I believe variant is talking in terms of the general public, not just the actual gamers.
I believe variant is talking in terms of the general public, not just the actual gamers.
Irrelevant to the sales statistics, which are a very good demonstration of the fact that actively including gender, orientation and racial diversity does not hurt RPG sales. Quite the contrary. The folks who are suggesting that it does need to look at what the market is actually doing right now and where the dollars and demographics really are, because that's some pretty overwhelming evidence right there that it doesn't.
Same thing for the same-sex couples portrayed in JC Penney ads and catalogs; aside from the one-million moms thing getting the vapours over it, nothing ever came of it: no massive boycott, no hemoraging funds, no run on the company in the stock markets.
Irrelevant to the sales statistics
What overwhelming evidence? By all accounts, Pathfinder is less than half the 3E market.
The D&D market shrunk and then split in two. Saying that one leftover piece is slightly bigger than the other piece is meaningless.
So Wizards and Piazo have released their sales numbers to the general public after not doing so for years, such that we can actually make this claim to a reasonable extent? If we actually had sales figures, we could do this comparison. Sure. No problem. We don't. Acting like we have statistics we don't really have makes anything we say relating to them pretty unreliable.
We could referece the act of doing so by other companies. It would lend credibility to the argument that displaying more diversity is beneficial to sales. It would only be a general argument in support of the idea, it wouldn't be a specific argument regarding the RPG market.
I really don't think the inclusion of diversity plays into this conflict to any significant degree. I could be wrong, but how would we determine what degree this mildly more diverse cast plays on something with so many other, obviously important, variables?
It entirely removes the context of the sales war between the two, though. 4th edition, a streamlined, modern, reinvention of the classic, which many people had a knee-jerk reaction to, and Pathfinder, an unabashed clone with tweaks of 3.5 D&D. I really don't think the inclusion of diversity plays into this conflict to any significant degree. I could be wrong, but how would we determine what degree this mildly more diverse cast plays on something with so many other, obviously important, variables?