Dear Wizards of the Coast blog post...

[Sunseeker]

With D&D, the calculus is necessarily different: new editions aren't just like the older editions but better. Part of the quoted argument was that, when a new edition comes out, it doesn't convert those satisfied with the older edition, who then become effectively fired as customers, since they don't see the value in the "upgrade" and they're not being sold to anymore.

There are still folks using analog phones and Windows 98. You're never going to win everyone over, I'm sure Windows would have a lot less uses if they didn't have a 90% market share of OS'.

It would be kind of like if, when the new Die Antwoord album came out, they stopped selling the old one.

No, a Die Antwood album is some of tha junk used to support the core product, which is Die Antwood themselves. Die Antwood, like most bands, will eventually be replaced, and at some point, their albums no longer produced, or only available through very nice sources.

That's not true if you go Print On Demand. You don't need to do print runs of 10,000 books (or whatever) and then hope to sell them all. You print them as there is demand for them, so you're never stuck with unsold stock, and you never pay for prints you never sell.

It's not necessary to fire a chunk of your customers anymore.

Except the prices on printing a single D&D hardcover would be astronomical. Even a paperback copy would be pricey. D&D books are already $35+ a book, and that's taking into account the savings of producing in bulk. You'd probably be looking at $60 a book, if not more.

And, to respond to another thread of the conversation, if the sales of your old edition cannibalize the sales of the new shiny hotness, your new shiny hotness probably isn't actually that great, but all the money you're still making from your old stuff probably is great balm for that burn.

That's not entirely true. There are a multitude of reasons a new product, even a better one, may not sell as well as an older, worse one. One of which is simply people are stuck in their ways, which I would say could be said very loudly about a good segment of the D&D population considering how many arguments we hear on a regular basis that D&D should go back to it's 80's roots because it's "traditional".

 

[I'm A Banana]

No, a Die Antwood album is some of tha junk used to support the core product, which is Die Antwood themselves. Die Antwood, like most bands, will eventually be replaced, and at some point, their albums no longer produced, or only available through very nice sources.

You seem to be loosing the thread a bit here.

Why can't D&D publish multiple editions at once, but a band can have multiple albums in production at once?

In part, because it's a lot cheaper to burn a CD than it is to print a book.

Print on Demand helps reduce the cost to print a book so that it becomes more feasible to have multiple editions in circulation at once.

Except the prices on printing a single D&D hardcover would be astronomical. Even a paperback copy would be pricey. D&D books are already $35+ a book, and that's taking into account the savings of producing in bulk. You'd probably be looking at $60 a book, if not more.

They'd probably be slightly more expensive, but I don't know where you're pulling $60 out of. I don't think a price bump would be a significant barrier to entry for a lot of people, especially given the loyalty of a typical long-term D&D gamer (and the fact that newbies don't need to buy squat).

That's not entirely true. There are a multitude of reasons a new product, even a better one, may not sell as well as an older, worse one. One of which is simply people are stuck in their ways, which I would say could be said very loudly about a good segment of the D&D population considering how many arguments we hear on a regular basis that D&D should go back to it's 80's roots because it's "traditional".

If your new hotness isn't hot enough to get people out of their stickiness, then you're not giving them what they want. If your audience loves the traditional, you need to give them the traditional. They're going to find it somehow, there's a clear demand for it, and you have enough brand loyalty to capitalize on it. All you need to do is publish it again. And you don't, because it's not necessarily economical.

POD can help change that calculus and make it economical.

Again, I think they should keep developing and releasing editions and books as well, but there's clearly strong diminishing returns for this. There's only so many different ways that people really care to learn to imagine to be a magical elf. A brand new edition every 5-10 years isn't a viable long-term business strategy for the RPG branch.

 

[CleverNickName]

At the risk of threadcrapping: Didn't we already do this?

