4 years of 5E on Amazon: same old same old

Mistwell said:

You can understand that if you can't even remember what magazine name it had, that people might want to check it themselves to see if specific numbers you do recall are accurate, right?

Click to expand...

You realize how many years ago that those interviews occurred? WE are talking DECADES!

I said it was for gaming and hobby magazines, but I truly can't recall which ones they were. It's like me asking who was the publisher for the mathbook you had in 10th grade? If you recall, kudos to you, you have a great memory. Most people aren't going to really recall it off the top of their head amongst all the other things.

Some of them had some pretty good distribution so if they were reading them back then, I'd imagine someone might be able to name at least one of them. I think one was a game type magazine. I know another that I stumbled across in a store and remember reading it while there at the store which seemed to repeat a lot of the same information, and I think it was a computer gaming magazine like PC gamer or Computer Gamer or something like that. Article came out a while after the interview...didn't get a copy of that myself but if I had to guess on those it's going to be sometime between 1992 and 94.

I wish I could tell you more, but it wasn't something I thought was super important at the time. Never thought I'd be defending the financials of TSR on some little board those many years ago. Why would I?

That's about the most detail I can recall, and I actually consider that pretty good considering it was over 25 YEARS ago (that's older than some of the people that are playing today and probably several that are on these boards).

One other thing to know, are the numbers I'm giving are NOT net profit. These are not the PROFIT that you think of, but gross profit, or overall income. So, even if TSR made 75 million, let's say, if they had expenses of 52 million, that only leaves an actual net profit of 23 million. With the 55 million people are stating I think that's probably referring to a gross of the industry, not the net profit everyone is making. Thus that 55 million gross would be more comparable to the gross rather than the net. Just my thoughts on these numbers tossed around.

GreyLord said:

I get sales numbers on other things in the quarterly meetings...and have gotten sales numbers ON D&D previously. I'm not with Hasbro or WotC today, and I'm in the same boat as all of you in this, but there is no reason they should NOT release actual numbers.

Prior to now, such as 2015, D&D was such a small splash that I can understand why there was hardly any implications of it, though MtG was pointed out with some hard numbers. It would be like trying to talk about how much Betrayal at House on the Hill or a smaller enterprise sold that year in relation to everything else.

Now, with how much they are bragging...I WANT to see the hard numbers and find it curious that they don't. It's far easier to make claims like they have without any substance to back it up, than it is when they release hard numbers to show exactly WHERE 5e is and how it's sold comparatively to other parts of WotC. If it is as big as they are claiming then they are pretty close to MtG numbers in some areas. I can see MtG in Walmart (and up until recently at least, and maybe still, Walmart STILL outsold Amazon in the US from what I understand, even if Amazon is pretty big), MtG has far more presence and more players (and it's still not a game as widespread presence in the US as say...Madden Football 2018). If it's as big as MtG in numbers, why am I not seeing that?

I can see better market penetration than ever before, and I even can believe their 9-10 million players (even without their evidence to back it up, after all we have the 25 million AD&D/D&D players from prior to WotC and that has very little evidence too), but what are the hard sales numbers thus far for 2018? Why are they saying they have this many players and then why isn't their market penetration as high as MtG from what I can see?

PS: In the US MtG is still pretty high, not quite as high as AD&D numbers in the past, but it's still doing gangbusters. Worldwide there are more than 20 MILLION MtG players. In the US, if we assume at least 12-15 Million, and over 60K participate in premium events. We should see something similar with D&D players if they are starting to approach those numbers in market penetration and representation in events and local scenes, meaning I should be able to go to nowhere North Dakota and pick up a D&D game set or something similar. I CAN with MtG, even in very rural areas where there are no game stores and almost nothing around but maybe a Walmart.

One other thing to add, with 15 million, if we go by that, we are talking almost 4-5% of all Americans are playing MtG, which is something even the most devout sometimes doubt or wonder. If it's 10 million MtG player that composes around 3% of Americans playing. That means in nowhere South Dakota we'd have a representation out of their 2000 citizens in the city, we'd have 60 players. That's more players than show up at some game shops on a regular basis. We can account for it by large department store sales and otherwise.

