D&D 5E Is 5e's Success Actually Bad for Other Games?

[Thomas Shey]

Hard to see how that comment on my part is a straw man.

 

[Fanaelialae]

They can be successful for the initial profits of the company/author, but what do they mean for continued sales and success? So a Kickstarter gets 10k backers, and they pledge several times the target amount, but how many people beyond those 10k will ever even hear of the game or play it or buy it?

Certainly a lot more than if you hadn't exposed 10k people to your game.

Realistically, for a small company, even a fraction of those folks who are dedicated can result in sustainable full time employment. I believe that's the case for Kevin Crawford, for example (creator of Stars Without Number).

 

[Morrus]

Certainly a lot more than if you hadn't exposed 10k people to your game.

Realistically, for a small company, even a fraction of those folks who are dedicated can result in sustainable full time employment. I believe that's the case for Kevin Crawford, for example (creator of Stars Without Number).

Yep, and that's the goal here. Outselling WotC isn't the goal. A healthy industry of employed people is the goal. I've managed to carve out a decent full time living from this industry, and I pay a bunch of other people, and I consider that a success.

We're small but successful restaurants. We don't need to outsell McD's to be a successful venture.

 

[darjr]

Yep, and that's the goal here. Outselling WotC isn't the goal. A healthy industry of employed people is the goal. I've managed to carve out a decent full time living from this industry, and I pay a bunch of other people, and I consider that a success.

Does 5es success hurt or help? How? Do you think?

 

[tetrasodium]

They can be successful for the initial profits of the company/author, but what do they mean for continued sales and success? So a Kickstarter gets 10k backers, and they pledge several times the target amount, but how many people beyond those 10k will ever even hear of the game or play it or buy it?

The fate kickstarter was several years ago & it seems like over that period it's gone from "what is fate" to a system that can be discussed even with people who haven't played it. I believe that others that have been mentioned are more recent but still have reasonable traction allowing discussion & the 5e fork I mentioned earlier is between the pdf going to backers & the pdf going to the printing press next month but seems successful enough given the timeframe

 

[Morrus]

Does 5es success hurt or help? How? Do you think?

I answered that earlier in the thread, but yes, I believe it helps.

Some of those D&D customers are my future customers. Thanks for recruiting them!

 

[Thomas Shey]

OK cool. But what about them says 5es success helped them? Do you think?
@Enevhar Aldarion

@tetrasodium

@Thomas Shey

Well, this can't be but speculative, but there's a certain rising-tide-lifts-all-boats element here. 5e absolutely did bring more people into the hobby, and without getting into the question of what numbers are present with this, some people are liable to either hop over to non-D&D games, or combine their continued play of 5e with other games. Since this new part is probably prone to being a younger demographic, a bigger than prior part of that is liable to be aware of Kickstarters, and thus look a them when they pop up.

As someone said, while there's been some tendency for new games to pop up with 5e mechanics (including a few cases where its hard to see any D&D style mechanics being a great choice) but it hasn't been the 3e era style "Everything is D20 based and nobody can bother to do anything else" so it hasn't choked the market, and on the whole, has probably been good for it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

They can be successful for the initial profits of the company/author, but what do they mean for continued sales and success? So a Kickstarter gets 10k backers, and they pledge several times the target amount, but how many people beyond those 10k will ever even hear of the game or play it or buy it?

Its probably impossible to know. No one shares sales figures, so actual sales of most RPGs are a black box outside the company involved.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Does it matter? If the game gets 10K backers and everybody gets paid and then gets to do more projects and make a living out of making games, it sounds like a success to me. And that story is happening more than it ever has in the history of the industry. The "1000 true fans" theory has some truth to it.

There's an awesome restaurant in my town that we love. It has a millionth of the customer base of the McDonalds franchise. It is, nevertheless, very much a success story.

Yeah, there's a game creator I know who probably considers if he never sells another copy outside the Kickstarter its a success, and in the days of DTRPG, that's probably not true with at least the digital versions of his products.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Certainly a lot more than if you hadn't exposed 10k people to your game.

Realistically, for a small company, even a fraction of those folks who are dedicated can result in sustainable full time employment. I believe that's the case for Kevin Crawford, for example (creator of Stars Without Number).

Though Kevin is probably a bad example to use because he's relentless at keeping his costs under control. Being a massively skilled one-man-band helps, as he rarely has to pay for anything but art.