I remember when 4E was announced, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, there were sackcloth and ashes, there were torches and pitchforks. There were self-proclaimed industry specialists announcing the end of the hobby as we knew it, and self-avowed market analysts were predicting the imminent demise of the company.

And look! Years later, the hobby is still strong. They are still in business, and they are still publishing books and selling them, and we are still buying them and playing the game.

-----

Now, re-read those two paragraphs above, but substitute "I remember when Wizards of the Coast bought TSR" for the 4E announcement. Then, re-read it again, but substitute "I remember when they decided to split the editions and publish Basic and Advanced Rules." And so on.

 

[Dragonblade]

1. It is according to Wizards of the Coast back when they purchased TSR.

2. Re-releasing old products competes with new products.

3. Re-releasing products is pointless if you are targeting people who are already invested in previous editions. They already have the books or they know about Ebay where they can get the books at the fraction of the cost of a new book in today's market.

I'm sorry, but you are wrong on multiple levels. Dancey's rationale on the failure of TSR only applies to creating new print products that compete with each other for limited consumer dollars on the retail shelf.

Here is a very basic example. Let's say TSR made three different campaign setting boxed sets. Each one costs $1000 to produce. Each one that sells makes $10. So they need to sell at least 100 of each one to break even. However, they only have 100 customers. And instead of each customer buying one box set from each line, each customer only buys one or maybe two box sets each, with a few diehards buying all three.

Spread out across all three lines, all three lines lose money unless one line is so popular that every one of those 100 customers buys the box set for that line. But that usually didn't happen. THIS is why TSR failed and what Dancey was talking about.

Making a back catalog of products available digitally or POD is completely different. The cost in producing those products is virtually ZERO assuming you have a digital archive of that prior edition content already.

I have a 50 GB Dropbox account for $99 a year. Doing the math, it would cost WotC a few cents on the dollar to host say the 100 Mb for these three hypothetical boxed sets. I'd be surprised if the digital footprint for their entire back catalog going back to 1974 was more than a TB.

Let's say broadband costs are $1 per download (which seems high to me). If WotC charged $5 for a digital copy of each boxed set, they really only need to sell ONE to make money!

Furthermore, your PDF products don't compete with each other in the sense that Dancey was talking about. There are no returns, no retail, printing, or distribution costs you have to recoup. Even if you do POD, the entire cost of that POD product is covered by the consumer.

Now, granted I'm ignoring some initial costs in setting up the whole digital marketplace and so on. But once you set up the initial architecture, it wouldn't take long at all before they turning a profit. WotC doesn't even have to do the heavy lifting themselves. Companies like DriveThruRPG already used to sell digitial WotC products and could easily do so again. Though if I were WotC I'd keep it all in house and try to tie my back catalog into some form of DDI subscription revenue.

Like I have posted before, if I could get unlimited digital access to every product WotC has ever produced for every edition for my $75 a year DDI subscription, hell I'd give WotC my bank account number and they can bill me for life.

 

[jadrax]

Making a back catalog of products available digitally or POD is completely different. The cost in producing those products is virtually ZERO assuming you have a digital archive of that prior edition content already.

From my experience, it is sadly not anywhere close to zero. For starters, if it was not intended to be sold digitally, (which nothing in back catalogue was), you need to update the legal terms and conditions. This means paying lawyers.

Then you have to actually scan in it properly, resource the original art so it dosen't look like a blurred mess because your only copy is 20 years old and has blurred. Then you discover your not sure you have the rights to the art any more due to some technical your lawyer is spouting that no-one in the office really understands, and you end up having to hunt down an artist that hates your guts and sweet talk him in his god-awful bedsit in Leeds.

Meanwhile, the intern has pointed out that Digital Content only sells if it has OCR and Hyperlinking, which he gets put in charge of and promptly screws up, meaning when you get back from Leeds you have to spend the day reversing his screw ups.

And then, after you have done all of this, only three people buy the thing because its been pirated by anyone who wanted it five years ago.

All hypothetically of course.

