Rule-of-Three: 07/24/2012

[pemerton]

I don't really know enough about the relative scale or profitability of the board game market versus the RPG market to know if it is feasible for D&D board game sales to offset D&D RPG sales significantly.

I would have thought there would be a bigger market for the board games than the RPG. But that's just a hunch - I don't actually know anything about either industry.

 

[delericho]

You've got questions - we've got answers!

Well, they have responses. But while every answer is a response, not every response is an answer. Going in, any of us could have said that the answer to the first and third questions would have been that there would be at least a little more support, but probably not too much, and certainly couldn't have put a date on it.

Coming out, the answers we have to the first and third questions is that there will be at least a little more support, probably not too much, and we can't put a date on it.

Well, I for on, would like to see some new books with errata for at least the PHB, and the MM would be great also. Even better would be PHB i, II and II as well as MMI and II

My group seems to be going to continue 4E for the forseeable future.

Given the weight of errata for the 4e Core Rulebooks, and also the reality that they may switch off DDI support, it would be really good if they would reprint those books, for people who want to continue.

Given the DDI editorial team is "still discussing plans for 2013" I wonder if the next announcement involves the cancellation of Dragon and Dungeon.

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised. A lot depends on just how profitable DDI has been. If it had been the runaway success WotC wanted, then there would be no 5e at this point (at least, not one as fundamentally different as this one), because doing so would risk the subscriber base, which would be an intolerable risk.

Assuming DDI has been a moderate success, but given the costs associated with developing yet another new version of the tools, I would be inclined to expect a much-reduced 5e DDI - ongoing e-magazines (maybe), plus a new 5e Compendium and (hopefully) a Character Builder. I'm reasonably confident that that's where the money lies - players will sign up for an easy way to manage their characters and to access the latest crunch/errata. But the DM tools will be nearly non-existent, as they cost just as much (or more) to develop, but they attract a fraction of the subscribers.

If DDI has been only a marginal success, then I would expect to see DDI almost completely mothballed. The "magazines" will be cancelled, and replaced with a handful of free columns (probably at, or below late-3e rates of release, if we're not already below those). The tools will be left active, but without ongoing maintenance, further errata, or any new tools being developed. Eventually, as subscriber numbers dwindle to the point where it's no longer turning any profit, they'll pull the plug.

And, of course, if DDI has actually been a failure, they'll just switch it off entirely. But I don't believe that that's the case - if it had been, I would have expected it to take D&D as a whole with it; surely they wouldn't now be spending the money to develop a new edition?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I have doubts that DDI is a failure. There are 4Ons that don't use it, but I figure most 4E groups have DDI subscribers. The tools are just too convenient to ignore, I think.

But maybe I underestimate the cost.

 

[Bluenose]

I have doubts that DDI is a failure. There are 4Ons that don't use it, but I figure most 4E groups have DDI subscribers. The tools are just too convenient to ignore, I think.

But maybe I underestimate the cost.

The DDI group on the Wizards forums has 70,000 members. That's people paying for DDI. At the cheapest rate, that's over half a million dollars every month. It's probably fair to say that no RPG book published this year will sell in those sort of numbers; 10,000 sales got Dresden Files RPG into the Top Five RPGs by sales, and that was over three months.

 

[delericho]

For the record, I don't believe DDI was a failure either; I was merely covering all the cases. (And, as I noted, had it failed, I'm inclined to think it would have taken the entire D&D RPG down with it.)

The DDI group on the Wizards forums has 70,000 members. That's people paying for DDI. At the cheapest rate, that's over half a million dollars every month. It's probably fair to say that no RPG book published this year will sell in those sort of numbers; 10,000 sales got Dresden Files RPG into the Top Five RPGs by sales, and that was over three months.

On the face of it, that's really good numbers. Except...

Just before WotC licensed out Dragon to Paizo, it had a subscriber base of 50,000 or so people. The subscription costs were about half of what it costs for DDI - approx $3 per month at the cheapest rate vs $6 for DDI. And, of course, Dragon didn't have the ongoing server costs, the massive databases, or the need for errata/revisions or tool development and maintenance that DDI has.

And the reason WotC licensed Dragon out to Paizo? They were about to cancel it, because it wasn't worth their effort.

I think that they were hoping for something more like 200k subscribers (IIRC, that was the figure Dancey gave in his recent analysis on the Escapist). That certainly would have been the runaway success I mentioned, but it seems near-certain that that hasn't happened. I'm also almost certain that DDI hasn't failed outright (see the top of this post). But what I don't know is whether 70k represents a marginal or a moderate success, nor where WotC will go with it next.

