Ginny Di interviews WotC's Kyle Brink

Continuing the D&D executive producer's interview tour, gaming influencer Ginny Di asks a WotC's Kyle Brink about the OGL and other things.

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[dave2008]

yes, but then why would anyone complain when you replace it with something better. I agree that makes you technically correct that it was not the revocation of 1.0a that was the issue, but you could also say 1.1 would not have been an issue if 1.0a had not been revoked at the same time, as everyone would just have ignored it.

In the end it takes both to become an issue and here the revocation was definitely used in the context of being replaced with 1.1 or 1.2, not with being replaced by a better 1.0b or whatever number you want to choose.

Yes, it is the nature of the replacement that makes the revocation undesirable. I think agree, so I am not sure what your comment is about.

 

[BlueFin]

no registration, no fees over 750k, no sublicensing of the content, that is a significant departure. 1.2 was closer to 1.0 than to 1.1

The point of 1.2 is they left the door gapingly open, in multiple clauses, to go ahead and do all of that at some future point, or indeed to completely pull the rug out of anyone who used that license by voiding it - pretty much at any time they wanted. Like I said, it was more dishonest than 1.1 because of they insidious way they were trying to do, or at least leaving the possibility to do, those same things.

Unfortunately the level of distrust they have created with me is I still ask myself “where is the trap“? Sure, releasing to the CC is a fantastic thing and a great move. But by leaving 1.0a “untouched“ they (to me, and at this point), are still leaving the door open to try to deauthorise it in the future. That would change of course if they do go ahead and release the 3.5 SRD into CC but that is unknown at this point.

By continuing to be disingenuous with many of his answers (IMO) KB is not changing my opinion that they are going to try ‘something’ in the future.

And I am ‘devastated’ by it all - in a sense. I mean it doesn’t affect my personal life or my happiness or whatever, and I am happily moving on to a bunch of other games. But I have loved watching the popularity of D&D explode over the last decade - like many, I started playing in the 80s when it was much maligned, and those who played were often bullied for being nerds and whatever. So seeing D&D become what it has has been wonderful. I have been especially excited by the prospect of a hopefully decent movie and maybe tv series. But now wotc have gone and sh*t all over it and for me, they have poisoned the well. Right before what should have been an amazing few years with the movie, 1D&D and the 50th anniversary and all that.

What idiots.

 

[BlueFin]

I actually think this is probably one of the comments that is more honest and less in need of spin if true. If they really were already revising things and thinking a new version was almost ready to release I can totally understand thinking it better to wait a bit and release it along with an initial statement. But the longer it took to get everyone on board to release it the more important they might have felt that whatever they put out be closer to an acceptable version, meaning even more changes to go through getting approval on. And then they get stuck in a cycle of continuuously delaying and wanting to make more changes. Yeah it ended up delayed a long time but it's not unreasonable for them to think at the time it might have been the right initial decisions and Kyle acknowledged that in hindsight made things worse

That’s all fine and all, but you’re responding to a statement I didn’t make

 

[BlueFin]

I disagree. I think at that point, anything WotC would have said would not have mattered. After the first leak, they lost the opportunity to tell their story, no matter how true. They would have been called liars and so on.
People want to believe that the corporations are the bad players.

What made them look like liars, more than anything else, was the astoundingly bad 1st response (it's hard to find a superlative expressive enough to describe how bad it was). A decent PR rep could have come out with a more or less immediate response to get ahead of the story. But instead they let a week go by for anyone and everyone else to set the narrative. Perhaps the people inside wotc should undertake an activity where they go through different scenarios, and try out different responses and see how they work out ... oh, wait

My personal opinion: I think the 3pp who were under NDA and leaked everything did it in a way to deal maximum damage. They could probably have either came out earlier or later or actually try to do it without going public.

I think the way wotc have behaved demonstrates this likely isn't the case.

 

[mcmillan]

I find these answers to be completely incongruous, because if No 1 was true, then it would be the most obvious thing in the world to come out immediately and say "no, no, please don't worry, we know 1.1 was wrong and we have moved on. We'll have a new version soon".

That’s all fine and all, but you’re responding to a statement I didn’t make

You said you found the two statements incongruent and the obvious approach is was too comment immediately. My explanation was why I think they are compatible and reasonable that they thought at the time the obvious approach was to wait. If you're trying to make a different point it could use clarifying

 

[bedir than]

A decent PR rep could have come out with a more or less immediate response to get ahead of the story.

Crisis communications almost never happens this quickly, on anything that doesn't involve lives lost.

The crashed train in Ohio still hasn't said why it happened.

Corporations aren't designed to act quickly.

 

[BlueFin]

That’s all fine and all, but you’re responding to a statement I didn’t make

You said you found the two statements incongruent and the obvious approach is was too comment immediately. My explanation was why I think they are compatible and reasonable that they thought at the time the obvious approach was to wait. If you're trying to make a different point it could use clarifying

I shouldn't really need to clarify because I was clear.

My subsequent point is (which I didn't bother to explain) - In your response you said "If they really were already revising things and thinking a new version was almost ready to release I can totally understand thinking it better to wait a bit and release it along with an initial statement". I never suggested that they should have released the updated version immediately, but rather that, if it were true that they had already moved on from 1.1, then, as I wrote elsewhere -

A decent PR rep could have come out with a more or less immediate response to get ahead of the story. But instead they let a week go by for anyone and everyone else to set the narrative.

There is a lot of evidence that the statement they had already moved on from 1.1 is a lie corporate BS (in the various incongruent statements KB has made in the three interviews so far).

But if you're saying that you understand they thought it was better to wait to release a statement until they could do so with their updated OGL, well, two things -

a) they didn't do that anyway
b) how well did their first response go, after having a week to work on it? As far as PR responses go, one would have to work very hard to come up with a worse one.

 

[BlueFin]

BlueFin said:
A decent PR rep could have come out with a more or less immediate response to get ahead of the story.

Crisis communications almost never happens this quickly, on anything that doesn't involve lives lost.

The crashed train in Ohio still hasn't said why it happened.

Corporations aren't designed to act quickly.

I am from Australia and don't know anything about the "crashed train in Ohio", but on the surface it's a false equivalence because it can take years to work out why a plane or train crash happened. But like I said, I don't know anything about it, maybe it did happen years ago?

But, I am not suggesting they needed to explain the ins and outs of it all, and you're taking what I said out of my full statement, which was that if it were true they had already moved on from 1.1, then a decent PR rep could have come out with a more or less immediate response to get ahead of the story. And that's an important distinction. It really wouldn't have needed to be much, just an honest few sentences - yes we did show a v1.1 of the OGL to some 3PPs; yes we got feedback that it was terrible; we are in the process of revising it. (I'm obviously paraphrasing of course.)

And by "immediate", I mean within, say 2 days? That would be pretty "immediate" for a corporation. Seriously, that would not be hard to do, especially if, as KB claims .... they had already moved on from 1.1.

 

[bostonmyk]

Ginny D really did a great job with the interview and video. Not so subtle of a reminder to myself to not be so judgy about streamers. I hope they're paying Kyle well to be put through the PR paddle machine like this.

Mike

 

[mamba]

The crashed train in Ohio still hasn't said why it happened.

why is not what was being asked here. If a train crashes in Ohio and you hear nothing from the company for three days and no actions were taken (eg to help the insured, etc.) as far as you can tell, then you would not find that acceptable.

This wasn’t about ‘why’, it was about ‘we hear you and are working on it’