Penny Arcade - Comic - Dark Portents From The Wizard's Orb
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Penny Arcade - Comic - Dark Portents From The Wizard's Orb
Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.
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An enthusiast like Gabe, who already revers 4th Edition above all other iterations, is not about to part with significant portions of his disposable income for digital trifles that add nothing to the experience. And he is far closer to representing an actual cross-section of the TTRPG demo than the mythical customer Hasbro is trying to peddle this stuff to.
edit: Corrected Mattel to Hasbro
Sorry, my bad. I get them mixed up. I'll correct my post.
They very much feel like they're trying to make the TTRPG business fit their general toy business. Hasbro really bought WotC for Magic: The Gathering and other TCGs it dabbled with. The idea of releasing a new set of boosters every several months fits in really well with how Hasbro did new theme sets of GI-Joe figures back in the day even if the product in hand is different. D&D just came along for the ride because WotC owned it after TSR also bungled it way back. Not knowing how to make D&D a profitable venture and screwing it up in the process has a long history whether it's by a toy company or dedicated TTRPG company.
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It also doesn't help that their CEO died in 2021, and their upper management has been flailing ever since, either.
I'd actually be curious to see long term business data of some of the more established toy companies. I've said before that the last few years have been rough on them because with inflation increasing prices for things like food and shelter that children need to, you know, live, parents squeezed for cash are going to cut down on buying toys. And Hasbro itself doesn't have much in the way of hot properties.
But we also have witnessed multiple toy stores that were big back when GI-Joe and other Hasbro IPs were big go under. Toys R' Us got the most attention but was hardly the only one.
I sometimes look through the toy aisles of Target and the like when seeing if I can find any interesting Lego sets on sale out of curiosity. Part of that is I'm curious current media IPs are popular enough to warrant that kind of merchandise. Part of that is that because the prices on certain toy lines are something I still remember from childhood, I sometimes compare those to the current versions as a very informal measure of long term inflation. And there often isn't much I don't recognize some form of from my own younger years and that suggests toy companies are having a tough time cashing in on modern IPs.
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Common blindspot for executives, and why I have cultivated a virulent distaste for companies cross pollinating their management and not adequately training them up through the ranks. Different products and services require different approaches. For example, something purely digital for which access to can literally be flipped on and off once a customer escalates to the right person is not the same as a physical product that is inherently hazardous and requires a trained and certified technician to physically travel to it and repair it. They have different staffing and training requirements, and vastly different consequences for failing to do so. But largely insulated from consequences shareholder culture pushes treating competent management like universally replaceable cogs just like it does the lower ranks.
The last CEO cost them $3B. I'd say there's limited evidence that not having one now is making things worse than they would be.
This panel did a lot of damage in November 1999
I dont cough up dough for that shit in video games and I am certainly not going to support Hasbro/WotC with any of their future endeavors. I have all my old books and ill think ill play through Dark Sun Shattered Lands again.. for the umpteenth time. (too bad wake of the ravager was such a turd)
If you are referring to their comic on the game, I think our definitions of shilling may not entirely match.
One thing that pops up a lot in the TTRPG discussion space is just how many D&D players are not TTRPG players. They know D&D, and they would rather try to hack D&D into something that works for cosmic horror than learn Call of C'thulu (or Trail of C'thulu, or Delta Green, or Nights Black Agents, etc). They'd rather try to homebrew a crossbow into a machine gun to run a cyberpunk campaign instead of playing Cyberpunk 2020 (or Cyberpunk Red, or Shadowrun, or GURPS Cyberpunk, etc).
So Vampire The Masquerade, or Warhammer 40k, or Cyberpunk Red, or any other TTRPG trying to monetize this heavily would almost certainly flop hard. But D&D might actually have the brand power and enough casual fans who aren't willing to jump ship that they can get away with filling the game with microtransactions.
Personally, I still don't think they can pull it off. I think most DM's are the ones actually buying the materials with their players just cribbing their notes, and so many GM's are used to making their own custom content anyways that trying to sell them shiny corporate stuff is going to make them balk - I don't want fancy 3D graphics on my TTRPG maps, because it makes my homebrew ones look like crap, I want maps that look hand drawn because I can mimic that style. But if anybody could pull it off, it would be D&D, simply because of their ubiquitous name in the industry.
Trying to hamfist a digital service model into meatspace while lacking the conveniences of digital that make it feasible is asking for failure. If they want the profits of a closed ecosystem, they have to offer the features that users want from such, and at a price point that the users will accept in exchange for the loss of autonomy. Charge too much? Fail. Not features/convenience enough offered compared to just running a game in meatspace? Fail. Get too restrictive on creative content and freedom? Fail.
So many ways to fail.
I read the news posts. *shrug*
I think it's poor form to complain about what you view as predatory practices in games, then post reviews of said games while linking to their respective websites or Steam pages. In my humble opinion, you can't decry something as bad, then use your platform to promote it. And before you go there, any press is good press. A story here, and links to the websites is driving traffic to them.
If they post a comic mocking something? Fine. But to then post content about how much fun you're having playing the games, regardless of the business model? Eh. Poor taste. But then creating links that takes you directly to purchase? C'mon, really? That's exactly how these games work. Give the player an immediate dopamine hit, have them open up their wallet, milk a few bucks out of them before they quit. It's a numbers game, and sending more potential people into their maw is shilling. Because I'm sure they're not doing this out of the kindness of their hearts, right?
Then they jump down Wizards of the Coast for offering digital cosmetic bonuses for a digital character sheet or profile on their platform with book pre-orders? For a game where you can literally make up whatever you want? Order a book, get a book, play D&D with your friends, just like every other edition of D&D. What are we mad about?
I guess, for me at least, it was pretty jarring to see one then the other. Consistency and credibility go hand in hand.
How in the world do you construe that as a "review"? Excuse me, "reviews", plural, an even more questionable assertion. Jerry specifically said he hasn't even played the game yet.
I feel like you've invented a very high standard for them. Nigh impossible, really.
I feel the same about your claims that they were "shilling" and that they posted "reviews".
- We have the internet now, any info that becomes available IS available. To anyone. Anytime.
- TTRPG players are masters at just using whatever they please. You can't charge for imagination.
... yet
“Never interrupt your customer when he is making a mistake” -Napoleon
Or they weren't shilling last week when they made a strip that gave the impression that descendant was a very interesting game.
I am also toroughly uninterested in buying either of them, but i don't think the strips influenced me either way.
I mean, that's part of what makes the situation worth being made fun of. That someone at Hasbro think they can apply the same model as a life service game to a product that people can just not buy.
But aren't a lot of die-hard fans also the type to bitch about a new edition not being like the one they like and thus stick to the old edition that they already own and/or homebrew content in that edition?
That's not sarcasm, by the way. Really asking. I am not a player and have vey limited knowledge of TTRPG, but from the conversation i had with players, that's the impression i got.
Meanwhile, as with everything, the most casual players are just content to buy the most basics stuff and ignore the additional content. The people who buy all the dlc characters in a fighting game are the Fighting Game Comunity, the one who buy a booster of MtG or Yu-Gi-Oh cards every week are the collectors and competitives players.