Dear Wizards, I no longer have a clue what you're doing

[GameDoc]

Older people also have less income.

Not necessarily. While there are many senior citizens on a fixed income, retired people are one of the prime marketing demographics for a lot of entertainment industries due to their disposable income. They're one of the most sought after customer bases for casinos and cruise lines.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

That gives me an idea...

Anyone want to invest in these businesses targeting aging gamers:

1) Golden Grells Retirement Community (and elsewhere, Greyhawk's)

2) St. George & the Dragon Casino

3) Rescue the Princess Cruise Lines

4) Forgotten Realms Alzheimers Clinic

 

[Thorvald_Grimbjorn]

I am completely in agreement with the OP's sentiments.

 

[mudbunny]

No...not really. My current salary is more than 100x what I had as a kid starting out in the hobby. And I'm trying to transition into something that pays better because I'm not being paid all that much.

What may be true- and may be what you meant- is that with increasing responsibilities, older people may have less "DISPOSABLE or DISCRETIONARY" income. Still, after paying for housing, transportation and food, I daresay that my absolute $$$ of D&D money is higher than ever before. That's why I can buy $800 gemstones and $3000 guitars*...and STILL buy RPG products.

What also needs to be accounted for is how much time older people have to actually use their potential purchases as compared to when they were teenagers. Like you, I have significantly more discretionary income available, but I also have, due to my family, significantly less time to use for RPGs. And to add to that it is also much more difficult to get my schedule (well, as much as you can schedule a sick child) to sync up with the schedules that my friends end up with.

That is why people in their late teens/early 20s are such an attractive market. They have a nice overlap of discretionary income *and* time in which to use the discretionary income.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Here's the thing: my lack of time or ability to use a luxury product- an RPG, a guitar, a gemstone- has NEVER impacted my buy/don't buy decision; money has.

Why? Because if I can't afford something, I can't afford it. If I can (or THINK I can due to some plastic cards in my wallet), but can't use it now, I may still buy it because I can envision (or imagine) a time when I can.

That may make me atypical, but judging by average American savings/income consumption rates and rising consumer credit debt, I don't think so.

 

[Lord_Blacksteel]

The 4e tools provided a real improvement to rpgs, so you could say, you'll drop back to normal again. but I don't thing other rpgs or editions of D&D have gotten such a vast amount of books you have to consider and so I think 4e in this way would not have been possible with all those tools.

4E tools are cool and handy (er, "were") but are hardly "required". A for the number of books...did you play 3E? Did you play 2E and the "Complete book of class x, race y, or niche Z"? They've been putting out vast amounts of books for a long time and many of us have managed to play the game without computer tools for a long time. Hero System and GURPS both had official character builders long before D&D did, and neither has ever been considered essential to play. Easier? Sure. Required? No.

I agree with the OP by the way, and nothing I've seen from DDXP answered much if the uncertainty noted in this thread.

 

[Otterscrubber]

I have to say I am very dissappointed in the Dragon and Dungeon magazines. When I was younger, i was too cheap to pony up for a subscription, so I would go to my friends house and read his. They were wonderful, detailed, great maps and interesting to read even if I didn't play the game all that much. Awhile back my friend was moving and didn't want his old magazines and I got to be the lucky beneficiary of most of his collection!

When DDI decided to make the magazines online, I thought great I can't wait to have all this stuff on my laptop available. But ya, most of the adventures seem short, lack a compelling story and the maps are shameless plugs for their tilesets. This saddens me greatly. D&D has a large place in my heart and I hope they do not simply make it a marketing vehicle for game related widgets.

I have not updated my monster builder recently, but I too loved this tool. (The only "tool" that was actually released for DMs). If I update and find it is now a broken tool I will be very disappointed. It was a very easy to use and well thought out application, unlike the character builder in many ways. In fact I would have to assume the folks who designed the monster builder were a completely different team from those who designed the character builder.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I have to say I am very dissappointed in the Dragon and Dungeon magazines. When I was younger, i was too cheap to pony up for a subscription, so I would go to my friends house and read his. They were wonderful, detailed, great maps and interesting to read even if I didn't play the game all that much. Awhile back my friend was moving and didn't want his old magazines and I got to be the lucky beneficiary of most of his collection!

When DDI decided to make the magazines online, I thought great I can't wait to have all this stuff on my laptop available. But ya, most of the adventures seem short, lack a compelling story and the maps are shameless plugs for their tilesets. This saddens me greatly. D&D has a large place in my heart and I hope they do not simply make it a marketing vehicle for game related widgets.

I have not updated my monster builder recently, but I too loved this tool. (The only "tool" that was actually released for DMs). If I update and find it is now a broken tool I will be very disappointed. It was a very easy to use and well thought out application, unlike the character builder in many ways. In fact I would have to assume the folks who designed the monster builder were a completely different team from those who designed the character builder.

Eh, probably the same general engineering group. Anyway, if you haven't updated MB then you should be good to go. I've not applied the latest update to mine either and it works great still, though of course with all the same bugs and oddities it always had.

Same with CB. Never did the last update. I guess maybe that means I'm missing a few things, but none of them seemed to be really useful anyway, and I don't have to deal with the silliness that the last update dealt to inventories.

I have to say too, while the new online CB is still somewhat deficient in certain areas it is still a pretty good program. Definitely still needs some work, but it is more than usable, at least for me. Frankly I don't use it that much since the old one is still around anyhow. Plus you can get all kinds of 3rd party patches for the old one, which is very cool and totally legit.

 

[Aegeri]

When I read responses to questions like those in the recent Letters to the Editor that Wizards posted, I am reminded of why I wrote this thread in the first place.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

When I read responses to questions like those in the recent Letters to the Editor that Wizards posted, I am reminded of why I wrote this thread in the first place.

So, when they initiate a feature to improve communications with the customers (one of several such initiatives ongoing) you're down on them for that? I don't understand... From my perspective those sorts of questions are exactly the kind of question I'm asking myself. Too bad they didn't pick a couple more articulate letters but maybe not too many people have written in. Picked up your pen Aegeri? hehe.

Honestly I don't feel particularly confused at all at this point. HoS is coming out, we know what's going to be in there more-or-less. What they're doing next seems pretty obvious. Not sure I understand why they didn't just make a bunch of big announcements at DDXP, their PR seems disorganized, but whatever. Where's the confusion really?