D&D 5E 5e and the Cheesecake Factory: Explaining Good Enough

[Manbearcat]

There are so many 2nd and 3rd order (to the objective qualities of the product) factors that drive shallow (meaning lacking rigor and/or robust analysis) reviews and box office numbers that it’s difficult to not be incredulous to social data. Using it as a proxy for quality has to be particularly fraught.

Can someone explain to me (in a way that backs up the #s = quality thesis) how Bladerunner, Children of Men, The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford, The Usual Suspects, Mulholland Drive, The Shawshank Redemption, The Highlander, and Fight Club all bombed at the box office?

No?

Didn’t think so.

Humankind’s proclivities aren’t impenetrable, but they’re certainly not clear.

 

[TheSword]

There are so many 2nd and 3rd order (to the objective qualities of the product) factors that drive shallow (meaning lacking rigor and/or robust analysis) reviews and box office numbers that it’s difficult to not be incredulous to social data. Using it as a proxy for quality has to be particularly fraught.

Can someone explain to me (in a way that backs up the #s = quality thesis) how Bladerunner, Children of Men, The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford, The Usual Suspects, Mulholland Drive, The Shawshank Redemption, The Highlander, and Fight Club all bombed at the box office?

No?

Didn’t think so.

Humankind’s proclivities aren’t impenetrable, but they’re certainly not clear.

Lots of things affect box office stats at the time.
marketing, distribution, recognition, what else is showing those weeks (I.e competition), timing, hell even the weather. A film may just not be of its time, or best seen in the movies. Austin Powers bombed, but then turned into a cult hit franchise.

Look at the public reviews of meta-critic or rotten tomatoes scores for those films and I think they better describe your feelings of their quality. How would public reviews of 5e be any different?

 

[fearsomepirate]

There's no reason to believe, given the gonzo sales numbers of 5e, that the average player even has a second favorite edition. "Everyone's second favorite edition" seems to have been coined by forum dwellers who, being some of the hobby's most dedicated fans, have rather different preferences compared to the broad masses of people.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Wait, has this thread moved into taking self-selected Likert scale product reviews on a sales platform as indicative of anything other than general popularity? Has the popularity of 5e been questioned?

The ratings on Amazon really only tell you one thing: a lot of people like 5e. As I've pointed out numerous times, popularity is not indicative of having great quality (here great quality in system), but rather at least acceptable quality with other valuable attributes. For 5e, that's already popular (it's easy to be popular when you start as the scion of popular), has excellent third party cheerleading (streams, products, reviews, ENWorld), has done an excellent job on the PR front (playtesting, regular polls, peeks behind the screen), and has been well managed on the brand/product line/PR front throughout.

 

[Manbearcat]

Lots of things affect box office stats at the time.
marketing, distribution, recognition, what else is showing those weeks (I.e competition), timing, hell even the weather. A film may just not be of its time, or best seen in the movies. Austin Powers bombed, but then turned into a cult hit franchise.

Look at the public reviews of meta-critic or rotten tomatoes scores for those films and I think they better describe your feelings of their quality. How would public reviews of 5e be any different?

Let me say that I don’t disagree with your hypothesis that 5e has captured an unprecedented market share and a huge number of people enjoy the game.

What I disagree with is point and click Amazon “reviews” (a) are robust broadly and (b) in any way are a proxy for “this thing is the best.” It’s a proxy for “most people who bought this reliably like this a lot (and getting in on the cultural wave of zeitgeist feels good).”

I mean...hell, the number of nuanced, in-depth conversations I’ve had with TTRPG players on this board where people who clearly (and objectively) don’t have a firm grasp on what they’re opining about, yet feel inclined to be adamant and assertive on the topic is particularly instructive! And these conversations are with people deeply invested in the hobby with considerable time allocated to their thoughts!

Again, a huge amount of cognitive bias and circumstance goes into the overwhelming swathe of social data out there. Sifting through it for signal is a worthy cause, but you have to do more than just cite the raw data, because it’s predictive value might be like polling results vs election results or GDP vs economic health or the greatest movies of all time flopping.

 

[Ovinomancer]

There's no reason to believe, given the gonzo sales numbers of 5e, that the average player even has a second favorite edition. "Everyone's second favorite edition" seems to have been coined by forum dwellers who, being some of the hobby's most dedicated fans, have rather different preferences compared to the broad masses of people.

