- Joined
- Jul 8, 2022
It doesn't help that Wizards is now run by a bunch of dishonest banker types. They are trying to squeeze Genshin Impact-level money out of a tabletop hobby game, and that kind of money just isn't in the Dungeons and Dragons community. It's a community that makes loads of custom content and usually puts it out for free or just enough money to cover operating costs. They are more likely to raid bits bins or 3d-print their own miniatures than pay $60 for a 3" resin minifigure, and people will take pride in the unique creation they made even if it's of poorer quality because it's theirs.
They are also people who sat down and thought, "Y'know, I could just play a video game with my friends that will know all the rules and implement them unerringly, leaving us to simply play the game, or my friends and I could decide to pour over literal tomes of rules, elect one of us as a referee, then sit around and argue with our hopefully-benevolent tyrant whenever there is a an issue with the pen and paper rules that needs debugging, and the dopamine reward for all of this is to update our miniature spreadsheet when our characters level up." And they decided to do the latter.
They tried buttering up a clique of amateur lawyers and accountants, and not only that, they had absolutely nothing of substance to distract them from the elephant in the room that is the OGL debacle everyone is still pissed at them for a few months prior. What else were they supposed to talk about at the summit if the PR guy they had knew nothing substantive about the product he was there to push?
According to that video, the corporate guy was very actively talking to the influencers to ask them all what was wrong with their approach and what they could do better in the future, but I guarantee nothing will come out of it. Even if that guy is being genuine and reports back to the executives with what they told him, if they use the feedback at all it will only be to manipulate people into thinking they're approaching things differently. Nothing will actually change. What's more likely is they will not invite those influencers back and opt for more docile influencers who will just tongue their asshole no matter what slop they present to them. They bought D&D because they want an absolute monopoly over tabletop roleplaying. They aren't interested in the hobby, they probably hate the hobby and think it's just a bunch of sweaty losers spending a friday throwing chunks of plastic around a table doing nothing productive, but they have money and the corporation wants to extract it from them.
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