The RPGnet Interview
This interview with Steve was conducted by Shannon Appelcline.
Magazine Beginnings
SA: You got your start in the roleplaying industry over twenty years ago, with the formation of White Wolf Magazine. What made you decide to get involved in the publishing side of the industry?
SW: My brother Stewart and I had already written an adventure module called The Secret in the Swamp for FGU’s Villains & Vigilante’s game. We were both in high school at the time, loved V&V and wrote an adventure for it because it was just fun to do. We sent the manuscript to Scott Bizar at FGU never really expecting it to be accepted for publication. To our surprise it was and that served as a validation that we could get our material published in the RPG field and maybe someone would even enjoy reading it. It was a tremendous rush to see the final printed book with the text brought to life in art by Patrick Zircher. That sort of rush, a sort of vanity press type feeling really, was pretty addicting. We wanted more of that. Plus, while we never did it for the money, since Stewart and I were both getting minimum wage at Burger King at the time, even the modest amount we got paid for writing The Secret in the Swamp was a thrill.
Stewart just came up to me during class break during high school one day and said “Let’s start a magazine,”; I said “Sure”; and we got to work that night on the first issue of what would become White Wolf Magazine. We still don’t have those early issues of White Wolf Magazine up at DriveThruRPG or RPGNow yet, partly because I’m not sure I want people reading my high school fiction attempts!
SA: You could put up your 1990 product, White Wolf Adventures, so that people could at least see some of the adventures from those first couple of years of White Wolf Magazine, though I'm not sure it would have the same cachet.
SW: Yes, that was a classic collection well, classic to me anyway. We'll eventually get everything up for download. The dream of the DriveThruRPG is having everything ever published for RPGs available for immediate download 24/7/365. Everything including the original White Wolf issues.
SA: I think it's fair to say that magazines are one of the most difficult and time-consuming types of publications that you can undertake in the roleplaying industry. Would you ever do one again?
SW: No, I wouldn't. The time and purpose for RPG magazines has come and gone. The more recent changes for Dragon and Dungeon are testament to that. RPG news is now instantly accessible at community websites like RPGnet so the news functions of a printed periodical has been replaced by something better. Also, the ad revenue model is difficult in the RPG market where almost every publisher's marketing budget is very tight and where cash flow means it is hard to get paid on time if at all. The circulation size is too small to get much outside-the-industry advertising. As for game content in magazines, it's more economical as a publisher to put the content in a larger supplement work or to sell it in pieces electronically than to put it into a magazine format.
SA: I got the definite impression that Paizo would have been happy to continue Dungeon and Dragon forever, and that it was ultimately Wizards' decision, not theirs.
SW: I think what you say in regards to Paizo is correct and I did not mean to imply that Dragon and Dungeon were failing. Rather, I think that Wizards recognized that content traditionally delivered by printed magazine is now better delivered digitally and that's the road they have chosen now for D&D Insider, Dragon and Dungeon.
Toward White Wolf Publishing
SA: You took over as President of White Wolf in 1993, seceding your brother, Stewart. How'd this come about?
SW: It was a pretty easy decision for everyone. Stewart had partnered with Mark Rein*Hagen in 1991 and the combined White Wolf released Vampire. Mark had almost no interest in running day-to-day business affairs, so those things fell to Stewart, who didn't exactly relish them either. When the success of Vampire put White Wolf into a hyper-growth mode as a company, it made the business part of the business begin to consume all of Stewart's time leaving little time for creative outlet. Meanwhile, I had been gone from the White Wolf for a couple years going through MBA-equivalent training at GE, which had me all hyped up to run a business operation. Coming in to take the business management off Stewart's hands worked perfectly for both of us. It was almost like we planned it to be that way ... only we didn't.
I served as CEO for the next nine years. It was an amazing decade filled with amazing and crazy people. Together we had our share of triumphs and glory and our share of setbacks and tests of friendship, resolve and integrity.
SA: How did being President from 1993-2002 change your view of the industry?
SW: The industry changed so much and so quickly over those nine years that you had to change your views on it every couple years. On the positive side for White Wolf, the period saw a revolution in RPG gaming and live action gaming. I hope it's more factual than immodest to say White Wolf was a leader of that movement.
Within the industry we also saw a sort of generational change. The hobby gaming industry started with distributors and retailers who specialized in other things like craft supplies or model railroads. In many cases, the folks running these operations did not fully understand gaming and were opposed to some parts of it--parts like nearly everything White Wolf released because we had the audacity to create RPGs for readers above 12 years old. During the 90s we saw the industry change so that the distribution and retail network became specialized around gaming and no longer specialized on other product types with gaming as a sideline. That was a welcome change.
