I think a lot about the backend math to games production and how to change it. So here is a starting point: most major corporations do not care about the content of the book as such: they are trying to slot something they make into what they see as a market opening.
This is achieved by paying sub poverty wages to a large number of people which generates unmotivated and large work teams none of which receive much of anything beyond a one time payment for services rendered. This puts an impetus on freelancers to constantly find gigs.
The lack of recurring payment for many is to produce profit paid out to shareholders, investors, managers and other individuals whose job is not making a book. There are also enormous expenditures on marketing (if I call you a good marketer or capitalist it isn’t a compliment)
By normalizing this wage structure, large gaming companies can point to their razor margins as evidence they cannot pay more because their only model for making a book is, overall, quite expensive and requires selling a truly massive number of copies (hence marketing)
These large (and often expensive) books have a skewed ratio of “noise” to “signal” (or “fluff” to “useable content”). Pages of useless backstory, elaborate staging for predetermined encounters, mechanics for set pieces and minimalist areas for exploration.
When I say “fuck WotC” I’m not really interested in attacking someone’s personal relationship with material but the system of exploitation that makes it. Most people learn to be comfortable serving a hegemonic game system that has high degrees of name recognition to boost them
Running, promoting, streaming, writing and blogging about major corporations is either seeking a job in a system based on gouging away at customers or buying their product as it allegedly changes the market when they take even a milktoast stand on issues of social justice
There’s a sucker born every minute because no one thinks to say “hey sucker 5e is a serviceable system but playing it is supporting a rapacious company with few, if any, redeeming features that encourages moral cowardice and wage theft.” Stop letting people get took by fast talk
The reason any of big ticket companies make “progressive” overtures is so they can continue to persist—despite their utterly regressive and loathsome pay structure and management culture—and advertise to you without getting told to fuck off. It’s not about principles.
A principled WotC would address the exploitive nature of DMs guild contracts, the distribution of pay, the ownership of IP, the generationally compounded problems of setting assumptions and would work on making something like the idealized D&D that exists in its defenders heads
Principled majors would take accountability for their many lapses of judgement and taste in hiring, publishing and general employee treatment—because people don’t like thinking about how their sausage is made and where their money goes (not to creators that’s for fucking sure)
A fan base who actually cares would continually pressure their hero to do better rather than treating all criticism as defiling their childhood and attacking them personally. There’s a reason our scene is so easily filled with missing stairs: people don’t want accountability
I have outstanding projects but I’ve been focused on issues of wage, better hiring practices, fair and transparent contracts and offsetting environmental damage. I’m publishing my backend math from now on and dare a major to post the pay and royalties for each credit
If you care about issues of social justice: stop buying identity washed corporate projects that offer as little substantial change as a bank that practiced redlining and discriminatory lending hanging a Black Lives Matter banner while continuing to profit from inequality
