Actually, our opinion does matter.

[Treebore]

As a business owner I always listened to customer feedback. Always. Doesn't mean I acted upon it, but I kept it in mind, and when I had a decision to make where I was able to take customer feedback into account, I did. I still did the bottom line, IE what I thought would be best for my business, but when I could also take customer feedback into consideration, I did.

So my opinion is that all feedback is worth hearing, and when a business can, they should act accordingly based on that feedback.

So give your opinions, they should at least read them. Nothing says they will do anything about them, but they might, if and when the opportunity presents itself.

So post away, they may be able to make you happy some day.

 

[IronWolf]

As a business owner I always listened to customer feedback. Always. Doesn't mean I acted upon it, but I kept it in mind, and when I had a decision to make where I was able to take customer feedback into account, I did. I still did the bottom line, IE what I thought would be best for my business, but when I could also take customer feedback into consideration, I did.

So my opinion is that all feedback is worth hearing, and when a business can, they should act accordingly based on that feedback.

This echoes my thoughts. One should take in all the feedback one can. Certainly EN World is a vocal minority, but certainly valuable feedback can be gained by reading some of the opinions about various things. That information then needs weighed against what you think the silent majority is thinking and then weeding out the extremes to either side.

 

[Dannager]

Contention 2 is wrong because we do observe dispersion of opinion, indicating disagreement on two sides of an issue. We do not have a vocal minority and a silent majority. Instead, we have two vocal minorities and a silent group. I think we can assume that the discussions on Enworld represent the views of both vocal groups entirely adequately.

Having more than one opinion doesn't mean that our traits generalize to the rest of the population. Yes, we have people on both sides of any given contentious issue, but there's one gigantic difference here between how we approach these issues and how your average (non-enthusiast) gamer approaches these issues: your average gamer doesn't even realize that many of these issues exist.

 

[DaveMage]

bottom line, when they come out with 5th edition, we'll all buy it (we meaning us message boarders and die hard fans)

Just like I bought 4E...

Oh, wait - I didn't.


However, a tangent to what you are saying is correct. You don't worry so much when people complain about your product pricing as long as they keep buying.

Once they stop buying, however....

 

[Umbran]

Having more than one opinion doesn't mean that our traits generalize to the rest of the population.

Exactly.

When I say that we don't represent the gamer population, I mean that in terms of statistics - no statistician worthy of the name would tell WotC to look at EN World is just a small version of the entire gaming community.

If you were to just proportionately scale up EN World to 1 million people, what you'd see would not look much like the real world's gaming community.

 

[Deset Gled]

I've worked at big, industrial companies. I've worked at small companies. I've worked for giant corporations, and I've worked for privately (even family owned) businesses. I have worked in product design, developement, and sales. Among other things, I have learned that one of the most critical skills for any business is to know who to listen to, and who to ignore.

Sometimes, listening to your biggest customer will actually destroy your company. Sometimes, the ability to tell a vocal customer (no matter what size) to screw off is vital to long term sustainability. Sometimes, the most respected experts are just plain wrong. Sometimes, the smallest ideas that trickle through the most unexpected source can turn a product from a failure into a miracle.

My main point here is: it doesn't matter how representative of the current market we are. We could be the largest voice in the industry, or a small group of loudmouth fanboys. WotC still needs to filter ever piece of oppinion we give them, and actively make decisions about how to manage D+D.

 

[MrGrenadine]

...your average gamer doesn't even realize that many of these issues exist.

In other words, the ENWorld poster is a more informed end-user, and as such, a more valuable source of feedback.

 

[MrGrenadine]

If you were to just proportionately scale up EN World to 1 million people, what you'd see would not look much like the real world's gaming community.

I agree, because you would be scaling up a small, well-informed, dedicated, enthusiastic segment of a larger population that doesn't necessarily share those traits.

However, why wouldn't a company want to listen closely to the feedback from a small, well-informed, dedicated, enthusiastic portion of its customer base?

 

[Azgulor]

Hmm, wow.

Morrus: If saying “we can’t bang the table and expect to get what we want” implied I was suggesting ENWorld represented the voice of the RPG community, then I guess I failed in my point.

Umbran: The numbers I cited were clearly labeled as examples. So, if you feel the ENWorld community is better served by dismissing our relevance as an important customer segment of any RPG company, so be it. I’m no industry expert, certainly. However, your attitude is 180 degrees out of synch of every successful sales person I’ve ever worked with or encountered. I respectfully submit that your numbers don’t invalidate anything in my post. I also can’t help but wonder why folks like Scott Rouse, Mike Mearls, Erik Mona, James Jacobs, Monte Cook, Clark Peterson, Chris Pramas, and many others bothered to waste their time posting here over the years given our insignificance…

Dedekind: I never said we were the opinion leaders. I only said that our opinion wasn’t insignificant.

TheUltramark: The RPG industry ain’t the NFL. The RPG industry, as a niche hobby, really can’t afford to be dismissive of customer segments. Obviously, the need to assess the validity of the feedback, whether or not it works with their business plans, etc. I never said “ENWorld is THE VOICE of the RPG community”. FWIW, I also didn’t buy 4e.

 

[Morrus]

I also can’t help but wonder why folks like Scott Rouse, Mike Mearls, Erik Mona, James Jacobs, Monte Cook, Clark Peterson, Chris Pramas, and many others bothered to waste their time posting here over the years given our insignificance.

One might also consider that these people have not posted here regularly in many years (some of the Paizo folks pop in occasionally, though - and of course Scott Rouse no longer works in the industry). The "online" segment, while it has clearly grown massively over the last decade, has has also spread out a great deal as publishers set up their own messageboards (or, in WotC's case, made valid PR decisions to focus on their own messageboards).

I'm not sure that the people you listed pay much attention to what goes on here these days unless their attention is specifically drawn to something concerning them directly.