Also during this period you saw things like Magic release and Wizards of the Coast ascend; TSR become insolvent and be sold; and the distribution network begin a massive consolidation.
SA: Why did you decide to step down as President of White Wolf in 2002?
SW: I stepped down for a combination of personal and professional reasons. On the professional side, I think that organizations risk becoming too stagnant if they have the same leader for more than a decade. That risk is exacerbated when you have the perception of a family-run business. I felt it was important to show internally at White Wolf and externally to our business partners that White Wolf was not about Stewart or Steve Wieck; it was its own entity and it was run by its capable and experienced staff, not by its family owners.
I had been schooled in business management at GE and part of the GE culture was that a business leader plans for their secession because GE is not about any one person. Mike Tinney took over as CEO of White Wolf has been doing a great job, and he's doing it differently and better than I would have done it.
There were personal reasons at work for me as well. I felt I was becoming stagnant in the job which wasn't good for me or the company. My wife and I were expecting twins and knew the first year of raising twins isn't easily matched with the job of being a CEO. Finally, we also wanted to relocate to Vancouver and being a remote CEO of White Wolf isn't really an option.
Getting DriveThruRPG Going
SA: I suppose that explains the two-year interim before the release of your next--and current--endeavor, DriveThruRPG. Why PDFs?
SW: Over the years at White Wolf we witnessed the growing frequency of digital piracy of the titles we published. In the late 90's it was one incident every couple months, but that ramped up to the point that around 2002 it was one incident every couple days. We poured so much blood, sweat and tears into the new World of Darkness not to mention the company's financial resources, only to see the title get pirated within the first few days of its release. It's a very frustrating experience.
We live in an era of digital piracy. We knew we weren't going to change that. We also knew that most RPG fans are honest and support their hobby--witness the fans who rallied and saved Palladium for example. Even honest fans though who have no legal way to get a title digitally, but who really want the digital copy, become sorely tempted to download a pirated copy. Many fans want the benefits of digital versions, but they weren't being given the opportunity to get digital versions in a way that supported the hobby. We decided to change that and offer White Wolf titles digitally.
We also thought that if we were going to offer digital RPGs, then we ought to make it a separate business from White Wolf and ask all the other RPG publishers who were experiencing the same problem, to join us. I spent six months talking with other publishers, most of whom I had known for years, and with few exceptions they agreed to join us. Thus DriveThruRPG was born.
SA: One of the biggest controversies in DriveThruRPG's early life was its decision to go with a Digital Rights Management (DRM) model. Did this come about due to your initial focus in offering DriveThru as an alternative to piracy?
SW: Yes. When I spoke with other publishers about offering their titles digitally, the number one question was "What about piracy?". Everyone, including us, was concerned that offering digital versions could lead to more piracy not less. DRM turned out to be flawed in many respects and a bad decision on our part. We learned our lessons and moved away from it six months after DriveThruRPG launched. All of our publishers partners were very supportive of the transition as were fans, our traffic and sales immediately increased the day we did away with DRM.
SA: One of the things that impresses me the most about DriveThruRPG is how well it did. You came into an already developed market where RPGnow was an existing market leader, and you made such a name for yourself that RPGnow is now your partner. Do you attribute this success solely to those industry connections you mentioned, or was there more?
DriveThruRPG's existence can be attributed to James Mathe who started RPGNow and pioneered the market for download RPGs. James started RPGNow the same year Apple launched iTunes, back when digital delivery was still mostly a concept for all entertainment media. Without RPGNow pioneering the market, DriveThruRPG would not exist at all.
In terms of then having to compete with RPGNow, undoubtedly the primary factor that allowed us to compete successfully was our selection of top RPG brands and publishers which were not available on RPGNow. Having pre-existing professional connections with top RPG publishers like George at Eden or Christian at FFG or John Z. at AEG certainly helped. It is far easier to work with someone you already know and trust. At the same time, these publishers are used to having to treat their RPG hobby like a business in order to keep their doors open, and they didn't come to us or stay with us because of a good old boy network, they did it because we structured our business around benefiting their fans and thereby their business. We did a lot of things that RPGNow wasn't doing in order to earn the publishers' business.
