Could the D20/OGL end up hurting WoTC?

[woodelf]

People who buy d20 books probably have the core books already. That's also why this isn't a two way street. Maybe a handful of people bought WotC's psionics rules so they could play in our Mindshadows setting, but lots of psionics fans bought Mindshadows instead of WotC's new release the month it came out.

I tend to agree with this--i'm highly skeptical that anyone who doesn't own a D&D3E PH would buy one just to play another game.

Hypothetical:
Non-gamer B5 fan sees the B5 D20 game on a shelf, and decides to check it out. Maybe she's always heard of this D&D or RPG thing, and wants to give it a try. MAybe she's a complete novice. Either way, she doesn't own any RPG books already. So, she reads the cover ad copy, and notices that it says "Requires the Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook, from Wizards of the Coast." Now what do you think is the most likely response?

• She spends $75 to get both books to try out the RPG thing that she doesn't have any particular prior attachment to
  
• She believes the ad copy, so puts the book back because she isn't curious enough to pay $75.
  
• She believes the ad copy, so buys the book and just uses it as a show reference, never even bothering to try and figure out the game side of it.
  
• She doesn't believe the ad copy, buys the book, and tries to figure it out despite the missing rules.

Of those 4 options, i find it very hard to believe that very many people will make the first choice. No, for the most part, i think those who buy games like B5 D20 either have already made the decision to buy a D&D3E PH on its own merits, or don't intend to buy one at all (perhaps because they, like me, know about and have a copy of the D20SRD).

 

[woodelf]

No, it's not the person who purchases the d20 book who will buy more core books, it's all the people he pulls into gaming who would not have gamed except that he bought a niche product WotC never would have produced. That new person would never have bought any RPG materials except that he was lured in by a niche WotC can't afford to serve. That new person will eventually be sucked into a D&D game and will eventually by a PHB.** That is the Skaff Efffect according to Dancey's article I quoted above. I suppose you didn't agree this conjecture. It's not the sale of the 3rd party book that sells core books. It's the attaction to RPGs through niche products that sells core books.

Of course, the Skaff Effect is not a proven, or even observed, result--it is an untested hypothesis that matches the incomplete data about the game market that *is* available. Moreover, the Skaff Effect claims that growth in the market eventually benefits the market leader. If it is correct, D&D benefits from growth of the RPG market at large, whether or not there is a WotC OGL/D20STL/etc.

And i'm not convinced, because it presumes that gamers will readily switch systems, in order to play D&D ('cause that's what they can find), yet one of the claimed reasons behind the D20STL was that gamers didn't want to switch systems [away from D&D] and would rather quit gaming than do so. It seems to me that one of those two hypotheses can't be ttrue.

 

[woodelf]

Besides - let's say there is competition. I'm curious why those factors I listed are irrelevent. Does that mean that promotion, advertising, quality design, color interiors, high-quality artwork, and so forth have no bearing on a book's sales? How could a d20 publisher ever compete with WotC?

By your logic, every sale that goes to WotC is one lost to d20 companies. Given all those factors in WotC's favor, and only a fool would label them irrelevent, how can a d20 company ever hope to draw someone away from WotC? Given that d20 companies have lower quality artwork, softcovers, black and white interiors, and lower quality design (poorer paid writers, no full-time editors, no developers), why would anyone buy a d20 book? From what you seem to think, someone who buys a d20 book also decides to NOT buy a WotC one. Surely that works in both directions.

Well, because the content is better? Seriously, i've bought a reasonable number of d20 System products, but none from WotC. And, in addition to judging the rules content and writing/editing, i wouldn't choose WotC products based on their art or layout either. Not saying you're wrong, just pointing out that these things are sufficiently subjective that it's not clear that the WotC products are superior in any, much less every, way.

But i do sort of agree with you: I didn't buy D&D3E because it wasn't good enough by my standards. It had nothing to do with competing or substitute products (or their lack). And i would've bought Arcana Unearthed not because i said "i want one core fantasy RPG book" or even "i want one core fantasy D20 System RPG book", but because it was good enough. Similarly, i bought Everquest D20, later, not because it was better than AU (which i already had) or would replace it, but because it was good enough. And i suspect most gamers are, within their budgetary constraints, the same way. It's only once you bump into those budgetary constraints that either/or decisions start showing up.

 

[woodelf]

And yet the only problem with this model is that you are (apparently) assuming that gamers have a "gaming budget" wherein its more likely to be an "entertainment budget" instead. In that regard, you're also competing against CCGs, DVDs, computer games, and Taco Bell.

I can only speak theoretically and anecdotally, of course, but personally, WotC has not lost sales because of d20 books in my account. The WotC books that I haven't bought, I wouldn't have bought regardless of whatever OGC product is out there. I'm -- and I believe Mike is saying he believes more customers are like this -- demand driven, not supply driven. Just because something's available from WotC and I'm a gamer doesn't automatically mean I have any demand for that product. In general, I've ignored FR material, the Races series, the Complete series, and a few other products from WotC. It's not because I've picked up something else from a d20 publisher instead, it's because I was never going to buy those in the first place.

Not only that, naturally (since rpg products are a luxury item) my demand is also pretty elastic. I think that's what Mike was trying to say and I agree with him completely.

