Pathfinder 1E Paizo Announcement and Prognostication

[Croesus]

Well, what do you know? That is exactly the plan.

--Erik

Just had to post these from the original thread.

 

[carmachu]

I am lad Paizo did well, but boy do they have a lot of fans who love patting themselves on the back.

Yes well, there were alot of 4e fans tearing them down in that thread......and in some instances still do.

 

[Treebore]

Except there isn't a single reason to do it. There are hundreds of alternative systems. I would rather see improvement on the d20 system than simply throwing it out and working to design a whole new one. I mean, how many different ways can you determine whether you are successful in a game?

I think when you get down to rock bottom basics, no game is "successful" in a way that matters unless YOU are the on who likes it. Sure, a game/company/team/etc... can have a ton of fans, but does it really matter to the individual if they aren't among them?

So from that perspective, a lot of people/businesses are failing to be successful in winning over even more "fans". So are actually "failures" with more people than they have fans.

Fortunately for those who are fans, Paizo is successful enough to keep their doors open and give their fans more fo what they want.

 

[BryonD]

If Paizo is competing head-to-head or anywhere close to it, then one has to wonder how much of the market is currently held by Paizo, Savage Worlds, Fantasy Craft, GURPS, etc. cumulatively. There was a time, when D&D first came out in the Seventies, that it was one hundred percent of the market.

Less than two years ago Paizo was still being scoffed at for thinking they could take THE 800 POUND GORILLA. All those other games existed then.

There are many times since when any gamestore owner would tell you that eighty percent or more of their RPG sales were D&D sales.

Perhaps PF + 4E still equals that 80%. Really I don't think that is true, but it gets into another topic. I think the BIGGEST happening is that 4E has been responsible for the brand truly losing dominance and Pazio read the market correctly and positioned themselves to grab up the vast lion share of D&D loses. But certainly PF has not acquired EVERYTHING 4E lost, so your assessment is, relatively, more accurate than it was at the time of the announcement thread.

But I still would bet that PF + 4E is within the historic fluctuation of "D&D". And PF, as is frequently pointed out, has a history of having been D&D for it's fan base to be established on. So to an important extent the market is still completely dominated by games that people discovered because it was officially D&D.

Name recognition? Yes, probably. Actual exposure, I wouldn't be too sure it's as one-dimensional as you suggest. There are a number of companies every bit as exposed as D&D, and right beside D&D, everywhere there is D&D. That might be part of why the brand has been diluted. I'd agree with your point if D&D were making itself more high profile, through regular television ads and in a lot more places where no other D&D-like product is exposed, but that's simply not the case. Oh, maybe there's an occasional ad push through a video gaming zine and a bit of product placement in television shows, but other companies have done similar things too. For each D&D on Community, there is a Talisman on The Big Bang Theory example, from what I have seen. And, yes, a non-gaming friend who watches TBBT mentioned that he saw the gang playing a D&D boardgame. Is that more exposure for D&D or brand dilution or both or what? So, to continue.

I haven't seen any evidence that anyone else is really getting anywhere near the exposure. There may (MAY) be a Talisman example for every D&D, but (A) you are counting one for John, one for Mark, one for John, one for Bryon, one for John, one for Kevin, one for John, ... and saying this pattern shows that John doesn''t have a leg up, and (B) I bet 90% of the people watching Big Bang had NO IDEA what Talisman was beyond simply being a generic geek fantasy game. You and I recognize it, but so what? You say D&D and 90% of the audience does know. As you more or less pointed out, I'd bet more people thought Talisman WAS D&D than actually knew what it was.

I think you are making a different argument and using circular logic to try and prove a point I'm not necessarily debating.

I don't believe I've been circular at all. I've repeated a point several times, but I have not used circular logic.

I'm not personally saying D&D isn't D&D. I am however saying that those who don't think of any particular edition as D&D (whether they think of 4E negatively as a minis/video game, or 3E as rules-bloated or too mechanical, or they think of an older edition as over-written or poorly organized) and find a replacement that they believe to be more like the D&D they desire (Pathfinder, Savage Worlds, a retro-clone), they further dilute the brand by calling what they do D&D even when it isn't branded as such. You seem to be conflating brand recognition with brand strength, but if the sales are going elsewhere, then that is a mistaken impression.

I agree it is two different points. I already stated that.

But, bottom line, Savage Worlds has not been given a fair chance by 10% of the people who have tried 3E or 4E. And you can substitute any other not-D&D game into that.

And yes, PF being "3.5 Thrives" further complicates things.

But my point is that a game with D&D on the cover will still get massively more interest than anything else. There is plenty of long tail out there for lots of other games to be successful at their own scale. But that doesn't make them on even footing by any stretch.

Might be more appropos to discuss a game with a bit of a track record, like PF or Savage Worlds, or something else not as newly released as DCC. It's sort of cherry picking to use them earlier as a "random" example then use them again to reinforce an additional point to an argument.

Fair enough, I choose that example because it is a still "to be released" game and that seemed to make sense for this conversation.

