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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WizarDru" data-source="post: 2730919" data-attributes="member: 151">This seems to advocate the 'if only they did it the RIGHT way, they'd be beating off new gamers with a stick' theory that I often hear advocated, but never substantiated.  If attracting new gamers was this simple, it would have been done many times over by now.  Attracting new gamers isn't nearly as difficult as RETAINING them.  The huge leap in sales from the release of 3.0 and the OGL is owed, in large part, to attracting old gamers back to the brand who had long since left.  TSR's settings were VERY popular within the existing fanbase...the problem was that most consumers could not afford to be fans of more than one or two settings, due to the volume of materials TSR released.  TSR's critical mistake was to assume that each settings rabid fanbase would dictate it's sales...but all that happened was that they cannibalized their own sales.  TSR was releasing ten times as much material, but selling less than WotC currently does.  It wasn't the settings that were the problem, or support for them...it was that most consumers have a relatively fixed budget for gaming products, and TSR was forcing them to choose amongst their products.A large part of the equation that is ignored is that there are different classes of consumers.    During the big wave in the early 80s, many non-gamers purchased the game, tried it perhaps once to see what the fuss was about...and then never played again.  This surely happened during the 3.0 release, as well.  Many gamers purchase a few core books and then never purchase another...they don't HAVE to.  After the core three books, one could play happily ad infinitum.  Most gamers purchase occasionally, for either interest or actual need...but more often interest.I don't see the current decline in sales as much more than the tide going out.  For all but the most serious of gamers, their needs have been sated.  By being on ENWorld, by definition, you are in a minority.  I've been to plenty of smaller cons where most of the RPGA members I meet have heard of ENworld, but never been here.  Two years ago, many hadn't even heard of it.  Consumer opinions here do not necessarily represent the majority or the average gamer.</blockquote>

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