Marketing criticisms miss the point

[hong]

Gnome Druids Rule!

Worst Terry Goodkind novel ever.

 

[Melan]

Hussar's idea about the RPGA appears valid (unfortunately for me). But I have doubts whether this will benefit the game's long-term prospects. D&D's strength was always that it was a lot of things to a lot of people. Now, it is a focused, tight design, but can a smaller group of dedicated supporters make up for the loss of the people who played "yes, but" D&D?

Well, maybe.

 

[Zogmo]

Two things

1) The only message that WotC got was that it's marketing was an amazing smash success. Why? Because about two weeks before the street date they had to go back to a second printing after already printing more books than any version previously released. The first printing should have given then approximately enough product to last them through the first quarter of sales so that they could support their vendors properly.

2) WotC is under pressure to generate as much money as possible from Hasbro. The 3.5e market was slowing way down and needed a big boost in sustainable sales over the next 5 years in order to justify it not being shut down. The market needed a jump start so it had to be different but not too different. This pressure, along with WotC's love for the game (who here would really pass up an invitation to work on a new D&D game?) prompted them to make 4e the way it is. The next five years will be full of tons of new things to support the shiny new system. Hasbro will be happy and D&D will have a stay of execution.

D&D IS DEAD, LONG LIVE D&D!

 

[Orius]

I don't agree with Wiker about marketing. 4e is by all accounts a big success. I would never consider a single poll from this site to be the barometer of gamer attitudes everywhere. So WotC obviously did something right there.

The continuing problems with DDI/Gleemax/whatever are another story however....

1) Show people that their library of 3.5 (and 3pp) products could be used in the new system. Also, It seems trite, but WotC showing - even once - that they give a damn that some people have
heavily invested in 3.5 would have been a nice olive branch. All we got though, is the feeling that we were suckers for buying - and god forbid liking - 3.5. (And thus, it behhoves us not to be suckers again with 4.0.)

2) Keep the 30-year-old fluff. If they wanted to vary the fluff, then ADD ON to existing fluff - don't kill the old.

That's what kind of bothers me the most, a lot of the background assumptions changing. It's possible that 4e really isn't a problem, that I could still run more or less the same campaign, but I'd have to assume at least some of us homebrewers out there try to shape our settings so they make sense with the rules. A radical rules change culd be disruptive to a homebrew setting a group has worked on for years. The fact that WotC felt they needed to blow up the Realms is a bit telling, though it could also be said that the Realms had gotten pretty stale as well.

It's his second point that I agree with the most, that WotC seems to be pretty much marketing a whole new system, rather than just hammering down the "proud nails" (or whatever that term is they were using in those design articles a few years ago).

They ran into issues because a lot of these "problems" were actually very subjective.

Some of the problems were problems for 99%+ of the 3e players. The necessity of magic items. The swinginess of high and low level combat. These things weren't actually beneficial to many campaigns.

Some of the problems were problems for 1%- of the 3e players. Barbarians. The Chaotic Good alignment. These things were beneficial to the vast majority of campaigns.

I'm exaggerating those percentages, but they get my point accross.

If they would've stopped at fixing the problems, they could justify a new edition (the Maths!) without necessarily alienating people. But when you've got a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and when you've got 4e and permission to tick off the trufans, you change things without really caring about the outliers.

I agree, more or less.

There's a reason the RPGA was tapped to do the play testing. That wasn't an accident. 4e is the RPGA's game. This is how WOTC is going to sustain the subscription model. They have a ready made audience who they know plays regularly, plays MODULES regularly, and play D&D without 3rd party support. Also these are people who have no problems playing with strangers, who are familiar with tournament style play, who actually LIKE WOTC D&D.

Add to this the DDI and the ability to play RPGA games without leaving your house. And Dungeon adventures that will give RPGA rewards.

This is what will drive 4e. Not you or me playing at home with your buddies. THIS will drive the business of D&D.

...

4e has not been marketed, particularly to people tired of 3e, but rather to create a new market - the RPGA.

