What would WotC need to do to win back the disenchanted?

[pemerton]

It wasn't a claim... I was offering my perception of WotC's actions in both the marketing and creation of 4th edition.

To my eyes there were enough significant changes made to the game, whether they be in style, implied background, rule mechanics, etc, that I could only conclude that they were breaking from what D&D was in order to rebuild the game for a new audience.

Whether I was correct in my perception or not I know that the broad changes to the game turned me off and drove me away.

I'm not contesting the last sentence, but the middle paragraph. I agree that the changes made to the game were significant. But I don't think you can reasonably infer, simply from your own experience, that they were aimed at a new audience.

I was a D&D player in the 1980s. I more-or-less stopped playing D&D with 2nd ed - for all sorts of reasons I didn't like the play experience with 2nd ed, and still don't. 3E didn't bring me back - I stuck with Rolemaster as my main game of choice. 4e did bring me back. So at least in my case, the rebuilding of the game brought back an old audience.

All I'm saying is - only WotC knows whether you or me is the more typical 4e player.

 

[pemerton]

A lot of posts in this thread suggest an attitude towards the commercial products of a for-profit corporation that is a little alien to me.

of course pre-3e pdfs weren't a big moneymaker. But that's not the point: WotC yanked them from the shelf and alienated even more people. It takes almost no effort for them to be there - since all of that legwork had been done years ago - and, really, does anybody honestly believe that 1e adventures compete with 4e? Fans of those editions have an absolute right to be angry at WotC over yanking the products they like, as I'm sure many 4e fans would be angry if they quit supporting that game.

The real problem is that what we got from WotC was corporate speak, the usual bull which is likely little more than half-true and does nothing to satisfy consumers and everything to generate suspicion.

I don't understand the idea of "an absolute right to be angry at WotC over yanking" the PDFs of older books. Nor of people having "suspicions" about their motives. Their motives are obvious - belief that the best way for the company to make money is to yank those PDFs. That's the belief that motivates for-profit corporations. The belief may be mistaken, although no actual evidence for that - like the costs of offering the stuff for sale vs the revenue it generates vs the effect that the sale of such stuff has on sale of other WotC products - has been offered (a dozen people on a message board saying "I'd buy that stuff if it was there" certainly isn't evidence that a market exists).

Some people on this thread seem to want the benefits of folk culture - it's freely available to anyone who wants to participate in it - and the benefits of privately owned and manufactured culture - it has high production values, is (at its best) of high quality, is widely available and widely shared. But all the evidence of history suggests that you can't have both. If RPGs are folk culture, than make your own. With the OGL you can even do it without breaking infringing anyone's intellectual property rights. Hell, with the OGL you can even piggyback on WotC's old commercially produced products, as the retro-clones and Pathfinder do.

But if you want to participate in the currently commercially produced cultural product that is D&D, then inevitably you'll have to do it on WotC's terms. That's what it means for cultural products to have been commercialised.

Well, you should feel bad saying this because one day you may be left behind, forgotten and no longer cared about by the company that makes your favorite game.

I don't think anyone is faulting WotC for trying to get younger players involved in D&D. The fact that they are doing it in a way that completely alienates long time fans of the game, many of which have spent a lot of money on the hobby over the years, is what many are upset about.

I used to be a fan of work that TSR did. Then they started making stuff I wasn't interested in. So I stopped buying it. Now WotC makes stuff that I am interested in, so I do buy it. I don't buy as much ICE stuff as I used to (not that they make much stuff any more!) because I don't play ICE games anymore.

Similarly, I once used to buy a lot of Marvel comics. As the quality (in my view) dropped in the mid-90s I hung on for a while out of a sense of fondness for the characters, and then eventually stopped buying them. One day, if I discover that Marvel is publishing comics I want to read again, I might start buying them again. It's not a big deal.

I don't expect a commercial publisher to "care about" me. I expect them to publish stuff. Some of it, I might buy. Lots of it, I won't. Buying stuff from a commercial publisher doesn't give me any control over what they publish, or any entitlement that they publish more stuff that I like. It's not my culture. It's been privatised. I'm just part of the consuming public.

These products people are clamouring to have Wizards sell as PDFs are often available used online; but several people have put Wizards selling them again as something that would validate this relationship they have with the company. But consumers' only relationship with a company is to be exploited, to spend money on product. No company cares about you, personally, or ever did. The feeling that they did was just the result of marketing to your demographic.

