Are we fair to WotC?

[Trickster Spirit]

The funny thing is I would argue that with the release of the Player's Option books that 2e was actually moving in the direction that 3e took.

Pretty much; and 18 years later you'll still see message board arguments between those who think Skills & Powers was great and those who thought it was despicable and refused to have anything to do with it. I reckon most of the former group moved on to 3.0 and most of the later make up today's 2E players or have since moved on to other pastures.

The more things change...

 

[Wicht]

It was never a gold mine for Wizards/Hasbro and they never showed a hint of a viable business model to capitalize on it for revenue.

Yeah, I think that's what I said.

But, and this is key, failure to show a viable business model does not mean that such a model does not exist. I think it does, but one must be generous, open and willing to play nice with others to make such a model work.

 

[Umbran]

The real point people keep overlooking is that this is a Hasbro problem in terms of revenue guidance / expectations being out of sync with the pen-and-paper RPG market.

People keep saying that. I don't think there's evidence that Hasbro's expectations are really impacting anything. If Hasbro had a real problem with how much D&D was making, they'd be unlikely to invest in a year and more of R&D while selling no new product to speak of. The property has generated *squat* for revenues recently. I think having that kind of patience speaks much differently about Hasbro's expectations.

Moreover, the only change we've see to the business model has been based in new technology being available and given a try, rather than any clear mandate form above. Instead, we see the same basic pattern - design edition, sell edition, when you've covered all the bases with new books and sales start to drop, twilight and repeat - that has existed since OD&D, which seems to be based in how D&D is a niche property that tends to saturate the market quickly.

Hasbro does have guidelines as to what properties qualify as "top flight" - and such properties get extra attention and marketing to keep them there. But my understanding is that Hasbro has a whole lot of properties that don't qualify, and that stick around anyway. Failure to be in the top is by no means a death sentence at Hasbro.

So, unless you have documentation that Hasbro expectations are really an influence here, I call it speculation on your part.

 

[Wicht]

The real point people keep overlooking is that this is a Hasbro problem in terms of revenue guidance / expectations being out of sync with the pen-and-paper RPG market. They wanted Monopoly sales or Warcraft sales, not D&D/Pathfinder sales. Likewise the OGL vs. End-of-Life is a corporate business model problem.

And that's probably true. Snark from my original comment aside, it is very possible, if not probable, that Hasbro and WotC have unrealistic (or did have) expectations for the profitability of an RPG. Their model (and budget) for R&D, etc. never makes much sense to me; especially (not to harp) with the existence of the OGL, which should have made the possibility of cutting that particular office down in size a notch or two completely feasible. I'm also pretty sure they misread the market when they decided adventures were a losing proposition and shuffled that particular chore off to 3pp. I think Paizo's folks (ie. Lisa, Eric, et.al) better understand the actual industry and market and plan accordingly. Which is also why Paizo is eating WotC's lunch in this particular segment of the gaming market. Paizo is also doing a better job, from all that I can tell, of figuring out what works and licensing their brand. D&D still has more name brand recognition in the world at large, but the Pathfinder Card game sold out at Gen-con in one day and there were still some people wanting it afterwards.

Going back to the original question of the OP, I think it perfectly fair to critique the model that WotC has been pursuing since about 3.25 and analyze where they went wrong. Hopefully they can right their ship because I am a firm believer that competition is good for all involved and Paizo can use the competition. Though I still think WotC should go back to the OGL and figure out how to use it, rather than just writing it off as a bad decision (which it did not have to be).

 

[Gundark]

The property has generated *squat* for revenues recently. I think having that kind of patience speaks much differently about Hasbro's expectations.

Wasn't D&D second place in revenue last quarter? At least according to stats released by ICV2. I think those reprints did pretty good.

 

[Gundark]

Honestly after hearing some excerpts from the announcements last night it seems that WotC is going in a different direction with the D&D brand. Toys, board games, apps, video games, MMOs I think are a better way to go rather than trying to squeeze money out of the table top game that WotC tried to do with 4e.

 

[Dannager]

It's really not much different than the lease vs. buy model for automobiles -- do you prefer to lease your car or buy it?

This ignores the significant functional differences between the two models. A leased car and a paid-for car are the same car. A physical book and a set of digital tools are two dramatically different things.

 

[Dannager]

I don't like using computers during play.

I think that probably has something to do with it.

 

[Umbran]

Wasn't D&D second place in revenue last quarter? At least according to stats released by ICV2. I think those reprints did pretty good.

I've criticized ICV2 before, and I'm not going to reverse my position on them now. Being #2 doesn't mean much unless we have a dollar amount on #1 and #3, does it? It looks like what it means is that D&D beat out a single month of Star Wars: Edge of the Empire (since that was released in June, and the stats came out in July). This is major revenue?

 

[Ahnehnois]

I think that probably has something to do with it.

True, but this isn't a computer game and I don't ever plan on changing on that.

Also, I wouldn't pay a subscription fee for an rpg.

Also, even online content has to be useful to me. If I'd rather play freeform or use older systems than access the online content, the online content is worthless.