A discussion of hybrid open source and proprietary licensing models.

["Ryan S. Dancey" <ryand AT organizedplay.com>]

On Wed, 2004-09-22 at 17:01 +0100, Rob Myers wrote:
> Looking at the parts of the D&D IP that you Opened, I'm interested 
> that none of the older campaign settings were opened, although IIRC 
> some have been given to specific members of the community now. And 
> also that the fiction lines weren't opened. This strikes me as 
> strange given the potential for fan (community) buy-in and production 
> in both these areas. Was this ever considered or was it outside the 
> area you were concentrating on? 

Neither the campaign settings(*), nor the fiction, proved to have any
market-testable impact on retention or acquisition.  Both are also good
reservoirs of value.  So Opening them would have not played into our
overall strategy (sell more core rulebooks and improve the game through
distributed development), and opening them would have reduced the amount
of income we could generate by keeping them closed.

Ryan

(*)  In fact, there's a pretty good theory that says campaign settings
are bad for retention.  That is a genie that is out of the bottle
though.  Were I still running the business, the only two campaign
settings being published would be Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms, and
I would not have licensed any of the older settings to any 3rd party for
further development.  My opinion on this matter differs greatly from
that of the present management team.