Pathfinder 1E Pathfinder outselling D&D

Dannager · Jul 6, 2011

Morrus said:
I can certainly understand criticisms of WotC. I have my own. But what on earth leads anyone to believe that the DDI model does not work?

I see no evidence that this is the case. I have seen may esitimated DDI subscription figures based on various things (the mosty common being related to the number of members of a WotC social group only accessible by DDI members, and which has an astonishingly high member count).

The DDI model, by all appearances so far, seems to work. It seems to work better than the "print loads of books and hope people buy them" model. It might not be our own individual preference, but I see no room for implication that it's not working.

Paizo's book sales have nothing to do with this. What we're looking at is WotC's attempt to shift the marketplace. Whether they'll be ultimately successful or not is another discussion, but trotting out Paizo's book sales vs. WotC's is as silly at this point as comparing Paizo's book sales vs. Blizzards WoW book sales. Hey - Pathfinder is bigger than World of Warcraft! [Hint - it isn't, but Paizo does probably sell more books].

WotC is attempting to shift the market to an online subscription model. A model that has lower costs, and thus higher profitability. Hell, many CRPGs have gone free-to-play and relied on in-game micropayments. Are we going to say that Zynga (that producers of Farmville) are unsiccessful because they haven't sold any DVDs of their game? It's currentl;y valued at $1.5 billion.

We don't really know WotC's subscription numbers. We can guess. We can use evidence such as that above. But we don't know. But there is a lot of evidence that DDI is succeeding and none that I'm aware of that it is not. And comparing books sales to a company that's moved to online subscriptions as its primary revenue base is just silly.

WotC's book sales are low because WotC has stopped selling books. WotC is closer (in nature, not size) to Blizzard than Paizo.

This has to be obvious. It has NOTHING to do with edition popularity. It's about sales venue, and WotC's sales venue is not in the fading FLGS scene. It's in tens of thousands of credit cards buying incremental rules additions each on on DDI and using their Character Builder and other tools.

How is it possible that this isn't obvious? How can people - with a straight face - use book sales in FLGSs as a basis of a game's popularity in the 21st century? Really?

We sold a crap load of WotBs adventures in various venues. The big one was the EN World subscription. I guarantee it sold more copies than most of the things you see in your FLGS. Your FLGS owner, however, knows nothing of it. Our ZEITGEIST Player's Guide just got 9000 downloads in a week. Survey FLGS's and find one that's even heard of it. The market is moving. It has been for a decade, and over the next decade it will do so more. Asking booksellers about a game's popularity is pointless in this age.

A brilliant post, but a quick nitpick; Zynga's IPO stands between $1.5 billion and $2 billion, but their valuation is between $15 billion and $20 billion. They're ginormous.

Morrus · Jul 6, 2011

Dannager said:
A brilliant post, but a quick nitpick; Zynga's IPO stands between $1.5 billion and $2 billion, but their valuation is between $15 billion and $20 billion. They're ginormous.

Good nitpick. But that's what WotC is after. They be going online.

Whether they'll succeed or not is another matter. But it's hard to doubt that's their goal, and that book sales just aren't the driving force now for them.

IronWolf · Jul 6, 2011

Dannager said:
When I outlined the model originally, and explained the things a game company would have to do in order to ensure that it followed the model, at what point in there did you believe I was suddenly talking about third-party anything?

I was never not talking about official support, because this is a model for a game's creator to follow. The only thing they have control over is official content.

Though a company can choose to publish their ruleset under a 3rd party friendly license and then reap the benefits of motivated people building tools off of that open content. It actually works pretty well and is a valid approach. It may not be your preferred approach, but it works for a good many of us. And for many of us it works much better than content controlled and regulated entirely by one entity.

Looking at how Paizo has released their content has allowed some quality digital offerings to be produced that help me at the table on a regular basis. Things like PC Gen, Combat Manager, Summoner app for the iPhone/iPad, the Spells app (which includes more than just spells), frameworks for MapTool and more. Even things like Hero Lab are wonderful tools for Pathfinder.

So while you look only at officially released tools, that misses a whole crop of excellent tools that company's have to support their product by simply releasing their ruleset in a manner to allow these tools to exist.

Different strategy? Yes. A valid strategy? Yes. In either case I think it is great that there are options out there for both of us. It doesn't make either inferior.

Dannager · Jul 6, 2011

BobROE said:
I do find it interesting though that WotC's subscription model is in many ways modeled after the payment systems for many MMOs (and no I'm not saying 4E == WoW). And now many MMOs, excluding the really big ones *cough*WoW*cough* are converting to free to play supported by microtransations, where users can pay for what they want. Which is actually much closer to the 3E/Pathfinder system where the rules (SRD/PRD) are free, but all the supplements have a fee.

(and yes I realize that in alot of MMOs the microtransactions are used to buy things that are available in game already, but are just annoying to get)

I'm not sure how far I'd want to see this extended in the TTRPG sphere however, paying 10 cents for a feat (or Power) doesn't really seem like something that would interest me.

The subscription model isn't dead in MMOs; rather, MMO publishers are starting to discover that there isn't room for a hundred different games running on the subscription model. People aren't comfortable investing themselves like that in more than a couple games - the frontrunners, as it were (read: WoW, and whatever flavor of MMO is being touted as this month's WoW-killer). Accordingly, there are a lot of publishers catching on and looking into this microtransaction model.

