Pathfinder 1E Pathfinder sales

[Zil]

There's craptons of evidence of D&D's utter dominance of the tabletop RPG market for the last decade. Retailer shelf space. Market research made public. Sales announcements by the companies involved. Fiscal reports. Marketing language. Print run sell-throughs.

I don't think anyone at all is debating whether or not D&D has been the historical best seller RPG over the last decade. The only thing being debated is whether Pathfinder has recently (in the last few quarters) caught up to and perhaps surpassed D&D in sales. For that we need to look at current data and not rely on historical data.

Look, I'll give you a real world example from my work. I work with oceanographic and meteorologic data to compute drifts of objects at sea (it's a search and rescue application). We consider both long term background climatic data (like your decade of facts on D&D's sales) but more useful than that is real time data. Knowing that on average over the past 10 years current flowed two knots north in this particular area is a good fallback, but if we have ship observations that say otherwise, or we have model data from an oceanographic model we will use that instead because it is closer what is really going on at this particular moment in time. The best data we can get is if we send an aircraft or vessel out to deploy a buoy that transmits position data (from which can derive surface current data). If we were to fall back to the climatic data if we had closer to real time data we would be doing a disservice to the public and be putting lives at risk. In some cases we are forced to fall back to climatic data if we are missing any other data, but even then we usually modify that data based on modeled or observed winds for which we have really good coverage (the wind drag effect on water will produce a noticeable surface current).

So what's the point? The point is that by rejecting this near real time data (Amazon, ICv2, etc) you are simply falling back to the historical norm which does not necessarily represent what is really going on on the ground at this particular time. You're falling back to an even worse quality of data than the data that you're criticizing.

And, most importantly, if any tabletop RPG that wasn't D&D had ever managed to claim the top spot for any appreciable (read: not simply a result of releasing books during a quarter when D&D didn't) length of time, the company responsible would put that junk on parade.

Okay, this month we have both Pathfinder and 4E releases (Ultimate Combat and the Neverwinter campaign setting. If you look at the Amazon.com rankings, Pathfinder has an overall book rank somewhere close to 500 (it's 665 today - it was under 500 a few days ago). If you look at the Neverwinter book, it has an overall book rating of 2000+. A few days ago I believe it was somewhere between 1700 and 1800.

The rankings have been pretty consistent over a period of days. So we can clearly say that as far as the Amazon channel goes, Pathfinder has been outselling the most recent 4E book over the past week or so. That is real data. Can we extrapolate that to mean that Pathfinder is more popular than D&D? Probably not. However we can probably expect that sales in other book channels are probably similar especially if you work in other data like the recent ICv2 data over the past few quarters.

It seems to me that what you're doing is simply rejecting data that doesn't match your view of how things should be because it doesn't match the long term trend line. You are favoring longer term data over more recent short term data which is a bad way to model what is going on right now.

 

[Dannager]

I do note that if there isn't that general assumption that WotC's the 800 lb gorilla, then a report that someone's beaten them is not really major news worthy of discussion.

Heh, I hadn't thought of that either.

 

[Dannager]

I don't think anyone at all is debating whether or not D&D has been the historical best seller RPG over the last decade.

prosfilaes has solicited me for evidence of whether D&D has been the historical best seller RPG over the last decade more than once now. Whether or not he's actually "debating" anyone, it's clear that he doesn't believe there's much evidence of it.

Take from that what you will.

The only thing being debated is whether Pathfinder has recently (in the last few quarters) caught up to and perhaps surpassed D&D in sales. For that we need to look at current data and not rely on historical data.

And that would be great, if we had good, current data to look at.

So what's the point? The point is that by rejecting this near real time data (Amazon, ICv2, etc) you are simply falling back to the historical norm which does not necessarily represent what is really going on on the ground at this particular time.

And that's fine. We don't have "real-time" data that is good enough to draw any credible conclusions about the market at this moment. Falling back on established precedent is the reasonable thing to do.

Let's look at an analogous situation (I'm oh so fond of those). For the duration of my lifetime, the United States has been the world's dominant superpower - the hegemonic power, in fact. Recently, China has begun to possibly challenge that. We have seen a handful of indicators that China is becoming competitive in certain areas. At a casual glance (and from certain sensationalist headlines) it can appear that China has become the new world power, or at least is on the level of the United States. Most political scientists, however, understand that China is far, far behind us in many areas, and don't feel that the current evidence of China's rise in power supports such a dramatic reclassification of global hegemony. In such a case, even if we didn't have evidence that supports the United States' continued dominance, it would be reasonable to assume that - until shown otherwise - the United States continues to be the world's leading power.