I think there are other factors that helped us a lot as well. Some of the already established electronic publishers came on board with us quickly and were very supportive. We also aggressively went after content that was out of print. Here again industry connections did help, like when I tracked down Scott Bizar at FGU fifteen years after he had published The Secret in the Swamp! So, I already knew folks like Scott or like Marc Miller of Traveller fame and we worked with them to bring back their out of print titles as PDFs. In other cases, we did the grunt work to find the people who held the rights to classic titles and made our introductions. It's a process that continues. I was just speaking with Rick Loomis of Flying Buffalo about making their old titles available as PDF again.
SA: The availability of out-of-print material is certainly something that I find advantageous in the PDF space. Could you expand on some of the other things that DriveThruRPG did that RPGnow wasn't?
SW: One example was that from day one of DriveThruRPG operation, we had full-time staff and equipment set-up to digitize the older, out-of-print titles. For someone holding rights but not actively publishing any longer, it was an easier proposition for them to accept when we could say "just ship us one copy of each of your old titles and we'll do everything else and start sending you royalties". In some cases, we have even gone into the secondary markets like eBay and purchased hard-to-get titles which publishers no longer had copies of themselves. Our passion has been to make every RPG ever published available and we set-up our business to reach for that goal.
In short, we were hitting the pavement to find the content and then working to get it online in ways that RPGNow was not.
On the other hand, RPGNow focused on being a great marketplace from a technical point of view. RPGNow had developed tons of customer and publisher features that DriveThruRPG did not have. Many of these features made it easier for electronic-only RPG publishers to serve their fans and generally conduct business more easily on RPGNow. DriveThru had several publisher tools and customer features that RPGNow did not have, but with a programming focus and years of headstart, RPGNow was superior in this area.
The Future of PDFs
SA: We've talked some about DriveThruRPG as a replacement medium, providing an alternative to electronic piracy and an alternative to hunting down old out-of-print products. From the other side of things, what advantages do you think the medium has in-and-of itself?
SW: People laud RPG PDFs for advantages like portability and the wonderful things you can create by copying and pasting select pieces. Certainly, it's convenient to take your entire collection to your friend's house all on your laptop, or to create your own custom spellbook printout from a dozen different d20 spell supplements.
I think some less-obvious advantages that PDFs have brought to the RPG hobby get overlooked. For example, PDFs have a +5 convenience bonus to buying. As we gamers have aged, it's not as easy to get down to the FLGS each week to pick up something for the weekly game, but you can browse, buy and download an adventure off DriveThruRPG and be reading through it all in a few minutes. When something is more accessible it naturally gets used more and that has been a boon for RPGs fans and publishers.
Another advantage is that the format allows for a short form content that wasn't previously available outside of magazines and then it may not necessarily have been the short articles most interesting to you. Publishers can't print a supplement for a single prestige class description, and sixteen-page adventures are not economical to print and distribute physically either. The RPG PDF market has opened up the ability for micro-supplements which let fans really customize what resource material they want to get.
Finally, the PDF market has opened up RPG creation to a whole new batch of creators. We now carry over 500 publishers' titles at DriveThruRPG and most of those did not exist before the RPG PDF market. The combination of the PDF market and the Open Game License swept away the economic barriers to entry in the RPG market and gave rise to lots of new creative voices. We wouldn't have publishers like Adamant Entertainment or cool RPG props from folks like Skeleton Key or Fat Dragon if a PDF market weren't available as a launch point.
To put some numbers to it, DriveThruRPG averaged over 8 new releases every single day last year. Fans who are only checking out what's new in print are missing out on the majority of RPG releases. PDF enabled that.
SA: Do you foresee any notable changes in PDF technology or sales in the near future?
SW: One of the more exciting things coming this year for RPG PDFs is Wizard's digital edition plans for 4e D&D. With more 4e content coming from Wizards in PDF format, a lot more RPG fans will be experiencing the advantages of digital editions. I am optimistic that this will grow the overall market for RPG PDFs as it becomes more natural for RPG fans introduced to PDFs this way to then seek out some of the best 4e compatible Open Game License titles on DriveThruRPG.
White Wolf has been experimenting with several direct to PDF releases like their Storytelling Adventure System (SAS) titles. I expect those experiments with short form releases will continue. On the technology front, we have had several dialogues with our publisher partners about packing more technology features into PDF titles. Some wickedly cool things have been done in the past like embedded audio and adjustable stat adventures that work for multiple level ranges of PCs. We’d like to see more of these experiments, but the general consensus from publishers is that the market is not rewarding those extra features with extra sales of the title. If there is no economic incentive for publishers to push the envelope, then we may not see many new experiments. We let our publishers know that we’re prepared to support anyone who is willing to try new PDF technology experiments, and we hope someone will step forward and lead the market in this aspect.
