Which groups of fans are worth going after?

[Neonchameleon]

Money matters, and to Hasbro (and thus to the success of D&D Next), money is the only thing that matters.

And financially there are three effective levels of fans. A casual fan who comes to the table and plays - and may have the core books but will have very little else. A customer - who picks out the books he likes on a case by case basis. And a subscriber who puts down money for products before seeing them (D&D Insider members and Paizo AP subscribers come to mind).

A subscriber is worth massively more than a customer - and a player who doesn't buy books is worth little more than someone who doesn't play at all. A subscriber is a direct income stream straight to you and it's a reliable income stream - it's not only more lucrative (especially as many also buy the books), it's much better for planning and budgetting. So you have vastly fewer overheads. A subscriber is therefore worth many times an oridnary player to the company. At present, two groups have demonstrated that they are prepared to become subscribers - 4e players and PF players.

For the sales targets, D&D Next needs both. An audience that was only as big as PF's won't cut it. 4e was outselling PF until they stopped producing material for it. So we can say that the fanbases are within an order of magnitude of each other. The question is what of the untapped fanbases?

Current 3.5 (and even 3.0 fans) need to be heavily discounted when it comes to potential sales projections - either is worth a whole lot in sales than a current 4e or Pathfinder fan. Both groups have demonstrated (a) that having a currently supported game is not relevant to them. And (b) they aren't prepared to put money in to get an objectively improved game - instead preferring to stick with what they know. And I do believe that PF is an objectively better version of 3.5 than 3.5 is. So by sticking with 3.5, current 3.5 fans are declaring that neither ongoing support nor an improved game are worth their money. This is not a market likely to buy a new and different game. Almost all current 3.5 fans are people who have out and out rejected buying books and upgrading to an actually improved system. To monetise them at all requires miraculously changing their gaming habits.

So regardless of how many 3.5 and 3.0 fans there still are, their decision not even to switch to Pathfinder points out that they are economically worth almost nothing. They aren't book buyers except in rare cases, and they certainly aren't subscribers.

3.5 and 3.0 fans should therefore be almost entirely ignored from a business decision perspective. Or possibly given adventures and splats occasionally. But they are largely irrelevant - they aren't even customers and are happy with what they have.

Which leaves 2e, 1e, and oD&D fans. We've already had a huge bite of the 2e lovers with a game that was meant to be just cleaning up 2e and giving it a more modern ruleset (3.0). It's an already heavily tapped well - and the 2e, 1e, and oD&D fans are used to not giving anyone money to play. After all there hasn't been a major new book for any of those games in a dozen years (unless you count e.g. OSRIC or Swords and Wizardry). Suddenly you need to change a decade's worth of buying habits and convince them to now pay a charge for what they used to have for free.

This isn't quite the mountain there was for 3.X holdouts. They haven't, after all, rejected a cleaned up version of the exact same game they used to play. They've rejected a different game. But even they compared to 4e and PF fans are a hard to monetise and unlikely to move to a subscription model.

Money matters (to Hasbro it's all that matters) - and there are only two groups in town showing willing to put their money where their mouths are. 4e and Pathfinder. Lose the 4e fans and you need to reverse brand loyalty and produce something PF fans prefer to PF when they have all moved away from WotC once already. Groups like the OSR may be loud - but when did they last put something on the best sellers list? Or indeed at all? I believe the Evil Hat (Spirit of the Century and Dresden Files) and Cubicle 7 fans to matter more financially. And both are small change.

Then there are the externals. People who currently aren't D&D fans. Say what you like about 4e, it had a plan to bring a probably receptive group in (that was derailed by certain incidents with Gleemax). An explicit goal of uniting the editions means they aren't even being targetted except as a side effect.

So what's WotC's big strategy?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Produce a new edition, everyone buys the core books, enough buy the supplements for a few years, then repeat.

The designers themselves, on the other hand, may have their own goals with the edition - enabling certain play styles, introducing unique mechanical concepts, and what not.