You're falling back to an even worse quality of data than the data that you're criticizing.

Except that we're not. The evidence that supports WotC's extended dominance of the market for the past decade is bountiful, and it's out there if you want it. It's also pretty much universally accepted that this is the case. I'm not going to track it down, because I have nothing to prove; if someone believes that WotC hasn't owned the market for the last decade at this point, no amount of evidence to the contrary is going to convince them otherwise (and, as you've aptly pointed out, no reasonable person actually believes that anyway).

Okay, this month we have both Pathfinder and 4E releases (Ultimate Combat and the Neverwinter campaign setting. If you look at the Amazon.com rankings, Pathfinder has an overall book rank somewhere close to 500 (it's 665 today - it was under 500 a few days ago). If you look at the Neverwinter book, it has an overall book rating of 2000+. A few days ago I believe it was somewhere between 1700 and 1800.

The rankings have been pretty consistent over a period of days. So we can clearly say that as far as the Amazon channel goes, Pathfinder has been outselling the most recent 4E book over the past week or so. That is real data. Can we extrapolate that to mean that Pathfinder is more popular than D&D? Probably not. However we can probably expect that sales in other book channels are probably similar especially if you work in other data like the recent ICv2 data over the past few quarters.

Possibly, but we've discussed the flaws with monitoring Amazon's numbers to track the industry, and we've discussed how any examination of D&D's sales is inadequate for determining its place in the market if that examination does not take into account D&D Insider.

It seems to me that what you're doing is simply rejecting data that doesn't match your view of how things should be because it doesn't match the long term trend line.

No. We're slowly accumulating this data, and when it reaches a point of sufficiency, whereby it overwhelms the level of credibility needed to alter our personal, historical understanding of the market, then at that point we will be forced to adjust out conception of where the major players stand in relation to one another.

You are favoring longer term data over more recent short term data which is a bad way to model what is going on right now.

No. We're favoring a large amount of data over an extended period of time over a very small amount of data over a very small length of time.

Look, I don't really care if Pathfinder ends up on even footing with - or even beating! - D&D. I think both are made by awesome companies, and if Pathfinder beats D&D it won't be because D&D is failing but because Pathfinder is succeeding so well. But I'm telling you, in all honesty, what we've got isn't enough to support changing our view of the industry "scoreboard" yet.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Personally i am not terribly interested in scientific proof of the numbers at this point. But the data i've seen recently and what i have witnessed locally leads me to reverse my old position (from about 6 months ago) that 4e is still the clear top dog. This could be wrong. My guess is the hobby will change drastically in coming years with several companies competing for the top spot.

 

[prosfilaes]

It's possible that it did. Heck, it's possible that this happened more than once. But the claim was (as you insisted on pointing out) that D&D was dominant for most of the last decade, so a quarter or two doesn't strike me as important to anyone who isn't trying to poke holes in a not-even-really-an-argument just for the heck of poking holes.

But it's critical! You can be the long term bestseller without ever being the quarterly bestseller, so to measure the likelihood of some RPG other than D&D being the quarterly bestseller, it's crucial to know the short term volatility of the market. If D&D frequently was beat in the quarterly bestseller lists then, then there's no much reason to doubt that it's being beat now.

But trust me, I've got evidence in the bank. You know I'm good for it.

Yeah, whatever.

It is not solid enough, representative enough, or significant enough to give us an accurate idea of what the market looks like right now, and frankly we're not interested in any idea of the market that's not accurate.

That's what this whole argument is about; you holding to an idea of the market that's not backed by evidence. You arguing that it's safe to dismiss all the evidence as weak and then solidly come to a position.

Now, it may be that there will eventually be enough evidence that Pathfinder has replaced D&D as top dog (and I mean really replaced) but we're not there yet.

That's goalpost moving; that wasn't the discussion.

Hold your horses and don't be alarmed when people have an outlook that is more critical of the evidence than your own.

I don't have a problem with people critical of the evidence; I have a problem with people who make up an answer from their assumptions that goes counter to every bit of evidence we have.

We've given our criteria. It strikes me as a little petty to call this irrational, since we've explained very coherently that we operate under the assumption that D&D has dominated (in general terms) for the last decade, and that the standard for evidence challenging this historically-established precedent is higher than the evidence being presented reaches.

