Edition Bias and 4e Sales Perception

[Cadfan]

I voted "like 4e, think its doing well."

What objective indicators we have suggest good sales. Best seller lists, sales volume rankings, etc. Of course "selling well" is subjective, and none of those things conclusively prove a successful product, but as evidence goes they point in the direction of success. So at the most pessimistic, you could argue that the "selling well" hypothesis hasn't been conclusively proven, but you couldn't argue that the "selling poorly" hypothesis even has meaningful support.

Local stores are at best anecdotal, and since gamers tend to have a bit of a local culture, it isn't surprising that entire stores might go one way or another. In my area(s), one store seems to sell quite a lot of 4e products. I base that conclusion on their tendency to not have 4e products in stock when you ask for them, because someone else already bought them. Fortunately they have a restock rate of under a week delay, and most of what I want are adventures, so waiting isn't a big deal for me. The other store seems to sell 4e products, but not at any particular speed. The first store is mostly a board gaming and roleplaying gaming store, and has a lot of tables and some active 4e games. The second store is mostly a wargaming store, and also has a lot of tables, but no chairs because the tables are for wargamers who need to stand to hover over everything. The second store serves an older clientelle- more middle aged, while the first store tends to serve people in their 20s.

And of course the DDI throws a wrench in any calculations anyways. There are a TON of books I haven't purchased because I can get them online through a service I already paid for. I assume that, net, WotC makes money on the DDI, even though it trades off a bit with book sales.

 

[Derren]

Yep, Dragonworld it is. So, one month after its release, P3 - an adventure - is number 10 on the list and is surpassed by only two non-D&D titles.

Not when I looked, but that list is changing constantly.

 

[Dragonbait]

I thought it was selling fairly well, but I'm recalling a brief period when 3E came out and several different sources in The Biz claimed it was the first time you could make money off of role-playing games (I started seeing well stocked shelves at B&N, B. Daltons, the WoTC store opened*, the massive amount of d20 books flooded the market, lots of new D&D-related video games, the movie *shudder*, and so on). It makes me wonder what -those- numbers were and how do they compare to 3.5E and 4E numbers?

*An anecdote: The company that was purchased by Wizards of the Coast and changed to the WoTC store was called the Game Keeper. I worked for the Game Keeper a year before it was bought out and when 3E was just months away. At that time I was trying to push for a resupply of roleplaying game books (namely AD&D 2ed, which sold within a day each time the books were stocked). The branch manager told me that they don't sell at all and that it was a dead buisness. Well look who bought out the company.

 

[Treebore]

Obviously sales are adequate, or they would have shut down already. Could sales be better? Without a doubt! They could have sold 6 million copies by now, and anyone would still wish they could still sell more.


I think a good poll question would be, "Is WOTC's sales of "hundreds of thousands of copies" of their core rule books in line with your perception of how much you thought 4E D&D is selling?"

With poll choices of:

That is about what I would think.
That is higher than I would have thought.
That is much higher than I would have thought.
That is much lower than I would have thought.

Then maybe do a companion poll of,

How many Core book sets do you think WOTC has sold?

With options of

Millions.

Over 4 million

Under 1 million

Under 500,000

It would probably be best to do the second poll first, then follow up with the first one. Plus ask people who have read WOTC's estimate to refrain from voting.

 

[kitsune9]

Just as anecdotal as the next, but all the chain book store (Borders and Barnes and Nobles) in my area seem to have it in stock (and it seems to be moving.)

The two game stores I ever frequent are a mixed bag.

The one in Berkeley seems to be selling 4e, and the in store game my friend is in has moved to 4e.

The other one in SF seems to be reccomending people not buy or play 4e. (Or at least the sales guy on shift the last time I was in there was.)

Scribble, I know which two stores you're talking about. I like the Berkeley one better myself, but rarely find myself over there. Yeah, I heard and saw the same thing.

