D&D General Is DnD being mothballed?

[Parmandur]

Getting back to the original posts by Matt, it really seems like he's being critical of WotC as a way to promote his own current/future competing products. Which feels borderline unethical to me.

I wouldn't go that far...unseemly, though, since it is hard to credit as a serious position.

 

[Alzrius]

yes, and most companies are not just trying to stay even with inflation, not aware of any that do, actually

Once again, my point was that the target numbers we're told WotC was setting seem to have a trend in how inflated they are. Earning (to once again quote Ryan Dancey, assuming I recall what he said correctly) $30M a year, only to decide to reset everything in the hope of reaching $100+M per year, strikes me as less about a projected path of stable growth and more about greed. Especially when they manage to hit that number and then decide that it's "undermonetized," which then becomes an impetus for a walled garden VTT, trying to blow up the OGL v1.0, etc.

 

[Older Beholder]

I wouldn't go that far...unseemly, though, since it is hard to credit as a serious position.

That's why I say 'borderline'

 

[Hussar]

Once again, my point was that the target numbers we're told WotC was setting seem to have a trend in how inflated they are. Earning (to once again quote Ryan Dancey, assuming I recall what he said correctly) $30M a year, only to decide to reset everything in the hope of reaching $100+M per year, strikes me as less about a projected path of stable growth and more about greed. Especially when they manage to hit that number and then decide that it's "undermonetized," which then becomes an impetus for a walled garden VTT, trying to blow up the OGL v1.0, etc.

30 million a year was the total size of the entire rpg industry at the time. Hasbro wanted to make DnD a core product which meant 50 million per year.

I’m not sure where your numbers are coming from.

 

[Alzrius]

30 million a year was the total size of the entire rpg industry at the time. Hasbro wanted to make DnD a core product which meant 50 million per year.

I’m not sure where your numbers are coming from.

They're coming from this article. To quote from selected excerpts:

Sometime around 2005ish, Hasbro made an internal decision to divide its businesses into two categories. Core brands, which had more than $50 million in annual sales, and had a growth path towards $100 million annual sales, and Non-Core brands, which didn't.

Magic has no problem hitting the "Core" brand bar, but D&D does. It's really a $25-30 million business, especially since Wizards isn't given credit for the licensing revenue of the D&D computer games.

I suppose you can read the "business" part of that "It's really a $25-30 million business" sentence to be a reference to the entire TTRPG industry, but to me that looks like he's talking about D&D specifically.

 

[dave2008]

Again, I'll refer you to the thread where the historian said that the driving impetus to stop making 3.5E was something other than "not making more money than was spent."

That is fine, but it is not evidence that is helpful for this discussion. I don't care why 4e was developed. What I care about, for this discussion, is the drop in sales. That is what is relevant. We know for a fact many supplements results in lower sales per supplement. When total sales went down over time. We know it is more costly to produce more supplements. That is all relevant evidence, not the reason they chose to make 4e.

I believe that Ryan Dancey was tossing that number around with regard to 3.X, though we might not have heard about it until later. That said, I'm leery of saying that this proves anything about 5E, because the point in question was that 3.5 wasn't necessarily producing too many books to survive. That 5E is doing better is dependent on a lot of factors, but the pace of overall releases has yet to be shown to be one of them; at best, people seem to be trying to draw inferences regarding sales volume, but even that's tricky, because why those volumes are what they are is almost completely speculative.

I agree it is not clear to what degree the sales schedule is a factor, but I think it is rather absurd to say it is not a factor. And since 5e as done so well, it is likely one of the factors that has helped. But who knows, maybe all the other factors have made 5e a success despite the low product volume dragging it down.

I think we don't ultimately know the whole truth; however, it seems to me there is more evidence to support the idea that fewer products has been a contributing factor than not.

 

[Alzrius]

That is fine, but it is not evidence that is helpful for this discussion. I don't care why 4e was developed. What I care about, for this discussion, is the drop in sales. That is what is relevant. We know for a fact many supplements results in lower sales per supplement. When total sales went down over time. We know it is more costly to produce more supplements. That is all relevant evidence, not the reason they chose to make 4e.

This sounds like a fundamental disagreement with regard to not only what we think is relevant, but what we're talking about in the first place. I'm not of the opinion that 3.5 sales tapering off is particularly noteworthy, as it's something that's common to all editions, including 5E. Rather, what I think is important is countering the narrative that 3.5's release schedule necessarily meant that unprofitability/unsustainability was inevitable, i.e. that releasing so much so fast meant that there'd be more expeditures than revenue. I find nothing to indicate that this was the case, and reason to say otherwise.

I agree it is not clear to what degree the sales schedule is a factor, but I think it is rather absurd to say it is not a factor. And since 5e as done so well, it is likely one of the factors that has helped. But who knows, maybe all the other factors have made 5e a success despite the low product volume dragging it down.

I think we don't ultimately know the whole truth; however, it seems to me there is more evidence to support the idea that fewer products has been a contributing factor than not.

I respectfully disagree. While 5E is selling well, I don't find much to indicate what it is that's prompting more people to buy their books (though as I said that's not my primary consideration here to begin with). That D&D is a phenomenon now isn't being argued, but why it's selling so well doesn't seem to me to have a clear answer, or even much in the way of anything that can be considered evidence; only speculation and opinion.

 

[mamba]

Getting back to the original posts by Matt, it really seems like he's being critical of WotC as a way to promote his own current/future competing products. Which feels borderline unethical to me.

I think he is just critical of WotC, there no hidden agenda. He has plenty of opportunity to promote his own stuff, he does not need to bash WotC for that.

 

[mamba]

Once again, my point was that the target numbers we're told WotC was setting seem to have a trend in how inflated they are. Earning (to once again quote Ryan Dancey, assuming I recall what he said correctly) $30M a year, only to decide to reset everything in the hope of reaching $100+M per year, strikes me as less about a projected path of stable growth and more about greed.

Do we know the trend of those numbers? Did they go from 20M to 30M, or from 50M to 30M? If they cut the rope instead of following the trajectory to the bitter end, that is perfectly ok and not greed.

Especially when they manage to hit that number and then decide that it's "undermonetized," which then becomes an impetus for a walled garden VTT, trying to blow up the OGL v1.0, etc.

It is also 15 years later, what was your goal 15 years ago can be today's undermonetized. I doubt the company I work for would be happy with its sales / profits from 15 years ago.

I have no problem with WotC building their own VTT, releasing computer games, movies, .... those are all legitimate ways to grow their business. I was very much opposed to their OGL stance, but they have reversed that and released the SRD under CC, so while not everything is forgiven and forgotten, I am ok where we are, but keeping an eye on them and 'diversifying'

 

[Hussar]

While 5e sales growth has apparently slowed, sure, is there any indication that it isn’t still growing?

Slowing is understandable with the revision on the way. But is there any indication that the 5e market isn’t still growing?