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

[Roman]

I don't really like 4E very much and would therefore like to see it replaced by 5E as soon as possible, but that's obviously not going to happen. All evidence coming out of WotC (statements on record sales and so on) indicates that 4E is selling extremely well. My anecdotal evidence all tells me that 4E is not doing well, as I don't seem to meet any people who actually like it IRL despite changing locations thrice in the past few months, but anecdotal evidence should not be trusted when confronted by statistical evidence (even if referred only vaguely by WotC). So yeah, 4E is selling very well and I will thus probably be sticking to 3E for a decade or so until 5E comes out (and, of course, I might not lie what 5E does to the game either! ).

 

[Delta]

All evidence coming out of WotC (statements on record sales and so on)...

Quibble: There aren't actually any statements on "record sales" from WOTC. Every time we try to track down that rumor, it comes up empty. For example, see the thread over here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...2-so-how-sales-d-d-4th-edition-product-6.html

So for the record I don't know how 4e has done compared to 1e... I doubt a staffer would have made that claim.

 

[TwinBahamut]

Honestly, I am very skeptical of the whole "D&D was at its height in the 80s" theory. I have seen some anecdotal claims about it, but there seems to be no real proof at all that 1E sales were ever any good... Since even WotC couldn't make the comparison (see the thread this one spawned from), it seems proof for that claim doesn't exist.

One thing I definitely have to dispute is the idea that D&D was more popular and well-known back then just because it had a Saturday-morning cartoon. One thing that argument completely ignores is the fact that Saturday morning cartoons simply don't exist anymore the way they did even a decade ago, let alone in the 80s. The cartoon market isn't even comparable, and even if the 80s D&D fad occurred today with all the strength that it is claimed to have had, D&D almost certainly would not have a cartoon.

Also, the D&D movie, regardless of claims of quality or lack thereof, does count for the purposes of being a visible sign of D&D brand recognition in the modern market.

Anyways, I think that I need to make a quick comparison to something I have a few anecdotes for...

When I was a kid in elementary school, there were two major "game fads". One was Pogs (I had no idea why those were popular even then, and less of an idea now), and the other was Magic the Gathering. I have no idea if the former even exists anymore, so I will focus on the latter, which should pretty obviously be a reasonable comparison to D&D (being made by the same people now, after all).

In the earliest days of Magic, there were a lot of people who were interested in it and talked about it at my school. Actually, my older brother was the person who really introduced me to it and actually owned cards for the game. I never owned any myself, though I liked playing with his a bit (I recall banding rules and Ornithopters, if any serious Magic fans want to know the timing). Of course, that fad didn't last long, and a lot of people moved on from the game and never looked back. At present, the only "game" my older brother is even interested in is duck hunting. I never even bought a single card back then. It was only in college, when I first encountered the new Ravnica block of cards, that I actually started paying any interest in the game again and bought Magic cards for the first time.

So, does the Magic market seem better off now, or was it better off back then, when it was in the midst of the fad? It certainly doesn't seem to be doing bad now, I can safely say that... It seems to be a very healthy game with a lot of fans that easily supports a fairly large number of tournaments, events, professional players, etc. It may not be a highly visible fad anymore, but it is a well-established game that has a lot of players, possibly far more serious players (as in repeat customers) than it had in the fad days.

I think D&D may be in a similar situation, really. It is not as visible as it once was (since the visibility was brought on by its novelty), but it is probably healthier and larger.

 

[Delta]

Honestly, I am very skeptical of the whole "D&D was at its height in the 80s" theory. I have seen some anecdotal claims about it, but there seems to be no real proof at all that 1E sales were ever any good... Since even WotC couldn't make the comparison (see the thread this one spawned from), it seems proof for that claim doesn't exist.

I think I'll have to go with the slight evidence from Gygax/ TSR/ WOTC (see above) over your countering opinion. Unless you have any better data.

 

[WalterKovacs]

Are you seriously arguing that everything before, after, and around 2E was messed up as a business, but not 2E? Are you at least aware that TSR went bankrupt in the 2E era?

This is the best data we have to work with:
- Gygax said in 1987 there were some 5 million D&D players.
- WOTC estimated in 1999 there were 1.65 million players.
- WOTC estimated in 2004 there were 3 million players.

Which translates to: Up in 1E, down in 2E, back up in 3E. If anyone has better data I'd love to see it, but that's what we have to date.

Even if the data is accurate, without knowing the method of collecting/interpreting the data, it's hard to really know if 5 million is counting the same "thing" as the 1.65.

Either way, the marks seem to be counting 1E at it's peak, 3e's inception/2e's end, and 3e/3.5 at it's peak, so to speak.

