D&D General Is DnD being mothballed?

[mamba]

You may feel thst way, yet I believe itnis a major positive factor in their success, not being held back by bloat.

I expect it to be a contributing factor, but I have a hard time gauging whether major or minor

No, I mean that adopting a slow and steady release schedule is pro-consumer, by not flooding the market

I am not sure it is pro-consumer at all. That seems to hinge on the premise that a consumer is really a collector and wants to buy all books.

I could also argue more releases is pro-consumer, because that offers a larger variety of options to choose from.

The only thing I can agree on is that a higher release schedule correlates to a lower ROI per item (all within limits of course)

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't judge people, or companies, on what they thought about but ultimately did not do. I also don't feel like beating the dead horse that went under the bridge and down the river a while ago.

It's your nickel, but I will never be ok with what WotC tried to do, and I don't care that they changed their mind at the last minute.

 

[dave2008]

Again, this is going off of a lot of what Ben Riggs said in his 4E seminar, with regard to what motivated WotC to switch editions in the first place. Again, I'm not saying that there wasn't any sort of drop-off, but it wasn't put forward as any sort of threat to the bottom line.

I have looked at someone's cliffnotes of that seminar, but I don't remember reading this part.

If it was a success right out of the proverbial gate, then it's hard to say that the release schedule was the reason, since by that point the only things that had been released were the Core Rules and maybe the introductory adventure? I can't quite recall, but either way, you don't end up with an immediate success because of how slowly future products are coming out.

I agree the immediate success can't be attributed to release schedule; however, neither can the supposed external factors. 5e was a success and then many factors help sustain it. It seems very odd to me that you would completely discount the release schedule as part of that.

Personally, I don't care much about the rate of 5E releases; I just want to put to bed the idea that a sustained schedule of frequent releases necessarily means death. Like I said, we have plenty of evidence to the contrary.

What evidence do we have? The bookscan numbers show how poor everything after the core books has sold in every edition except 5e. If you are making more books at diminishing sales, the numbers just don't add up for you, just in R&D/development cost alone. It is not a smoking gun, but is really good evidence that a fast & furious release schedule did not help.

 

[Alzrius]

I have looked at someone's cliffnotes of that seminar, but I don't remember reading this part.

I'm pretty sure those were mine. To reiterate, it was WoW's release that prompted the formation of 4E more than anything.

I agree the immediate success can't be attributed to release schedule; however, neither can the supposed external factors. 5e was a success and then many factors help sustain it. It seems very odd to me that you would completely discount the release schedule as part of that.

I mean, we can quibble over "completely discount" versus "mostly discount," but I do think that external factors were a larger reason either way. The idea that giving people less, and that creating a hunger that drove future sales, isn't something which strikes me as having a lot to support it.

What evidence do we have? The bookscan numbers show how poor everything after the core books has sold in every edition except 5e. If you are making more books at diminishing sales, the numbers just don't add up for you, just in R&D/development cost alone. It is not a smoking gun, but is really good evidence that a fast & furious release schedule did not help.

Again, I want to stress that my major point here isn't to do with 5E. It's to point out that 3.5/4E's release schedule wasn't necessarily going to lead to disaster. Even if we grant the premise that a slower release schedule has helped 5E, that doesn't mean that the opposite is true (though I can see why some people would think that).

 

[dave2008]

The idea that giving people less, and that creating a hunger that drove future sales, isn't something which strikes me as having a lot to support it.

I don't know if it is a general marketing truism, but I think the basic idea is to have more demand than supply. I remember Enzo Ferrari said, when asked how many cars they will make each year: "One less than we can sell." You always leave them wanting more!

 

[Alzrius]

I don't know if it is a general marketing truism, but I think the basic idea is to have more demand than supply. I remember Enzo Ferrari said, when asked how many cars they will make each year: "One less than we can sell." You always leave them wanting more!

Sure, but first you have to figure out how many "one less" actually is in real terms. If he'd only sold one car per month, I'm not sure that would have helped with overall profitability.

 

[Staffan]

Companies are not, in the long term, going to publish because of love of the game. They may say that but unless you're a boutique privately owned organization it's just not going to happen. Let's put it another way. If you can put $1,000 in a bank and earn 2% interest or put it into a hedge fund and make 8% where are most people going to invest their money? Assuming that you believe the latter is a safe investment you're going to put that grand into a hedge fund.

I do not believe most companies in the RPG business are in it to maximize profits. Why, you ask? Because they are in the RPG business. If they were looking to maximize ROI, they'd be doing something else.

Lisa Stevens and Vic Wertz were absolutely loaded with Pokemoney when they left Wizards. They could easily have retired and lived off interest from some index fund – I would not be surprised if they had actually made more money that way, and definitely done so with fewer headaches. But instead they started Paizo to take over the periodicals department from Wizards, which eventually lead to the whole Pathfinder thing. And while most owners in the RPG business don't start out with that kind of money, most are in a similar headspace.

That doesn't mean they don't want to make a profit. But the primary goal is "make this thing I like", and wanting to make it in a financially sustainable fashion. That's not the same thing as wanting to maximize profit.

P.S. I'd love it if some billionaire bought out D&D and made it their passion project and didn't care about making a dime (or even 2-3 dimes) on sales. Especially if they paid me a bazillion dollars to be a consultant. But if wishes were horses we'd be hip deep in horse pucky.

I would not. There are no good billionaires, and none that would make good stewards of D&D.

Paizo isn't posting stuff for free outbof generosity: that's a strategy to make money, same as ORC or the OGL.

Paizo is a very odd duck among RPG companies, because while most subscribe to the idea that adventures aren't profitable Paizo has made them the core of their business. Making the rules available online means they can include all sorts of things in their APs without any fear that people won't be able to use them because they don't have the books. It's also really convenient when running games and I can look things up without flipping back and forth between multiple books.

 

[Autumnal]

I don't judge people, or companies, on what they thought about but ultimately did not do. I also don't feel like beating the dead horse that went under the bridge and down the river a while ago.

I’m reminded of the old Usenet administration joke about “a crowd flailing with stout sticks at a completely dry spot of ground where, six months ago, there were the greasy remains of a horse”. In later years, “six months” was amended to “six years” to accommodate some particularly enduring feuds.

 

[dave2008]

Sure, but first you have to figure out how many "one less" actually is in real terms. If he'd only sold one car per month, I'm not sure that would have helped with overall profitability.

Sure, but I think the bookscan numbers speak for themselves really.

 

[Parmandur]

I am not sure it is pro-consumer at all. That seems to hinge on the premise that a consumer is really a collector and wants to buy all books.

I could also argue more releases is pro-consumer, because that offers a larger variety of options to choose from.

The only thing I can agree on is that a higher release schedule correlates to a lower ROI per item (all within limits of course)

Releasing a flood of products to pump customers for money is a gross practice, IMO.