The marketplace backlash to 4e didn't help either.
Greg wasn't in the hot seat long enough to really take the blame for the 4e/DDI plan, and Wizards just hired a new exec to be in charge of Sales & Marketing, and Bill Slavicsek who headed RPG R&D left last summer, so the team that committed those numbers to Hasbro are gone. The team that's there now probably doesn't have a blank sheet of paper and an open checkbook, but they also don't have to answer to Hasbro for the promises of the prior regime. As to their next move? Only time will tell. TL;DR version: Spoiler:
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-Decision to pull 3.x was made in upper corporate levels. It was going to happen no matter what. No-one at wizards could do anything about it.
-4e and DDI were not a greedy cash grab, but a desperate attempt to keep the brand profitable enough to stop it from being shut down entirely.
-It didn't work because the lead designer ate a bullet in the middle of it all.
Let us have a moment of silence for the D&D that might have been. Thank you. Now: Why do I post this in the DDN board? Partly in the hope that knowing more about how things happened and why will quell some of the anger that has gripped far too many. also, because I think this may have been a genuinely good idea. While the link between DDI and 4e never reached its lofty goals, that was not because of a flaw in its design. Indeed, I was really drawn to 4th edition because of the relative ease of use and good user interface of the online character builder and compendium. As someone who had before played exclusively on computer it really bridged the gap to tabletop and led me to meet what are now some of my best friends. And I believe it can do the same for others. Is this a forlorn hope? Would developing even (relatively) simple online components alongside the newest iteration of D&D be prohibitively expensive? If it could be done, SHOULD it be done?
"Ha! Rock beats scissors!" "Darn it! Rock is overpowered! I'm not playing this again until the next edition is released!" "C'mon, just one more." "Oh, all right..." "Wait, what is that?" "Its 'Dynamite' from the expanded rules." "Just because you can afford to buy every supplement that comes out..." "Hey, it's completely balanced! You're just a bad DM for not accommodating it." Spoiler:
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RPGs are getting more popular, and whenever something gets more popular, it inevitably changes, usually becoming more palatable to the masses. Nintendo is the perfect example. In the old days their games coined the term "Nintendo hard" to extend play time, but they knew their fans were dedicated enough to play anyway. Now they mostly make stuff a five year old can master. That's not necessarily bad, though. Most of those old Nintendo games were infuriating. Likewise, a lot of old RPGs were too complex and irritating for the average person to really get into. Rules light systems are going to get more popular as more people enter the hobby, simply because the new people aren't bound by nostalgia, and would rather play something easy and fun than something that takes a huge amount of effort to learn.
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6 months ago ::
Nov 24, 2012 - 12:24AM
#2
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Date Joined:
Nov 30, 2010
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I won't be surprised, even the first D&D books had announcement of DDI stuff to appear on the future, i even remember a tool that allow you to render and design how your character could look on a 3d model.
Virtual Tabletop was meant to be a software with full 3d support, something no other virtual tabletop can accomplish.
Adventure tools was meant to be more than just a monster builder for example and it never got out of beta before it was scrapted for an online monster builder.
Most people i know that play D&D, only have a few D&D books...that are shared between the group and a single DDI account shared between them, on my current online group, atleast half of us had DDI account, but the low amount of monthly new content and the painfully bad silverlight builder reduced to only 1 subscriber on the entire group, even when i had an active DDI account, i prefered to use the offline builder over the online one....
I always say that DDI and digital tools are the future, more and more people play RPGs online and that number of people will continue to increase over the years...
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6 months ago ::
Nov 24, 2012 - 12:27AM
#3
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Many of the people who worked on 4e are working on next, so there no reason not to expect the same level of polish when the product ships.
My two copper.
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6 months ago ::
Nov 24, 2012 - 12:30AM
#4
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Date Joined:
Nov 30, 2010
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Nope, there aren't as many people working on D&DNext from 4e...the head is too busy with his own game, 13th Age...and some of the best designers are not active on D&DNext development at all...Mearls is probably one of the worst 4th edition designers
Here is 2 of his biggest contributions to 4th edition D&D:
1. Original Assassin (shroud assassin): who is terrible at it's job, can't do anything beside of what he is meant to do...that he do badly, with a complicated and useless striker feature...and is made of tissue paper (controller HP)
2. Battle Cleric options...with a single feature and the lack of knowledge of how multiclass and hybrid works, he made the broken Battle Cleric Lore...wish if you have Healer Lore, you can replace it for this feature...that grant you scale mail prof and +2 shield bonus when not wearing shields...You can get Healer Lore just by spending a feat to MC into cleric and Cleric Hybrid get Healer Lore for free...
