D&D 5E Reasons Why My Interest in 5e is Waning

[collin]

anything anyone who isn't affiliated with Paizo says on these boards about Paizo's financials is nothing more than conjecture.

Agreed. Which is also pretty much true of WotC/Hasbro or any other company we talk about here. I think it's fine for us to speculate and conjecture, as long as we realize that is all it is. Without true inside knowledge or access to any company's financial data, we are all just guessing. But that's what makes for lively discussion. We just need to not take it too much to heart and remember to be civil about it.

 

[chriton227]

Ashame.

And RPGs:

For ICv2 growth means:

Here is a link to an article talking about RPGs being $15mil, the source of the data is ICv2 for the year 2013. The six consecutive years of growth was for the hobby games market as a whole, not necessarily for the RPG segment; in 2013 RPGs accounted for $15mil of a $700mil North American hobby games market, or just over 2% of the hobby games market. Every other category is more than twice the size of RPGs, and the collectible games market is 30 times the size of RPGs. A hypothetical 50% drop in RPGs would be completely wiped out by a meager 1.02% increase across the rest of the segments, or just 2.04% to compensate if RPGs sales were to drop to zero, and since hobby games whole increased by $340mil over the 5 years leading up to the $15mil 2013 RPG sales figure, RPGs couldn't have contributed much to the overall gain and any movement up or down of RPG sales would have just been noise compared to the overall trend.

The ICv2 figures are also all regarding retail sales, I would expect that once retailers and distributors got their cut, only about half makes it to the game producers, and much of that is going to get eaten by production costs. The RPG industry is tiny, I would be shocked if there were more than about 100 people in the US who fully make their living from producing RPGs.

For a point of comparison, the average US Walmart store has $65mil in annual sales(1), so one average Walmart store would have more sales revenue in 3 months than the entire North American RPG market. Even if WotC got every dime of the RPG market, that would still only amount to 0.3% of Hasbro's $4.08bil 2013 gross revenue (2). For that matter, retail sales of My Little Pony by itself was $650 million, or more than 40x the size of the entire RPG market. Even the horrible flop of a D&D movie in 2000 brought in as much revenue in the 8 weeks it was in the theaters as the entire RPG market brought in for the entire year of 2013 (3). Imagine how much it could have brought in if it was good, and understand why execs as Hasbro and/or WotC would be attracted to getting a slice of that sort of revenue at little if any cost instead of investing in producing RPG books that may or may not make them a profit.

(1) Walmart Corporate Financial Fact Sheet
(2) Hasbro 2013 Annual Report
(3) IMDB Box Office figures for Dungeons & Dragons (2000)

 

[Kramodlog]

Here is a link to an article talking about RPGs being $15mil, the source of the data is ICv2 for the year 2013.

Ah, thank you. Very interesting. Since this is ICv2, I wonder if online distributors aren't included.

 

[pemerton]

So selling a few boardgames is going to keep the business going?

Perhaps. I would have though that, overall, the market for boardgames is bigger than the market for RPGs - at my local games shop (Mind Games in Swanston St, Melbourne) the boargames are in the front, more visible area and the RPGs in the back area.

Whether D&D boardgames sell more than D&D RPG books I don't know, and I wouldn't know how to conjecture an answer either way.

The problem with this is, if they focus more on the brand than on the game then people will abandon the line and go elsewhere which could cause popularity with another brand.

If WotC does not publish many new RPG books, and there are people who want to buy lots of new RPG books, then it follows that they will have to buy them from someone other than WotC.

But the only game which is producing product at the sort of rate you are talking about is Pathfinder. Which, as [MENTION=6701829]Trickster Spirit[/MENTION] has pointed out multiple times upthread, keeps them well within the circle of D&D-lovers and D&D-players.

WotC seem to have formed the view that it is not economically efficient for them to try and chase those Paizo customers. On that, I trust their knowledge of their own balance sheets over anyone's online speculation.

They also seem to have formed the view that having some D&D players buy books from Paizo and play D&D under the Pathfinder label isn't going to hurt the D&D brand. I'm inclined to agree with Trickster Spirit that this seems reasonable. PF players play PF because of their love of D&D (the iconic RPG), not as an alternative.

Now if a game like Rolemaster or Runequest or Burning Wheel or The One Ring (just to name some currently available relatively well-known fantasy RPGs) took off, it would be a different thing. Those games are all predicated, in part, on being not-D&D. But much as I would love for some of these excellent games to get the commercial traction and brand recognition that D&D enjoys, I think the prospects of that are basically nil.

D&D is sacred to a lot of people and they would leave in waves than see their beloved game get put on the back burner more and more until it's an after thought.

It makes no sense that if the game is sacred to someone than s/he will abandon it. If it's sacred to people, they will value it. Which is what WotC is hoping for - because that valuation of a private intellectual property monopoly is precisely what the commercial value of a brand is built on!

