Open Letter to WotC from Chris Dias

[Dias Ex Machina]

...so perhaps you can move on and allow others to continue the discussion regarding the open letter and the points expressed by the author of it?

Yes, and I wanted to express my gratitude to the many people that posted comments here, on LivingDice.com, and Wizard's homeage. It has been cross-posted by several people. Taking out of account the rare ill-mannered accusation of me griping or of being lazy, everyone has been really supportive. The collision of Paizo and WOTC was never part of my letter, other that the observation that Paizo was selling Amethyst in their online store and that my letter began because of Alea publishing moving away from 4th Edition, the third major publisher in six months to do so (my timeline may be in error, full disclosure). I appreciate the support from Morrus and Enworld, posting nearly everything Amethyst related that comes up. My hope was that WOTC follow that idea and roll with it using their considerable influence in the D&D community. I sincerly believe establishing a relationship with 3rd party products would improve their image and increase the D&D market share. The fact that Paizo follows that is conventient, a good argument, but honestly coincidental to the letter.

 

[xechnao]

If the two games are generally comparable in sales, then it makes sense to compare their business practices and policies. If we are not sure if they are comparable, then we cannot (or at least should not) make a strong claim that the practices of one will apply well to the other.

Pathfinder and D&D compete for a segment of a shared market. I think that at this point this is undeniable.
In the past D&D was the absolute king of the market. It had no fear of any competition. This is not the case any more. D&D competes with a player that produces support of the highest quality for the product that made modern D&D the king it was, while D&D, prematurely distanced itself from that product to venture towards some new enterprise. This enterprise has failed to surpass the glory of the previous product and its established community, a glory of a vision that has been growing bigger due to Paizo's support.

Pathfinder is undeniably more successful than 4e. While 4e bears the D&D brand name, Pathfinder and Paizo have managed to capture the attention of the community that the D&D brand name totally ruled.

In this sense, Pathfinder, as of now has managed to surpass D&D. Whatever you say about 2nd year or 3rd year makes no sense. What makes sense is how many active players and followers each brand has and how many of them are going to support their brand in the future -even towards whatever new enterprises each brand decides to venture to.

 

[Marius Delphus]

In the past D&D was the absolute king of the market. It had no fear of any competition. This is not the case any more....

Pathfinder is undeniably more successful than 4e....

In this sense, Pathfinder, as of now has managed to surpass D&D.

Again, people keep saying this, but nothing approximating verifiable proof has been offered. Where is your proof that Hasbro/WOTC "fears" the competition offered by Pathfinder? Also it depends entirely on your definition of "more successful" and "surpass," of which you seem to be offering two or three in your post.

 

[Goonalan]

Hi

I'm not a producer of any products, just a lowly consumer- with a chunk of disposable income.

In previous editions, and I'm blushing a little as I type this, I spent up to £100/week on WOTC & 3PP products- actually, on average, for a good few years I spent £100 a week easily.

Just to let you know I work two jobs, have few debts, and dress badly- I've not got money to burn, I've just got money to spend.

I hate the fact that there are so few 3PP products for 4e (my favourite edition to date- 30 years DMing as of Jan).

I didn't buy WOTBS, it came free with my ENWorld Community Supporter account- I guess that still counts me as a sale for Morrus but when I started my sub it was nothing to do with WOTBS. I've not used WOTBS or read beyond the second adventure- nothing bad about it you understand just doesn't fit with my present games.

I'm a collector of D&D stuff as well as a DM- I own easy 90% of everything ever produced by Wizards/3PP for the 3X edition. I can say the same for 4e.

I want choice- and I know choice is bad- Morrus, sorry feller, but I want other businesses to get in to the act and produce adventures (and lots of other stuff) for 4e. Yours are great, but as a consumer, I want more choice.

I don't play Pathfinder- and yet I buy their books- Paizo and 3PP (I bought a lot of them (all) at first- but I couldn't justify keeping on buying products for a game I'll never play). I bought/buy them because they represente/d the only choice I could find- even, as I say, if they were for another game.

I just play D&D 4e, and yet I have bought a dozen other rules systems in the last year, because there are no other 4e products that I (want/need) or can just buy to read.

What I'm trying to say is I have this money I want to spend on 4e products, and I can't spend it because the products don't exist, or I've just bought them all. Okay this is a business model- the DI subscription thing, I get it. But if WOTC produced more 4e stuff I'd buy it, if they produced Minis I'd buy them (I have thousands), if 3PP produced more 4e stuff I'd buy them too.

Gasp- am I truly alone in this.

