D&D 5E D&D pateau-ing?

[beancounter]

If people only valued growth, most companies could not sell stock.

I disagree.

Stocks are an investment vehicle. People buy stocks for capital growth or income (via dividends and capital gain distributions)

Sure, there may be some people who view it from an altruistic perspective, or a way to make a statement, etc., but they are a small minority.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I disagree.

Stocks are an investment vehicle. People buy stocks for capital growth or income (via dividends and capital gain distributions)

Sure, there may be some people who view it from an altruistic perspective, or a way to make a statement, etc., but they are a small minority.

The delicious corruption of a practice that existed to help businesses you genuinely valued and wanted to support.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

This is based on the logic that making any profit is a win.

correct... when you make money that is good. not making money is bad and breaking even is okay

That's not how this works.

it does when you take greed out of it.


{Redacted comments, I am SO done arguing money talk D&D for gods sake)

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I disagree.

Stocks are an investment vehicle. People buy stocks for capital growth or income (via dividends and capital gain distributions)

Sure, there may be some people who view it from an altruistic perspective, or a way to make a statement, etc., but they are a small minority.

stocks are you buying a part of the business. When the business does better you get benefits when it does worse you don't.

 

[beancounter]

The delicious corruption of a practice that existed to help businesses you genuinely valued and wanted to support.

Sure, if you have money to spare, but for most, at some point you need capital growth, or your retirement savings will suffer.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Sure, if you have money to spare, but for most, at some point you need capital growth, or your retirement savings will suffer.

Yes, I know how the grift works.

 

[beancounter]

stocks are you buying a part of the business. When the business does better you get benefits when it does worse you don't.

Right. That's why stocks are an investment vehicle, and why you want to maximize your return.

 

[beancounter]

Yes, I know how the grift works.

There is grift in a lot of things, but stocks are one of the most effective ways to increase your wealth over time without requiring a large upfront investment.

Unless, you place your trust in bitcoin and NFTs...

 

[Hussar]

Of course.

Thinking about the google trend statistic, I don't honestly think it's as predictive as we're making it out to be. We have the anomaly of COVID-19 causing a paradigm shift on top of the already established rising popularity of both the game and the entire medium as an accepted cultural pastime rather people thinking it's only for weirdos and turbonerds. While we've been talking about how the movie will most likely suck and not make a lot of money, what about the D&D MTG sets? The first one sold like crazy, and the second one is looking to be even more popular since it's catering to the most played format of the game. D&D as an IP still has lots of room to expand IMO, since for about 15 years now we've only seen the most tepid of efforts to use the IP in anything other than the infrequent rulebook and adventure releases.

As far as I'm aware, the only year the industry of tabletops experienced negative growth in the 21st century was 2008. It took a world financial crash and the worst version of D&D ever to pull that off. Even in the years between then and 2014 there was positive growth in the industry as a whole. So even if there's a dip in the growth of D&D I can't imagine we're looking at any kind of crash for the hobby.

Sorry, but, this isn't even remotely true.

From the time between 4e went fallow and the release of 5e, the RPG market shrunk from about 25-30 million to about 10 million dollars. There was, as far as I know, zero negative growth in 2008.

And, yeah, my ears were burning @Bill91. I admit that I strongly disagree with the notion that 5e is somehow an outgrowth of 3e.

 

[Blue Orange]

The delicious corruption of a practice that existed to help businesses you genuinely valued and wanted to support.

I don't know how much I'd assume there's some Edenic 'purity' to the hobby that got lost; Gygax tried to squelch unauthorized D&D supplements, for instance. Companies want to make money. The conflict between art and commerce is as old as art itself.

As to the original point...the pandemic's on its way out, so the original advantage of D&D as a social activity that can be done remotely has declined. No doubt some of the people who joined during the pandemic will continue to play, but we're likely to see at least something of a fall-off. All good things must come to an end (to allude to another franchise that still had a bit of life in it when they killed it).