The Business: WOTC Doesn't Care About Tabletop Adoption Anymore

The Q4 report for WOTC and Hasbro recently had a lot of channels cutting videos or streams like this. You see Roll For Combat do this a few weeks ago.

For all the talk about how bad this is, I notice that WOTC itself is unconcerned.

The commentary on Next Edition's dismal adoption rates, while bad in Tabletop terms, does not matter to the C-Suite and the Big Move. Death Cult signalling aside, what I notice a lot of people are forgetting is what Roll For Combat pointed out: a critical mass of Current Edition player are already wholly dependent upon the Walled Garden, so it doesn't matter because the target audience will blindly and blithly do The Current Thing. WOTC can change what it is digitally, just like Amazon can remotely change what is on your Kindle e-Reader or what buying from them means, and the audience will just go along with it.

Once WOTC's moves to make human Referees irrelevant succeeds, and that remains in the works, that chokepoint is broken and the target audience--which has no problems with Endless Slop--takes over the Most Important Network Node position in the User Network while the old chokepoint holders have their status in the network depreciated completely. Now that target audience becomes the only one worth WOTC's time and resources to serve, so the legacy holdovers are going to get frozen out unless they cave to the social pressure and consume the Endless Slop.

That's the Big Move: cutting out the need for human Referees.

If you think this is not possible, open up Twitter and query Grok to (a) generate a brand-new book-legal Current Edition man for you, (b) generate a five room dungeon for him to delve, and (c) run your man through it. It will deliver on all three points. Will it do that better than the best around? No. Will it do that better than the usual sad sack stuck with the job, or your typical Forever DM? Yes.

Take that, make it able to handle far more and run it on a bespoke Virtual Table Top, and you have where WOTC wants to go. It's doable even to this badly pozzed corporation to pull off. Remember where WOTC is located; they can find plenty of suitable talent, both in terms of skills and political alignment, to do that job.

Why would WOTC care about books sold? That is irrelevant. Between official Organized Play and Beyond users, both of which can be compelled to use the latest edition (and revision therein) at any time, the folks not buying are the irrelevant parties so far as C-Suite is concerned. WOTC is a videogame company now. The print stuff is a legacy holdover that they are slowly phasing out.

In that there is danger, but only if you care about Conventional Play and Normie acceptability. If you don't there is opportunity, but not in the "I am the Apprentice that overthrew and became the Master!" but rather in the "I rule those left behind" sense.

That's what is happening here: the bifurcation of the hobby, where Conventional Play is leaving all remnants of the medium behind because it can no longer satisfy its wants or needs. What remains is the Real Hobby, and those that still don't grok that their paradigm of play is dependent upon a commercial apparantus that no longer wants or needs them--is actively trying to scrape them off like they're barnicles--are the ones who will be confused and angry once that bifurcation is complete and Conventional Play in Tabletop shrivels because the pillar propping it up is no longer there.