This is probably the single most insightful post on this thread. It reminds me of all the outrage over the "Why you can't have nice things" blog post and thread a couple of weeks ago. The poster of that blog said that gamers, despite having a self-image of being too sharp to fall for marketing spin, are actually very easy to market to. When I read that, I wasn't sure what he had in mind. This thread is giving me a better sense of what he might have had in mind. Apparently TSR and WotC have succeeded in making a whole lot of people believe that a series of cultural products that are privately produced and whose content is privately owned and controlled are in fact common property - and people are clamouring to be allowed to pay money to WotC to purchase those products! That's marketing success if I ever saw it.

 

[The Little Raven]

I can tell you exactly what his powers do - not that I would know the names of any of them. Pull a guy here, slide a guy there, add a bonus to next attacker of opponent, deal some amount of damage and look to the DM to see whether we're anywhere near getting some stupid goblin bloodied after hitting it enough times. This is my point with the black box mentality. All that matters is the effect NOT the action(s) that caused the effect and whether they make any damn sense.

I am failing to see how the players' failure to remember fundamental things about their characters is anything but their own fault (unless they have some kind of memory problem or something). Having crazy spells that stopped time or reversed gravity never made me forget that my 2e fighter/mage wielded a mithral longsword.

DM: "Jake, what weapon are you using?"
Jake: "I don't remember. One of my powers knocks an enemy prone, so I can only remember that. It's all this game's fault. Nevermind the fact that I could remember minute trivia about your previous edition campaign worlds, now because of 4th edition giving me powers that have effects beyond just damage, I can't remember basic details about my character."

That's just ridiculous.

The situation I mentioned was completely laughable though because the guy honestly thought he was using a staff until the DM told him at the start of a game that he didn't actually have one but he did have a dagger.

I'd question the player's dedication to the character or the game being played if they can't remember something so basic.

And in the end that's my point, it really doesn't matter; it is the power that is important.

Yeah, it doesn't matter whether the weapon deals 1d4 or 2d6 damage. Or gets additional damage on a crit. Or can be wielded in the offhand. Or has a minimum level of damage that it can do. Or whether it gains an additional bonus based on its weapon group. Or whether it can even be used with the power in question.

Yeah, obviously weapon choice means nothing.

- the guy got sick of describing what he was doing after trying to come up with a new way of describing the same specific action for the upteenth time. I think all of us have given up on describing our powers and that is one of the things that makes me a sad panda with 4e.

That wasn't my implied question, but I fail to see how him getting sick of describing a specific action ad nauseum would make or justify him forgetting whether he was wielding a dagger or a staff.

- no I am not dumb. I can understand the power they are using perfectly. What weapon is causing the damage or effect is irrelevent in gameplay.

I'm not saying you're dumb.

I'm saying you're not paying attention, and then blaming the game system for your failure.

 

[Beginning of the End]

That means not dumping resources in to older product lines. Time is money, money is money, bandwidth is money.

You assert the WotC was spending time, money, and bandwidth to keep the OOP PDFs available through DTRPG.

At least one of these (bandwidth) is clearly false. WotC wasn't the one providing the bandwidth.

The money was all flowing the other way. WotC's costs (in terms of digitizing the content and legal fees for crafting/approving the licenses) had already been paid.

Time was probably not entirely nonexistent. There was almost certainly an employee who's job description included monitoring the PDF program. But if that guy was spending more than 15 minutes a month on monitoring the OOP material, WotC was doing something wrong.

We can sit here all day and hypothesize about some hidden business reason why WotC suddenly discovered that they don't actually own the copyright on all of their OOP material. (Although the fact that some OOP material was never made available specifically because WotC had run those types of legal checks makes that conspiracy theory rather tenuous.) But in the absence of that, there's no other rational explanation for what WotC did. And my original point stands.

(And the absurdity of you saying, "Well they don't want you!" in response to people answering the OP's question stands as well. Maybe they don't. Perhaps even probably. But it's irrelevant in the context of this thread.)

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Also in that link:

I had divested my residual rights in the game, so its renewed publication would have brought me no financial gain.

So we know Gygax is out.

 

[billd91]

I don't understand the idea of "an absolute right to be angry at WotC over yanking" the PDFs of older books. Nor of people having "suspicions" about their motives. Their motives are obvious - belief that the best way for the company to make money is to yank those PDFs. That's the belief that motivates for-profit corporations. The belief may be mistaken, although no actual evidence for that - like the costs of offering the stuff for sale vs the revenue it generates vs the effect that the sale of such stuff has on sale of other WotC products - has been offered (a dozen people on a message board saying "I'd buy that stuff if it was there" certainly isn't evidence that a market exists).

I don't see how you can't understand people having suspicions about WotC's motives. Unless you can find them explaining why they pulled their PDFs, their citation of piracy is all we have. And even you are indicating there's some other reason than that - contrary to WotC's public announcements. Nobody's expecting WotC to put out a balance sheet explaining why they thought the PDFs might not have been profitable enough to pursue, but a little more straight talk? Maybe.

