'Dungeons & Dragons' fights for its future

[kenwolf]

it says that the survey was done by wizards of the coast. why should we doubt the numbers if wizards is the one that did the survey ?

 

[kenwolf]

What did he need to do a survey about? Tabletop gaming as a reason to get together with friends & hang out? Size of the gaming industry? WoW as D&D of this generation?

have you even read the article ? it doesn't matter what the survey was for. what matters is that it found out that about 6 million world wide players played last year. that might even be an inflated number.

 

[AllisterH]

how is this story bias ? i don't see anything being bias at all. i see it stating facts of the game that some people don't want to admit.

6 million players isn't a lot and if this number gets split even a little bit from people not moving to 4th it isn't good for wizards at all.

Yeah, which tells me that WOTC doesn't really need the RPG side of the equation. If the entire hobby is only worth 30 million a year, M:TG by itself significantly trumps this by at least an oder of magnitude

(We once did a "how much does M:TG get in revenue" based on number of packs sold X friday night magic on the M:TG boards and we easily got into the millions per MONTH)

 

[kenwolf]

it only matters if Hasbro sees that the rpg department isn't pulling it's weight and making good money. then it gets ether sold or shut down. then no more D&D

 

[Kwalish Kid]

The truth is that just as you can spot the bias and misdirection in any story as long as you are informed about and fluent in the subject. Just because you don't see the distortion in a story about politics, the Middle East, or anything else outside your area of expertise doesn't mean that it isn't there.

I just hope that everyone here remembers that the next time they read a news story.

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

$30 million market for traditional RPGs, is that even close to accurate? If so... wow, that is a small market, comparable to the revenue of a single smallish tech company. I guess it's not so outlandish when I think about the sizes of the companies involved in the industry, but still, for something that's been such a big part of my life, it sure is tiny potatoes in the larger economic context.

The wierd thing about this is that the MMRPG D&D Online, which everyone I know considers to be a complete flop, must pull in about a million dollars a month if it has 100,000 customers. 12 million a year must be getting into the zone of the money that WoTC makes off of D&D. I mean, it's probably less, but the fact that it's even in the same ballpark is amazing.

I didn't find the article to be biased at all. You're not going to see a mainstream mag saying that people sitting around a table playing characters and talking in funny voices is cool. I liked how the article emphasized how the pen and paper game had social aspects that computer games lacked.

Ken

 

[mattcolville]

It seems that the reporter latched onto some of the main issues here in the forums and wrote about them? Alright, who is informing on us or what is his user name?

Peace Space

I believe Peter Svensson posts on RPGnet as...PeterSvensson.

I was interviewed for this article, I believe because Peter read my blog as well as a post I made on RPGnet about cobbling together enough info to play 4E without the official rules. I think he thought I'd actually playtested the real game and, as a result, was not super interested in what else I had to say, since I had not actually playtested the real game.

But he absolutely was pursuing the angle of "D&D is now obsolete, since there's WoW." This was not something I found to be true in my experience, and lo and behold that was not in there. He had a counterpoint to his argument, but did not present it.

 

[Silvergriffon]

Wow.
MSNBC is just as biased and inaccurate with this as they are with, well... everything else. :\

 

[Hussar]

I believe Peter Svensson posts on RPGnet as...PeterSvensson.

I was interviewed for this article, I believe because Peter read my blog as well as a post I made on RPGnet about cobbling together enough info to play 4E without the official rules. I think he thought I'd actually playtested the real game and, as a result, was not super interested in what else I had to say, since I had not actually playtested the real game.

But he absolutely was pursuing the angle of "D&D is now obsolete, since there's WoW." This was not something I found to be true in my experience, and lo and behold that was not in there. He had a counterpoint to his argument, but did not present it.

Well, to be fair, "D&D is doing Pretty Much the Same as it has for the past 5 years" is not exactly a catchy headline. The story does need a bit of a slant.

Heck, considering some of the articles I've seen, this one's pretty decent. At least he realized that there ARE more than one edition of the game.

 

[VannATLC]

I play DND twice a month.

8 of the 12 people I play with play, or have played WoW.
6 of them play WoW with me.

Right now, it is unfair to say the systems are competeing.
I enjoy the team interactions in WoW, but it is cumbersome and virtually impossible to have meaningfuly character development.

I play DND because I like a tactially orientated role-playing system, and I enjoy the opportunity to play different styles of people and character.

It is possible that DDI will allow me some more play time, in DND, but I do not believe it will work as well as sitting round a table.

Right now, DDI sounds like it would take the role that the Laptops do in my current DND games.. nothing yet can replicate the experience of describing the slide down the ballroom stairs, latch onto the chandelier, steal a kiss from the princess, some expensive plonk, a trencher of meat and bread, then dissapearing out the window to freedom. (I'm going to miss my bard )