Which leads me to make two points, available below, with supporting evidence-

1. (4e) D&D (in my house) has much much much much much less market saturation, D&D used to enjoy a 100% market share- with total domination of all shelves, book cases et al in my back room/office (and bed-side cabinet). It is at present vying for shelf space with not only other RPGS (none of which I play or DM you understand) but also DVDs, books (non-fantasy), magazines (again non-fantasy) and even an air freshener. Pre 4th edition such a situation would be viewed as a 2012/Mayan Calendar-style apocalyptic event, particularly the introduction of an air freshener.

2. 4e D&D (in my house) has underperformed spectacularly from a fiscal POV, I was forced to use my disposable income to buy the Mrs a new car last year, that money was earmarked for my D&D spend, instead it was frittered away. A year ago I found myself phoning the mortgage company and quadrupling the amount I pay off every month- seriously. My spend has dropped from £400/month to, whatever... buttons- maybe £40-50.

The above two facts are the absolute truth- I have checked with me and can confirm them to be a 100% accurate.

I want a bigger 4e, I want a community (such as exists at Pathfinder), I want droves of 4e 3PP who can produce alternative adventures or other niche, specialist (or whatever) products.

I swear on my un-Essential Red Box that I will continue to buy everything WOTC produce (and I will continue to sub to ENWorld), however I promise I have more money to spend in attempt to keep other producers interested in making 4e a more vibrant place.

Has anyone else noticed it's all got a little 'bad blood' of late, yeah I know we've been here before- as I said earlier 30 years DMing.

I know the customer is not always right, I'm just saying- I have money, can I have more 4e stuff, from more people- like they used to do, like they do at Pathfinder (damn them all to hell with with their excellent graphics, cartography, adventures et al- thank the lord for a shoddy rule-set).

So I'd really like it if WOTC had a re-think, that the letter in the OP touched a nerve, like it did with me- that's all. I know it wont of course- but there, I've had my say.

Cheers Goonalan.

 

[enrious]

I don't dispute the accuracy of your report, Goonalan.

Heck, I used to be you, in a manner of speaking.

But at the end of the day, you're only one person. Nevermind that you have the buying habit of four.

The two biggest mistakes a company can make:

1) Don't listen to their customers.

2) Listen to their customers.

 

[Wicht]

Again, people keep saying this, but nothing approximating verifiable proof has been offered. Where is your proof that Hasbro/WOTC "fears" the competition offered by Pathfinder? Also it depends entirely on your definition of "more successful" and "surpass," of which you seem to be offering two or three in your post.

I think his point is not necessarily that Pathfinder is selling more than 4e (though it very well could be) but that if you think about what each company would consider success, Paizo has been much more successful. That is, 4e went from market leader to actually sharing the ring for the first time ever. Is that success? Pathfinder, on the other hand, went from nothing to actually being in the ring as a genuine competitor vying for control of the market. Even if 4e is still outperforming Pathfinder, the mere fact that Pathfinder is in the ring is an astonishing amount of success.

The original Rocky movie is a great illustration of this point. Rocky, a nobody fighter, gets in the ring with the champ and though he actually loses the fight, the fact that he made it so close to winning is such an astonishing feat that nobody really cares whether he loses - he's made his mark and thus been successful.

Anyway, I think thats what xechnao was trying to say. He can correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[Morrus]

Early in the concept phase for ZEITGEIST I did consider including Pathfinder stats. We quickly realised, though, that you can't just substitute statistics (any more than we could for the 3.5 - 4E WotBS conversion) and that it would require a lot of rewriting for each system to do a job worth doing.

However, based on this thread, I'm going to look again at that opinion. I'm very unsure that it can be done well - the games are just so different, with different advancement rates, PC capabilities, and so on.

So, if there are any experienced Pathfinder writers who feel that this is possible - and within their capabilities to do well - please contact me. I might have a job for you (taking an existing 4E adventure and converting it). However, I'm not convinced it can be done well without massive rewriting - and I'd rather not do it at all than do it badly.

But it might be worth an experiment - I'll even report the results in terms of relative percentages of versions downloaded if I do it. I think I'd be a fool to try to compete with Paizo for the core product type of the core market of their own core game (just like I'd be a fool to be producing APs for 4E if WotC were churning out lots of quality APs), but it might be worth trying at least for the first adventure and see where we are. If we can find a good way to do it.

 

[Obryn]

First of all, do you have any formal training in research? I do.

Ditto. Graduate-level, as if it matters. Knowledge is knowledge; you're displaying a lack of understanding of basic methodology, so it wouldn't matter if all I had was a high school diploma. But your appeal to authority/snark is cute.

