Is it WotC’s responsibility to bring people to the hobby?

[DM Howard]

I agree.


But the point has been missed here.

Maybe another example... I want a beer. I walk into a beer store. I am a beer drinker and I know what I want to drink. So my decision is based on convenience and prior experience. I want a beer: I buy it from a beer store. (Maybe I want a WotC, maybe I want a Paizo or maybe an independent brew.)

What I am not about to do is convert my local grocer, on the far side of town, to become a beer store. That is a little too much like work to be fun when I can do my shopping, even over the Internet, at places where players gather.

I might stock up on beer at home and offer one to people I know - usually those would be beer drinkers anyway. They know where the beer store is, where the Internet spots are, and already have a taste for beer.

I am not going to open my house to the masses in my city, unless I am selling it. And if I do that, maybe put up a poster at the bus stops... I will get beer drinkers anyways.

I am not describing handshakes, symbols and tokens. I am not describing an aberrant behavior. I am describing the natural order of things, a heuristic.

OK, I understand where you are coming from and I agree with you when it comes to the industry needing to take a more active role and one of those is marketing.

I'm a marketing major and I'm often appalled at how little Wotc, Paizo, and the rest do any kind of marketing to grab new players.

I'll take this one step further and say that perhaps the industry itself, by not trying very hard to reach out to new players has passed on that "secret club" mentality to the consumer base.

So perhaps it does indeed need to start with a change in thinking of the industry as a whole. I'm not saying that tons and tons of money need be spent on marketing to potential consumers but when there is essentially only marketing where there are already "beer drinkers" that's when I think there is a problem.

 

[Console Cowboy]

OK, I understand where you are coming from and I agree with you when it comes to the industry needing to take a more active role and one of those is marketing.

I'm a marketing major and I'm often appalled at how little Wotc, Paizo, and the rest do any kind of marketing to grab new players.

I'll take this one step further and say that perhaps the industry itself, by not trying very hard to reach out to new players has passed on that "secret club" mentality to the consumer base.

So perhaps it does indeed need to start with a change in thinking of the industry as a whole. I'm not saying that tons and tons of money need be spent on marketing to potential consumers but when there is essentially only marketing where there are already "beer drinkers" that's when I think there is a problem.

Money alone won't cure it. In advertising there is actually taught a "programmable formula" to check spend against (projected) sales. (I know, I taught it at the state university here.) While this theory of per centages is nice for an exam question, it is not real world practical. So throwing money at the problem with advertising is NOT going to bring in new blood or attract people who have never tasted beer to try beer.

To bring in new people takes outside of the box thinking - the kind of thinking they do not indoctrinate at a business school.

Public relations (not just the simple publicity stuff but the scary social engineering stuff of Noam Chomsky talks) is inexpensive - even cheap. Better than any CPM. And the attraction of new people needs to be established atop a base of relationships; a unique feature of tabletop role-playing games that is different than boardgames; and it has to ignore the territory of video games where, frankly, RPGs lose to graphics and consumer convenience.

I am speaking as a public relations hired gun that started his career in the recession of the late 1980's and retired in 2010. The barriers to the type of work that needs to be done are neither complexity nor expense. The barrier is a lockstep mentality. Ultimately a company does not hire an employee with a degree expecting innovative ideas, but, employers employe such people for their journeyman work and ability to make deadlines - the same criteria that gets a degree in the first place.

 

[DM Howard]

Money alone won't cure it. In advertising there is actually taught a "programmable formula" to check spend against (projected) sales. (I know, I taught it at the state university here.) While this theory of per centages is nice for an exam question, it is not real world practical. So throwing money at the problem with advertising is NOT going to bring in new blood or attract people who have never tasted beer to try beer.

To bring in new people takes outside of the box thinking - the kind of thinking they do not indoctrinate at a business school.

Public relations (not just the simple publicity stuff but the scary social engineering stuff of Noam Chomsky talks) is inexpensive - even cheap. Better than any CPM. And the attraction of new people needs to be established atop a base of relationships; a unique feature of tabletop role-playing games that is different than boardgames; and it has to ignore the territory of video games where, frankly, RPGs lose to graphics and consumer convenience.

I am speaking as a public relations hired gun that started his career in the recession of the late 1980's and retired in 2010. The barriers to the type of work that needs to be done are neither complexity nor expense. The barrier is a lockstep mentality. Ultimately a company does not hire an employee with a degree expecting innovative ideas, but, employers employe such people for their journeyman work and ability to make deadlines - the same criteria that gets a degree in the first place.

And I don't necessarily think throwing money at the problem will truly help either but it IS a place to start. I completely agree that the industry needs to build on relationships but that needs to start somewhere and the industry as a whole needs to become more visible to potential customers rather than sitting back and relying on the same old beer drinkers that they have to bring new customers in.

Honestly I think the best idea (certainly not the least expensive way) to bring this about would be a tv comedy series based around a group that plays role playing games and the show could build upon the relationship building, story telling, and pure social entertainment that this hobby is. Sure this isn't very realistic in actually happening but I think showing the game in a media form that a wide range of people like to access could increase the industry's visibility dramatically.

 

[GreyICE]

4E WAS Wizards of the Coast's attempt to bring new players into the market. Lets look at all the things they did:

Removed finicky systems, subsystems, sub-subsystems, corner cases, walls of text, etc.