You object to being called irrational even though you operate under an assumption that overwhelms evidence? Isn't that the definition of an irrational argument?

You understand that the other side's argument essentially amounts to "You should accept our weak evidence that Pathfinder is beating D&D

If you don't accept any of the evidence has been shown, that all indicates that Pathfinder is beating D&D, then you still lack any evidence to refute it.

because - despite the fact that pretty much no one in the industry is going to start claiming that D&D hasn't been top dog for the past decade - you don't have anything other than weak evidence that D&D was ever at the head of the pack in the RPG field to begin with!"

You've shown no evidence at all for anything. Which makes discussing standards of evidence pretty hard, or evaluating the evidence in the context of the question here.

On average, D&D was top dog for the past decade. That says nothing about quarterly performance; that says nothing about the past couple years. The Cosby Show was #1 5 years straight and off the air in another two. If you dismiss the evidence given here, surely the fact that D&D was once, several years ago, the top dog should be dismissed as being statistically irrelevant to D&D's state today on a quarterly basis.

 

[prosfilaes]

Most political scientists, however, understand that China is far, far behind us in many areas, and don't feel that the current evidence of China's rise in power supports such a dramatic reclassification of global hegemony. In such a case, even if we didn't have evidence that supports the United States' continued dominance, it would be reasonable to assume that - until shown otherwise - the United States continues to be the world's leading power.

That's self-contradictory; you give a case where you have evidence and then say "in such a case, even if we didn't have evidence". In any case, "most political scientists" say that Pathfinder book sales have reached the level of D&D 4 book sales.

we've discussed how any examination of D&D's sales is inadequate for determining its place in the market if that examination does not take into account D&D Insider.

In other words, if you don't like the question, change it. DDI has no effect on the answer to the question "who is selling more physical books?"

whereby it overwhelms the level of credibility needed to alter our personal, historical understanding of the market,

Irrational. You're letting your personal understanding--your bias--overwhelm the fact that you have no data.

No. We're favoring a large amount of data over an extended period of time over a very small amount of data over a very small length of time.

Show me the data. You claim that you have a large amount of data, but I think there exists a tiny amount of data that passes the lines you give for acceptable data.

In any case, if you want to know the quarterly sales, the best data comes from that quarter. Last year's sales don't matter much.

But I'm telling you, in all honesty, what we've got isn't enough to support changing our view of the industry "scoreboard" yet.

You're looking at a scoreboard that says Yankees 12, White Sox 5, and claiming that proves that the White Sox didn't score more points in the 6th inning.

 

[BryonD]

To me it says a great deal that the goal posts of the debate have been moved this far.

No one would have seriously suggested anything remotely like this at any point during 3E.

The one time blip of WoD peaking over D&D was seen as a huge event.

Three years ago we were being assured that PF faced certain rapid decline.

Now the debate is down to a corner of demanding that no rational person can can observe valuable information thats actually exists between the extremes of meaningless random noise and certainty to three decimal places.

 

[Dannager]

Look, prosfilaes. I'm not going to argue with you. I know the evidence, I know I'm not applying a double standard, so there's really nothing for me to worry about. Obviously I'm not going to convince you that the evidence you have is inadequate, so the last page or so has been little more than my trying to convince you that I actually believe what I believe and that I think my standards are just fine; it's a little silly to try to justify that to someone, and it's even sillier that you apparently think I need to.

 

[Dannager]

Now the debate is down to a corner of demanding that no rational person can can observe valuable information thats actually exists between the extremes of meaningless random noise and certainty to three decimal places.

No one is saying that. We're saying that the information that exists isn't enough to get us to change our view of who's at the top of the industry yet.

Is this a problem for you?

 

[BryonD]

No one is saying that.

Really? Just yesterday the claim was that the information was no better than a count of cookies in a house.

We're saying that the information that exists isn't enough to get us to change our view of who's at the top of the industry yet.

That is still a major moving of the goal posts. I don't think it really matters or necessarily even makes sense to try to establish that ONE thing is the undisputed top. But it is very much noteworthy that RPGs have moved from a point of being an unquestioned exception in that there WAS an undisputed top of the industry and now it is very ambigious.

Is this a problem for you?

A problem? Er, excuse me, a problem?

LOL

It certainly seems to be a problem to you that the debate exists and needs some boldy italicy indignation.

I'm having a lot of fun and just calling it like I see it. No problem Whatsoever.