Yeah, i agree with that. Now, obviously, i have a finite supply of money. So i can't buy everything i want to. But there's also a large list of RPGs i wouldn't buy even if i had infinite money. In my particular case, everything WotC's produced since the advent of D&D3e falls into that category. If there hadn't been a D20STL, it's not like i would've bought a bunch of D&D3E books instead of AU and DragonMech and Nyambe. I might've bought Paranoia XP or Deleria already, instead of merely having them on the to-buy list. Or i might've bought that new video card.

 

[woodelf]

No, that's just not true. RPGs aren't like movies - in that they are not standalone products which can be enjoyed with any other RPG product. They are more like Operating Systems. If someone switches to Linux over Windows, that customer's demand for Windows-based software just decreased dramatically since it's not compatible anymore. So, if someone switches to Arcana Unearthed, or Grim Tales, their demand for supplements to Eberron just went in the toilet.

Well, i'll quibble with the analogy: Mac software is pretty much useless if i run MSWindows on Intel hardware. I can find a lot of use for a ShadowRun supplement if i play D&D3E. And the amount of effort required if i want to "convert" one to the other is nothing like the effort that would be required to make incomptabile software work together. So, while maybe not as independent as movies, they're nowhere near as dependent as software.

 

[woodelf]

And what a lot of us are saying is that you can only come to this conclusion by ignoring the Skaff effect. Now whether it holds true to the effect that it once did is pure conjecture to anyone without access to WotC's sales figures. But you are never going to come to the right conclusion by totally neglecting it.

Why, has someone proved it when i wasn't looking?

 

[Psion]

Why, has someone proved it when i wasn't looking?

What's to prove?

Let me put it another way, for those who seem to think it's a "theory" (it's not so much a theory as an observation.) For that matter, if you look back at the post you quoted I wasn't even suggesting it universally held true.

You are never going to come to the right conclusion totally neglecting any benefits WotC gains in terms of additional core books sold driven by d20 supplement sales. As I was saying before, nobody but WotC can make an informed guess as to how much of a benefit this is, but somehow I think that they wouldn't keep updating the SRD and so forth if they didn't feel they reaped some benefit from it.

 

[Psion]

I tend to agree with this--i'm highly skeptical that anyone who doesn't own a D&D3E PH would buy one just to play another game.

But it's not that simple.

Sure, that's one possible way that WotC benefits from d20 sales.

Keep in mind that one of the driving assumptions behind the d20 license is the network effect is an overriding force in purchasing habits of players. So lets say you have one or two people who already own the PHB who go out and buy this new book and start a game using it. Then other people decide to get involved that aren't interested in D&D, might get involved when a new setting or d20 game that seems fresh to them is put on the table. (And don't think this doesn't happen, because I've seen players locally who have declined to get involved in my D&D game express a sudden interest when I brought up the possibility of playing spycraft.)

D&D players get burned out, and move on to other things from time to time, temporarily or permanently. When they do so, having an option that keeps the player in the same market space as the PHB prevent the lost sales of replacement books and books for new players.

 

[fusangite]

Could D&D 3E have both boosted the size of the total RPG market so massively and converted so many players of other systems if it had not been launched as an open-source system? I sincerely doubt it.

To reduce this to a mathematical level, look at it this way:

M0: actual market for D&D 3E
M1: market for D&D 3E had it been launched as a proprietary product
P0: average annual individual purchase of D20 materials
P1: average annual individual purchase of proprietary D&D materials
W: percentage of total sales by WOTC

M0 x P0 x W = annual WOTC D&D sales (current)
M1 x P1 = annual WOTC D&D sales (if D&D were not open source)

Now, in my view, making D&D open-source results in a P0 far larger than P1; furthermore, it also results in M0 being far larger than M1. If M0 is double the value of M1, and P0 is double the value of P1, W can be as low as 0.26 and making D&D open-source turns out to be profitable.

 

[der_kluge]

A very good definition of the "Skaff effect" can be found here.

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/md/md20020228e

The relevant section for the lazy folks:

the logical conclusion is that the larger the number of people who play D&D, the harder it is for competitive games to succeed, and the longer people will stay active gamers, and the more value the network of D&D players will have to Wizards of the Coast.

In fact, we believe that there may be a secondary market force we jokingly call "The Skaff Effect," after our own [game designer] Skaff Elias. Skaff is one of the smartest guys in the company, and after looking at lots of trends and thinking about our business over a long period of time, he enunciated his theory thusly:

"All marketing and sales activity in a hobby gaming genre eventually contributes to the overall success of the market share leader in that genre."

In other words, the more money other companies spend on their games, the more D&D sales are eventually made. Now, there are clearly issues of efficiency -- not every dollar input to the market results in a dollar output in D&D sales; and there is a substantial time lag between input and output; and a certain amount of people are diverted from D&D to other games never to return. However, we believe very strongly that the net effect of the competition in the RPG genre is positive for D&D.

The downside here is that I believe that one of the reasons that the RPG as a category has declined so much from the early 90s relates to the proliferation of systems. Every one of those different game systems creates a "bubble" of market inefficiency; the cumulative effect of all those bubbles has proven to be a massive downsizing of the marketplace. I have to note, highlight, and reiterate: The problem is not competitive >product<, the problem is competitive >systems<. I am very much for competition and for a lot of interesting and cool products.