From a business perspective, it's a good move on WOTC's part. They design a game specifically targeted at their greatest consumers, create a space where those consumers can congregate in even greater numbers, more easily and then charge rent.

If it works, they have a bread and butter revenue stream that is more or less independent of selling more books. They can piggyback on the MMORPG model. No, they will never have numbers like WOW, but, they don't need those numbers. They need a nice solid core of DDI subscribers playing RPGA games and they're set.

...

To me, this adds up to pretty strong proof that you and me are not the target audience for 4e. WOTC is banking on the RPGA to drive this edition. And why not? The RPGA has been driving 3e for the past couple of years. PHB 2, polymorph errata, whatnot, all results of RPGA game issues.

This is why, when you read some of the changes, you think, "What the Hell? Why did they change that? I never had any problems with that at my table." You didn't. Sure. But, the RPGA did. That's why it got changed.

You might be right. Some of this suprises me; I thought the RPGA was dying out, but then I've never really been concerned about tournaments either.

But a lot of it smacks of how tournament play influences or at least used to influence the development of M:tG. I know I'll probably get called down for because I'm taking the "WotC is turning D&D into a TCG!" angle, but I see similarities. Just as DCI seemed to influence the development of M:tG about 10 years ago (I haven't been involved with TCG for about 10 years, so I don't know what may have changed), if you're right, RPGA is influencing D&D's development in similar overall ways. That is, change things that tourney players don't like, because that's where all the money is. I suppose I could make snarky comments about PHB II and the like being the game's equivalent of booster packs. I don't think that's entirely the case, but it does add a sort of "collectiblity" aspect to the game that I don't like.

I don't like it probably most of all because it adds or has the potential to add a competitive element to playing D&D, which was never part of the game in the past. This competitive element is what obsesses over stuff like "weak builds", "game balance", and the like. DMs in normal home games can fudge things around so it's not a problem. Tournament play functions in a completely different manner.

Some of it does make sense though. RPGs aren't really a big business at all, even D&D. You can't make money just selling sourcebooks and settings. TSR tried that and failed, and WotC knows the mistakes they made. There's only so much money they can make selling the core books. Past that, the optional sourcebooks only have so much margin, and there's always that group of players that don't want to add anything. Using the RPGA and DDI to make money without having to crank out sourcebooks that might not make a big profit or new editions too quickly probably is sound.

 

[Hussar]

Even better sales? The difference between a hit and a blockbuster, in movie terms?

Going into a second print run before your first print run has even hit the street IS a blockbuster by any stretch of the imagination. Unless the first print run was incredibly small. Possible, but highly, highly unlikely considering WOTC usually prints in the tens of thousands even for late era 3e splats. We're probably looking at 150k worth of books in the first run alone.

I wonder if anyone will actually fess up to how many books were printed in the first run. If it's lots, it would certainly put paid to a lot of nay-sayers.

But, in any case, you cannot possibly call this marketing plan a failure.

 

[amethal]

But, in any case, you cannot possibly call this marketing plan a failure.

I think there is more to marketing than selling the first three books to distributors.

The marketing seems to have generated a fair amount of ill will towards WotC as a company.

Personally, I haven't bought a WotC book since they cancelled Dungeon and Dragon.

I boycotted the end of 3.5, but I am not boycotting 4th edition. Instead, having removed the good will I felt towards them, they have to sell it to me - and its a hard sell since Paizo has successfully tied up most of my gaming budget in the meantime.

So far, 4th edition has not sold itself to me.

 

[Darrin Drader]

I'll be honest, the 4E marketing did nothing for me. I wasn't exactly opposed to the launch of 4th edition, but I wasn't ready to ditch 3rd edition either. The only thing I was willing to do was clean up a few rules that bothered me and move on with the game. In the end, I decided to quit fighting it and simply ignore it until I had a chance to play it for myself. It came as quite a shock that I really did like the game just as much, if not more, than 3.5. I didn't sell out or become some sort of traitor, I just enjoyed how the game played.

