We agree on more than it may first appear, Graf...I chalk it up to us having different degrees of faith on how accurately the preferences of gamers can be measured.
Graf said:
If you ask people point blank “would you buy a new edition of DnD” would provide a Yes/No kind of answer but you’ll run into trouble with preconceived notions about what a “new edition” means. Asking indirectly would get you a very interesting and complex can of worms; far more so than when WotC used marketing surveys to assist in the development of 3e.
The biggest one is that a lot of DnD consumers are concerned that an edition change has caused their books to be outdated (as it has in the past… I recently junked my 3.0 phb for example).
I, sorry, we think that you’d have a very difficult time working up a marketing survey that could get the DnD consuming population to give you quantifiable answers about their need for a new edition relative to an old edition.
Hypothetically if there was a new grapple rule where [improved grapple was touch attack -> strength save (fortitude save mortified by your strength bonus) OR an Escape Artist Check vs DC = to 10 + the creatures HD/2 + str bonus + racial grapple bonus] and you wanted to find out whether that rule would encourage someone to buy a new edition (its simpler than the current system) or not (its not like DnD, its hard to understand, etc) how would you execute that as a marketing survey?
You can’t cold call people (too few people play DnD), write-in and internet servys are unrealable.
I agree -- trying to design a targeted gamer cold-call survey would be tricky...though with certain magazine subscription lists out there...it would certainly be possible.
Ironically enough, I believe that specific 'rules' are vastly overrated as a selling point of a new edition. Bad rules can certianly sink a game...but I doubt that a new edition would sink into 'bad rules'. May not be much of an impromvement...but certainly not bad (the way the tail end of 2e was bad).
What do we know about the psychographics of gamer culture...not much publicly, unfortunately, though there is information on the psychographics of 'geek' culture (though I find the term somewhat derrisive of the wide variety of people who check these boards). 'Geek culture' has as a defining characteristic -- a "completionist" tendency -- the need to master an entire body of subject matter as a demonstration of worth to one's peers.
Think about how many threads on these boards devolve into different people disagreeing with each other solely to demonstrate their superior knowledge of a subject...be it of a game, a book, a movie...or whatever else.
It's the "Worst Movie...EVAR" effect. Geeks are completionists -- and therefore, barring a royal screw-up, will buy new edititions -- even though they may bitch to the high heavens along the way. There's a lot of people out there are absolutely venomous about Star Wars Episodes I-III yet, for some reason, still happen to own all three.
As for non-geek casual gamers (the holy grail for marketers), more general research will suffice. This is a massive overgeneralization but, in general, among consumers who are non-identifiers with a brand...a re-release of that brand will attract more consumers than extending a current brand line. i.e. 'causal' gamers can reasonably be predicted to buy more copies of a new edition PHB than they would to purchasing the "Races of..." "Heroes off..." lines etc. Hence the line that has been dogma ever since the release of third edition...that it is PHB sales that drive the line.
Somewhere in the balance of this casual vs 'geek' culture gamer mix -- there is an ideal way and manner to release a new game. The only real rules discussion would be, improve where ever possible, but most importantly "don't screw this up". (which is why I believe a 4th edition will be much less experiemental with new rules than many on these boards think)