Apparently TSR and WotC have succeeded in making a whole lot of people believe that a series of cultural products that are privately produced and whose content is privately owned and controlled are in fact common property - and people are clamouring to be allowed to pay money to WotC to purchase those products! That's marketing success if I ever saw it.

It's not a question of common property. People are clamoring for products they know WotC has, sure, and talk a lot about the products they prefer. But that's the hobby market for you. Gamers are no different from plenty of other hobbies from rebuilding cars to model trains to stamping. Hobbyists often identify with their products and brands. You don't just rebuild engines, you rebuild Chrysler engines ("Mopar or no car!"). You don't collect soda memorabilia, you collect Coca-cola memorabilia. And when the company you depend on for your supporting products cuts you off or offers a significant redesign, you grouse about it. That's the double-edged sword of marketing a powerful brand. It may attract people, it will lodge in their brains, they will seek out your products, and it will lead to a furor if fans of the brand don't like the way it drifts or products are withheld.

 

[yinadditve]

Agreeing with Pawsplay and Sammael

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

People are clamoring for products they know WotC has, sure, and talk a lot about the products they prefer. But that's the hobby market for you. Gamers are no different from plenty of other hobbies from rebuilding cars to model trains to stamping. Hobbyists often identify with their products and brands. You don't just rebuild engines, you rebuild Chrysler engines ("Mopar or no car!"). You don't collect soda memorabilia, you collect Coca-cola memorabilia. And when the company you depend on for your supporting products cuts you off or offers a significant redesign, you grouse about it. That's the double-edged sword of marketing a powerful brand. It may attract people, it will lodge in their brains, they will seek out your products, and it will lead to a furor if fans of the brand don't like the way it drifts or products are withheld.

Bingo!

When 4Ed rolled out, I was among the people who talked about the specter of it being the "New Coke" of the RPG industry. I was not insulting 4Ed itself, but questioning whether 4Ed was the product D&D's installed base was looking for.

Coke did their research: in taste tests, New Coke kicked Pepsi's butt...AND Coke's original recipe as well. The problem was that Coke didn't ask all of the right questions. For most Coke drinkers, New Coke was welcome to the family as another drink, but not as a replacement for the original. Not only that, most Pepsi drinkers wanted to drink Pepsi...even if they picked New Coke in the tests. Coke's market split, there were few Pepsi defectors, and eventually, New Coke died out.

4Ed has not fallen into that trap. While the D&D market did split, 4Ed has been successful in bringing in gamers from other systems AND growing the hobby by bringing in new players.

But there is still a market for old D&D products. I own multiples of most of the key D&D books of the previous editions, but I have no idea as to how much longer they can last. Those books took a beating. Despite my aforementioned dislike of pdfs for entertainment uses, I'm not going to lie and say that I might not buy some as backups.

The same story goes for minis. I got into it with a shopkeeper about minis for the 4Ed game. He claims that he can't sell them. I countered that it wsa because the market is glutted with elves, dwarves, humans and dragons from a variety of companies, but nobody- incuding WotC- is making real Dragonborn, Wilden, Tieflings, Shifters, Changelings, Goliaths, Shardminds, Devas, or merely size M Minotaurs, and you can't sell what isn't made.

Drop a bigger percentage of those into your "Official 4Ed" minis line and you'll see people buy them. I know this because I see people looking for them all the time, online and in game stores.

 

[pemerton]

Bill91, I hope you don't mind that I take your paragraphs in reverse order (edit: and get your username wrong! - sorry about that).

It's not a question of common property. People are clamoring for products they know WotC has, sure, and talk a lot about the products they prefer. But that's the hobby market for you. Gamers are no different from plenty of other hobbies from rebuilding cars to model trains to stamping. Hobbyists often identify with their products and brands.

<snip>

when the company you depend on for your supporting products cuts you off or offers a significant redesign, you grouse about it. That's the double-edged sword of marketing a powerful brand. It may attract people, it will lodge in their brains, they will seek out your products, and it will lead to a furor if fans of the brand don't like the way it drifts or products are withheld.

That's true, but it's still alien to me. Not the grousing - I can understand that. I was apparently the one person in Australia who was addicted to Flash Forward when it showed here, and groused when the TV channel moved it later and later in timeslot. It's the furor that I don't really get. What would the TV channel have to do to "win me back"? - show good shows in a good timeslot. What would ICE have to do to "win me back"? - sell RPG stuff that I enjoy at a fair price. What would WotC have to do to "win me back"? - the same. But if they don't, they're not being unfair or unreasonable or manipulative or anything else that one sees asserted or implied about them. They're just doing business. That's what commercialisation and privatisation mean - the owner/producer is in charge, not the consumer.