That said, it is a very different game than 3.5 and I like them both. I really don't plan to abandon the 3.x ruleset, though there's a good chance that any future games played with those rules with be with the Pathfinder game. I fully intend to keep a subscription to both Pathfinder and DDI. I probably will not be buying many of the support books for 4th edition though. I found that the 3.x splats never really meshed well with the core rules in game, and I didn't like having to reference 20 books at the table. The major rules updates, like the PHB II and III, I probably will buy.

As for my design goals for 4th edition, I think I'm going to hang out on the fringes and do adventures and settings for a while. I'll leave class designs for the rules cranking machines like Ari Maramel.

 

[Hussar]

don't like it probably most of all because it adds or has the potential to add a competitive element to playing D&D, which was never part of the game in the past. This competitive element is what obsesses over stuff like "weak builds", "game balance", and the like. DMs in normal home games can fudge things around so it's not a problem. Tournament play functions in a completely different manner.

What? Back the horse up here. All you have to do is look at the first ten years of D&D and you'll see that every element was heavily influenced by tournament play. Pretty much all of 1e was a direct out growth of tournament play. Competitive play has always been a strong element in D&D.

Heck, the whole adversarial DM role prevalent in AD&D was directly competitive.

I think there is more to marketing than selling the first three books to distributors.

Umm, no. Selling through your first print run has nothing to do with selling to distributors and everything to do with selling to consumers. Distributors don't buy out your print run.

By any stretch of the imagination, we can call the launch a very strong success.

Again, that you or I didn't like the marketing campaign is irrelevant. The sales dollars pretty much speak for themselves.

 

[Erik Mona]

This is true. I had forgotten Living City. Although it doesn't really change my point. LC had good numbers, but it wasn't until 3e that the RPGA really got going the way it is now.

Living City was a huge hit, but at its height it only had about 7,000 players. The last number I was officially quoted by WotC for Living Greyhawk was 15,000 active players, meaning players who had played at least two four-hour events in the last year. I have reason to believe that number stayed relatively stable over the year or two since, so I think it's an accurate estimate.

There may be 150,000 gamers on the RPGA mailing list, but 15,000 probably represents the maximum current size of the "core" RPGA audience you're speaking of. A lot of those people are casual players who may have polished off their two slots at a single game day, so if you trim a bit of fat you're at about 10,000 members. Or so.

A lot of those guys really do buy everything, and just about every one of them certainly has a complete set of core rulebooks and two or three class books useful for one of their characters. A small percentage are "completists" who purchase just about every single book. Many fly from convention to convention, or drive long distances to play exclusive events. The RPGA is a lifestyle for a lot of people. These folks are hard core, and they spend a lot of money on their hobby.

These customers are, without a doubt, the bedrock of Wizards of the Coast's RPG business. They can be counted on, more or less, to buy the books. If WotC can hook them into a monthly subscription (which will not be difficult), they will have a very solid foundation on which to build an enormously successful online business.

When I was at Wizards of the Coast, the company had an uncanny ability to squander and overlook this audience, but these are the players that fuel the Magic: The Gathering business on the DCI side of things. Shortly after I joined the staff in 1999 the RPGA became an official part of DCI (the Magic org play division). I am not sure, but I believe that the RPGA database has been merged with the DCI database, so that RPGA members are DCI members and vice versa.

I have a strong feeling that Wizards of the Coast, taking the success of Magic's relationship to its tournament players to heart, no longer takes the RPGA members for granted. In 2000 it would have been unthinkable to center strategic and game system design decisions around the needs of the RPGA, which was mostly an afterthought in those days as far as strategy was concerned.

I don't think Wizards is trying to target this audience specifically (book trade sales probably dwarf this audience by an order of magnitude, for example), by any means, but I definitely think this is an interesting lens through which to view the rules changes and overall strategy for the new edition.

--Erik

 

[Noinarap]

I think it is awesome you guys just spent 5 pages talking about marketing!

Here's my next ad campaign concept.

Gnome Druids Rule!

Forgive me, but can we call this a Rouse-roll?