Wait, that is a tautology. The fanbase is not the same as the rest of the industry. Paizo could not have gained industry advantage but-for the fanbase issue, and therefore it was not the industry they were ignoring, but the fanbase. Indeed, the rest of the industry, before they lost leadership, was by definition doing things which caused all those other companies to NOT be the industry leader. Therefore we know for sure following the industry is not what is needed to gain leadership (Paizo was not following the industry, or else they would have released a 4e-type game too). It's the fanbase that's at issue, which is not the same as the industry, and right now the fanbase is buying WOTC books in droves.
Fanbase are not the same as the industry, but there is some overlap in tastes.
The fanbase buys the books. They are the consumer. If you do not listen to the needs and desires of your consumer, your products will not sell. This goes for companies in small niche hobbies (WotC with D&D4) and big companies in the mainstream (Microsoft with Windows 8). You cannot tell the consumers what they want and dictate tastes unless you have staggering brand loyalty or an unassailable monopoly. WotC very much does not have the former and has been losing the latter for years.
Companies require the consumer to maintain their position in the industry. So while following the industry is not the same as following the consumer, if your competitors listen to their consumers, following industry trends can be the same as listening to the consumers. (But, sometimes not, as industry trends can be skewed by a single dominant force, like the aforementioned monopoly.)
You say that Paizo wasn't following the industry or they would have released a 4e-type game. I'm not sure that's true. It's not like there were many other 4e-type games released at the same time. Or prior. Or after. 4e is really an anomaly in TTRPGs. The closest other game is 13th Age, which was made by the same people and has a whole lot of non-4e ideas as well.
The rest of the industry seemed to be going for rules-lite and story manipulation for years prior to 5e and Inspiration. And OSR games have been around for a decade. I can't even name another RPG that assumes a grid and miniatures. Does WarHammer? I know many support a grid, but assuming/mandating a grid? That's rare.
WotC wasn't listening to the industry or the fanbase, they were listening to a select group of people, and a few like-minded designers, mixed with following trends from the related video game RPG industry.
They've never been good at listening. I think they stopped after 3.0 became a runaway success. No one really wanted 3.5 except WotC, but they had claimed so much of the market they could get away with it. When they tried something similar with Essentials (only backwards compatible) it did not work because they no longer had the clout to just dictate market trends.
Again, nobody said or implied different. I said the overwhelming majority of the 40 years theres been an industry, they led. And I said AT THE MOMENT, they lead.
I think it's unfair to give WotC credit for the 26 years D&D was owned by TSR, especially since that company maintained its lead almost by accident and dispute horrible mismanagement.
WotC has been in charge of D&D for fifteen years, and for a quarter of that time they lost the market lead that even TSR at its height of idiocy never managed to lose. They launched 3.0 to a boom audience and great fan support, and have watched their sales and reputation dwindle for every year since. They're doing well now, but when compared to all the years of WotC D&D, this is almost an anomaly.
No, wait, this has a basic false assumption. You assume you have a measure of the fanbase. You do not.
Do YOU want to pay $50 for a PDF of a book you already own?
Do the majority of people on this thread?
Are you happy with PDFs the quality of the Basic documents, with no subheadings or hyperlinks?
This isn't a measure of the fanbase so much as a measure of human behaviour. Over and over again in the last fifteen years, when people have been given a choice between paying an inflated price for digital content or piracy they have opted for piracy. Industries much larger than WotC have struggled with how to fight piracy or make their content appealing and/or harder to pirate.
Raising prices and making the content more exclusive doesn't seem to be a sound strategy. Movies are fighting by pushing the experience: more food, better seats and frame rates, 3D films, etc. The theatre experience. If instead movie studios came out and said "Movie piracy is a thing. So you can only watch movies on our apps, and we're charging full $30 DVD prices. And the content will be slightly different, optimized for mobile consumption." then people would laugh and piracy would spike.
Okay, it's not the best metaphor. But again and again it's been shown that the best tools for fighting piracy are convenience and good will. When it is easier to pay than steal, people will pay. When the time:money ratio is favourable, people will pay. When people want to give you their money they will.
Downloading a PDF from a site I have an account with? Easier than hunting for a PDF and risking malware.
Paying $50? Well, at my pay rate that's two hours of my time, so if I can find it elsewhere else in less than 120 minutes it's worthwhile. Paying $10? That's less than half-an-hour of my time, so hunting for a free copy will likely waste time.
Do I want to pay? This is the big variable. This is the element that will change from person to person.
I like D&D. I like the D&D brand team. I can't say I like WotC. I don't know Trapdoor Tech. While I like DriveThruStuff and like giving them money, they likely have a similar profit from a $50 WotC PDF as a $4 3PP.
I'll pay $50 for a D&D book from my FLGS because I like the owner. Otherwise it would NOT have been worth it. I'd have purchased from amazon if not for liking my store. So, really, the price I'm willing to pay WotC (and not my FLGS) for access to the PHB seems to be around $30.
WotC is still fighting an uphill battle to restore its position. It's doing well on Amazon (possibly because of the high price), but the long term success is still unknown. There's still a LOT of wary people. They really need to restore faith in their company. Doing anything to upset the fanbase or draw unnecessary ire now would be a very bad idea. All the people on the fence need is an excuse.
OK, no offense, but that is ridiculous. No, they do not. Not even a tiny little bit. The biggest of the biggest kickstarter funded companies are still so extraordinary tiny that they are literally rounding errors for WOTC, even at the lowest point for WOTC. This is one of those internet echo-chamber time things. The extreme large majority of people never even hear of those games. Even on the net when you look at the games people are talking about all the kickstarter games combined are almost a rounding error for the number of people talking 5e right now.
Rounding errors for WotC, yes, because MtG is a little factory printing money for WotC. For D&D… not so much. There's a LOT of Kickstarters that clear the $100,000 mark in the Tabletop games section.
Numenera hit ICv2's Top 5 games chart and it funded through Kickstarter. And back in the day, Cards Against Humanity was a Kickstarter project.To say nothing of Reaper miniatures.
But really, Kickstartered games are not one big company that will compete. It's dozens of small games. Dozens of dozens. It's Rome versus the barbarians. The ant colony versus the grasshopper.
I have so much money I can afford to pay for games. If I have a choice between spending $50 for a PDF of a book I already own or the same for a physical book I don't have (or 2-3 PDFs I'll take the latter option. Especially if the other games are something I really want, that really appeal to my gaming style. Or are written by a creative I enjoy.
Similarly, I only have so many hours I can game. I'm in the middle of a Pathfinder AP right now, so I don't have time to play 5e. And the next time I play a one-shot it *might* be 5e, or it *might* be Shadows of Esteren, a Kickstarted game. Or Fate Eclipse Phase, a stretch goal from a Kickstarter, if it's ready for playtesting.
While neither publisher can remotely compete with D&D in the larger market, for my money and time they're very much equal rivals. For a friend of mine the even competition is Xcrawl. For another, FATE Core. Another is a big Dread fan. There's so much competition for money and time.
If WotC doesn't give people content they want to buy, content they want to play, they will find it elsewhere. And it's very, very easy for people to find games just right for them.
WotC is in a position where it has to earn our money. They're off to a good start with 5e, but they're no longer in a position where they can dictate the terms of the consumer/publisher relationship.