So, when WotC claims that you have 10 million D&D players, that means in a high school of 2000, you should have 60 D&D gamers in that school. That's MORE than what you have show up at some hobby stores in cities with 40K or 50K people living in them. A city of 40 or 50K means that you would have 1,200 - 1,500 people playing. ANY game with that many playing it is going to have a pretty good representation in events and other wise in a city that size. This is what I mean by we should see this market penetration everywhere if they are actually this many people playing D&D. WE DID see it in the US during the early 80s fad. WE did NOT see it during the late 80s and 90s. This is why, because I'm not seeing this regularly, I'd like to see hard numbers on the actual sales for 5e.

Click to expand...

I've never done organized play in a store, ever: according to WotC chatter, most people who play do not, either. They play with friends and family, at home. Magic is an inherently more public game than D&D.

GreyLord said:

You realize how many years ago that those interviews occurred? WE are talking DECADES!

I said it was for gaming and hobby magazines, but I truly can't recall which ones they were. It's like me asking who was the publisher for the mathbook you had in 10th grade? If you recall, kudos to you, you have a great memory. Most people aren't going to really recall it off the top of their head amongst all the other things.

Some of them had some pretty good distribution so if they were reading them back then, I'd imagine someone might be able to name at least one of them. I think one was a game type magazine. I know another that I stumbled across in a store and remember reading it while there at the store which seemed to repeat a lot of the same information, and I think it was a computer gaming magazine like PC gamer or Computer Gamer or something like that. Article came out a while after the interview...didn't get a copy of that myself but if I had to guess on those it's going to be sometime between 1992 and 94.

I wish I could tell you more, but it wasn't something I thought was super important at the time. Never thought I'd be defending the financials of TSR on some little board those many years ago. Why would I?

That's about the most detail I can recall, and I actually consider that pretty good considering it was over 25 YEARS ago (that's older than some of the people that are playing today and probably several that are on these boards).

Click to expand...

This post gives me great trust in your recollection. You have said that you are no longer with WotC: care to provide some more details on your perspective there...?

Parmandur said:

This post gives me great trust in your recollection. You have said that you are no longer with WotC: care to provide some more details on your perspective there...?

Click to expand...

Maybe in PMs, but not in public. It was never with WotC directly (nor TSR). I did have access to some things though (indirectly connected because of business stuff). Not something I wish to discuss in public currently.

GreyLord said:

So, when WotC claims that you have 10 million D&D players, that means in a high school of 2000, you should have 60 D&D gamers in that school. That's MORE than what you have show up at some hobby stores in cities with 40K or 50K people living in them. A city of 40 or 50K means that you would have 1,200 - 1,500 people playing. ANY game with that many playing it is going to have a pretty good representation in events and other wise in a city that size. This is what I mean by we should see this market penetration everywhere if they are actually this many people playing D&D. WE DID see it in the US during the early 80s fad. WE did NOT see it during the late 80s and 90s. This is why, because I'm not seeing this regularly, I'd like to see hard numbers on the actual sales for 5e.

Click to expand...

The major disconnect here with you and others who can't believe the numbers is that we're not talking about hobby gamers.

Hobby gamers are not the majority of D&D players.

Recently there was a conversation with someone on this board who plays many games every year at the major conventions in the USA. They said they knew what the population base was like because they played with so many different people. I couldn't convince them that their scope is actually so minuscule as to not matter. Esp. as the samples come from people playing at conventions.

Gen Con, the big convention, is only 60k.

Side note - Players aren't distributed evenly between all population centres. That's just not how that works. If I had to guess, the larger the city, the larger the % of players there, more so if there are major schools there.

Also, the population of North America is 579 million so 15 million is 2.5%.

