Scott [Rouse, Senior Brand Manager for D&D]: We are looking at various types of payment methods, subscription periods, and pricing options. Our overall goal is to offer a good value to consumers in terms of what they will get for the price paid. The magazines were a great value when you compare price vs content and I don’t foresee this changing as we move online. We have some experience with payment options for consumers without credit cards and we are evaluating several options. Accounts will be user based and can move with you from machine to machine.Looking at those three paragraphs I'm having trouble nailing down exactly what has been decided over at Wizards, because a hell of a lot of stuff still seems to be up in the air. Back at the end of January when the Wizards' announced their new Digital Initiative, did they have anything planned beyond "Ummm, it will be on the internets?"
Chris [Perkins ,D&D Design Manager]: We don’t foresee any lack of “previewability.” There will be ways to preview content and we will be testing a couple preview different options. It would be great to hear how customers would like to preview content. We have not come up with a solution for “portability” of content after your subscription has ended but we are discussing ideas with in our development team. We do not have a DRM solution yet but have a range of options available to us.
Bill [Slavicsek, Director of R&D for D&D]: The content will be updated very frequently, but we can’t get into specifics on this yet. Expect constant small bursts of content that later get collected for ease of reference. As with the magazines, the online content represents only one part of our D&D efforts, and those without Internet access will have other options. We have a great stable of D&D staff and freelancers that we be generating the content.
A Return to the Stars
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After a veeeeerrrryyyy long, and mostly unplanned, hiatus, Stuart and I got
together to play more Stargrave in recent days. It was good! It was also a
bit ...
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Posts
They would do well to model themselves after Pyramid Magazine, in my opinion. An annual $20 for weekly new content and - the biggest draw for me - access to the archives of every past issue.
ReplyDeleteEven if WotC didn't have the print issues available in the online version (like Pyramid does, with few exceptions), a feature like that would make me willing to get a subscription. Given how many people play D&D, I'd be guess that even at the same price as Pyramid, they'd make a fair amount of money on the arrangement.
I hope they're not seriously considering any sort of DRM. It sounds like they're at least poking at the option.
ReplyDeleteI mean, I'm a disinterested party in specific terms, but just as a general gamer who kinda-sorta-cares just because: DRM = The Suck.
Please, WotC, be sane about it.
My account will move "from machine to machine"...
ReplyDeletewhen it becomes self aware, We'll talk.