The Future of DriveThruRPG
SA: Looking toward the future, how has the merger with RPGnow changed DriveThruRPG itself?
SW: The merger has been really transformative for us. Sorry to sound like a broken record repeating the same song line here, but our mission being to have every RPG available 24/7/365 world-wide, the merger instantly brought that a lot closer to reality. The selection on both sites DriveThruRPG and RPGNow jumped dramatically with the merger. It seems to have helped fans of either site find more titles of interest which means more creators are getting connected to more fans.
With the merger, we went from being a micro-size company to being merely a small company. That modest change in scale has been enough to get a lot more resources to work in a concerted way to support the still nascent PDF market. Before the merger, RPGNow and DriveThruRPG each had competing programming efforts to imitate features each other introduced, now we have those same resources working together rather than working in divided, parallel tracks.
In the year ahead, we'll be further expanding our technical staff and using that combined resource to make a lot more improvements. Most of the improvements we make are more evolutionary than revolutionary. Fans might browse DriveThruRPG one day and see something new: "Hey, there's this new little in-page flash preview thing that lets me flip through thumbnails of the book pages". All these small improvements add up so fans can find the RPG resources they want more easily and quickly.
Some of the things planned for this year are improving the amount of community reviews we have on site. We'll start offering customer rewards for customers who take a moment to review titles, and we'll see if can we twist your arm to let us link to RPG.net's great review resources. We’d also like to add the option for publishers to leave a short audio commentary on their titles to let fans hear directly from the creators what’s cool and useful about a title.
We want to push further into some content areas. Our selection of music to accompany RPG game sessions should be much better than it is currently. We should also be offering a lot more stand-alone download card and board games.
SA: Besides board and card games, you've also pushed quite a bit into adjacent industries with your comic book and fiction sites. How successful are those relative to roleplaying PDFs?
SW: Our fiction sites have been been doing fine though they are much smaller in traffic and volume compared to DriveThruRPG. The interest in reading novels on screen is not as great as something more visual and reference-oriented like RPGs, but some readers are using the format and we like having popular sci fi, fantasy and horror fiction available.
DriveThruComics is still a small enterprise that continues to steadily grow. We're adding more publishers and content each week. I think the download model will continue to grow and be a viable way to connect comic fans and creators, but it's an uphill battle. Most of the top comic publishers have expressed a desire to do nothing right now like DC (aside from Zuda) or do their own thing like Marvel's recently launched digital comic subscription service. On the other end of the size spectrum, independent creators are used to a web comic model instead of download model for getting their work known and trying to get fans to support their creative efforts.
So far, DriveThruComics has largely been existing in the middle ground between those size extremes, working with some great independent publishers like Phil and Kaja Foglio's Airship Entertainment or Archaia Studios whose Artesia title I zealously pundit to anyone who will listen. There have also been some natural RPG crossovers like Tarol's Goblins comic and of course Kenzer's Knights of the Dinner Table.
As a fan of digital goods, I prefer the download it and own it model vs. the subscription model such as what Marvel has adopted. The same debate is going on in music downloads now with Apple's model vs. Real or others with subscription models. Personally, I want to be able to take download comics on the bus or the plane on my laptop and not worry about an internet connection. I want to feel like I own my copy of the work, not pay money out each month and have nothing at the end to show for it. Unless we get a strong voice from our customers, we'll continue to push for the download model in comics.
As a company, we do have personal interests leading us to establishing download PDF marketplaces for other publishing categories. For example, we are just starting www.EcoBrain.com which focuses on resources to learn how to live more "green". We spoke earlier about the advantages of digital copies, and certainly one of them is that they are far more ecologically friendly compared to the natural resources required to print and ship physical books. As we all consume more reading material digitally, we'll see a great positive change on the use of natural resources.
SA: Besides EcoBrain, and the various advances we talked about for DriveThruRPG already, any other plans for expansion in the near future?
SW:Yes, several actually. We're going to be working on non-English versions of the RPG sites starting with German, French and Spanish. There are a lot of great original RPG titles in those languages that we'd like to see available to fans digitally. It would also be nice to get the libraries of translated RPG available.
We're also looking at sports training as an area that would interest us in setting up a PDF marketplace. It would offer resources for anyone from Dad's like me who have been drafted into coaching their kid's soccer team and had no clue how to run a soccer practice to tri-athletes wanting to improve their swim stroke. The material is often very visual and more for reference than reading in long spells at a time, so it's the sort of thing that works well as eBooks.
SA: I look forward to seeing these advances in the future. Thanks for taking the time for this interview!