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6 months ago ::
Nov 24, 2012 - 12:50AM
#5
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Nope, there aren't as many people working on D&DNext from 4e...the head is too busy with his own game, 13th Age...and some of the best designers are not active on D&DNext development at all...Mearls is probably one of the worst 4th edition designers
Here is 2 of his biggest contributions to 4th edition D&D:
1. Original Assassin (shroud assassin): who is terrible at it's job, can't do anything beside of what he is meant to do...that he do badly, with a complicated and useless striker feature...and is made of tissue paper (controller HP)
2. Battle Cleric options...with a single feature and the lack of knowledge of how multiclass and hybrid works, he made the broken Battle Cleric Lore...wish if you have Healer Lore, you can replace it for this feature...that grant you scale mail prof and +2 shield bonus when not wearing shields...You can get Healer Lore just by spending a feat to MC into cleric and Cleric Hybrid get Healer Lore for free...
Whatever buddy. I'll let you keep all that hate to yourself 
My two copper.
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6 months ago ::
Nov 24, 2012 - 1:27AM
#6
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Date Joined:
Jan 29, 2005
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Nope, there aren't as many people working on D&DNext from 4e...the head is too busy with his own game, 13th Age...and some of the best designers are not active on D&DNext development at all...Mearls is probably one of the worst 4th edition designers
Here is 2 of his biggest contributions to 4th edition D&D:
1. Original Assassin (shroud assassin): who is terrible at it's job, can't do anything beside of what he is meant to do...that he do badly, with a complicated and useless striker feature...and is made of tissue paper (controller HP)
2. Battle Cleric options...with a single feature and the lack of knowledge of how multiclass and hybrid works, he made the broken Battle Cleric Lore...wish if you have Healer Lore, you can replace it for this feature...that grant you scale mail prof and +2 shield bonus when not wearing shields...You can get Healer Lore just by spending a feat to MC into cleric and Cleric Hybrid get Healer Lore for free...
Whatever buddy. I'll let you keep all that hate to yourself
Actually, he forgot Heroes of Shadow and Mearls' whole excuse of "interesting fluff is a good excuse for bad mechanics" quote from the reaction to HoS. Basically, a reaction to the Vampire and Binder being absolutely worthless at doing anything mechanically.
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6 months ago ::
Nov 24, 2012 - 1:29AM
#7
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Date Joined:
Jul 29, 2012
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Aside from PDFs of books, I have no desire for e-D&D (tools, builders, blah, blah, etc), just books , thank you.
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6 months ago ::
Nov 24, 2012 - 2:13AM
#8
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Mearls terrible record of being offensive towards and totally misunderstanding the needs and desires of 4th Edition fans even when he was working on 4th Edition is a large part of why many 4th Ed fans have so little faith in his ability to reflect any of what made the edition popular (and it WAS the best selling RPG in the world for 3 years) in Next.
And judging from what he's been Tweeting, that lack of faith is totally justified.
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6 months ago ::
Nov 24, 2012 - 3:48AM
#9
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Date Joined:
Sep 17, 2004
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Mearls terrible record of being offensive towards and totally misunderstanding the needs and desires of 4th Edition fans even when he was working on 4th Edition is a large part of why many 4th Ed fans have so little faith in his ability to reflect any of what made the edition popular (and it WAS the best selling RPG in the world for 3 years) in Next.
And judging from what he's been Tweeting, that lack of faith is totally justified.
Who was responsible for the massive screw-up that was Essentials, out of curiosity?
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6 months ago ::
Nov 24, 2012 - 4:14AM
#10
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Date Joined:
Jan 29, 2005
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Mearls terrible record of being offensive towards and totally misunderstanding the needs and desires of 4th Edition fans even when he was working on 4th Edition is a large part of why many 4th Ed fans have so little faith in his ability to reflect any of what made the edition popular (and it WAS the best selling RPG in the world for 3 years) in Next.
And judging from what he's been Tweeting, that lack of faith is totally justified.
Who was responsible for the massive screw-up that was Essentials, out of curiosity?
Essentials was Mearls.
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