Here’s an anecdote for you. I live in a medium ish flyover town suburb. My kid and their friends decided to found a D&D group at their high school. They didn’t advertise it anywhere. They sat 40 kids on the first day and had to turn away a lot of other kids. The kids came from all the high school stereotypes.

GreyLord said:

Now, with how much they are bragging...I WANT to see the hard numbers and find it curious that they don't. It's far easier to make claims like they have without any substance to back it up, than it is when they release hard numbers to show exactly WHERE 5e is and how it's sold comparatively to other parts of WotC. If it is as big as they are claiming then they are pretty close to MtG numbers in some areas. I can see MtG in Walmart (and up until recently at least, and maybe still, Walmart STILL outsold Amazon in the US from what I understand, even if Amazon is pretty big), MtG has far more presence and more players (and it's still not a game as widespread presence in the US as say...Madden Football 2018). If it's as big as MtG in numbers, why am I not seeing that?

Click to expand...

First, D&D is sold in WalMart.
Second, WalMart has a tiny book section in general and typically an even smaller board game section. It's not a great place to buy that sort of thing. You really want to go to a book store, game store, or online.

It's not curious that they're not giving sales numbers. They never really have. They didn't throughout 4e either.

GreyLord said:

So, when WotC claims that you have 10 million D&D players, that means in a high school of 2000, you should have 60 D&D gamers in that school. That's MORE than what you have show up at some hobby stores in cities with 40K or 50K people living in them.

Click to expand...

For the first set of numbers, they said NORTH America. Which =/= the United States. The population of NA is around 580 million, as that includes Canada and Mexico. And D&D is big in Canada (long, cold winters and all).
For the second set, the 19 million, they said worldwide...

GreyLord said:

This is why, because I'm not seeing this regularly, I'd like to see hard numbers on the actual sales for 5e.

Click to expand...

Why? What will that prove?

You're talking about three very different things:
a) Number of players
b) Number of PHBs sold
c) Players you SEE playing

As you say:

GreyLord said:

So, when WotC claims that you have 10 million D&D players, that means in a high school of 2000, you should have 60 D&D gamers in that school. That's MORE than what you have show up at some hobby stores in cities with 40K or 50K people living in them.

Click to expand...

The problem with this is you're asking them to prove something that goes against the evidence of your eyes, as you don't see enough people playing in local game stores and are not aware of the number of gamers in the world.
Of course, most players don't play in game stores. Or probably even buy their books from FLGS. So that's not a fair point of comparison. D&D is an invisible hobby as you play with friends at home or online.

Even if they DID release sales numbers, that wouldn't match the number of players because most players don't buy a book. So, more than likely, you would STILL not believe their statements.
And if they DID release their marketing survey numbers and data, you could probably dismiss that as well for one reason or another. Sample size or research methodology or something.


It really just comes down to one question. One question that defines this issue:

Do you think they are lying?

If the answer is "yes" then it does not matter what data they release, you won't believe it. Because you think they're trying to mislead us.
If the answer is "no" then it does not matter if they can 'prove' it. They believe it, and are trying to give us all the information.
If the answer is "unintentionally", then either the data is wrong and releasing it will prove nothing. Or they're incompetent at reading the data...

It's super depressing to think that the people in charge of a game I love are intentionally misleading us, lying to us, or are grossly incompetent. Why would anyone want to live with that worldview?

The thing I don't get about the "I don't see all of these people playing" argument, is that would be true if 50,000 or 5 billion people were playing: we can't see that many people do anything, that's why anecdotes are not useful.

Jester David said:

First, D&D is sold in WalMart.
Second, WalMart has a tiny book section in general and typically an even smaller board game section. It's not a great place to buy that sort of thing. You really want to go to a book store, game store, or online.

It's not curious that they're not giving sales numbers. They never really have. They didn't throughout 4e either.

Click to expand...

It's select Walmarts. I can go into just about any Walmart these days and find the shelf with select MtG (at least 3/4 of the stores). D&D is VERY RARE if it at all (it was at one time, but currently, I haven't seen on in stores for a long time, extending from California in the West to South Carolina and Washington DC in the East. It MAY be in stores, but it is definitely not a chain wide thing. Individual managers have some freedom to stock so a manager may have used this personal preference, but it's not carried as something distributed by national typically).

