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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8832826" data-attributes="member: 6790260"><p>4e wasn't an "unpopular" version, despite what people like to claim, if you're using sales as a proxy for popularity; we've been told as much by the people who actually worked there. It sold as well as, if not better than, 3e did. The problems it faced were many, and negative publicity from fans with a vested interest in tearing it down was certainly one of the big issues (though there were <em>several</em> others.)</p><p></p><p>The only reason PF started outselling 4e is because <em>they stopped making 4e books</em>. It's quite easy to out-sell your rivals when you're ramping up production and they've <em>stopped completely</em>.</p><p></p><p>Let's put the myth to rest and move on.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Unfortunately, the answer is almost certainly no. WotC doesn't do the kind of serious data collection needed to answer these questions, and academic historians haven't shown much interest yet (AFAICT, anyway.) The latter might change if you give it a couple decades, because by that point, D&D will have existed for nearly a full human lifetime (70 years!) People would need to be in their 80s or older in order to even remember a time before D&D. Since most people who got into D&D when it was brand-new, even most of the people who <em>are</em> 80+ will be likely to have at least heard of it or experienced its cultural impact, creating an opening for a new subfield. Shannon Applecline's <em>Designers & Dragons</em> and other works (such as <em>The Elusive Shift</em>) are the first early forays, but I don't think many of them are the result of academia becoming involved.</p><p></p><p>For WotC to actually do this kind of data collection, they would need to hire both a proper statistician and a proper psychologist, preferably ones with experience in survey design and interpretation. Most of the surveys WotC publishes are either minimally-effective focus group type questions, or outright push-polling (which, unfortunately, was <em>especially</em> rife during the D&D Next playtest. They conducted polls where, I kid you not, the <em>only</em> answers were--paraphrased, of course--"yes," "enthusiastic yes," "unenthusiastic yes," and "yes but I want <em>more</em>.") Since there is no appetite for increasing D&D's staff to include people actually <em>creating</em> new content, let alone "wasteful" jobs like people with actual mathematics or psychology training, it's simply never going to happen.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 8832826, member: 6790260"] 4e wasn't an "unpopular" version, despite what people like to claim, if you're using sales as a proxy for popularity; we've been told as much by the people who actually worked there. It sold as well as, if not better than, 3e did. The problems it faced were many, and negative publicity from fans with a vested interest in tearing it down was certainly one of the big issues (though there were [I]several[/I] others.) The only reason PF started outselling 4e is because [I]they stopped making 4e books[/I]. It's quite easy to out-sell your rivals when you're ramping up production and they've [I]stopped completely[/I]. Let's put the myth to rest and move on. Unfortunately, the answer is almost certainly no. WotC doesn't do the kind of serious data collection needed to answer these questions, and academic historians haven't shown much interest yet (AFAICT, anyway.) The latter might change if you give it a couple decades, because by that point, D&D will have existed for nearly a full human lifetime (70 years!) People would need to be in their 80s or older in order to even remember a time before D&D. Since most people who got into D&D when it was brand-new, even most of the people who [I]are[/I] 80+ will be likely to have at least heard of it or experienced its cultural impact, creating an opening for a new subfield. Shannon Applecline's [I]Designers & Dragons[/I] and other works (such as [I]The Elusive Shift[/I]) are the first early forays, but I don't think many of them are the result of academia becoming involved. For WotC to actually do this kind of data collection, they would need to hire both a proper statistician and a proper psychologist, preferably ones with experience in survey design and interpretation. Most of the surveys WotC publishes are either minimally-effective focus group type questions, or outright push-polling (which, unfortunately, was [I]especially[/I] rife during the D&D Next playtest. They conducted polls where, I kid you not, the [I]only[/I] answers were--paraphrased, of course--"yes," "enthusiastic yes," "unenthusiastic yes," and "yes but I want [I]more[/I].") Since there is no appetite for increasing D&D's staff to include people actually [I]creating[/I] new content, let alone "wasteful" jobs like people with actual mathematics or psychology training, it's simply never going to happen. [/QUOTE]
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