 

[Dragonblade]

From my experience, it is sadly not anywhere close to zero. For starters, if it was not intended to be sold digitally, (which nothing in back catalogue was), you need to update the legal terms and conditions. This means paying lawyers.

Then you have to actually scan in it properly, resource the original art so it dosen't look like a blurred mess because your only copy is 20 years old and has blurred. Then you discover your not sure you have the rights to the art any more due to some technical your lawyer is spouting that no-one in the office really understands, and you end up having to hunt down an artist that hates your guts and sweet talk him in his god-awful bedsit in Leeds.

Meanwhile, the intern has pointed out that Digital Content only sells if it has OCR and Hyperlinking, which he gets put in charge of and promptly screws up, meaning when you get back from Leeds you have to spend the day reversing his screw ups.

And then, after you have done all of this, only three people buy the thing because its been pirated by anyone who wanted it five years ago.

All hypothetically of course.

Don't hold back. Tell us how you really feel.

But yes, for some of the older content I think those are concerns. But WotC used to sell all their 3e stuff digitally before, so it would be easy to make it available again, and their 4e stuff should all be electronically created and easy to put up.

They also used to sell prior edition content as well on DriveThruRPG, so I assume the rights issues to original authors or art has been worked out. I know that was an issue with older issues of Dragon, and that is why the Dragon Compendium electronic product was discontinued. But I'd be surprised if WotC didn't fully own their non-magazine stuff. Still you bring up a good point.

As far as pirating goes, the diehard pirates will do that regardless. But I think most customers will pay if you offer them something of value for a reasonable price. I think Apple's $0.99 price for music on iTunes and good services like Pandora and Spotify have done far more to eliminate music piracy than any amount of RIAA lawsuits.

 

[ArmoredSaint]

Appeal to non-existent authority. Check.
Appeal to non-existent pity. Check.
Mistaking a torrent of verbiage for a capital truth. Check.

Mr. Blog Man is entirely correct that we have no reason to believe anything he claims as grounds for listening to him... which ends up being exactly why we shouldn't listen to him, because he certainly doesn't have a point based on logic, facts, or reason. Nice apophasis there.

I second this post. This was the most appropriate response to the hubris expressed by the blog post.

I'm guessing that the blogger prefers 4th edition...

 

[Janaxstrus]

Except the prices on printing a single D&D hardcover would be astronomical. Even a paperback copy would be pricey. D&D books are already $35+ a book, and that's taking into account the savings of producing in bulk. You'd probably be looking at $60 a book, if not more.

My company does Print-On-Demand for multiple multi-national companies, both in the US and Internationally, including manuals and training materials that are 3 times the size of a D&D book.

If they cost anywhere close to 60 per book, you can blame WotC. I know exactly how much those books cost to manufacture, and we would be talking about a HUGE profit margin at 60 a book. 35 would be a profit margin most companies should envy.

 

[Fifth Element]

At the risk of threadcrapping: Didn't we already do this?

I remember when 4E was announced, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, there were sackcloth and ashes, there were torches and pitchforks. There were self-proclaimed industry specialists announcing the end of the hobby as we knew it, and self-avowed market analysts were predicting the imminent demise of the company.

And look! Years later, the hobby is still strong. They are still in business, and they are still publishing books and selling them, and we are still buying them and playing the game.

-----

Now, re-read those two paragraphs above, but substitute "I remember when Wizards of the Coast bought TSR" for the 4E announcement. Then, re-read it again, but substitute "I remember when they decided to split the editions and publish Basic and Advanced Rules." And so on.

Well said. Those who fail to learn from history...

 

[jadrax]

Don't hold back. Tell us how you really feel.

Lol.

But do not get me wrong, i do not think that making the back-catalogue is a bad idea, and items that were available digitally probably should be made so again. It strikes me that they were removed for reasons other than practicality.

Its just the close to Zero cost bit I take issue with. ;o)