Which groups of fans are worth going after?

[Li Shenron]

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?

I think your analysis is both reasonable and full of seriously arguable points at the same time.

You're first of all making one big mistake: you are missing the point that most people didn't switch to the next edition because they didn't need to. They just realized that they were having enough fun, or they had already fixed their problems with house rules, or they had spent enough money, or they already mastered the rules and didn't fancy restarting, and so on with more reasons... but this happens at every edition, and it is definitely going to happen for 4e fans too! Thus it could be said that 4e fans are not one bit more likely to switch to 5e than any fan of older editions, perhaps even less inclined since at the moment they might feel "strong" enough as a community that they can keep playing 4e despite WotC active supports is going to end.

Subscribers are also IMHO very often people who are fans of the gaming community more than an edition. They want the latest edition because being up to date is perhaps the most important or exciting thing for them. They probably like changing edition every few years (although they might get disappointed and grumpy if it happens too often). Clearly, it means they are 4e fans now, but among them there are also those least likely to drop D&D altoghter, because they go wherever D&D goes. In fact, if they spend more money on subscription than books, they also probably don't care about buying new books because that's what they do and like doing all the time.

Next, you are underestimating the amount of grognards (pre-4e fans) who can in fact be very interested in a new edition if they think (a) provides some benefits or refreshing new ideas, or (b) provides more people to play with. At least I am in such group, having stopped buying D&D books at 3.0 (with just one 3.5 exception) and having skipped 4e altogether, and yet I am very positive that I will start buying 5e books.

Then, you are kind of assuming that people who buy D&D books are always the same bunch. But most people started playing D&D when they were teenagers or young adults, and there is always a new batch of potential gamers that are not coming from any existing edition, and WotC needs to target them too.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

No, I've said that 5E can't succeed without 4E fans. 5E needs to win over everybody. If they fail 4E fans, they fail, and if they fail to win over the AD&D or 3.5E/PF fans they fail. 4E proved a portion of the D&D community isn't enough, and as a result the non-4E portion won't be enough same as 4E alone wasn't enough.

The post I was responding to(and also a general sentiment on this and other forums) is that 5E should exclude 4E fans. I have done nothing of that sort.

I believe 4e fans will not be explicitely excluded, but they need to look harder what parts of their/our current favourite edition is brought to the game. There will be no shiny "powers". But the healing surge mechanic is in, balance seems to be taken into account. The fighter and rogue seem to be getting stuff that lets them also do cool things.

An really a rogue with darkvision by default. Finally he can backstab and sneak around at night... (yeah, the 3e rogue had a hard time doing so, including pathfinder... 4e essentials at least introduced disciple of darkvision feat).

There are 4e things. And if they would not include those things they would not only lose 4e fans, but also those fans, that want to get a better system than 3e. Something without its flaws, without deviating too much from D&D classic. 4e failed a little in that regard. But this does not mean, that it can´t be salvaged. I would still say, that 3e seems to have the least direct influence, as the best parts were retained in 4e or some good retroclones.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Is it too much to think that the reason a new edition gets released every four or five years or so is because enough players don't give a rat's ass about any one edition, and instead just buy the new game (and supplements) in enough bulk to keep the doors to the D&D department open for the next four or five years?

Many of us couldn't care less about which edition is the "true" edition, or which one plays better than another, or whether or not a whole heap of you move on to the new edition or remain stuck in whatever edition you're currently playing. And I imagine that to certain extent WotC feels the same way.

It's YOU who sometimes get a stick up your rear end about worrying which game(s) is "selling better" or which one is available so that you can introduce your friends to it, or which one is "splintering the D&D community" or every other hackneyed cliche that gets thrown out there all in an attempt to make it seem like YOUR way of playing D&D is the "real" way to play D&D, and that WotC should be catering to you and your almighty dollar.

But guess what? There's apparently enough of the rest of us out here who will just buy new books every couple years because gosh-darned it... buying new roleplaying game books every couple of years is fun. And in many ways it's US who WotC is really catering to, when you get right down to it, because we might very well be in the majority.

 

[SteveC]

For my $.02, I'd say that if you cater to the largest D&D blocks, you have a winning edition. 4E and 3X players (and I'm going to include Pathfinder players here) are clearly your two biggest groups, so if you can make them happy, you've got a winner on your hands.

And that's what makes me mystified at what we've seen so far, which really seems targeted at fans of first and second edition, mixed with a retro C&C approach.

As a 4E fan, I haven't seen anything in the 5E materials that improves of or is even relevant to my wants. As someone who played a lot of 3X, I'm not seeing much that would make me want to change there either.

