D&D General Kobold Press Going Down a Dark Road

[mamba]

No. No he's not. When kids have literal crap tons that they want to buy and spend money on(like lunches and movies) each month and only $120 to do it, nearly two months of allowance(at the very highest end of the allowance range) is HUGE.

yes he is, because $200 < 12 x 120, by a lot

If you want to include everything else everyone wants to buy with their disposable income, then I am not even sure how that is supposed to work, let alone what it is supposed to accomplish.

I would like a penthouse in NY, a vacation home in Hawaii, a yacht, etc. More realistically a new car every two years would be nice but by no means necessary. So at that point it boils down to personal priority / preference and pretty much nothing else

 

[Ruin Explorer]

They should target the largest concentration of disposable income.

Just to be clear, this is your profound misunderstanding of the economics here.

D&D is successful not because people individually dump thousands into WotC's pocket.

D&D is successful because millions and millions of people play it, each at a low or even zero cost.

Therefore it is outright irrational to suggest primarily targeting disposable income - because almost anyone can afford to play D&D on a basic level. They question is why aren't they? And the answer is very unlikely to be "It's too expensive". Your logic only applies to products where you can extract thousands from individuals customers.

 

[Maxperson]

I am not ignoring things as far as I can tell. You said $120 a month outstrips what WotC is offering for D&D and as far as I can tell books (or their digital equivalent, which is not more expensive) is that.

What are you including to the tune of $1000 a year that I am not counting that WotC creates for D&D?

20+ Latest Teen Spending Statistics 2025 • HeadphonesAddict

The latest teen spending statistics. Learn about the new data and trends on teenager spending habits. How much money they make and what they spend it on.

headphonesaddict.com

https://www.lexingtonlaw.com/blog/credit-cards/teen-spending-habits.html

22 Fascinating Teenage Spending Statistics in 2023

Let's look at some interesting teenage spending statistics for 2023.

www.businessdit.com

D&D doesn't even make the lists. I mean there's the other category which is 4% of teen spending, so assuming $1500 a year, that would be $60 a year for everything not on the list, which would include D&D books. Even video games, which are far more popular than D&D, only get 14%.

 

[mamba]

Where is the WotC sales link that shows that it's mainly a teen/tween audience? And quite franlky, how would they even know? People who buy books don't submit an age.

how do they know the age distribution of their playerbase? I’d say it is safe to assume the purchase of books (or their digital equivalent) is not that far off either

 

[Maxperson]

Just to be clear, this is your profound misunderstanding of the economics here.

D&D is successful not because people individually dump thousands into WotC's pocket.

D&D is successful because millions and millions of people play it, each at a low or even zero cost.

Therefore it is outright irrational to suggest primarily targeting disposable income - because almost anyone can afford to play D&D on a basic level. They question is why aren't they? And the answer is very unlikely to be "It's too expensive". Your logic only applies to products where you can extract thousands from individuals customers.

Millions x 0 = 0. People playing the basic free game aren't earning WotC a penny, unless they start spending disposable income on other things from WotC.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

And yet when I go to conventions, it's primarily the older folks who I see fielding armies of figures for Warhammer, Battletech and other miniature wargames.

LOL think about that a bit harder.

What do you think is discouraging people from going to those sort of conventions? I would suggest it's that's sausagefests (sorry guys) full of old men. Certainly when I was in my teens and twenties, I'd love to have gone to an RPG convention full of people my own age, but one full of decrepit ancients (i.e. people the age I am now lol). I literally wouldn't have been seen dead there.

Does that make me a "bad nerd"? Maybe. But I think it's fairly common. All the convention-type things which had a large teens and twenties sort of audience, that I can think of, are about youth phenomenons (like MLP in its heyday), or certain kinds of videogame gathering.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Millions x 0 = 0. People playing the basic free game aren't earning WotC a penny, unless they start spending disposable income on other things from WotC.

You're really not interested in thinking about this remotely seriously? Those people cause others to spend money, and spread the game. This is like a virus, not a mining operation.

You've offered absolutely no explanation as to why you think a game that makes money on volume should be targeting high disposable income brackets. Until you can explain that, your arguments are completely irrational and anti-economic.

 

[mamba]

D&D doesn't even make the lists.

of course not, there is only $200 worth of material every year that they even could buy, D&D is beat by just about everything when it comes to how much you can spend on it.

So you are making the point that the disposable income has to cover everything you want to buy. Ok, then my point that this just means it becomes a matter of personal priorities stands.

If someone rather buys 2 pairs of sneakers or 5 video games a year than everything D&D, then that is up to them. I just fail to see how this is making any relevant point.

I mean there's the other category which is 4% of teen spending, so assuming $1500 a year, that would be $60 a year for everything not on the list, which would include D&D books. Even video games, which are far more popular than D&D, only get 14%.

So? Do you think every teen is interested in D&D and spending half of their 60 bucks on a book a year? I am sure WotC would love that, I just am not at all surprised that 1) D&D / TTRPGs do not make this list as a separate category, 2) those who like to play it still have enough disposable income to buy the D&D products they want. These statistics are wide averages, not narrow margins for every category

Going by your statistics they have roughly $2400 a year, so 200 a month, i.e. enough to buy everything D&D releases in a year in one month if they really wanted to. Tell me again how they cannot afford it. I'd argue those that don't mostly do not want to

 

[mamba]

Millions x 0 = 0. People playing the basic free game aren't earning WotC a penny, unless they start spending disposable income on other things from WotC.

How many people do you know that play the free base game? The argument that many play for free because the DM already has and shares the books is a lot stronger imo.

This still seems entirely unconnected to 'people cannot afford it, so WotC needs to target the 40 year olds with money', if anything it shows how ridiculous that point about affordability is.

 

[Hussar]

Assuming those teens wouldn't rather go out to Denny's for a late dinner with friends, or a movie, or buy new earbuds, or... There are a lot of things teens want and even with the high end of $120 a month to use, they aren't going to be able to get anywhere near everything they want. Think back to when you were a kid and how many different things you wanted on a daily basis, shifting with each new thing you found out about. Then understand that there are about 10,000(slight exaggeration) times more things to attract current teens than there were when we were teens.

My teenage daughter makes about 5-600 usd per month flipping burgers at Burger King. Good grief I made more than 120 dollars a month when I was a teen and I had to fight mammoths on my way to work.

Remember teen= 16-19. As in senior high school and university age. Where most of your income is disposable.

120 bucks a month? What planet are you living on?