 

[Incenjucar]

Ultimately, WotC and Mearls can only reasonably go after the fans that they are capable of catering to. By giving up on 4E they have determined that they lack the ability to make sufficient money off of the 4E-specific audience, so they're going to have to target the audience they think they're capable of bringing in, which appears to primarily be fans of the early eras of the game.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Current 3.5 (and even 3.0 fans) need to be heavily discounted when it comes to potential sales projections - either is worth a whole lot in sales than a current 4e or Pathfinder fan. Both groups have demonstrated (a) that having a currently supported game is not relevant to them. And (b) they aren't prepared to put money in to get an objectively improved game - instead preferring to stick with what they know. And I do believe that PF is an objectively better version of 3.5 than 3.5 is. So by sticking with 3.5, current 3.5 fans are declaring that neither ongoing support nor an improved game are worth their money. This is not a market likely to buy a new and different game. Almost all current 3.5 fans are people who have out and out rejected buying books and upgrading to an actually improved system. To monetise them at all requires miraculously changing their gaming habits.

So regardless of how many 3.5 and 3.0 fans there still are, their decision not even to switch to Pathfinder points out that they are economically worth almost nothing. They aren't book buyers except in rare cases, and they certainly aren't subscribers.

3.5 and 3.0 fans should therefore be almost entirely ignored from a business decision perspective. Or possibly given adventures and splats occasionally. But they are largely irrelevant - they aren't even customers and are happy with what they have.

I very much disagree. Current 3.5 players use the system because they feel it is currently the best on the market (even though it's a secondhand market). I suspect many use importations from PF (as I do), but still play an essentially 3.5; it's hard to look at PF and say that it clearly improved the game. There are some improvements, but a lot of setting-specific junk and some mechanical steps backwards. There's not a lot of real innovation; it's still basically the same system.

If anything, I think the combined 3.5/PF market is the one that represents the most potential profit, by being the largest of the groups, and, more importantly, the most potential swing in profits, being the group that is most likely to make conscientious purchasing decisions based on mechanics, based on their rejection of mechanics they don't like. It's also probably the only subgroup that might actually be experiencing a net growth (largely due to PF's introductory products). I doubt there are a lot of new old-schoolers out there, and 4e seems to be losing market share pretty rapidly.

I could, however, categorize 4e fans into two groups. One is the group of people who explicitly dislike other versions of D&D or who think 4e is superior (and are very unlikely to be satisfied with any system that caters to the larger D&D audience). The other (the one that WotC is gambling is much larger) is those who simply play whatever's available, whatever their friends are playing, or whatever has "D&D" on the cover. Given that they handled the switch from 3e to 4e; it is unlikely that any change will be radical enough to lose them. Thus, I conclude that "4e fans should therefore be almost entirely ignored from a business decision perspective. Or possibly given adventures and splats occasionally." It is unlikely that any decision WotC makes will affect their profit margins from this group.

By contrast, I think there's a very large 3e audience still looking for the perfect game that is very open to genuine innovation.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

I could, however, categorize 4e fans into two groups. One is the group of people who explicitly dislike other versions of D&D or who think 4e is superior (and are very unlikely to be satisfied with any system that caters to the larger D&D audience). The other (the one that WotC is gambling is much larger) is those who simply play whatever's available, whatever their friends are playing, or whatever has "D&D" on the cover. Given that they handled the switch from 3e to 4e; it is unlikely that any change will be radical enough to lose them. Thus, I conclude that "4e fans should therefore be almost entirely ignored from a business decision perspective. Or possibly given adventures and splats occasionally." It is unlikely that any decision WotC makes will affect their profit margins from this group.

I find it rather dismissive and condescending to assert that most 4E fans are followers who just play whatever, as opposed to liking and preferring 4E as a system. I find more than a whiff of wishful thinking in there as well. I also find two practical issues with the assertion. First is if 4E fans are blind followers, why has 4E been played at all given all the opposition. The second is if 4E players are just sheep who follow whatever their friends play, if their friends are playing 4E and refuse to switch to 5E, it would stand that the sheep would be more likely to follow their friends than follow WotC into a new direction.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

The 3E audience was/is large - but I believe it's not unified. That is shown alone by the fact that 3E players went with Pathfinder, OSR games (or outright older editions) or 4E.

