D&D: big as it ever was? (Forked Thread: So...How are Sales of 4E Product?)

[justanobody]

I've reported justanobody on his prosletyzing his religious views. Anyone whose arguments are based on unseen principles not supported by any evidence but their own meandering experience despite significant objective evidence is clearly advocating a religious ideology, and I f I can't promote CHristianity here, then he can't promote his, even if he wrote it.

What's wrong with my prostate?!

 

[ki11erDM]

After reading these 2 threads I feel like I put an econ 101 book and a players handbook into a blinder and hit liquefy and then cut the resulting powder with cocaine and did about 10 lines.

Now that I think about it… maybe that is why I don’t remember the 80’s…

 

[The Little Raven]

Sales do not equal popularity.

Ah, y'know what I love about this statement? It means that any claim by anyone of popularity cannot be proven, since the most objective indicator of popularity for consumer products is sales. So, anyone who says that AD&D was more popular than 3e because it sold better is wrong. Or anyone who claims 3e was more popular than 4e. Or 2e over 1e. Or chocolate over vanilla. Titanic isn't popular, despite it being the highest grossing movie of all time.

What objective metric than can actually be used determines popularity, then, because it seems that you're basing "popularity" on whether or not you like or, or whether your anecdotes claim it to be so.

 

[darjr]

Sales most certainly does indicate popularity. Sure, it does not, necessarily, indicate players, but if it wasn't popular enough to support a certain amount of sales, it wouldn't sell that much.

It's really simple.

Also note that after the bust in the business of D&D, wizards estimated that there were 1.65 million D&D players, in 1999. In 2004 the estimate, from wizards again, was that there were three million players.

 

[darjr]

Hmmm this article from 2004 says that the estimate is 1.6. Sounds like the 1999 numbers. Maybe both articles are referring to the numbers published by WotC from the 1999 survey?

 

[Delta]

2e didn't kill TSR. Poor management making decisions like Buck Rogers, or purchasing a needlepoint distributor, or not taking in any market research (that Dancey could find), or investing in boxed sets that cost more to produce than they took in, or creating a dozen variations on D&D settings and trying to support them all fully, or moving a popular setting from its normal system (D&D) to a brand new one (SAGA), or attempting to compete with M:tG with a poorly designed card game (Spellfire), or Dragon Dice, or the multitude of other decisions TSR made that pushed them into the grave. Suggesting that the 2e critics, who said the same things about 2e that 3e critics said about 3e and so on (dumbing down; for the ADD generation; soulless; etc, ad nauseum), were correct about it killing TSR ignores the actual history of the company's decline and bankruptcy.

So everything else that TSR did in the 90's was rubbish, but 2E was a golden child of profitability, beautiful in all ways? I think not -- all of these were missteps from the same company running in the wrong direction, around the 2E era.

The concensus I've always is heard is that 2E drove old players away, and 3E brought them back again -- and now it looks like 4E is driving a good proportion of them away again.

Put it another way: the only other time I've ever entirely skipped a D&D edition (2E), the company went bankrupt within the decade. My guess is that the "digital initiative" (Gleemax/ DDI) will stand in for the "poor management making decisions" you bring up, in the 4E era.

 

[T. Foster]

Also note that after the bust in the business of D&D, wizards estimated that there were 1.65 million D&D players, in 1999. In 2004 the estimate, from wizards again, was that there were three million players.

In his book Roleplaying Mastery (1987), Gary Gygax cited estimates from TSR of 5 million D&D players in the US, 8 million worldwide.

 

[TerraDave]

T Foster and JRRN, your experiences are very close to my own...hence the thread...

 

[malraux]

Put it another way: the only other time I've ever entirely skipped a D&D edition (2E), the company went bankrupt within the decade. My guess is that the "digital initiative" (Gleemax/ DDI) will stand in for the "poor management making decisions" you bring up, in the 4E era.

I don't think so. Imagine the worst case with DDI, that it loses all money sunk into it and never recoups anything. At which point, the employees associated with it are fired, the extra IT infrastructure is sold off for basically nothing, and the WotC profitability is brought down slightly, with only a small fraction of the budget going into DDI. Meanwhile, all other lines are profitable.

From the stories regarding TSR when WotC acquired the company, TSR had done far worse than just try out a new revenue stream, they had sunk a huge amount of their budget into stuff dragon dice and CCGs and buck rodgers board games. Even worse, rather than just admitting the mistake, taking the loss and moving on, they were paying to warehouse worthless junk.

Admittedly WotC does a lot more than just DnD: M:tG and other CCGs, Avalon Hill, etc, but WotC has a pretty good track record of keeping those lines profitable, and as importantly, knowing when to cut losses. The change in DDM is a good example. To make WotC compare to TSR, WotC would have to suddenly drop the cost of DDM to less than profitability, then even after they continued to decline in sales, keep production up and just start storing the excess.

In short, system bad business decisions look a lot different from a single failed revenue stream.

 

[malraux]

In his book Roleplaying Mastery (1987), Gary Gygax cited estimates from TSR of 5 million D&D players in the US, 8 million worldwide.

Any idea what was defined as a player? Is that someone who has ever played, or someone who plays twice a month?