D&D 4E 4E Marketing Campaign?

[Gryffyn]

I think WOTC should focus at least part of their marketing approach on attracting a wider audiene to RPG's in general. I realize it is going to be a very controversial statement, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be in WOTC's and the hobby in general's best interst long term to take tabletop RPGing out of its niche market place and move it into the "mainstream." Clearly online / computer gaming (including RPGs) has been a huge growth industry and has gained wide acceptance in our larger culture. I don't see any reason why moving tabletop gaming forward in that same way wouldn't be a huge win for the industry. The most popular movies and books in the past 10 years have been fantasy settings (LOTR and Harry Potter). Why not capture some of this market and bring them in.

The immediacy of online gaming is the big difference. To get involved in WoW or another online fantasy RPG, all you have to go is buy or download the game, install it, and log in. To get involved in D&D, you have to either find or create a group of real live people. That isn't always easy.

WotC has been running ads pointing out the essential difference between MMOs and D&D for a couple of years now -- has it helped mainstream the game?

Finally, does it really matter if D&D has as big a playerbase as WoW? I don't think so.

 

[am181d]

You don't market a product to a new audience until the product is available. It's pointless. You can build enthusiasm for people who are already invested (i.e. "That looks like a cool movie! I love movies! I will go see that in ten months!"), but you can't keep people excited about something if they don't know what it is (i.e. "I'm looking forward to trying something new and interesting eventually."). WotC shouldn't be promoting D&D in earnest till close to the release date or even after.

 

[ChaosShard]

The immediacy of online gaming is the big difference. To get involved in WoW or another online fantasy RPG, all you have to go is buy or download the game, install it, and log in. To get involved in D&D, you have to either find or create a group of real live people. That isn't always easy.

WotC has been running ads pointing out the essential difference between MMOs and D&D for a couple of years now -- has it helped mainstream the game?

Finally, does it really matter if D&D has as big a playerbase as WoW? I don't think so.

I would hope that WotC would try to get WoW players interested in D&D, not as a replacement for WoW, but as a different type of game in the same general genre (fantasy). Plenty of WoW players that I've spoken with (having played most of my time on RP servers) have played PnP games, but don't have a regular group. The Digital Initiative could fix that, if done properly.

There's no need, or reason to try, to "steal" WoW players, they can (and do, and hopefully will) enjoy both hobbies, as my wife and I do. WoW during the week, and D&D on sundays

 

[arscott]

Well, MtG can afford them. Look here.

Cheers, LT.

Sure. But last I heard, Magic makes a lot more money for WotC than D&D does. And even if they made the same amount of money, I'd guess that a MtG commercial is more likely to get its audience to buy than a D&D commercial:

-Magic's lower price point makes it a likelier Impulse buy, whereas someone purchasing a $35 dollar book is going to think harder about the decision (and be less influenced by ads).

-I have a feeling that Magic Players are a more tightly focused demographic than D&D players, which means that if they run their ads with the right shows, each individual ad will reach a greater number of receptive eyes.

-From a conceptual standpoint, Magic is an easier game to understand. Explaining what a role-playing game is takes a bit of effort, but explaining what a CCG is takes half a sentence. So a MtG commercial is more likely to attract and keep new players.

 

[mhensley]

I wanted to mention something else that's been bothering me about the current marketing plan. A lot of the questions that we've been asking have been met with "sorry, I can't answer that."

To a certain extent, that makes sense: if you give someone an answer to something that can change, you may very well end up looking very silly, and creating controversy where none is needed.

Still, as we know, the books are at the printer. At this point the rules for skill challenges or multiclassing, or anything else aren't going to change unless there is such a huge mistake that it warrants it. So what's the reason at this point?

If that reason is, "we want to have an orderly publicity campaign and control how the information is dispensed," I can understand that. Let's start that process! The books are just over two months away from being in our hands, so what are we waiting for?

QFTMFT

What indeed are they waiting on? I feel like the marketing and rollout of 3rd edition was handled in a much better way than they are doing with 4th. Of course they used to have a working magazine back then with decent articles.

 

[morgul97]

To get involved in D&D, you have to either find or create a group of real live people. That isn't always easy.

I think this is part of the problem. I know this has for sure been a barrier to me over the years being involved in RPGing to the level I would like. When I was a kid, if I wanted to play basketball, I would just walk to the park and eventually someone would show up and we would play. RPGs have never seemed to work this way. Perhaps that is just a function of the way these games are structured and cannot be solve.

Perhaps what needs to happen is getting it out of the private space it is usually played (at one's home) and into a more public space. I know when I go to my local game store (the Source in St. Paul, MN) and I see tons of people playing minis games and CCG's, but you almost never see RPGers. Those other games are perhaps just, by their nature, more amenable to that sort of "pick up game" setting.

One way that I have met people with similar interests in other contexts (politics) is through Meetup. There is an RPG Meetup group here in town, but it doesn't appear to have that many people regularly showing up.

Seems that there needs to be more interaction between potential players, other than just on message boards. Perhaps DDI will allow for more interaction... perhaps it won't.

 

[Aesthetic Monk]

You don't market a product to a new audience until the product is available. It's pointless. You can build enthusiasm for people who are already invested (i.e. "That looks like a cool movie! I love movies! I will go see that in ten months!"), but you can't keep people excited about something if they don't know what it is (i.e. "I'm looking forward to trying something new and interesting eventually."). WotC shouldn't be promoting D&D in earnest till close to the release date or even after.

Maybe not in earnest, but your analogy doesn't hold up perfectly. There are any number of "teaser" ads out for big-name movies months or more in advance, and those are hardly targeted narrowly to those who "love" movies. You can build a decent level of enthusiasm with a low-information, high-emotion run-up campaign.