D&D General Extra Credits: The History of D&D Hasbro Refused to Learn

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

This is a factor that I would think is important to consider: these numbers were taken post-5e announcement. A period where one would expect 4e sales to drop off, regardless of external influences.View attachment 289769

And I should really say 'numbers'... there is no description of how these rankings were derived in this report.

 

[darjr]

I’m not saying she’s lying.

But she’s hardly an impartial witness either.

Awesome!

Consider this though:

Lisa Stevens (not Stephens btw... that's Owen K.C.!) has a vested interest in pumping the Paizo side of the story. Chris Sims and Owen K.C. Stephens do not. To those on the outside objectively looking in, with no vested interest in the outcome of this discussion (like me), those two are far more reliable sources of information on this topic.

Apologies @Hussar

I don’t want to play about discrediting the messengers. I am trying not to.

 

[Vaalingrade]

The relationship some D&D fans and 4e is like those people who post on Facebook on the daily for then years about how much of a cheating dog their ex was for having a co-worker of the opposite sex they never saw outside of the office.

 

[darjr]

The relationship some D&D fans and 4e is like those people who post on Facebook on the daily for then years about how much of a cheating dog their ex was for having a co-worker of the opposite sex they never saw outside of the office.

I think this hobby is such a personal thing to many of us that these points rise in importance, even if they really are not.

Also new people are finding 4e, along with other older editions to the game. Lots of folks it seems. And people are curious.

 

[Nikosandros]

I think this hobby is such a personal thing to many of us that these points rise in importance, even if they really are not.

I fully agree. Still, I'm still sometimes taken aback by the vitriol that sometimes emerges (not in this thread).

 

[Umbran]

And I should really say 'numbers'... there is no description of how these rankings were derived in this report.

I wouldn't even say that it is clearly stated what the numbers in that chart represent. It might be "number of retailers who claim this is a 'best seller'." It isn't clear what, if any definition of "best seller" was used.

And, after that chart, is a disclaimer: "Note that just because a game sold well at 10 retailers, but a second game sold well at only 2,doesn’t mean that the first game sold more units or produced more profit than second one did."

Which tells us straight out that we cannot use that chart to tell us anything about sales overall.

 

[Parmandur]

It seems the point is just to be a "word of mouth" booster for game store owners trying to make stocking decisions?

 

[MNblockhead]

Spotify is not a paywalled platform. Paying for an account removes ads (and a few other perks). You are perfectly free to create a free account, which has access to the entire Spotify catalog.

Right, sorry about that. Actually I subscribe to Spotify. But I dislike it for podcasts and use PocketCasts. So I've missed when podcasts moved to become Spotify exclusives.

I pulled up When We Were Wizards on Spotify, but it has the same number of episodes: 4. So, unfortunately, it appears they stopped after four episodes, which is unfortunate. I really enjoyed the four episodes they put out.

 

[Clint_L]

I honestly don't see why it matters whether Pathfinder briefly outsold 4e or not (I mean...it almost certainly did, depending on the unit of measurement - surely there was one day or one hour where it did, at least, so this is all kind of arbitrary). I don't think anyone disputes the main idea: 4e was a problematic expansion for WotC, and the rise of Pathfinder was part of the problem. This doesn't mean that 4e was a bad expansion or a worse game than 3e or Pathfinder or anything else, just that it didn't do what WotC hoped it would do.

Which, you know, they have outright acknowledged many times.

 

[dbolack]

I've never seen any numbers that indicate White Wolf ever got even close to the size of DND during the 90's. It was a ompetitor and a successful system. I don't want to say anything bad about it. I liked the system even if I didn't like the doom and gloom of the setting. If I'm wrong I'd love to see some hard numbers showing that.

There were no real, trustworthy metrics of anything in those days. The closest thing you could use as a value was "what was your first game?" to new folks in this period. In the days of the WoD First editions, they were the source of a LOT of new hobby members.