Dancey v. Mearls?

[qstor]

The D&D in a death spiral was really interesting reading. So is there other information that gives some weight to Dancey's comments that 4e sales are way down vs Mearls 4e is selling great.

I didn't go to the RPGA room at GenCon but I imagine there was a ton of 4e games there. And here in the DC area 4e games seem to be pretty popular. So given that I would imagine the downward spiral of 4e seems to be exaggerated.
A lot of people I know like it. But then whether they keep buying the books is another matter perhaps. Was any of the Dark Sun books on the best seller lists?

Just trying to balance out some of the comments either way.

Me I prefer 3.5. I'm happy with Pathfinder and have been buying about $75 bucks worth of Pathfinders stuff a month. I bought some of the 4e books including the PH2 for some of the old core classes like bard and druid. But I'm not really playing it now and I can't ever imagine myself running it.

Thanks

Mike

 

[Umbran]

Both are good people, but honestly, I'd have to take what either of them say with not so much a grain of salt as an entire salt lick.

 

[Jor-El]

Both are good people, but honestly, I'd have to take what either of them say with not so much a grain of salt as an entire salt lick.

This indeed!

 

[jonesy]

I'm really dissappointed by this.

I read the topic as 'Donkey vs Mearls'. I thought there'd be an epic battle. Not talk about two guys fighting each other with hype and anti-hype.

Was any of the Dark Sun books on the best seller lists?

At least on Amazon Dark Sun has been outselling the other 4E books from the day it became available. For what it's worth.

 

[Dausuul]

Links to the Mearls interview:

Escapist article
Full transcript

Mearls doesn't seem exactly Pollyanna-ish; he's not saying 4E has been a smashing success, and in fact if you read between the lines he seems to be acknowledging that they lost a bunch of players and have not done as well as they would have liked at pulling in new ones. His description of Essentials strongly suggests a retool rather than a continuation (that is, going back and rethinking some of the basic ideas of 4E rather than continuing to develop along the original lines), and retooling is what you do when your product isn't meeting expectations.

Now, does he say D&D is in a death spiral? Of course not. If it were in a death spiral, you wouldn't hear any WotC employee say so until well past the event horizon. That's just a basic rule of corporate life.

Personally, I don't think D&D is in a death spiral yet, but the brand has clearly taken a hit and Mearls has been given the job of reviving it. I like where he's headed and wish him the best of luck.

 

[Stormonu]

I guess Mearls ruined Dancy?

I don't normally agree with Umbran, but I think I do on this one. Both seem to have a horse in the race, and therefore it's difficult to take either at face value.

With the 4E books having about a 12-month lead time between inception and final release, its pretty safe to say that 4E was successful enough to continue being supporting - if it had not, we probably would not have seen a book line past 2009/early 2010.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'm sure it would look something like this:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PBbK8tkTE8"]Ryan Dancey versus Mike Mearls[/ame]

 

[Wayside]

The D&D in a death spiral was really interesting reading. So is there other information that gives some weight to Dancey's comments that 4e sales are way down vs Mearls 4e is selling great.

The CMO of the parent company of one of WotC's biggest competitors posted several screeds about how D&D is failing (because, you know, the PHB2 sold through its initial print run, which is clearly terribad and not at all what the PHB1 did), and how the real future of tabletop RPGs just happens to mirror the current trajectory of his own company.

But actual information? Weight? Nope. He was just towing the company line. If you think his comments about D&D were glum, you should've seen what he said about White Wolf after the CCP merger. Not only the "just an imprint" and "legacy business" bits, but stuff like:

"...look for White Wolf to become ultimately focused on its MMORPG offering, and by the end of 2007, to have reduced its paper-based publishing business to a shell entity, providing reprints of its games to a dwindling number of buyers."

He thinks tabletop games are just generally done for.

 

[Wicht]

"...look for White Wolf to become ultimately focused on its MMORPG offering, and by the end of 2007, to have reduced its paper-based publishing business to a shell entity, providing reprints of its games to a dwindling number of buyers."

While he was a little premature, it is interesting that White Wolf is moving to a pretty slim paper-publishing model.

 

[MortonStromgal]

Evolve or Die... Really thats what has to happen to RPG companies and FLGS. Some of which have already started the Evolution. The old way of doing buisness will eventually die off, but there is still plenty of time left.