The reason microtransaction-based MMOs are all the rage now is that they eliminate the need for a large, invested playerbase. Instead of needing 1 million players willing to pay $15 per month, you need 900,000 players willing to play for free, and 100,000 players willing to pay $150 per month to have significant advantages over the other 900,000. This turns out to work fantastically for MMOs that are less popular, but still have a small base of very, very active and very, very invested players. You make your game free to attract the numbers that an MMO needs to be lively, and you charge for tons of little things that your super-hardcore players will gobble up like candy.

In other words, this model doesn't really apply to D&D, where we already have tons of people willing to pay monthly subscription prices.

Dannager · Jul 6, 2011

carmachu said:
No offense, but your full of crap. I was in that discussion, and while heated perhaps about 4e and how its doing, that was NOT the case.

Here's the discussion, please point out, out of the 6 pages, the OVERWHELMING number of posts treating him like the antichrist.

paizo.com - Paizo / Messageboards / Paizo Community / Gaming / D&D 4th Edition / Ramifications of WotC D&D layoffs

carmachu, that thread alone has seen so many post deletions for flagrant rules violations that the first post in the thread isn't even there anymore. He's not full of crap. I was participating in that thread its entire lifetime. The behavior that was seen in that thread and others was deplorable.

Dannager · Jul 6, 2011

BryonD said:
Shrug. The technology exists at the same time as 4E.

Now, combine this technology with a really popular game system and THEN you will have something.

This seems like a lame dig at 4e, so I'm just going to leave it unaddressed.

You misunderstand. A license allowing its use is worthless WITHOUT the ability to actually implement. And both the ability and the license, in both potential and in practice, greatly exceeded 4E.

We disagree. That's fine.

Dannager · Jul 6, 2011

IronWolf said:
Though a company can choose to publish their ruleset under a 3rd party friendly license and then reap the benefits of motivated people building tools off of that open content. It actually works pretty well and is a valid approach. It may not be your preferred approach, but it works for a good many of us. And for many of us it works much better than content controlled and regulated entirely by one entity.

Looking at how Paizo has released their content has allowed some quality digital offerings to be produced that help me at the table on a regular basis. Things like PC Gen, Combat Manager, Summoner app for the iPhone/iPad, the Spells app (which includes more than just spells), frameworks for MapTool and more. Even things like Hero Lab are wonderful tools for Pathfinder.

So while you look only at officially released tools, that misses a whole crop of excellent tools that company's have to support their product by simply releasing their ruleset in a manner to allow these tools to exist.

Different strategy? Yes. A valid strategy? Yes. In either case I think it is great that there are options out there for both of us. It doesn't make either inferior.

I never said it did. But I honestly don't think that is the direction the hobby is headed in. I think that we will see a lot of official digital support, and that third party developers will create apps (as we've seen with 4e) that extend this official support (there are tons of apps, for instance, that allow you to pull data from the Compendium). But the foundation will remain within the company that controls the game system.

I'm A Banana · Jul 6, 2011

Welp, we lasted about 18 pages without people saying that others are full of crap. Not bad for a contentious topic!

It looks like the fortune-tellers can read the bones and determine that WotC might be rocking the online system, or not. But Paizo is clearly rocking the physical system.

Which is awesome, either way you slice it.

Personally, I hope WotC is rocking the online system hard, since there's a lot of new areas there to explore, and they won't do it if there's no money in it.

Jared Rascher · Jul 6, 2011

Morrus said:
Good nitpick. But that's what WotC is after. They be going online.

Whether they'll succeed or not is another matter. But it's hard to doubt that's their goal, and that book sales just aren't the driving force now for them.

For months after I quit playing 4th edition, I kept up my DDI subscription, because I could pay a relatively small monthly fee and tinker with the new stuff they had coming out. I may have even stuck with it if they hadn't shifted from their original tool formal to the totally online format, and to be honest, if it had been 100% online from the beginning, I probably wouldn't have been motivated to change, but I got used to having everything on my own computer and just updating once a month.

That particular concept isn't a bad one. I've recently gotten a free month of Marvel's online comic subscription, and even though I'm much more of a DC fan and have very few Marvel comics I'd read on a regular basis, the small monthly fee to sample what's out there in a given month is actually kind of tempting.

In other words, finding just the right monthly fee to get the generally curious to subscribe and not think about that, let's say, less than $10 a month they have going to the subscription versus the ability to browse what may interest them may indeed be a viable business model.

In fact, while its not online material, per se, I think part of Paizo's success has been the subscription model which insulates them a bit from having clunkers come out from time to time. I think if every one of Paizo's books had to go through the standard distribution model, the sales figures might be a bit different.

carmachu · Jul 6, 2011

Dannager said:
carmachu, that thread alone has seen so many post deletions for flagrant rules violations that the first post in the thread isn't even there anymore. He's not full of crap. I was participating in that thread its entire lifetime. The behavior that was seen in that thread and others was deplorable.

I was there too, and I didnt see half of what he claimed. So unless he can back it up, I call foul.

Because remember, it was the OVERWHELMING NUMBER OF POSTS calling him an antichrist. That didnt happen the way he claimed.

Pathfinder 1E Pathfinder outselling D&D

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