I guess I'm saying that I get the irritation - but I don't really get the outrage.

I don't see how you can't understand people having suspicions about WotC's motives. Unless you can find them explaining why they pulled their PDFs, their citation of piracy is all we have. And even you are indicating there's some other reason than that - contrary to WotC's public announcements. Nobody's expecting WotC to put out a balance sheet explaining why they thought the PDFs might not have been profitable enough to pursue, but a little more straight talk? Maybe.

Now this I really don't get. WotC stated a reason, namely, piracy. My understanding is that the piracy concerns are mostly about 4e PDFs, and that the other PDFs are (like someone said upthread) a casualty of that. But in any event, I don't need WotC to give me a reason, and I don't need to have suspicions, because I already know their reason: their belief about what is the best way for them to make money over whatever they take to be the relevant timeframe for measuring such things.

Assuming that the real concern is for protecting 4e PDFs from piracy, from the fact that they let the older PDFs go also I think we can infer (i) that sales from those PDFs were sufficiently low, and/or (ii)that market research tells them that leaving them on sale will split or confuse the market, such that it's not worth WotC's time keeping them on the market, and/or (iii, and with a tip of the hat to Dannyalcatraz) that there are legal complexities that they can't, or can't be bothered to, resolve. Again, I don't see the room for suspicions here - it's straightforward inference.

In my (somewhat abstract) capacity as an admirer of human culture and all it's achievements, I think it's a shame that all that stuff is sitting there unavailable when it seems that it could be made available pretty easily. But that's just another consequence of privatising cultural production. If you don't like it, it's no good trying to persuade WotC that they've made a flawed business decision - maybe they have, but no one here is better placed than WotC to make that judgement. You need to somehow undo that privatisation of your culture. Does the Library of Congress carry copies of old TSR and WotC publications?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Now this I really don't get. WotC stated a reason, namely, piracy. My understanding is that the piracy concerns are mostly about 4e PDFs, and that the other PDFs are (like someone said upthread) a casualty of that. But in any event, I don't need WotC to give me a reason, and I don't need to have suspicions, because I already know their reason: their belief about what is the best way for them to make money over whatever they take to be the relevant timeframe for measuring such things.

The counterpoint has been made that while it is a reason, it is somewhat nonsensical. Simply put, once your stuff has been digitally reproduced in the market, you can't "take your ball and go home" and expect things to change.

Pulling legitimate versions of your work from the market after it has been pirated means that only pirates make money from your work. As far as I know, WotC is the only operational company that has taken this approach to piracy- all of the other producers of music, TV, movies and even games keep their stuff on the market. At least with legal versions, ethical consumers have the option of obtaining your work and giving you money, as opposed to choosing between engaging in piracy or doing without. You may not make as much money as you did before, but you're making an amount greater than zero, and it is probably non-trivial.

Assuming that the real concern is for protecting 4e PDFs from piracy, from the fact that they let the older PDFs go also I think we can infer (i) that sales from those PDFs were sufficiently low, and/or (ii)that market research tells them that leaving them on sale will split or confuse the market, such that it's not worth WotC's time keeping them on the market, and/or (iii, and with a tip of the hat to Dannyalcatraz) that there are legal complexities that they can't, or can't be bothered to, resolve. Again, I don't see the room for suspicions here - it's straightforward inference.

While I can't say I'm suspicious of WotC's stated motives, I do find them hard to understand. I suppose "puzzled" would be a better term.

Besides aforementioned holes in the "piracy" assertion:

1. even low sales of a pdf would probably be profitable for a company with access to the kind of bandwith WotC can purchase
2. the market is already split; keeping your original work on the market would more likely minimize the profits of competitors currently operating without the market's biggest player than actually cannibalize your current products any more than they already are.
3. if 3.5 pdfs DID start outselling 4Ed products, that would give WotC not only $$$, but valuable market data.

The last two are key- WotC may just find that, instead of cannibalizing 4Ed, they may actually be able to support 2 RPGs, much like major soft-drink companies have a wide array of choices.

Yes, they tried this early on with Everway, and Everway folded. But WotC was a small company then with more limited resources stretched to support D&D, M:tG, Pokemon and others...and Everway was not already a proven winner in the marketplace like 3.5Ed.

Does the Library of Congress carry copies of old TSR and WotC publications?

I don't know for sure, but with a storage capacity of 20TB for digital stuff alone, and acting as the repository of the Copyright Office (including comic books, movies, video games, music recordings, and so forth), I think its safe to say that the Library of Congress has copies of some of those works in some form. They may not be accessible to you and me, but they're in there.