I believe the 3E audience was probably be the edition that D&D Next now aspires to be, but for different reasons - it came after a long time of no new D&D editions, and thus united all D&D fans. But WotC doesn't want to "rest" on D&D for a few years before they do something new...

3E and the OGL changed the landscape a lot. Suddenly it was possible to createmuch more D&D like games then ever before.

 

[JamesonCourage]

I know it's only one facet of your post, but your unsupported (and probably unsupportable) use of "objectively better" makes me question the logic of a big section of your post. I'll admit that 4e fans are very important to the success of 5e (I just XP'd thecasualoblivion today when he was making the same point), but that doesn't make the rest of your post correct.

This just comes off as another edition war post to me. I don't know if it was intended that way (and it probably wasn't), but I'm getting that feeling from you quite a bit recently (the "AD&D wasn't good" thread, with the "looking backwards" line in the title; or the tone of some posts in "convincing 4e players to consider 5e" thread). That might be unfair, but I'm saying how it's coming across to me.

As I've said, I like balance as a goal. And, I think catering to 4e players is important for the success of 5e. But this post just says "edition war" to me. It's no wonder people are saying "it's like 2008 all over again" (not that the "4e doesn't deserve to be catered to" or "4e was a failure" or "4e wasn't D&D" posts that are more frequent nowadays are any better). As always, play what you like

 

[Lokiare]

in order to meet Hasbros unrealistic sales goals, they have to get all groups as well as a whole slew of new groups. even 3.5 in its hey day did not meet Hasbros goals. it more than likely that 5e will be a smashing success greater than 3.5 and 4e put together and still get shelved by hasbro for not being profitable enough. the numbers mentioned in articles i've seen are around $100,000,000 as goals...

 

[thecasualoblivion]

I know it's only one facet of your post, but your unsupported (and probably unsupportable) use of "objectively better" makes me question the logic of a big section of your post. I'll admit that 4e fans are very important to the success of 5e (I just XP'd thecasualoblivion today when he was making the same point), but that doesn't make the rest of your post correct.

This just comes off as another edition war post to me. I don't know if it was intended that way (and it probably wasn't), but I'm getting that feeling from you quite a bit recently (the "AD&D wasn't good" thread, with the "looking backwards" line in the title; or the tone of some posts in "convincing 4e players to consider 5e" thread). That might be unfair, but I'm saying how it's coming across to me.

As I've said, I like balance as a goal. And, I think catering to 4e players is important for the success of 5e. But this post just says "edition war" to me. It's no wonder people are saying "it's like 2008 all over again" (not that the "4e doesn't deserve to be catered to" or "4e was a failure" or "4e wasn't D&D" posts that are more frequent nowadays are any better). As always, play what you like

I think the point he's trying to make is that subscribers/collectors are more significant from a revenue perspective, than more casual purchasers, and that only 4E and Pathfinder players over the past five years have shown that behavior. I think he has a point, though the conclusions he derives from it are up for debate.

 

[amerigoV]

So regardless of how many 3.5 and 3.0 fans there still are, their decision not even to switch to Pathfinder points out that they are economically worth almost nothing. They aren't book buyers except in rare cases, and they certainly aren't subscribers.

3.5 and 3.0 fans should therefore be almost entirely ignored from a business decision perspective. Or possibly given adventures and splats occasionally. But they are largely irrelevant - they aren't even customers and are happy with what they have.

I hope that is not the "logic" they are using and are instead actually surveying people that still play 3.x. Lets face it, 3.5 and Pathfinder are nothing more than published house rules for 3.0. Just because someone chooses NOT to spend $90 bucks (say a DM) for 3.5 and/or another $50 for Pathfinder core does not mean they love 3.0 so much they would not buy a new edition. It may just mean those published house rules did not add the value of the asking price. Heck, even for 3.5, I only bought the PHB and I mainly was a DM during that time - I saw no value in picking up DMG/MM, especially with the monsters in the SRD.

People will pay money for a quality game they like. I have gone whole hog into Savage Worlds once I discovered it (I have a ton of 3.x books, a few 4e., and nothing Pathfinder system-wise). If D&D Next clearly outdoes Savage Worlds at a good price point, I'll definitively consider it. If not, I'll cherry pick a few items and move on.