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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dedekind" data-source="post: 5447649" data-attributes="member: 63968">A few secondary concerns:1) I think your analysis should include a discussion of non-TTRPG competition. Many people compare D&D to WoW and I imagine the cross-elasticity of TTRPGs and Digital RPGS is fairly high. Not a lot of industries (outside of entertainment) face the same issue of ready substitutes. 2) The best point buried deep upthread is that you have to have a line of products to be financially successful. Or, more generally, you have to be able to produce something "far" into the future. The upfront costs of both time and money are too large for there not to be a long-run payoff even for the most dedicated hobbyists. I imagine this was the issue for many of the d20 companies in the early 2000s; they started with their best idea (highest value product) but didn't continue to produce good products after that. 3) Regarding advertising, the most valuable thing WotC owns is the brand. Yes, the intellectual property is valuable over the mid-term (10 years), but D&D is where the value is at. This affects advertising since people don't have to have D&D explained to them--instead, they have to have what D&D is doing now explained to them. This also creates a significant barrier to entry. 4) Someone mentioned the *new* industry spawning idea and the point was made that it would have to be entirely new type of product. I think the TTRPG industry only faces incremental changes. The *new* industry is now all grown up and now overshadows D&D: MMORPGs. The person on the street recognizes WoW far more readily than D&D, specifically for the target audience of middle class 18-35  year olds.</blockquote>

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