So, it indicates that, when 3e finally came out, there was a downturn before hand. However, this may not be directly connected to 2e, (it might have boosted D&D's overall numbers for a while ... but near the end, everyone started dropping off). The latter would be some of the reason to make 4e sooner rather than later, not waiting until fans started getting turned off by existing D&D options before bringing out a new edition.

 

[TwinBahamut]

I think I'll have to go with the slight evidence from Gygax/ TSR/ WOTC (see above) over your countering opinion. Unless you have any better data.

What "countering opinion"? In what you quoted, I am stating something that is essentially fact. It is nothing more than an inevitable conclusion drawn from what has been said in the two relevant threads. See for yourself:

1) The only people who have real access to the relevant data for both 1E sales and 4e sales are the people at WotC.

2) The people at WotC have said that the sales data for 1E is too imprecise to make any such comparison.

3) Thus, it is impossible for anyone to make any kind of comparison between 1E sales and 4E sales.

4) Any statement to the effect of "D&D was at its height in the 1E period" requires a comparison of sales data across editions.

5) Given 3 and 4, it is impossible to prove the claim that "D&D was at its height in the 1E period".

As long as we are talking about objective, non-anecdotal data about the popularity of D&D (which essentially means detailed sales data and market research), which I consider to be the only measure that can be used to prove this kind of claim, then my argument is valid.

Anyways, aren't you being a bit deceptive when you say that "slight evidence from WotC" is proving your claim? An employee of WotC has gone on record to say that D&D is as big or bigger now than it has ever been. If you want to dispute that claim, you need to find a stronger basis for disputing it than a comparisons between modern player estimates and some old number made by a man who did not necessarily have enough information to make the claim he did. We don't even know how the two different numbers were calculated. I don't hold that kind of evidence to be sufficient to prove your claim at all.

Anyways, I am still sticking to the conclusion I made based on my MtG analogy: D&D was much more visible in the 80s because of its novelty, but that probably did not correlate to either sales, sustained popularity, or anything else of the sort.

However, I am curious if anyone actually knows anything about the relevant sales data for Magic the Gathering, to make my analogy more complete. Without that, I admit it is a bit flawed...

 

[Delta]

Anyways, aren't you being a bit deceptive when you say that "slight evidence from WotC" is proving your claim? An employee of WotC has gone on record to say that D&D is as big or bigger now than it has ever been. If you want to dispute that claim, you need to find a stronger basis for disputing it than a comparisons between modern player estimates and some old number made by a man who did not necessarily have enough information to make the claim he did.

That's ridiculous. The statement from Gygax in the 80's is "some old number made by a man who did not necessarily have enough information", but vague PR cheerleading thrown out decades later is the gold-standard "an employee of WotC has gone on record"?

Come to think of it, we also have multiple polls at both the ENWorld and WOTC site that show the majority of players joining the game in the early 80's, but you'll probably discount that, too, in favor of your, well... nothing.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/171146-when-did-you-start-playing-d-d.html

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/244553-evolution-fighter.html

 

[M.L. Martin]

moving a popular setting from its normal system (D&D) to a brand new one (SAGA)

Point of information: Said 'popular setting' had been cancelled a year or two before SAGA's launch, depending on how one counts Dragonlance Classics Vol. III, and some evidence suggests that it had nearly died a couple of times before that, and that a massive push in 1992 had not saved it.

The reasoning behind the move to SAGA was manifold, as I understand it: trying to appeal to novel fans who, it was felt, would respond better to a less wargamey and intimidating system than AD&D, and distancing it from AD&D for legal reasons to avoid it possibly falling under the D&D movie deal and ensuring that it could be licensed separately. The move to SAGA was a gamble that failed to work out for several reasons, but I don't think it was the act of pure stupidity that Ryan "One System, One Setting, One Campaign" Dancey makes it out to be.

 

[WalterKovacs]

Come to think of it, we also have multiple polls at both the ENWorld and WOTC site that show the majority of players joining the game in the early 80's, but you'll probably discount that, too, in favor of your, well... nothing.

Of course, do the people that have voted on ENWorld of joining the game (i.e. first played it) in the early 80's are postin on ENWorld. There is probably a good number of them playing more recent editions. There are also people that have voted that definitely did not play older editions.

So, that means ... a lot of older players have kept playing and gone over to newer editions, and there are new players that haven't played older editions. I fail to see how that supports any argument involving comparing past popularity/sales to new ones.

(a) Anyone that was playing and stopped playing ... wouldn't have voted in the poll (for the most part). So we don't know how many there were before, and how many are left

(b) It doesn't indicate whether or not the same player can be counted for later editions as well.

 

[darjr]

I guess the assumption is that if the game were as popular as it was in the 80's there would be a more even scale. I think the argument has merit.