I am an MBA as well as someone who has played RPGs for about 15 years, giving me some perspective from both sides. I agree with Eric Noah wholeheartedly that this situation really boils down to players and DMs. Your typical gaming group on average probably has about five players for every DM with perhaps one alternate dungeon master. Simple economics will dictate that that a DM-oriented book is only going to do about 20% the sales of a core rulebook.
Wizards of the Coast has done a good job of creating a flexible and well-balanced game system. Its been great to see some of the creativity in some of the rules supplements, but the sheer number of extra feats, prestige classes, etc. have really reached their saturation point. Furthermore, with every new supplement I have to worry about how this affects game balance, so it is more of a headache now than it is worth. I do not plan buying any more rules supplements, unless there is a really compelling reason. My players can buy new ones but I will not let them use it in my campaign. What Wizards of the Coast has done a poor job of is support for the dungeon master. That “fluff” stuff as it is called provides important material for me as a dungeon master.
I am a person without a ton of time to plan out a game session yet will not run a game unless it is quality. The DM-oriented materials provide economic way for me to put together a game without having to spend a ton of time on it. I simply weave together “fluff” stuff from modules, Dungeon magazine, and a good campaign world to create a great campaign. If the players do something I don’t expect during a game session then I have more materials to weave in to make the appropriate adjustments. I buy these DM products based on two factors. I look for the quality of ideas within the RPG product and how flexible it is to integrate this stuff with my current campaign. The Forgotten Realms was good campaign world because it was generic enough that I could take the Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh or the Slavelord modules or any other of my previous materials and integrate them in … but also interesting/quality/unique enough that I actually want to use the Forgotten Realms.
Now I wouldn’t say I am representative of all DMs out there, but I am someone who has probably spent thousands of dollars on D&D products. There are some DMs have the time to come up with their own stuff, but there are others like me who rely on a steady stream of DM-oriented quality products.
The current Wizards of the Coast strategy is not a very good one, because it provides good support for players but not DMs. This may just be a unique case but I recently found a group of players who could not find a DM. None of the players from within this group was willing to DM either, so for the last couple months the group has sat idle. How long before this group of players starts to lose interest in the game altogether? This may not hurt sales for Wizards of the Coast in the short run on a product by product basis but it will hurt sales in the long run from an overall system-wide basis.
Just because DMs do not generate the revenues that players do, doesn’t mean that they should be ignored. DMs are very important influencers (opinion leaders) about what the players play. If I feel like a game system just isn’t working for me, I will try something new with my players. If we all like it and it lasts we will start gravitating to that new system, meaning my players stop buying stuff from the old system and start buying stuff form the new system. The point, though, is roleplaying games aren’t like other games and Hasbro doesn’t understand this.
Roleplaying products form an overall game system, just like computer components like your processor and disk drive make up your computer. It takes the right balance of these components (rules, story, setting, action) to make a good system. Some of these components are not very profitable and some are much more profitable, but if some aspect of these components is seriously lacking the overall computer then it can seriously impair the computer system.
The fundamental problem boils down to this. The hurdle rates which Hasbro uses to measure their other more self-contained, insular products (Monopoly, Clue, etc.) are not properly aligned to measure the complexities of a roleplaying game system. How badly Monopoly sells may not have an influence on how well my Clue game sells. Therefore setting hurdle rates at the product level is not a bad idea for these sorts of games. However, product-level metrics are not such a good idea for inter-related roleplaying products. Maybe Product A does not sell as well but perhaps its real value is in enhancing sales of product B, C, and D as well as helping sustain my overall brand. These case-by-case product-based metrics cannot truly measure this and force managers into bad decisions. Therefore Wizards of the Coast needs to make the case to Hasbro management for metrics that are more in line with the realities of the D&D game. There is nothing worse for a company’s long term future than using the wrong metrics. I suggest management at Wizards of the Coast read “The Goal” by Eliyahu Goldratt. It provides a good example of the problems caused by looking at independent metrics without regard interrelationship between these metrics.
The computer analogy is rather good, too.
