The 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons has been criticized before for sharing many traits with the massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) industry, but now there is evidence that it was actually designed that way. Recently, Greg Tito's article at The Escapist quoted Andy Collins, a member of the 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons design team:
Collins admitted that 4th edition was influenced by MMOs but was quick to point out that the design took inspiration from many contemporary sources. "As professional game designers, we look at all games for lessons," he said last year. "Certainly, the lessons we learn from online games are going to be the most obvious ones because they have a lot of people familiar with the sources, but there's also lessons about turn management from European board games, interface ideas from card games."
As a follow-up to that article, Ryan Dancey, formerly brand manager of Dungeons & Dragons at Wizards of the Coast and CEO of the Pathfinder MMORPG development company Goblinworks, explained on ENWorld:
In the Escapist articles I am quoted as saying that this process will be like the evolution of the model train hobby. What I could have been more clear about was that my belief in this transformation is driven not by escalating costs (as in the case with model trains) but instead by the lack of an effective acquisition engine to drive new players into the TRPG hobby, and by the continued subtraction from the TRPG social network caused by MMOs.
I've chatted with Dancey about MMORPGs for years. It was the only topic we discussed, actually, whenever I bumped into him at Gen Con (I think that's probably a whole two times) and his article is entirely consistent with our forecasts back then. In discussions on ENWorld Dancey gave some very interesting background to the development of Dungeons & Dragons.
Hasbro, envious of the success of Marvel's superhero properties into a lucrative transmedia juggernaut, gave each of its brands the goal of $100 million annual sales. The problem was that each of Wizards of the Coast's brands were viewed in isolation, which left Dungeons & Dragons, "a $25-30 million business" according to Dancey, in dires traits. The Dungeons & Dragons team hit on the idea of using the online Dungeons & Dragons Insider (DDI) to grow the brand to $50 million and potentially beyond:
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.
Although MMORPGs have been previously cited as an influential part of Dungeons & Dragons' development, this is the first time it has been stated by a former Wizards of the Coast employee that 4th Edition was in fact designed from the start to be virtual table top (VTT) game with the eventual goal of becoming a MMO:
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.
As current players of 4th Edition know, it's taken three years since the virtual tabletop was announced before it reached the open beta stage. In retrospect, Dancey's comments put the release of the Heroes of Neverwinter Facebook game in a new light.
Comments