D&D 5E D&D Team Productivity?

[The Big BZ]

So by my calculations in the roughly six and half years since 5e's launch WotC have published 24 D&D books and 2 boxes. 3 of the books have been updates of old material (Saltmarsh etc), 5 of them have been partially outsourced to other companys like Sasquatch, Green Ronin etc and 2 have been almost entirely written outside the design studio (Acquisitions and Wildemount).

Now surely that is a pretty low productivity rate?? I mention this now because it seems like a very very long time that this Candlekeep book has been in production.

All of the above comes from a position of love. I own every 5e product in at least two formats and a lot of them in 3 (standard, special edition and Beyond).

 

[commandercrud]

Their claim it that it's quality over quantity.

 

[BMaC]

The old chestnut that will be trotted out is that the slow release schedule is the key to 5e's success: "I've got too much to play already!" etc. In terms of outsourcing, this is straightforward late-stage capitalism.

 

[Oofta]

They've tried the "flood the market with product" strategy before, it was time to try something different.

It seems to be working reasonably well, why would they change? D&D is more popular than ever, the books they do release sell well with relatively minimal investment.

 

[Morrus]

4 hardback books a year isn't low productivity in my book.

 

[BMaC]

4 hardback books a year isn't low productivity in my book.

It would be decent productivity if it was in fact WotC producing 4 books of a new content a year. But they're not. Some of their productivity is due to rehashing old material and outsourcing production. The actual content generated by WotC is lower than 4 books a year.

 

[humble minion]

Productivity isn't measured in sheer volume, it's measured by the amount of return you get on the investment you make.

WotC obviously made the strategic decision some time ago to manage D&D as a line with relatively low numbers of book releases, which allows them to spend less on their development team (ESPECIALLY on that part of the dev team that playtests or looks for loopholes in new material in conjunction with old material), as well as saving money on warehousing etc, inventory management etc of a huge range of products. And it seems to be working for them, much as I'd personally prefer a to see more energetic release schedule because it might mean they'd release stuff i want sooner.

Still, given the huge proliferation of 5e products on the market, it's not like we're exactly deprived of content, after all...

 

[BMaC]

Productivity isn't measured in sheer volume, it's measured by the amount of return you get on the investment you make.

WotC obviously made the strategic decision some time ago to manage D&D as a line with relatively low numbers of book releases, which allows them to spend less on their development team (ESPECIALLY on that part of the dev team that playtests or looks for loopholes in new material in conjunction with old material), as well as saving money on warehousing etc, inventory management etc of a huge range of products. And it seems to be working for them, much as I'd personally prefer a to see more energetic release schedule because it might mean they'd release stuff i want sooner.

Still, given the huge proliferation of 5e products on the market, it's not like we're exactly deprived of content, after all...

Yes, given the poor quality of bindings and other print issues that we have seen I agree that WotC is definitely cutting corners.

 

[Morrus]

It would be decent productivity if it was in fact WotC producing 4 books of a new content a year. But they're not. Some of their productivity is due to rehashing old material and outsourcing production. The actual content generated by WotC is lower than 4 books a year.

The writing part is just one factor. Art, layout, and stuff takes ages.

 

[Umbran]

Now surely that is a pretty low productivity rate??

Productivity should not be measured in number of titles, but in value - revenue or net profit would be far better measures of productivity, depending on what parts of the overall team you wanted to measure.

It should be noted that the slow release rate is a planned stategic choice, rather than a failure on the part of the team to produce.