You're mixing and confusing a lot of terms in this paragraph. Why can't an anecdote have rigor? Do you think anthropologists realy on rigorless anecdotes? What about field tests of pharmaceuticals?

Again, it's data collection.

I'll not speak to anthropology, but I know there are several branches with varying degrees of scientific rigor. Regardless, I doubt most physical anthropologists, archaeologists, social anthropologists, and the like would prefer to describe their work as "a collection of anecdotes."

Don't conflate "collecting anecdotes" with "surveys." They're very different.

Field tests of pharmaceuticals aren't even remotely anecdotal. They often involve surveys, but surveys != anecdotes.

The problem in this situation would be failing to identify anecdotes in which those cures were not successful.

Again, it's not whether or not the cures were s successful that's important. It's the control and methodology used in the collection of data. This really isn't hard.

Performing a controlled experiment in most of the examples you give is completely impossible. For instance, it's not feasible to randomly select 1000 people between two groups, give half of them cancer, and then treat the cancer and the non-cancer groups with a randomly selected treatment, either placebo or the experimental treatment.

In the real world, you have to deal with people who already have cancer, and who agree to be part of an experiment. You compare the experimental treatment to some sort of control, usually the "industry-standard" or "gold standard" alternative, maybe both. You can't give cancer treatments to people who are well, so your only comparison is whether the new treatment is significantly better than what you were doing before. Which will not tell you directly, whether the new treatment works at all, or even if what you were doing before was better than no treatment at all.

I am starting to doubt any research credentials you claim.

Let's say we're doing a cancer study for a treatment. We'll take 200, 1000, whatever people; the methodology is the same regardless.

A simple double-blind would be, "Half get the real treatment, half get a sham treatment." Neither the experimenters nor the patients know which one they're on. Collect data at the end - surveys, results of medical examinations, whatever - and compare your treatment to both the placebo effect of the sham treatment and known industry standards.

None of the above is "collecting anecdotes" in any way, shape, or form. Information and knowledge are controlled from start to finish.

Similarly, we can't run two controlled experiments, one in which WotC opens up the OGL to 4e material, and one in which they don't.

That doesn't mean there is no data.

Of course you can't. And of course there's data. But neither "people on forums said this" or "my game shop owner said that" is meaningful data. You could approach such a thing with a degree of rigor with, for example, surveys with randomized or bias-controlled participants, but what you'd find is data on what people in forums and game shops are saying. If you think I'm saying the only way to find meaningful data would be to force WotC to make changes, then you're displaying a lack of imagination here.

A quick overview of qualitative research:

Qualitative research - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You're welcome.

Sigh.

-O

 

[pawsplay]

But your appeal to authority/snark is cute.

Not at all, I just like to know where to aim my argument. I was trying to be respectful and taking into account your level of knowledge before replying.

Field tests of pharmaceuticals aren't even remotely anecdotal. They often involve surveys, but surveys != anecdotes.

Tell me how, "Have you had any side effects this wee?" (however phrased) is not collecting anecdotes.

Let's say we're doing a cancer study for a treatment. We'll take 200, 1000, whatever people; the methodology is the same regardless.

A simple double-blind would be, "Half get the real treatment, half get a sham treatment." Neither the experimenters nor the patients know which one they're on. Collect data at the end - surveys, results of medical examinations, whatever - and compare your treatment to both the placebo effect of the sham treatment and known industry standards.

I'm not sure which part of my post you're replying to. From a controlled study standpoint, you've missed an important issue. You can't do a cancer drug study with a placebo. You just can't. Since there are existing treatments that are somewhat effective, it would be unethical.

Of course you can't. And of course there's data. But neither "people on forums said this" or "my game shop owner said that" is meaningful data. You could approach such a thing with a degree of rigor with, for example, surveys with randomized or bias-controlled participants, but what you'd find is data on what people in forums and game shops are saying.

Actually, that would not be very useful data. You might be able to establish some sales figures, but for determing what and why, qualitative research is going to be much more effective than quantitative research.

You've already admitted you don't know how social sciences do research, are you ready to admit you don't know much about marketing research, either?

 

[BryonD]

Don't conflate "collecting anecdotes" with "surveys." They're very different.

But by this standard, some of the market data we have are also "surveys" and not anecdotes.

One may challenge whether or not a given survey, as soundly scientific as it may be, is representative of the larger whole, or simply of the group which was surveyed.

Then you get into splitting hairs. A valid survey of group A' may be representative of A, or it may simply be the A' anecdote on the true nature of A.