The Business: What Happens When A Product Depending Upon Network Effects Frays Its Network?

Daddy Warpig and Dorrinal spent last night's episode on Geek Gab talking about the Baldur's Gate games (and a few other things).

Both of them are Friends of the Retreat. Both of them know my take on Conventional Play and videogames. It should be no surprise when I say that the reason most people who played any of the BG series think well of them is because Vidya as a medium does Conventional Play better across the board.

Which leads to a question that Tabletop Bro, maybe without realizing it, asks: what would it take to supplant Current Edition?

TLDR: You have to break the Network Effect.

There is only one way to do that successfully: produce an alternative that does what the users' Revealed Preferences are better than the established offering. This is how World of Warcraft superceded Everquest to become the top MMORPG- a feat that has not yet been repeated, though many have claimed to try and a few even made the attempt (as Final Fantasy XIV has done, and is doing).

But first, that established Network needs to be frayed. A would-be supercessor needs to identify the established user network's Revealed Preferences, identify ways to filter out the useless boat anchors among them, and then start talking up their alternative by (a) acknowledge the lack in the top dog and (b) how the alternative satisfies that lack in ways that the users want to hear.

Remember that these publishers can't rely on the government to pick winners and losers the way that militaries and law enforcement agencies do when awarding arms contracts to manufacturers.

Which means that the only leverage they have is their network. That is not trivial, but it isn't insurmountable either. It's a matter of consistent identification of the failure of the target to do what the users want, which means maintaining conversations with the users that expose and confirm those Revealed Preferences.

Then, when making the alternative, be as close to what the users' like as possible while delivering on the Revealed Preferences. This is how Vanilla WOW did it. It took a game with mandatory grouping to do anything and gutted all amost all of it in the open world- only Elite Quests/NPCs and Instances remained.

Back in 2004, that was huge. WOW has only gone harder in that direction since, making it more and more convenient to the users, and FF14 has become the only viable competitor due to addressing the Revealed Preferences of WOW's users better than WOW does in many respects- but not yet enough, or well enough, to supercede WOW and become The Only MMO That Matters.

What does Current Edition fail to do that its users want of it?

Videogames solve all of them. That's why Sorcerors By The Sea wants to turn Current Edition into one. That's why so many lapsed tabletop players play videogame versions instead. It's not like the user network isn't fraying; it's that no one is even trying to take advantage of this situation for their own advantage.

I'm going to bet that the first party in the tabletop scene that successfully gets Current Edition's users to see that their alternative solves all of their core organization and content problems is going to supercede Current Edition.

Right now, that's the Bros- proving again that only D&D can beat D&D.