Paizo To Make Kingmaker Bestiary... For D&D 5E!

Parmandur · May 7, 2019

robus said:
How are you judging that? Not saying it’s not, I just haven’t seen evidence of it?

People I know are playing it, which is merely anecdotal, for one thing.

Primarily, sales charts. It's one of the best selling RPGs out at the moment, and has been consistently placing in the top five selling per ICV2 charts since it came out. By industry standards, removing D&D and Star Wars as a handicap, it seems a financial success.

Enevhar Aldarion · May 7, 2019

Parmandur said:
People I know are playing it, which is merely anecdotal, for one thing.

Primarily, sales charts. It's one of the best selling RPGs out at the moment, and has been consistently placing in the top five selling per ICV2 charts since it came out. By industry standards, removing D&D and Star Wars as a handicap, it seems a financial success.

The big problem I have with all these sales charts is that the book industry, and by extension the RPG industry, simply does not share actual numbers of units sold. So a chart showing the top 5, as a random example, could have the product in the #1 spot selling 1 million units, and then #2-5 selling 50k or less each, making their being top 5 actually meaningless.

Something like a Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds list of most played games tells me more, since they give percentages for each game played.

Plus, considering most everything other D&D 5E is available to buy in PDF, something like the Starfinder core book could have sold only in the thousands for print copies, but maybe the tens or hundreds of thousands in PDF, and I am pretty sure those ICV2 charts only account for sales of physical copies of books. So it could actually be a big seller when everything is factored in, or it could just be the third biggest flea on the elephant's back.

MNblockhead · May 7, 2019

Jester David said:
Gut feeling.
Personal anecdotal evidence.
I think people are reaching saturation. I need maybe one good monster book. I think one more subclass book is needed. Maybe the psion. And I have more adventures that I need. After that, there’s little they can publish to improvise my game.
Meanwhile, I think most of the people who would play and are interested and been exposed already. New player acquisition is going to slow down.

Plus, 2017 was a huge year and 2018 was even better. Can 2019 be even better? Or just the same as things plateau?

If 2018 was the peak, then 2019 will be close to what 2017 was. And 2017 was a huge year. And since 2014 was a string year too, 2022 will still be decent sales. And the game could go to 2024 before they really need to have a new edition.
And that’s assuming the decline is as sharp as the rise. It will likely be slower.

I think we have not yet hit the peak. D&D as a brand has barely been tapped in terms of a mainstream audience. If the Critical Role cartoon gets good reviews and picked up by Amazon or Netflix and really takes off, that could bring a lot more people to the game who become curious because of the cartoon. They like the cartoon, they learn about the web stream, and then D&D. If a D&D movie is made that is actually successful, that could bring many new players.

But even if you are correct, and we are close to the peak for new players, I don't think we are at the peak of profits. There is still a lot for WotC to make by licensing content to third-parties that a providing it in digital formats. I think they'll want to milk these revenue sources a few more years, along with making money from software and books, for a few years before they bring in a new edition. I'm not sure that edition churn is the way to make money going forward.

Parmandur · May 7, 2019

Enevhar Aldarion said:
The big problem I have with all these sales charts is that the book industry, and by extension the RPG industry, simply does not share actual numbers of units sold. So a chart showing the top 5, as a random example, could have the product in the #1 spot selling 1 million units, and then #2-5 selling 50k or less each, making their being top 5 actually meaningless.

Something like a Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds list of most played games tells me more, since they give percentages for each game played.

Plus, considering most everything other D&D 5E is available to buy in PDF, something like the Starfinder core book could have sold only in the thousands for print copies, but maybe the tens or hundreds of thousands in PDF, and I am pretty sure those ICV2 charts only account for sales of physical copies of books. So it could actually be a big seller when everything is factored in, or it could just be the third biggest flea on the elephant's back.

True, we only have vague ideas of relative success: I dunno if Starfinder is hitting Paizo's internal metric goals or whatever, but it is, relatively speaking, one of the best selling games of the past few years. I see no reason to doubt it's being successful in TTRPG industry terms.

S'mon · May 7, 2019

Parmandur said:
True, we only have vague ideas of relative success: I dunno if Starfinder is hitting Paizo's internal metric goals or whatever, but it is, relatively speaking, one of the best selling games of the past few years. I see no reason to doubt it's being successful in TTRPG industry terms.

I get the impression it's successful in standard industry terms, but not in "Pathfinder 2010" terms and certainly not in "5e D&D 2018" terms.

Morrus · May 7, 2019

Paizo To Make Kingmaker Bestiary... For D&D 5E!

Successful doesn’t mean “the single biggest” — there’s more than one successful company or person in the world. Successful means achieving the goals of the company.

Parmandur · May 7, 2019

S'mon said:
I get the impression it's successful in standard industry terms, but not in "Pathfinder 2010" terms and certainly not in "5e D&D 2018" terms.

Well, sure, probably not, but why would anyone expect that...?

zztong · May 7, 2019

Hussar said:
If Paizo then turns around and starts supporting 5e, suddenly that whole brand identity gets called into question.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but on a personal level, the PF2 Playtest stripped away any brand loyalty I had for Pathfinder. It also got several of my friends to start looking at 5e. To one of them, an official and supported pairing of 5e and Golarion would be ideal. It will be interesting to see where all the chips land.

Mercurius · May 7, 2019

Morrus said:
Successful doesn’t mean “the single biggest” — there’s more than one successful company or person in the world. Successful means achieving the goals of the company.

This is key. Americans in particular have the "king of the hill" mentality, as if the King Gorilla is the only successful gorilla. It is an incredibly myopic worldview. Not everyone has this view explicitly, but it is a subconscious influence that is particularly prevalent among Americans.

lyle.spade · May 7, 2019

Mercurius said:
This is key. Americans in particular have the "king of the hill" mentality, as if the King Gorilla is the only successful gorilla. It is an incredibly myopic worldview. Not everyone has this view explicitly, but it is a subconscious influence that is particularly prevalent among Americans.

Interesting observation, or perceived observation. We can also tend to be a bit manic...everything is awesome and spotless, or all is lost.

That aside, there is plenty of room in the market for a few big players, but 5e has really pushed aside most all other systems, and it starting to spread in a manner somewhat like during the d20 era, although I think overall the quality of third party work is much higher than 15+ years ago.

Paizo To Make Kingmaker Bestiary... For D&D 5E!

Parmandur

Book-Friend

Enevhar Aldarion

Hero

MNblockhead

A Title Much Cooler Than Anything on the Old Site

Parmandur

Book-Friend

S'mon

Legend

Morrus

Well, that was fun

Parmandur

Book-Friend

zztong

Explorer

Mercurius

Legend

lyle.spade

Adventurer

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