Ryan Dancey - D&D in a Death Spiral

[Miyaa]

Hitting any non-fiction bestseller list isn't that hard. For April 2nd, when the PHB2 was #14, "Who Moved My Cheese" was #15, and it's an eleven-year-old book.

I just find it amusing that the D&D stuff, being about how to play in a fictional world is classified in the non-fiction category.

I'm not sure if we are close to the end of D&D as an entity. Deaths usually are either going out as a whimper or one last supernova burst before dying out. But a lot of other death scenarios are possible.

I think Wizards's input into D&D is on a death-spiral, considering how and why things are being produced. (As an aside, I find it interesting that Stan! and others have commented on how Wizards has produced way too much material, where I would contend that they are produce no where near enough considering how the production came out with 3rd edition and 3.5. It's like one rule book, one module, and maybe one or two tie-in novels per month instead of the multiple books and modules that they usually get. But that's neither here or there.) If you compare the timing of when they are producing books versus when they were producing similar stuff for 2nd and 3rd editions, I think you'll see that they've sped up when these things ought to be published, which is both a blessing and a curse for how they decided to organize and market the eventual complete game set.

I agree that the solution is to slow down on production, but not to slow that you inadvertently wean the customers off of your crack, er, product. Ever notice that WoW will produce a new chapter once every year and a half? They're really good at getting people hooked on something, and just when the thought of that they are almost getting tired of the game sets in, hey, here's an expansion set. And then they don't mind the half-day wasted downloading and upgrading their stuff. That's what Wizards ought to do.

And then they can be less concerned that piracy is taking a good chunk away from their presumed market share.

 

[billd91]

I just find it amusing that the D&D stuff, being about how to play in a fictional world is classified in the non-fiction category.

It is kind of funny. But makes sense too, not being a narrative work and all.

 

[BryonD]

Well, yes. Dancey's statement was a hypothesis of future events, based on unknowable data. That was my point this whole time, but you kept insisting that someone should disprove it somehow. Both the future and WotC's internal numbers are unknown to Dancey and to everyone here, so refuting his words is rather impossible.

There are reasonable arguments presented. That does not need to consitute proof. It seems you are inferring that because the capacity for proof is withheld, that no reasonable analysis of what knowledge is available should be permitted.

If his reasoning his flawed, then the reasoning itself may be shown to be wrong without ever needing to know the absolute conclusion.

You are falsely equating a reasonable estimate with a claim of absolute value.
WotC's internal numbers are not required to refute the generalizations presented.

 

[Intense_Interest]

If his reasoning his flawed, then the reasoning itself may be shown to be wrong without ever needing to know the absolute conclusion.

You are falsely equating a reasonable estimate with a claim of absolute value.
WotC's internal numbers are not required to refute the generalizations presented.

Yet how is anything he says reasonable? Dancey's point is so embedded in rhetoric that it is impossible to derive a reasonable conclusion from it.

Paragraph 1: Who are these regressive people, specifically? I can't even imagine that calling a group the "Corporate Force of the Dark Side" is part of a reasoned debate.

Paragraph 2-5: Show me where WotC has made any of these claims. Ryan Dancey is an outsider who alludes to this knowledge, and is speculating that all of these conclusions are true. He has no concrete data.

Paragraph 6-8: There is no actual correlation to any of these events. They are a collection of word-salad excretions of a paranoid schizophrenic. It would qualify as reasoned debate only in a Conspiracy Theorist's convention.

Paragraph 9-12: Slippery Slope ahoy! Any person with real-world experience of bankrupt companies can throw out numerous cases of formerly-bankrupt corporations or companies on the brink of insolvency fighting through it. His claim requires the sight of a Prophet to be even reasonable.

When Ryan Dancey shows up with something reasonable, then maybe we'll take his side into account.

 

[AngryMojo]

Honestly, the comments seem a bit to Chicken Little to me to really be taken seriously. If 4e is selling poorly, it could be that everything is selling poorly right now.

That being said, whenever gaming books sell out of multiple print runs and hit bestseller lists, it's generally a good sign for sales. There's no actual way to tell without looking at actual sales figures, but we do know that 4e print runs are larger than 3.5 print runs were, and 4e is having to be reprinted more rapidly than 3.5 was.

When I say 4e and 3.5 I'm specifically referring to the Player's Handbook. The true indicator of any RPG's sales are it's main player book. If your sales are high on that, you're in good shape.

 

[Jasperak]

Can we as a community make a wiki page that lists the resources that we use to get all of these numbers that people are throwing back and forth? One single page that we can all reference to make our respective points?

Where are we getting the numbers for how fast the print runs are going for 4e and went for 3e and 3.5e? And sizes of those print runs? Where is this information? I know some have posted links to USA Today and I think NY Times for the Best seller Lists, but where are the rest of these numbers coming from and does it benefit anyone to have to search through twenty different threads to find those links as opposed to one single resource?

 

[Mirtek]

Sorry to be a thread necromancer, but after reading the recent The Escapist interview with Mike Mearls, and finding Ryan's statement mentioned, this thread was among the first few google hits.

Now, reading Ryan's one and a half year after he made them, I am shocked how many of them came true:

The next things that will take hits are the RPGA (costs a lot to operate - slash it's budget)

Done

then quality (put fewer words and less art on fewer pages and raise the price),

See the declining quality of the online mags.

then consistency (rules varients generated by inexperienced designers and/or overworked developers start to spawn and cohesion in rulings breaks down leading to ad hoc interpretations as the de facto way to play)

Giving up the unified system with Essentials and Arcana Unearthed? Done

 

[AngryMojo]

Sorry to be a thread necromancer, but after reading the recent The Escapist interview with Mike Mearls, and finding Ryan's statement mentioned, this thread was among the first few google hits.

I think the biggest argument against Ryan's views is the state of the industry today, compared to the state of every other niche industry during hard economic times. Everybody is suffering, but a year and a half after his comments about a death spiral, guess what's still around.

People have been doing chicken little impressions for decades. D&D has lasted through recessions before, they'll last again. If anything, be happy WotC is releasing the game with a lower price point through Essentials. That's what the industry needs, a lower introductory cost.

 

[Piratecat]

Giving up the unified system with Essentials and Arcana Unearthed? Done

Actually, the online database has almost completely eliminated redundant and contradictory rules sub-systems. I've been surprised in that regard.

 

[delericho]

Agreed. While I don't like what WotC have been doing of late, there's no evidence that they're doing noticably worse (in terms of sales) than they were 18 months ago.

Now, if we see an announcement of 5e within the next 12 months, that probably would be a warning sign of something being badly wrong... but I'm really not expecting such a thing.