A lot is riding on the elements we haven't seen yet, themes and backgrounds could make or break the game. We'll have to see.

 

[Incenjucar]

Is it too much to think that the reason a new edition gets released every four or five years or so is because enough players don't give a rat's ass about any one edition, and instead just buy the new game (and supplements) in enough bulk to keep the doors to the D&D department open for the next four or five years?

Many of us couldn't care less about which edition is the "true" edition, or which one plays better than another, or whether or not a whole heap of you move on to the new edition or remain stuck in whatever edition you're currently playing. And I imagine that to certain extent WotC feels the same way.

It's YOU who sometimes get a stick up your rear end about worrying which game(s) is "selling better" or which one is available so that you can introduce your friends to it, or which one is "splintering the D&D community" or every other hackneyed cliche that gets thrown out there all in an attempt to make it seem like YOUR way of playing D&D is the "real" way to play D&D, and that WotC should be catering to you and your almighty dollar.

But guess what? There's apparently enough of the rest of us out here who will just buy new books every couple years because gosh-darned it... buying new roleplaying game books every couple of years is fun. And in many ways it's US who WotC is really catering to, when you get right down to it, because we might very well be in the majority.

This is entirely possible. I have a feeling that WotC is working its way toward working the same way Xbox games do, with punctuated releases smoothed over by episodic content, rather than the MMO-style perpetual purchases that single-edition-lovers crave.

I won't be surprised if, by 6th edition, they start talking about a "Season Pass."

 

[Lokiare]

The fundamental weakness with your entire piece lies here - we do not have a clear indication that Hasbro mucks in on the strategy of D&D. We don't have a strong indication that Hasbro is leaning heavily on WotC on the matter, such that WotC would have to approach it from an immediate-$$-only perspective.

Plus, even if "money is the only thing that matters", this does not necessarily lean to a ruthless strategy. Health of the brand depends on loyalty of the fanbase, which means that money depends upon the loyalty of the fanbase. Dong things we like that don't actually haul in many $$ may still be seen as a loss-leader from that perspective.

So, I don't think we can predict so clearly what the strategy should be.

You can go find the particulars on your own but it basically went like this:

Hasbro wanted to buy WotC. WotC said ok on one condition: They act as a separate company with no interference. Hasbro bought WotC. After the first few years Hasbro decided WotC wasn't meeting financial goals with their products, so they used market shares to force a CEO change and sent an upper level manager down from Hasbro to become the CEO of WotC. From then on all decisions were pretty much made by Hasbro.

As I said I'll leave it to you to find the sources of this, they are out there and have been researched.

Another major problem is that just about every person has been replaced due to lay offs and firings, so the left hand has no clue what the right hand did last time.

As far as I know WotC does not have a PR department. If they do, they need to be cleared out.

We do know WotC has a legal department because they sent out a slew of Cease and Desist orders to individuals that made better software in a long weekend in their basement than WotC's software department did in 3 years.

In other words the D&D side of WotC is pretty much a mess. Think of a city that was just looted and is burning to the ground. That's WotC right now. Maybe they can rebuild, maybe not...

 

[Lokiare]

Would you please stop with your anti pre-4th Ed crusade...for all of us, it's not fun, it's not cool, it is passive-aggressive and boring.

Go shoot something, maybe that will take your mind off it.

You can replace pre-4th with anything you like. WotC marketing has pretty much shown they have no clue...

 

[Tony Vargas]

For my $.02, I'd say that if you cater to the largest D&D blocks, you have a winning edition. 4E and 3X players (and I'm going to include Pathfinder players here) are clearly your two biggest groups, so if you can make them happy, you've got a winner on your hands.

And that's what makes me mystified at what we've seen so far, which really seems targeted at fans of first and second edition, mixed with a retro C&C approach.

I honestly think the theory might be that there is a "vast un-tapped market" of potential customers who played D&D or AD&D 1e back in the 70s & 80s, and haven't touched it since, who will come flooding back if the game is just made nostalgic enough. It's not a crazy theory. D&D was a fad in the 80s. It hasn't been since. That points to a large cohort of former-D&Ders. The only indicator of what they might want is the "grognards" (1e holdouts and such), maybe not a good indicator, but what else does WotC have to go on?

So: please the longtime classic-D&Ders, attract the nostalgic one-time D&Ders (in vast numbers, & in their peak earning years), rake in the revenue, and don't get laid off right before Christmas.

Sounds like as good a plan as any.