PF isn't valid because the rule set came with a huge fan base that learned it under the D&D name. Not remotely knocking Paizo, I actually believe (and this is pure gut feel) that PF is more popular now than 3.5 was in the waning couple years, so Paizo has kicked ass. But if someone over at the Forge or at his home desk somewhere, writes the most perfectly awesome fantasy game ever, the odds are still very remote that it will catch on because the critical mass of attention is so hard to get.

Bet you could argue that number up to 100% if you decide the larger group in your example only inludes folks who fit into the 100%.

I don't follow your point here. I'm not cherry picking, I'm talking about the market as a whole.

 

[Dannager]

Perhaps PF + 4E still equals that 80%. Really I don't think that is true, but it gets into another topic. I think the BIGGEST happening is that 4E has been responsible for the brand truly losing dominance and Pazio read the market correctly and positioned themselves to grab up the vast lion share of D&D loses.

Frankly, I don't believe for a second that we'd have this many people playing earlier editions of D&D if it weren't for the fact that Pathfinder RPG was created. Some people would have stuck with 3.5, and some people would have gone to even earlier games, but I think we'd be seeing a lot more eventual converts to 4e. Even moreso had Paizo decided to support 4e.

If you see the "fracturing of the market" as a bad thing, I don't think you can necessarily lay the lion's share of the blame at WotC's feet.

And that's not to hate on Paizo at all. They made a brilliant and ballsy decision, and I don't really believe that people having more options as far as what to play is a bad thing.

 

[BryonD]

Frankly, I don't believe for a second that we'd have this many people playing earlier editions of D&D if it weren't for the fact that Pathfinder RPG was created. Some people would have stuck with 3.5, and some people would have gone to even earlier games, but I think we'd be seeing a lot more eventual converts to 4e. Even moreso had Paizo decided to support 4e.

We have had this conversation before.

You are still dreaming.

I can lean over from where I'm sitting at this desk and see the GURPS books and Warhammer books I bought before PF was announced. I was also working with Wulf Ratbane on some of his ideas that eventually became Trailblazer. I was exploring options. But I knew that I had several options that blew 4E out of the water. The chance that I would be playing 4E now is about nil.

And, as I've said before, I think 4E is pretty ok. It is just that there are so MANY significantly better options out there that pretty ok doesn't cut it. But for my "pretty ok" there are tons of "4E sucks" folks out there. You should hear the other folks I game with talk, they would be banned from here is a heartbeat.

The people who want to play 4E ARE playing 4E. Nothing is stopping them. If they are playing PF and not 4E, it is because they think PF is a better game. (And don't tell me they are playing PF because their friends insist. That logic supports the more popular game. If 75% prefer A and 25% prefer B, the B fans "forced" to play A will greatly outnumber the A fans forced to play B.)

If 4E was hugely popular then Paizo would have had no choice but to convert or go into something else completely.

Lack of conversion to 4E is entirely the fault of 4E.

 

[BryonD]

If you see the "fracturing of the market" as a bad thing, I don't think you can necessarily lay the lion's share of the blame at WotC's feet.

And that's not to hate on Paizo at all. They made a brilliant and ballsy decision, and I don't really believe that people having more options as far as what to play is a bad thing.

You edited while I was responding....

Under the circumstances I see fracturing of the market as an awesome thing.

And I see competition as a hugely awesome thing.

And I'm gratified to see all the people who were telling me how wrong I was two and three years ago trying to make up excuses for why it turns out I didn't express my position strongly enough.

I do think there was merit to the strength of the flagship brand and it is a bit of a bummer that this is gone.

But I'm far from calling the current circumstances bad. I'm calling them awesome. WotC could have made different choices that could have made things end up different. They did not. So be it.

It very well may be bad from WotC's POV, but I'm loving how things are.

 

[Dannager]

We have had this conversation before.

You are still dreaming.

I can lean over from where I'm sitting at this desk and see the GURPS books and Warhammer books I bought before PF was announced. I was also working with Wulf Ratbane on some of his ideas that eventually became Trailblazer. I was exploring options. But I knew that I had several options that blew 4E out of the water. The chance that I would be playing 4E now is about nil.

And that's you. You're dedicated enough to actively explore other options, and you clearly believe that you would be able to find a group of people comfortable enough with also exploring those options to find a game that you like better than the "default" choice.

I don't think that applies to a lot of gamers.

And, as I've said before, I think 4E is pretty ok. It is just that there are so MANY significantly better options out there that pretty ok doesn't cut it. But for my "pretty ok" there are tons of "4E sucks" folks out there. You should hear the other folks I game with talk, they would be banned from here is a heartbeat.

Those are the sorts of people I would avoid playing with, even if I made Pathfinder my game of choice. I wouldn't tolerate a gamer at my table saying "Pathfinder RPG sucks," - I'd ask them to keep their inflamed opinion to themselves, and it would reflect poorly on them in my mind.