In regards to numbers given...

We have numbers for the first two years of 3e (first one they released, second one came out due to some rather crazy scandals that hit WotC and numbers came out with the news related to that).

We have approximations for 2e PHBs, and some financials on that.

For Hasbro, it tried but never became a core brand, so it wasn't really reported. If D&D is doing that much better now, that means sales should also be doing that much better (of course, if the entire RPG hobby is only 55 million, it STILL probably wouldn't be a mainstay Hasbro brand, but if the guesses that 3e had 5 million players and it made somewhere between 30 to 40 million a year [at least for one year] than it stands to reason that with 9 to 10 million players WotC would be doing a LOT better than that currently).

I even get financials on MtG (and I think many of the quarterlies and annuals are made public) and other major Hasbro brands and divisions if I read reports. If D&D is getting that big...why not?

Jester David said:

Do you think they are lying?

If the answer is "yes" then it does not matter what data they release, you won't believe it. Because you think they're trying to mislead us.
If the answer is "no" then it does not matter if they can 'prove' it. They believe it, and are trying to give us all the information.
If the answer is "unintentionally", then either the data is wrong and releasing it will prove nothing. Or they're incompetent at reading the data...

It's super depressing to think that the people in charge of a game I love are intentionally misleading us, lying to us, or are grossly incompetent. Why would anyone want to live with that worldview?

Click to expand...

NO, I do not think they are lying. I think (just like people did for other press releases made during 3e and 4e) that people are reading into it FAR more than what is actually being said.

I don't have a problem thinking that 9 to 10 million people are playing D&D. I actually think that's very possible. It could even be 12 million or more world wide. I have no idea how they came on those numbers, but I don't have a problem with it. It's like I don't have a problem when they claimed there were 25 million AD&D/D&D gamers in the past.

It's when people extrapolate from that to say that it is MORE popular now than ever before. Statements have been made by WotC that I deem accurate that indicate that 5e has now outsold 3e - 4e PHBs combined. I could believe that. However, when people start making claims (and most likely because they never actually saw just how crazy a fad 1e was in the early 80s...which is okay since if one was old enough to experience it, let's say 15, so they were aware of how crazy the US was about it at that time, they'd be in their late 40s and early 50s for the YOUNG people who barely could comprehend it...for those who really experienced it they would be in their 60s and 70s. Many of those ARE DEAD. Those who are alive, while a majority stopped playing the game and have never touched it since, and the most others are not active in the scene at all. The one that has perhaps the MOST knowledge was chased off and out of the RPG scene (which was unfortunate because he is one of the best and most loyal guys I know of) by the new people in it.

From what I've actually seen WotC say and state, I really don't have a problem with it.

The only difficulties I have are the things that people extrapolate and then say WotC stated, when I didn't see WotC say anything of the sort. OR, when they say things that are not really what WotC meant, but think that's what WotC meant or should have said instead of what actually was stated.

5e is popular and people are excited about it. That I get. I think it's great. 5e is a great game. It's a great edition. It is probably the best selling version in the past 20 years. I don't have a problem with people accepting that triumph and being happy about it.

I do take issue with those trying to state things that I have yet to see. There was NO WHERE in the US that I really could go which didn't have D&D on the shelf in their department stores during the fad. Even in the late 80s it was carried in many toy stores and elsewhere.

Pokémon of the late 90s and early 2000s probably was as big (if people can remember that) as D&D was in it's fad years. Marvel is as big now as D&D was during it's fad years (though the Marvel fad has gone on longer than the D&D fad did). I just don't see that type of market penetration or craziness about 5e as was with any of the major fads that hit the US. 5e I think is the biggest D&D has been in decades, but it's not national FAD big as of yet.

So when people start claiming it's bigger than these types of fads...yeah...I'm NOT impressed.

