Why Wizards Has Lost Touch w/ Its Base

[Kid Charlemagne]

Well, he is not a very good brand manager then.

Can you present any evidence to back this up? I know people are peeved over Dragon and Dungeon, and might not like specific products, but I've heard nothing to suggest that D&D isn't going gangbusters right now, just as it was when Charles was the brand manager.

 

[CharlesRyan]

As a former WOTC brand manager, Charles, could you shed a little light on this on how these sorts of decisions get made?

It really wouldn't be appropriate for me to comment on something like that. (Plus, it's been 18 months since I've worked for WotC, so any insight I might have is pretty dated. I used to hate it when ex-WotC folk, who hadn't been in the building for years, pontificated in public on "how things are done" at WotC, and I'm not going to fill that role now.) I'll say only this: WotC is a sizeable business, and like any sizeable business, decisionmaking involves a lot of stakeholders and a lot of often conflicting considerations.

What do they typically look for in a brand manager? Is it just a second-tier MBA with entertainment/ agency/marketing experience or do they really try to find people that know the RPG industry well?

Again, I don't work for WotC anymore, so it isn't appropriate for me to spout off about how they do things. I'll tell you how I looked at it though, when I hired into the Brand team at WotC: I looked first and foremost for the appropriate business skills and experience. Then I looked for an understanding of the sorts of brands that include powerful IPs and develop loyal consumer communities and shared experiences. (Wouldn't have to be D&D--a brand like Harley Davidson has the same sort of attributes.) A gaming background was a strong tertiary qualification. (And I'm please to say that everyone I hired was, or had been at some point in their life, a gamer.)

As a former WOTC person doesn't this seem like just a really, really bad way to alienate your most loyal consumers, brand advocates, influentials, etc.?

Any lifestyle brand like D&D relies on its opinion leaders and brand advocates to keep the brand strong and vibrant. Alienate those consumers, and you lose their powerful, positive influence over more casual adherents to the brand. But at the end of the day, if fewer people are buying Dragon than purchase a typical C-tier adventure module, the cost might be well worth it if the effort results in a stronger vehicle capable of reaching a much broader audience. Obviously, that's the math they were doing inside the WotC walls. I'm sure it wasn't an easy decision--of course, if running a successful brand like D&D was easy, everyone would do it.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Note that if we're no longer part of their customer base, it may well be because they pushed us out.

If you take away something that many people like, you will lose many of those people as customers. Of course they're no longer part of the customer base then.

Will a 12-14 year old shell out 7 - 8 dollars a month for a paper product or would they pay 10-15 a month for an online community with content and the ability to play games?

Well, I guess you'll need a credit card for this stuff, which will be a barrier for many people. Dragon and Dungeon you can pick up with cash at your local store.

From a tactical standpoint it's pure brilliance. Kill off all other competitors and outside content and make yourselves the one-and-only source for the game. The d20/OGL diluted the product line enough but produced a few companies that make better d20 products than Wizards does. Kill off the OGL by making the new edition non-OGL and you've cornered the market on D&D, which has not been the case since the OGL was released.

Lack of competition is always bad for the customer.

They'll probably do what you have described here: First eliminate Dragon and Dungeon, then, the new edition that will be a long soon won't have an OGL, so they hinder all those d20 people (Many of them being more competent than WotC themselves) who cannot produce any more stuff compatible to the newest incarnation of what they call D&D.

I just hope that they break their own neck with that coup.

 

[mmadsen]

Note that if we're no longer part of their customer base, it may well be because they pushed us out.

That might make good business sense. I'm not saying it does in this case, but not all customers are profitable to cater to.

Well, I guess you'll need a credit card for this stuff, which will be a barrier for many people.

Why do so many adult gamers complain about needing a credit card? I never hear "normal" people complain about needing a credit card...

 

[Vigilance]

However, based on age dynamics alone, I would hypothesize that our market subsegment probably has more disposable cash and spent more $$ per person on the hobby.

Maybe, but studies have shown older gamers spend less money on gaming, whether they have more money or not.

WOTC is concerned with folks who actually SPEND money, not how much they have. Ryan Dancey said their earliest market research drew a very clear distinction, to the point that they stopped looking at the over 30 gamer.

They didn't spend enough on gaming to cater to.

Chuck

 

[Desdichado]

How do you know those guys don't care about the hobby? I have an MBA and I'm a gamer. It is possible to have a professional background outside the hobby and still be a gamer after all.

 

[Sholari]

Thanks, Charles. I am really upset about this, but do appreciate you giving your perspective on things. At least it helps a little to make this all a little more palatable. For me at least this would be the equivalent of Harley Davidson changing their iconic motor sound that of a put-put moped. If WOTC would just be willing to have a dialogue or a better explanation of things, instead of one quote in a press release, it would probably help people to feel a lot better about this.

 

[painandgreed]

Older players - do you MySpace for 2-3 hours a day or do any other social type of networking?

Besides this forum and others like it for other demographics, my social life is planned around:

LiveJournal
MySpace
Tribes
ModelMayhem
Deviant Art

Pretty much everybody I know is on LJ or MySpace, which is a large group of people from their 20's to 40's across the country. Almost everybody I know from college 20 years ago has a MySpace account that.

 

[an_idol_mind]

Well, this is a common idea that I disagree with. Wizards making money is not necessarily the same thing as what's good for the hobby.

If D&D fails with WotC, odds are the game is dead. If D&D dies, the hobby pretty much goes with it. Even if you don't play the current edition and never buy a single WotC product, the mere existence of D&D helps keep gaming shops open and selling other RPGs. For gamers who prefer older editions, games like Castles & Crusades provide an old-school feel, and those games would wither and die without D&D being around. Like it or not, the profits of WotC/D&D keep the industry alive.

Personally, I wish there was less churn in the D&D ruleset. That is, I wish the rules would settle down to a common agreed-upon set, like chess or baseball, so that players of different generations could all share the fun with each other. The fact that Wizards is financially incented to change the rules a lot every few years is a bad thing for D&D, in my opinion.

Baseball is great for people who like baseball, but it doesn't do much for folks who prefer Calvinball. D&D allows for a wider variety of possibilities than games liek chess or baseball. As a result, it's had to include house rules and variant rules since its inception. If WotC were ever to establish one standard rules set, the game would lose most of its audience, because we wouldn't be able to have as much diversity in the game.

Modern counter-examples include the Internet and the Linux operating system, whose production is not controlled by a single company, and who would be worse off if only a single company was making money off them. Ryan Dancey attempted to move D&D in that direction with the OGL, but Wizards really turned away from that circa 3.5, which saddened me.

I don't think D&D is comparable to an operating system for computers. They're two different business models.

 

[Vigilance]

Thanks, Charles. I am really upset about this, but do appreciate you giving your perspective on things. At least it helps a little to make this all a little more palatable. For me at least this would be the equivalent of Harley Davidson changing their iconic motor sound that of a put-put moped. If WOTC would just be willing to have a dialogue or a better explanation of things, instead of one quote in a press release, it would probably help people to feel a lot better about this.

They'll probably be willing to.

After people stop clamoring for their blood, analyzing their professional backgrounds and professing them to be "non-gamers" though they've never met them, calling them mean, etc.

In other words, it would only add fuel to the fire right now.

Most people in these threads seem to have skipped denial and gone straight to the anger stage of grief.