I am not accusing the D&D designers of lacking passion; I AM accusing them of bowing down to corporate pressure to design a game that would be a commercial success by tapping into minatures sales and DDI and that would be distinct enough from the 3E based OGL generation of games to mean that the D&D IP is protected.
There is nothing wrong with these goals per se, but when they are the PRIMARY drivers for the content of an RPG, then you have a BIG problem.
Yes, well said and this could describe the problem with American economics as a whole: profit before people, culture, and art. This is why I wonder if RPGs as a medium is inherently better suited to relatively small companies because once you get to a certain point--and once you sell yourself to a corporate giant like Hasbro--you start losing sight of certain things. This is why we can cross our fingers that Paizo doesn't get
too big and if it does, they somehow manage to stay "small."
So? How old the original people were has exactly diddly to do with who, in the long run, actually bought (and buys) the stuff.
I'm going to guess that WotC knows it's market data better than we do.
The only data we have access to is now old - the 1999 market survey results. They have about 66% of tabletop RPG players as being under 25 years old. We don't know the breakdown in terms of dollar sales. Nor do we know the reason why the bulk of gamers were so young.
However, it does look like the traditional market was young. And I don't think you'll build a cogent argument that the older set is a place where they're apt to be able to grow the market substantially. Keeping older gamers around isn't a bad idea, but if you can manage it, getting new gamers is a better long-term strategy.
Yes, but the point I was going to make was actually made in the next post by mudbunny: quantity of players is a separate matter from amount of product purchased. I'm in a game group of seven and I am the only one who buys RPGs regularly. I'm the only serious-to-hardcore gamer, everyone else is casual. If we look at how many 4E sales we have have contributed, five or six of the other six have purchased a PHB, one purchased a Red Box, a couple official dice, and a few had DDI for at least a month or two to get the Character Builder and I think that's it. Meanwhile I've purchased about 60% of the total 35ish hardcovers, plus a few Essentials products, plus one or two adventures, plus I had a DDI subscription for about a year and a half.
So of the seven of us, I would guess that six have spent a total of about $250-300 on 4E products, maybe $4-500 including DDI, while alone I've spent about over $1,000 (and I don't even buy D&D miniatures).
Now this has nothing to do with age as we are all in our 30s or 40s. But what it does have to do with is the split between the "casual" and "diehard" gamers. Going on the above figures, if you take my anecdote as roughly exemplary of that buying difference, I spend about as much money on new D&D stuff as about 10 casual players. If we take DDI out of the equation then it becomes something like 20.
I may be wrong, but my guess is that a larger percentage of 30+ players are diehard than 12-20 players, at least in terms of purchasing.
I think that you are looking at this part wrong. There are two factors which get taken into account when looking at how much age groups spend. The number of people in the age group spending and the amount that they spend. While it is highly probable that people in older age-groups have more disposable income to spend, there are going to be less of them spending money on RPGs than younger people.
The larger population spending money on RPGs at the lower age groups will balance out (and probably exceed) the larger amounts spent by us old farts.
Yes, exactly. But this just supports what I am saying: there may be less old farts buying stuff, but we're probably buying a lot more stuff. But I think you are right, that it balances out - so we have two
roughly equal purchasing groups: the 10% or so of players that buy half the product and the 90% that buy the other half. Now the thing is, that 10% is your core that are more likely to continue purchasing
if they (we!) like the product. The 90% is more fickle and changeable; at best a few of them enter the 10%, but more likely their interest fades and dies.
So it may be that the normal major goals of retaining old players and finding new ones are secondary as a "key to success" to
finding ways to make existing casual fans into diehard fans. Or, at the least, it is equal to the other goals and probably under-emphasized by WotC. I think this key has to do with, to go back to someone's comment earlier on, offering a truly great experience that you can't get elsewhere, that isn't simply a complex board-game or a social video game.
