GTS 2009 D&D Seminar - the Rouse discusses D&D

[BryonD]

It is a shame for many fans of 3.XE that WotC does not feel they can also move forward and support that edition but at least with this absolute statement you will have put many future questions to bed. Thank you for being so forthright.

It really doesn't make much sense to try to support an older edition alongside a prior one.

However, it IS a shame that they feel a need to promote a game that assumes its players need "ease of DMing" is incompatible with supporting an advanced version of the same game for players don't need that and find the downsides of that trade-off to be much greater cost than the value added.

 

[Storminator]

And to answer the implied question this does not mean going back and supporting older editions.

Whew!

PS

 

[Windjammer]

4E and the DIY mentality

Ariosto hit the nail above. 4E isn't marketing one of its most considerable strengths: ease of customizability. Like the "design your own trap" article that came out in Dragon magazine after the core books were released - that's the sort of stuff you want to be in the core books. Goes for everything else too. Monster design, encounter design, you name it (and I mean designing these beyond just crunching the numbers); "creating your own plane(s)", to name another great section that wasn't carried over into a 4E core product (MoTP). To find advice on that stuff I'm currently forced to bypass 4E core product (books and DDI). If I want to get advice on how to use 4E as a toolkit and wrap my head around 4E's design tenets (a prerequisite to customize a game effectively) I read Mike Mearls' blog. And that's for free. And he responds to people.

So I think you're doing your brand a disservice by solely supporting Plug'n'Play. Certainly, "PlugnPlay" works exceedingly well with 4E (Delve Format), but it misses out the DIY crowd that's just as thrilled with 4E but remains hesitant to buy follow-up product.

 

[Treebore]

No, I will not quit saying dislike, because many people do dislike it (I actually like certain elements compared to 3e, but dislike (not hate) the game as a whole). However, I'd be willing to amend what I wrote to read "dislike or [x]" What would you like x to be "like it, but not enough to switch from their current edition"?

Maybe we should just be sure not to say "dislike" in a general way. We should be sure to speak just for ourselves. So just be clear and say, "I do not like 4E." and I will say how "4E isn't my favorite game." That way we can perpetrate clearer perceptions.

 

[Scott_Rouse]

More like a mainstream activity to do like poker. The recognition was good (89% is huge) but a follow up question among the 89% about how they perceived the brand would be interesting.

I understand. When I first joined Wizards we had the Magic Pro Tour on ESPN 2. This was before poker but in a time when things like billiards and darts were on TV. If recall MTG PT ratings were in about a 1-2% share (read bad) and was crushed by pretty much everything else on the network including billiards, fishing, darts, strongman etc.


<snip>

I was thinking more along the lines of Time, Scientific American, Sports Illustrated, Cosmo, etc. I've never heard of Starlog. The death of small print media is fairly inevitable but there are lots of magazines that still have a huge subscriber base--I do imagine a full page ad in such a magazine would be pricey though--especially in a good section. I suppose I question internet ads because I view them as an annoyance, why else would many sites charge you to have ad free access. I would be curious to know how well CTRs translate to sales though-but that may be difficult to measure.

The big mass media mags that you mention are way out of reach for a brand like D&D and would be a complete waste of our marketing dollars. you spend a ton of money to reach a very broad demographic of which the majority will never buy the game.

A better bet would be to go for a couple tiers down of targeted gamer and lifestyle magazines like X-Box, PC Gamer, Playstation, (possibly Wired but even that is spendy). The demographic and pyschohgraphics are going to be much closer to the potential target audience and cost way less.

You are right it is difficult to track sales to print and online advertising unless there is a measurable call to action like a special offer.

No offense to Wil Wheaton, but he isn't exactly well known outside of geek circles. Someone like Vin Diesel and Felicia Day as you mentioned would be more along the lines I'm thinking of. Again I can see that this would have cost/availablity ramifications just a thought.

Fair enough but we love us some Wil Wheaton.

These were very well done. More like this (and maybe something in a big movie) would be superb IMO.

We are right there with you. We would love to have a big, well done movie for our brand.

I don't mean to hassle and I hope It's not taken that way, I'm just really curious as to the strategy/timing for moving beyond the core demographic (which seems to have stalled in place for many years, but that may just be me) and any plans to move beyond being a niche activity (video games were such once) to something more common place. I suspect some technological intergration may be required however(a D&D app for say an Iphone or blackberry would be supercool---although the facebook thing grew old quick so I'm not sure how that would/could be done) before there's any chance of that.

No hassle at all. This will be more of a slow build versus a overnight switch but we are working in the direction you are asking about. I agree with you on the technological integration.

Anyway Just a guy who's curious about the future of his favourite hobby.
Thanks for all your replies in this thread Scott, very interesting reading thus far.

My pleasure

 

[Hereticus]

And to answer the implied question this does not mean going back and supporting older editions.

Pathfinder owes you credit for one more sale based on that comment.

It is a shame for many fans of 3.XE that WotC does not feel they can also move forward and support that edition but at least with this absolute statement you will have put many future questions to bed. Thank you for being so forthright.

The deal breaker for me with 4.0 is the lack of any sort of magic system that resembles anything at all like the earlier editions. With the best part of the game completely removed, it is now something completely different.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

No offense to Wil Wheaton, but he isn't exactly well known outside of geek circles. Someone like Vin Diesel and Felicia Day as you mentioned would be more along the lines I'm thinking of. Again I can see that this would have cost/availablity ramifications just a thought.

No offense to Felicia Day, but I would put her in the same category as Wil Wheaton. She may be a good actor, but so far she has not really broken out except in geek circles.

The other person I would put with Vin Deisel in the known to mainstream category is Stephen Corbert.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

Scott,

Along the lines of bringing 4e closer to the type of game that 3.x players seem to prefer, any chance of a new Unearthed Arcana in which you could provide some optional rules and subsystems that older players might apreciate without impinging on core?

 

[Hadrian the Builder]

Scott, you are on fire! I am really enjoying these great responses from you.
I'm going to push my luck and ask you about the halo effect you mentioned in your first post. When you develop a marketing campaign, how do you expand that halo effect?
I'm thinking of the idea that I've sucked my wife into the hobby, my friend got his girlfriend playing, and I'll probably play with my kids when they are old enough to play.(I did see you mention some of this before.) Are there things that WotC can do that encourages this? Is this effect measurable so that you can assess it?

Also, I think I recall some generous donation of gaming materials to US service members by WotC. That got me thinking. Do you have any information that might indicate that targeting service members for marketing is worthwhile or measurable?

 

[Scott_Rouse]

Folks, I know it's really hard to avoid and you are being very cool about keeping it civil but I really don't want this to turn into an edition vs edition discussion.

Thanks