 

[Primal]

Although I may not like 4E as a whole, it does have some good aspects... just not enough for me and my group (we prefer 3E/PF). Still, in general, I think it's selling well... maybe not just around here, I think, because the owner of my FLGS (which is part of the biggest RPG chain in my country) said the 4E sales peaked last summer and they're now selling less D&D stuff than at the end of the 3E era (manga, on the other hand, seems to sell more and more each year! ).

 

[kitsune9]

I thought it was selling fairly well, but I'm recalling a brief period when 3E came out and several different sources in The Biz claimed it was the first time you could make money off of role-playing games (I started seeing well stocked shelves at B&N, B. Daltons, the WoTC store opened*, the massive amount of d20 books flooded the market, lots of new D&D-related video games, the movie *shudder*, and so on). It makes me wonder what -those- numbers were and how do they compare to 3.5E and 4E numbers?

*An anecdote: The company that was purchased by Wizards of the Coast and changed to the WoTC store was called the Game Keeper. I worked for the Game Keeper a year before it was bought out and when 3E was just months away. At that time I was trying to push for a resupply of roleplaying game books (namely AD&D 2ed, which sold within a day each time the books were stocked). The branch manager told me that they don't sell at all and that it was a dead buisness. Well look who bought out the company.

The Game Keeper in my area closed out years ago. They barely carried any rpg merchandise despite being owned by WotC and the manager banned rpgs at the table only allowing ccgs and clix games.

 

[Scribble]

Scribble, I know which two stores you're talking about. I like the Berkeley one better myself, but rarely find myself over there. Yeah, I heard and saw the same thing.

Most of my gaming happens over in Berkeley anyway, so while I don't get into a store "often" I get there enough.

But I think thats one of the reasons I tend to like FLGS less and less and big chains and amazon more and more.

I don't mind if you have an opinion, and mention it. I don't mind if you dislike something I like. But if I'm a customer in your store, and I ask for info about a product, I don't need a 10 minute diatribe related to your personal tastes.

 

[Dannager]

How many Core book sets do you think WOTC has sold?

With options of

Millions.

Over 4 million

Under 1 million

Under 500,000

It would probably be best to do the second poll first, then follow up with the first one. Plus ask people who have read WOTC's estimate to refrain from voting.

The poll you are suggesting here is implying a range. The average poll taker, in a relative vacuum of useful knowledge, will infer from the choices given that the "correct" response is somewhere within the given range of choices - and more often than not will vote towards the middle of that range, regardless of how accurate that may or may not be. This is a methodological confound. Your poll, as written, will give you absolutely nothing useful.

For a more illustrative example of the problem you've come across, imagine seeing an unidentifiable watch and being asked "How many tens of dollars do you think this watch cost?" Now imagine being asked "How many hundreds of dollars do you think this watch cost?" Now imagine being asked "How many thousands of dollars do you think this watch cost?" Each of these questions will provoke an entirely different range of responses from the uneducated participant, even though the actual watch (and its real value) never changes.

If you want a real indicator of how people think D&D should be doing (not that it's a useful question to begin with, because people have no idea how D&D should be doing), you need to make the response open-ended, and avoid implying a range completely.

Also, not to imply anything of your intentions here, the above confound is sometimes intentionally used in developing a survey in order to purposefully skew results one way or the other. Its effect on response is so predictable that it can be used very reliably to favor one position over another in a study's conclusion.

 

[fanboy2000]

This year I've been spending a lot of time at both SFSU and UC Davis (BOY WHAT A FUN TIME IT IS TRAVELLING BETWEEN THE TWO HAH HAH HAH OH GOD KILL ME) and the difference is striking - UC Davis has a full roleplaying games club that has a weekly LARP that's well attended, where SFSU has...well, a basement. Where people play card games. Actually, it's not even a basement, it's the basement to a basement.

1. I've never been to UC Davis, but I'm familiar enough with Nor Cal commuting to know your life sucks.

2. The only game store in SF I know of is Gamescape and it has a decent RPG section. By decent I mean I saw a lot of Paranoia XP and Traveller. There was also a good selection of other, lesser, RPGs. The last time I was there, however, was before 4e's launch so I don't know how they're handling that.