Reason I say I want to see the numbers is NOT to disprove WotC, but to use them to back up what I've heard them say and shut those who try to claim MORE than what WotC states down. If I'm wrong though, and the numbers support what people state (despite what WotC does NOT) than, hey, I'd also be willing to see that. Hard numbers would need to be something like number of copies sold, or the dollar amounts in Wotc sold (as compared, let's say to what MtG is doing, or other WotC Divisions).

I expect if we saw the numbers it would show that MtG is still the giant and D&D is nowhere close to it, BUT it might also show that since D&D is such a small department, that it is more profitable per man hour (not necessarily though). I also expect that if the entire RPG market is actually only 55 million, it still has not hit as big as AD&D was in it's hey day yet.

PS: (if 5e is sold for another 5 years I DO expect that it will sell more than AD&D did overall with corebooks simply due to the volume being sold over that length of time vs. how much AD&D fluctuated from 1978 to 83 and then 83 to 88. At least as long as it continues on it's current trajectory that it's been going on for the past few years). (that is a personal conjecture of course).

GreyLord said:

I do take issue with those trying to state things that I have yet to see. There was NO WHERE in the US that I really could go which didn't have D&D on the shelf in their department stores during the fad. Even in the late 80s it was carried in many toy stores and elsewhere.

Click to expand...

And how many stores did you go into, by chance?
And in how many different cities/ states?

And you don't you think the fact those would have been smaller stores that stocked things by request and based on local audiences might have also been a factor? Rather than the modern day where people don't special order books and instead order online?

GreyLord said:

We have approximations for 2e PHBs, and some financials on that.

Click to expand...

You've said that twice, but I have yet to see those numbers, or see a citation.

GreyLord said:

For Hasbro, it tried but never became a core brand, so it wasn't really reported. If D&D is doing that much better now, that means sales should also be doing that much better (of course, if the entire RPG hobby is only 55 million, it STILL probably wouldn't be a mainstay Hasbro brand, but if the guesses that 3e had 5 million players and it made somewhere between 30 to 40 million a year [at least for one year] than it stands to reason that with 9 to 10 million players WotC would be doing a LOT better than that currently).

Click to expand...

$55 million... excluding online vendors. $55 excluding the largest retailers in the world.

GreyLord said:

However, when people start making claims (and most likely because they never actually saw just how crazy a fad 1e was in the early 80s...which is okay since if one was old enough to experience it, let's say 15, so they were aware of how crazy the US was about it at that time, they'd be in their late 40s and early 50s for the YOUNG people who barely could comprehend it...for those who really experienced it they would be in their 60s and 70s. Many of those ARE DEAD. Those who are alive, while a majority stopped playing the game and have never touched it since, and the most others are not active in the scene at all. The one that has perhaps the MOST knowledge was chased off and out of the RPG scene (which was unfortunate because he is one of the best and most loyal guys I know of) by the new people in it.

Click to expand...

Here's the thing... in the '80s, the fad was more public. Because it couldn't be online. That's not the case now. People don't have to talk about D&D as pubicaly. It doesn't need to be sold in department stores.

Also, you were likely looking for it more. You're 40 now. How often do you hang around a high school or spend time with junior high or high school kids? How much time do you spend on Reddit and Twitter and Instagram. How often do you watch people play games on Twitch?
Because while I type this over 28,000 people are watching a bunch of nerdy-ass voice actors play D&D on a single Twitch channel, another 15,000 on Youtube, and several thousand more on ProjectAlpha. And an additional 300,000 will watch it after.
Heck, odds are you likely have a semi-solid group and haven't spent much time looking for new players or browsing games on Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds. You're very likely just not as exposed to the people half your age engaging with the game.

As a comparison, if you walk around the street or look around stores you'd have no idea how big or popular Fortnite is. You're not going to see that in WalMart. Or how big 5 Nights at Freddy's was. Stuff like that isn't big in "meat space".

You're dismissing how widespread and popular D&D is right now because it's not popular and successful in the same ways you're familiar with.