Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5454712" data-attributes="member: 42582">Dannyalcatraz, adding to what you've just said: we don't know what there market share is (although there is some reason to suspect it might have dropped, certainly from the heyday of 3E).We also don't know what there market share is relative to their projections. For example, if part of the reason for going to 4e was because they had already projected an OGL-driven loss of market share arising from good 3pp competing with 3E, then it may be that they are now better off than they feared - or worse off than they hoped. Until we know this, it's hard to tell whether the move to 4e was rational from WotC's point of view.Another complexity is how the changes in the game are taken into account by the business side of 4e trying to project their impact. I'm sure they're sophisticated enough to rely on more than just designers' intuition as to whether a particular mechanical approach will be popular, but I'm also pretty sure that market research into RPGs is not as sophisticated as into many other entertainment products. For example, how sophisticated is their marketing analysis of gamer demographics, and of RPG rulesets, and of the popularity of different rules with different demographics? Again, I don't know, but without those sorts of analytical tools I imagine it is fairly hard to predict how changes to the game are likely to fare in the market place.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 5454712, member: 42582"] Dannyalcatraz, adding to what you've just said: we don't know what there market share is (although there is some reason to suspect it might have dropped, certainly from the heyday of 3E). We also don't know what there market share is [I]relative to their projections[/I]. For example, if part of the reason for going to 4e was because they had already projected an OGL-driven loss of market share arising from good 3pp competing with 3E, then it may be that they are now better off than they feared - or worse off than they hoped. Until we know this, it's hard to tell whether the move to 4e was rational from WotC's point of view. Another complexity is how the changes in the game are taken into account by the business side of 4e trying to project their impact. I'm sure they're sophisticated enough to rely on more than just designers' intuition as to whether a particular mechanical approach will be popular, but I'm also pretty sure that market research into RPGs is not as sophisticated as into many other entertainment products. For example, how sophisticated is their marketing analysis of gamer demographics, and of RPG rulesets, and of the popularity of different rules with different demographics? Again, I don't know, but without those sorts of analytical tools I imagine it is fairly hard to predict how changes to the game are likely to fare in the market place. [/QUOTE]

Verification