(And don't tell me they are playing PF because their friends insist. That logic supports the more popular game. If 75% prefer A and 25% prefer B, the B fans "forced" to play A will greatly outnumber the A fans forced to play B.)

The players will, by and large, play what the DM wants them to play, whether because they have no strong preference themselves, or because they'd prefer to play a game with a system that isn't necessarily their first choice rather than play no game at all.

Levels of play favor DM adoption.

If 4E was hugely popular then Paizo would have had no choice but to convert or go into something else completely.

What I'm saying is that we could have seen a situation where a lot of gamers initially stuck with 3.5, but eventually migrated to 4e simply because they'd prefer an actively-supported game rather than a game with little to no support (just as we typically see with an edition change). Instead, it wasn't long before it was clear that those who preferred 3.5 would have active support in the form of Pathfinder, and so that eventual migration never took place. Those who stuck with 3.5 but wanted to play a supported game now had two choices: 4e or Pathfinder. They overwhelmingly chose the one that was most similar to the game they were already playing.

You cannot discount the tremendous value that active support has to a game. And let's be honest: if Pathfinder hadn't come around, there really would not be anything on the d20/3.5 scene that comes anywhere close to the level of professionalism and support that Pathfinder has.

Lack of conversion to 4E is entirely the fault of 4E.

Again, I disagree for all of the reasons outlined above.

 

[Mark CMG]

So to an important extent the market is still completely dominated by games that people discovered because it was officially D&D.

I agree and will add to that further in this post to try and distinguish the difference between our thoughts on the importance of this.

I haven't seen any evidence that anyone else is really getting anywhere near the exposure. There may (MAY) be a Talisman example for every D&D, but (A) you are counting one for John, one for Mark, one for John, one for Bryon, one for John, one for Kevin, one for John, ... and saying this pattern shows that John doesn''t have a leg up, (. . .)

I didn't say there wasn't a leg up. But I did suggest that it is much closer to one-to-one (field versus D&D) than one hundred fold (D&D over the field), which is where I disagree with your earlier assessment, regarding D&D's exposure. Nearly everywhere that D&D is sold, other RPGs are present. I've posted it before, that I believe this is in large part responsible for WotC's isolationist policies of the last four years, including switching from the OGL to the GSL and steering more and more fans toward the DDI and away from hardcopy books. It's a two-fold strategy that separates them from the growing competition and gleans a greater share of the revenue stream (both from the market and from each individual customer). I'm actually surprised that FLGSs participate in their own disenfranchisement. If I was an FLGS owner I doubt I would run a weekly promotion for a publisher that was trying to remove me from the picture. If 3,000 or so FLGS owners got to talking and decided they weren't going to be satisfied with the scraps anymore, deciding it would be in their best interest to focus on publishers not diverting their revenues toward online concerns and pre-sales through Amazon, that name recognition would take on a different tone and the brand strength would plummet even further.

But my point is that a game with D&D on the cover will still get massively more interest than anything else. There is plenty of long tail out there for lots of other games to be successful at their own scale. But that doesn't make them on even footing by any stretch.

"Massively more than anything else" singularly (perhaps not PF) but my assertion is that the cumulative amount of interest in RP games others than D&D is not massively outweighed by the interest in D&D proper. No one has argued equal footing for anything other than PF, AFAIK, and that wasn't me anyway. However, the interest in non-D&D games cumulatively might actual outweigh the interest in D&D at this point in time, if one takes the interest in PF being somewhere in the neighborhood as the interest in D&D then adds to the PF interest the total current interest in all other non-D&D entities. Does D&D still get more people looking toward RPGs than the entire field of non-D&D RPGs? Perhaps. I'd even say probably. But are a majority of those who initially look to RPGs as a leisure activity current D&D players? One might argue that the entire field of non-D&D RPGs, inclusive of PF, make up the majority these days. This is why I draw the distinction between name recognition and brand strength.

PF isn't valid because the rule set came with a huge fan base that learned it under the D&D name.

I concede that most RPGs garner interest because of D&D name recognition, not because of its brand dominance nor its brand strength.

 

[Mark CMG]

And that's you. You're dedicated enough to actively explore other options, and you clearly believe that you would be able to find a group of people comfortable enough with also exploring those options to find a game that you like better than the "default" choice.

I have never seen anyone imply that one of the Ds in D&D is for Default. I don't think we'll be seeing that in the ads anytime soon. I think we are seeing the signs of corporate policies and decay damaging a once strong, some would say unassailable, brand. You can't gut institutional memory out of the carcass and continually trim supposed fat so close to the bone without eventually running out of meat.


Still, the following statements confuse me when examined side by side -

You're dedicated enough to actively explore other options, and you clearly believe that you would be able to find a group of people comfortable enough with also exploring those options to find a game that you like better than the "default" choice.

(. . .)

The players will, by and large, play what the DM wants them to play, whether because they have no strong preference themselves, or because they'd prefer to play a game with a system that isn't necessarily their first choice rather than play no game at all.

So, on the one hand Bryon was lucky to find a game that anyone would play but on the other players will play whatever he DMs?