I'd go so far to say that, for a lot of people, 5e is their ONLY edition, given the demographic numbers that have come out about how many new players 5e has attracted to the hobby. For the people here, this look right -- we're the small sliver of a small sliver of fans that likes to pontificate on forum software about D&D. I believe the 5e reddit is a good bit larger in population than ENW (I can't find total account info for ENW), although, to be fair, I have no idea how often the news page is hit by non-members (I'd guess quite a lot, given that Mo keeps it up). The number of people using DDB is probably larger than both ENW and 5e reddit, but that's still not a majority of 5e players.

 

[Aldarc]

There's no reason to believe, given the gonzo sales numbers of 5e, that the average player even has a second favorite edition. "Everyone's second favorite edition" seems to have been coined by forum dwellers who, being some of the hobby's most dedicated fans, have rather different preferences compared to the broad masses of people.

Yeah, it's a quip that clearly reflects people who have played more than one edition, which definitely precludes a large swath of players of 5e. It plays more into the idea upon which 5e was initially marketed as a "big tent" edition for fans of past editions.

There are so many 2nd and 3rd order (to the objective qualities of the product) factors that drive shallow (meaning lacking rigor and/or robust analysis) reviews and box office numbers that it’s difficult to not be incredulous to social data. Using it as a proxy for quality has to be particularly fraught.

Here is an article from Wired that talks about how film ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, and IMDB reflect a bias towards men. There are a number of other articles that talk about a similar phenomenon in a lot of online film ratings.

 

[Manbearcat]

Yeah, it's a quip that clearly reflects people who have played more than one edition, which definitely precludes a large swath of players of 5e. It plays more into the idea upon which 5e was initially marketed as a "big tent" edition for fans of past editions.


Here is an article from Wired that talks about how film ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, and IMDB reflect a bias towards men. There are a number of other articles that talk about a similar phenomenon in a lot of online film ratings.

Yeah. There are different subsets of people who answer the phone, who engage with solicitors live, who point and click, who actively engage in reviews, who physically go to the movies, and every other number of things possible.

For that social data to have meaning at the population level is often fraught. Then...to take the next step and use it as a proxie? Ballsy is one way to put it!

I mean, how many and what % of teenagers take their first sip of alcohol at a high school party? Are we going to use that data to say BEER GOODEST!?

 

[Aldarc]

Yeah. There are different subsets of people who answer the phone, who engage with solicitors live, who point and click, who actively engage in reviews, who physically go to the movies, and every other number of things possible.

For that social data to have meaning at the population level is often fraught. Then...to take the next step and use it as a proxie? Ballsy is one way to put it!

I mean, how many and what % of teenagers take their first sip of alcohol at a high school party? Are we going to use that data to say BEER GOODEST!?

Could you imagine a film critic who went about film criticism simply in terms of its rankings or popularity? "We know that Citizen Kane is the best movie or otherwise it would not be number one on AFI Greatest Movies of All Time list." but without actually engaging the various film processes (e.g., acting, directing, cinematography, editing, pacing, etc.) that went into the making of the film or how it was a watershed moment?

 

[Oofta]

Wait, has this thread moved into taking self-selected Likert scale product reviews on a sales platform as indicative of anything other than general popularity? Has the popularity of 5e been questioned?

The ratings on Amazon really only tell you one thing: a lot of people like 5e. As I've pointed out numerous times, popularity is not indicative of having great quality (here great quality in system), but rather at least acceptable quality with other valuable attributes. For 5e, that's already popular (it's easy to be popular when you start as the scion of popular), has excellent third party cheerleading (streams, products, reviews, ENWorld), has done an excellent job on the PR front (playtesting, regular polls, peeks behind the screen), and has been well managed on the brand/product line/PR front throughout.

So you deem it not "high quality" because ... huh? I'm not trying to be dismissive but you sound like an art snob. Those stupid plebs who enjoy the game just don't know what quality really is.

I've eaten at some very high end restaurants that were pretty "meh" for me. Maybe they were haute cuisine but I would have preferred pizza from my favorite restaurant. Does that mean either was higher "quality"? For me, for my personal taste preference, the pizza was higher quality. For me.

Which is the problem with all of this. Quality, like beauty is in the eye of the beholder. IMHO D&D is high quality for me because it does what I need and I enjoy it. You saying it's not is bordering on insulting whether you mean it that way or not.

So is it high quality? Who are you asking? There is no objective standard of quality for TTRPGs beyond basic clarity and cohesiveness.