(With regard to your point about the "Dresden Files" book: unfortunately, being #1 in RPGs isn't enough. D&D has to succeed in the context of Hasbro, versus whatever metrics they use, and according to the expectations that they have for their brands. This means that D&D could outsell the next largest RPG by a factor of 10, 100, or more, and still fail - it may very well be that RPGs are simply too small an issue for Hasbro to bother with.)

 

[Echohawk]

The DDI group on the Wizards forums has 70,000 members. That's people paying for DDI.

But what I don't know is whether 70k represents a marginal or a moderate success, nor where WotC will go with it next.

It's worth remembering that as far as we know, 70,000 is the number of WotC community members who are also subscribed to DDI. Presumably there are some (maybe many?) DDI subscribers who are not WotC community members. If so, the total is 70,000 plus all of those people.

 

[delericho]

It's worth remembering that as far as we know, 70,000 is the number of WotC community members who are also subscribed to DDI. Presumably there are some (maybe many?) DDI subscribers who are not WotC community members. If so, the total is 70,000 plus all of those people.

I'm aware of that.

However, as I noted in my first post on the subject, if DDI had been the runaway success they wanted, then they would not be developing 5e, or at least not a 5e that is as significantly different from 4e. At most, we'd be seeing something of a clean-up of the previous edition, where WotC did a few more fundamental math fixes, cleared out the clutter of all the 'junk' feats (etc) accumulated by 4e, but did not fundamentally change the underlying structure of the game.

Because if DDI is a runaway success, then the 5e they're putting out represents a massive risk - they may well alienate the existing (presumed massive) subscriber base in a probably-futile attempt to win back large numbers of OSR and Pathfinder fans. Doing so makes sense if 4e failed, and it makes sense if they think they can do better - but if DDI is a runaway success then it makes no sense to replace 4e with a radically-different new version.

(And that's quite aside from the cost of redoing all the tools again. They've already had to develop everything at least twice, and they've only just for the Character Builder and Monster Builder back to being more or less 'right'. A significantly different 5e necessitates throwing almost all of that away and starting over.)

Now, I will concede the possibility that I could be wrong. Of course I could - I don't have access to WotC's grand strategy! But putting together this 5e at this time, coupled with the near-complete silence about the future of DDI leads me to strongly suspect otherwise.

 

[pauljathome]

It's worth remembering that as far as we know, 70,000 is the number of WotC community members who are also subscribed to DDI. Presumably there are some (maybe many?) DDI subscribers who are not WotC community members. If so, the total is 70,000 plus all of those people.

You're making the assumption that the instant somebody unsubscribes they get dropped from the total.

There has to be SOME lag. Given how good at software WOTC has been in the past there is the possibility of a CONSIDERABLE lag (months or even years).

Although their move to offline tools was designed to counter it I imagine that there is still something of a tendency for people to subscribe for a month and then unsubscribe for a few months so one can easily imagine this being a significant factor.

And, from WOTCs point of view, the key figure is probably not the total number of subscriptions but rather the renewal rate.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Something like DDI doesn't cost very much, relative to the income, once it goes into "mostly maintenance" mode. So I'd say there is at least a good chance that keeping DDI running, more or less as is, becomes a replacement for the reprint of the books. You only need a developer or two fixing bugs (one more experienced, one junior probably), and then working on modest features, slowly, when the bugs aren't a problem.

Of course, given that they've apparently pushed the virtual table sideways to another group, I'd push the whole thing over to them, and split the profits. At that point, it's no overhead for WotC at all, no surrender of IP, but a steady source of income. Even 10,000 hard-core subscribers would be worth keeping afloat in that environment, and possibly considerably less if the other company runs multiple software projects efficiently. Since the content and improvements would be less, I'd drop the rates a bit, probably keeping the $10 for single month at a time, but something like $30 to $40 a year for people willing to commit. I'd even look at discounts for people who only want to maintain a handful of characters versus a modest surcharge for those who want more. You want a stable base.

Then if that relationship works out, you've got a stable partner to do tools for 5E, too.

 

[Echohawk]

You're making the assumption that the instant somebody unsubscribes they get dropped from the total.

I'm not assuming that. Someone tested how the counting worked shortly after the DDI group numbers first became visible, and reported here on ENWorld that as soon as their subscription ended, they were no longer included in the DDI group in the WotC forums. (Which means that they would also not be included in the count for that group that everyone sees -- i.e. as part of the 70,000.)

I confess that I am relying on the accuracy of that report, since I haven't tested this myself, but I wasn't just making an assumption.