All the while, we are getting a crap release schedule while they test out their newest hair brained theory.

I'm pretty confident that WotC has accountants and financial managers on its staff. They can read a balance sheet. If they've worked out that supplements aren't profitable, you're not going to see them. If the brand strategy turns out to be "hare-brained" then the upshot will not be supplements instead. It will be Mearls and/or his colleagues gradually losing their jobs, and the 5e publication schedule slowing down further.

Or, alternatively - and to allude to a post by BryonD a page or so upthread - they will try and make a quick buck off 6th ed.

Which is also pretty much true of WotC/Hasbro or any other company we talk about here. I think it's fine for us to speculate and conjecture, as long as we realize that is all it is. Without true inside knowledge or access to any company's financial data, we are all just guessing.

Hasbro is a publicly traded company. It's financial reports are public documents, from which people on these boards post extracts from time-to-time.

As far as I know Hasbro is a profitable company, though like all companies it wants to increase its profits. In recent reports WotC has been identified as a distinctively profitable segment of the company, and D&D has been called out as notably contributing to WotC's profits.

There is no reason to think that WotC is in financial trouble, or that it is not happy with the performance of its D&D division. Though it is true that, as far as I know, we have no real way of telling how big a part of that division's profits flow from the RPG.

 

[Shasarak]

And yet Paizo has cards, a video game, novels, minis... And a robust RPG line!

Maybe Paizo never got the memo that it costs money to produce product?

 

[Sailor Moon]

Paizo vs Wizards.

Paizo: Let's get together and see what great product we can come with next.

Wizards: Let's get together and come up with a way to make the most money.

 

[chriton227]

Paizo vs Wizards.

Paizo: Let's get together and see what great product we can come with next.

Wizards: Let's get together and come up with a way to make the most money.

Exactly. And that perfectly sums up the difference between a privately owned company and a publicly traded one. The private company is free to do things however they want (within certain limitations), while the publicly traded one has a legal responsibility to try to maximize returns for their investors, and if they don't their board can replace the company leadership with people who will. Personally I feel that in a case like RPGs where it is a niche corner of the niche hobby games industry, the games and customers would be better servers by companies not beholden to the financial demands of shareholders, but that is just my opinion.

 

[Hussar]

So what? We're RPG players. You had lots of people saying 4e sucked on boards and surprise, 4e tanked. A lot of people on boards were saying PF was great. Surprise, it did very well. We are a reflection of the gaming community.

]

Ahem. Lots of people said 3e was great and it tanked even faster than 4e did. What we say on the boards isn't always what's true.

 

[Hussar]

Maybe Paizo never got the memo that it costs money to produce product?

Careful though. TSR forgot that lesson and went out of business. Heck, LOTS of companies have forgotten that lesson and driven themselves into bankruptcy.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

I can see how that affects the perception of the 'on ramp' before you start playing. The learning curve 5e presents a returning player is pretty smooth, too, it's different - but familiar. A new-to-gaming player confronted with 5e, OTOH, doesn't do so well. The players I've introduced to 5e who admit to having played D&D before, even if it was only a few times, 15+ years ago, seem to pick it up fairly well, they come back for a few sessions, at least. The new-to-gaming players, OTOH, I've yet to see one return. 4e & Essentials, it was the exact opposite. Returning players would give up on it fairly quickly, new ones would get into it surprisingly often. I say 'surprisingly' because I've introduced a lot of people to D&D in the last 35 years, and for most of that time, the most common response was try it once, never be seen again. 5e is back to that familiar pattern.

Small sample sizes are irrelevant. I'm running two campaigns right now, and of those, 5 of the 10 players had played before. And only one didn't stick with it (loves the concept, but admittedly has no imagination. Just couldn't do it).

One of the new players is starting up his own game as DM, with at least 4 players, a half and half mix of new and old.

Of the old-timers in my campaigns, 3 started with 4th ed, 2 with 3rd. All 4 prefer the 5th edition rules. The ones that learned with the 4th edition absolutely love it.

I have two additional people that want to join the campaign (never played) as soon as schedules allow.

I've been DMing since the '70s through every edition. I greatly prefer the 5th edition as well.

Anecdotal evidence at the few stores around here are that D&D play is up, and a large number of them are new players. It's hard to tell sticking power, because a given person might play one week, and not be available for the next two weeks, then return.

But I think the common thread I see around here is simply excitement. I hadn't run a game in several years for a variety of reasons. But there are a lot of people playing now, and they are bringing more people in. My friend in DC is experiencing the same thing.

Can I say that my experiences are the norm? No, too small of a sample. But again, anecdotal evidence, plus what WotC is reporting makes it seem like my experience is pretty common.

Ilbranteloth