Pathfinder 1E Paizo Announcement and Prognostication

Dannager · Aug 8, 2011

Mark CMG said:
I have never seen anyone imply that one of the Ds in D&D is for Default.

I put it in quotation marks for a reason. It's default in the sense that D&D has a 90%+ brand awareness and everything else has in the single digits (I don't even know that Pathfinder has a 1% brand awareness), and in the sense that D&D is how the vast majority of current tabletop roleplaying game players have historically been exposed to the hobby.

Mark CMG · Aug 8, 2011

Dannager said:
I put it in quotation marks for a reason. It's default in the sense that D&D has a 90%+ brand awareness and everything else has in the single digits (I don't even know that Pathfinder has a 1% brand awareness), and in the sense that D&D is how the vast majority of current tabletop roleplaying game players have historically been exposed to the hobby.

Your numbers and logic (here and above) elude me. See the discussion tangent between Bryon and myself for my position.

Azgulor · Aug 8, 2011

Dannager said:
Frankly, I don't believe for a second that we'd have this many people playing earlier editions of D&D if it weren't for the fact that Pathfinder RPG was created. Some people would have stuck with 3.5, and some people would have gone to even earlier games, but I think we'd be seeing a lot more eventual converts to 4e. Even moreso had Paizo decided to support 4e.

If you see the "fracturing of the market" as a bad thing, I don't think you can necessarily lay the lion's share of the blame at WotC's feet.

And that's not to hate on Paizo at all. They made a brilliant and ballsy decision, and I don't really believe that people having more options as far as what to play is a bad thing.

I don't see that assertion holding water at all. If there was no PF, I'd be playing Conan, 3.5, or some other system. I wouldn't be playing or running 4e.

Also, when you speak of "fracturing the market", that only applies to D&D. Plenty of gamers played multiple systems prior to 4e and PF. If WotC failed to bring its customer base forward to 4e, they only have themselves to blame.

Dannager · Aug 8, 2011

Mark CMG said:
Your numbers and logic (here and above) elude me. See the discussion tangent between Bryon and myself for my position.

Brand awareness refers to the chance that a random consumer (typically - but not necessarily - limited to the U.S. market) knows about the brand in question. In other words, it is the proportion of consumers who are aware of the brand.

The 90%+ figure is the accepted brand awareness of D&D, and I've seen it cited a number of times both by WotC employees and other industry figures. According to market research, if you walk up to a random person and ask, "Hey, have you heard of Dungeons & Dragons?" they will respond with "Yes," 90% of the time or more. This figure goes a long way towards explaining why the D&D property is valued so highly, for example.

I don't believe there is any other tabletop role-playing game brand that carries anywhere near the same level of brand awareness (licensed properties for which tabletop roleplaying games have been made don't count). As I mentioned above, I'm not even sure that 1% of U.S. consumers would respond to the question "Have you heard of the Pathfinder game?" with a "Yes."

I also mentioned that D&D is a more common "entry point" into the hobby than any other tabletop roleplaying game. I believe that this is also widely accepted as true.

Given the above, I believe that calling D&D the "default" tabletop roleplaying game is hardly a stretch. It's conceivable that this could change, but right now that's the state of things.

Dannager · Aug 8, 2011

Azgulor said:
I don't see that assertion holding water at all. If there was no PF, I'd be playing Conan, 3.5, or some other system. I wouldn't be playing or running 4e.

I don't doubt that.

But I don't believe that you are (in this respect) representative of your average D&D 3.5 player.

Also, when you speak of "fracturing the market", that only applies to D&D.

Yes.

Bedrockgames · Aug 8, 2011

D&D is like jello, it is just synomous with the hobby itself but peoples in tgat 90% dont necessarily know what the d&d brand really is. D&d could vanish tomorrow and the activity would still be called d&d by plenty of people. I even sometimes call game night d&d night and i havent played d&d in ages.

Mark CMG · Aug 8, 2011

Dannager said:
(snip)

Again, please read my other posts in the thread to understand my position. In a nutshell, brand awareness (name recognition) does not equal brand strength. You're holding that up as evidence of something I do not believe translates from brand recognition to brand strength. Given the market, despite brand recognition, one might even argue that "default" is no longer a valid assessment. I'm not sure I would but I can see how the case could be made. I've already conceded "entry point" (in so many words) in my discussion with Bryon, but given the migration away from the entry point by so many, I'm sure that has its own implications on brand strength as well.

Dannager · Aug 8, 2011

Mark CMG said:
Again, please read my other posts in the thread to understand my position. In a nutshell, brand awareness (name recognition) does not equal brand strength.

I didn't say it was.

You're holding that up as evidence of something I do not believe translates from brand recognition to brand strength.

No, I'm not. I'm saying that the fact that the only tabletop roleplaying game most people are aware of is D&D, and the fact that most people start out playing D&D both lend credence to the idea that D&D can be called the "default" tabletop RPG.

What is outlandish about this? I used the word "default" in a certain sense, and that sense is supported by the data.

Dannager · Aug 8, 2011

Mark CMG said:
I've already conceded "entry point" (in so many words) in my discussion with Bryon, but given the migration away from the entry point by so many, I'm sure that has its own implications on brand strength as well.

If 90% of people start out by drinking Coke, and 30% eventually transition to drinking Dr. Pepper, you still want to be Coke. By a long shot.

Mark CMG · Aug 8, 2011

Dannager said:
I used the word "default" in a certain sense, and that sense is supported by the data.

It's a poor choice of words as explained in the remainder of my post that you chose not to quote.

Mark CMG said:
Given the market, despite brand recognition, one might even argue that "default" is no longer a valid assessment. I'm not sure I would but I can see how the case could be made. I've already conceded "entry point" (in so many words) in my discussion with Bryon, but given the migration away from the entry point by so many, I'm sure that has its own implications on brand strength as well.

If the data suggests that PF is doing as well (or even nearly as well) as D&D in the current day market then it stands to reason that when you combine PF and all non-D&D RPG options . . . Again, my above posts explain all of this.

Just as brand recognition (awareness) does not equate with brand strength, neither does entry point equate with default game.

Dannager said:
If 90% of people start out by drinking Coke, and 30% eventually transition to drinking Dr. Pepper, you still want to be Coke. By a long shot.

Not if another forty percent are drinking Pepsi.

Pathfinder 1E Paizo Announcement and Prognostication

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