Every class played right out of the box. Yes, more classes added more variety, new material added new stuff you could do, but you could make a Fighter using PHB 1 and you'd be just fine.

We're playing in a fantasy game!

World of Warcraft, Everquest, Final Fantasy, etc. People have come to expect fantastic settings to have fantastic races. DnD's races... lacked. Flip open the PHB and you have: humans, humans with pointy ears, short humans, short humans take 2, short humans take 3 (with beards) and half-orcs (who are humans with little tusks).

Yeah, gently caress that noise. You can play a Dragon! A half-demon! Their mystic elves had all black eyes and could teleport through the feywild!

We're big damn HEROES!

You ever see Cloud stop to rest for 2 weeks because of a few injuries? Does your character in WoW stop to rest? Does any of your fantasy heroes ever die to a goblin arrow? No!

4E was goddamn HEROIC. Level 1? Okay. You're just starting out and guess what? You kick ass and take names. And it's only getting better from here.

Powers

You want to know what turns off players of other games from PnP rpgs? Endless table lookup. Rules arguments. Wondering how things work.

Powers are self-contained. They do exactly what they say. No "I get 4 level 1 spell slots? What can I do with those?" Nope. You have powers. You use them.

Game systems

You like boss fights? Why can't DnD do boss fights? You dislike measuring in 5 ft increments (or live in ANY OTHER COUNTRY THAN THE US)? Here, spaces. Neutral towards metric/english, perfectly comprehensible, and diagonals measure easily. You want to defend people? You can defend people (and in a much more interesting manner than traditional 'aggro' mechanics). You play video games? Good on you. DnD 4E can do anything your video game can do, do it cooler, do it more interesting, and screw the stupid grinding everyone hates.



----

Here we are now, people. Don't start whining WotC doesn't do enough to bring in new players when you can click over to Penny Arcade and SEE how DnD 4E did everything you wanted to happen with their edition. And you killed it.

 

[Console Cowboy]

Double post

 

[Console Cowboy]

And I don't necessarily think throwing money at the problem will truly help either but it IS a place to start. I completely agree that the industry needs to build on relationships but that needs to start somewhere and the industry as a whole needs to become more visible to potential customers rather than sitting back and relying on the same old beer drinkers that they have to bring new customers in.

Honestly I think the best idea (certainly not the least expensive way) to bring this about would be a tv comedy series based around a group that plays role playing games and the show could build upon the relationship building, story telling, and pure social entertainment that this hobby is. Sure this isn't very realistic in actually happening but I think showing the game in a media form that a wide range of people like to access could increase the industry's visibility dramatically.

And you would be surprised how cost effective it is to shop around a treatment for such a show. The cartoon was just such a show. The backers were the toy manufacture sponsors - the reason why it did not continue on CBS, lack of sponsors. But the idea was sold. And Gary was called away from the work he had to dedicate himself to do there because of the Blumes.

WotC, to go that route, has to have someone on salary dedicated to get this job done. It won't cost $75,000 in one shot ads to do it, to bandy about the figure quoted earlier in this topic.

And there are other things they could do with a paid staff, the size of which dwarfs other companies.

But another thing has to come back into fashion: Gary's idea of a non-system. A game that provided suggestions that only the DM had access to. That is a quaint but important concept in AD&D 1e. When that concept was phased out of prominence, as it was, the edition wars occurred with the brand that carried the hobby name.

I know about Traveller et al. But outsiders would not. They are more likely to hear about the "nerd rage" of D&D and (rightly) assume the game is for elitist Asperger's. It only takes one in a group to use the /system rules/ as a shield to collapse a group who use the hobby to meet others socially.

 

[Console Cowboy]

4E WAS Wizards of the Coast's attempt to bring new players into the market. Lets look at all the things they did:

Removed finicky systems, subsystems, sub-subsystems, corner cases, walls of text, etc.

Every class played right out of the box. Yes, more classes added more variety, new material added new stuff you could do, but you could make a Fighter using PHB 1 and you'd be just fine.

We're playing in a fantasy game!

World of Warcraft, Everquest, Final Fantasy, etc. People have come to expect fantastic settings to have fantastic races. DnD's races... lacked. Flip open the PHB and you have: humans, humans with pointy ears, short humans, short humans take 2, short humans take 3 (with beards) and half-orcs (who are humans with little tusks).

Yeah, gently caress that noise. You can play a Dragon! A half-demon! Their mystic elves had all black eyes and could teleport through the feywild!

We're big damn HEROES!

You ever see Cloud stop to rest for 2 weeks because of a few injuries? Does your character in WoW stop to rest? Does any of your fantasy heroes ever die to a goblin arrow? No!

4E was goddamn HEROIC. Level 1? Okay. You're just starting out and guess what? You kick ass and take names. And it's only getting better from here.

Powers

You want to know what turns off players of other games from PnP rpgs? Endless table lookup. Rules arguments. Wondering how things work.

Powers are self-contained. They do exactly what they say. No "I get 4 level 1 spell slots? What can I do with those?" Nope. You have powers. You use them.

Game systems

You like boss fights? Why can't DnD do boss fights? You dislike measuring in 5 ft increments (or live in ANY OTHER COUNTRY THAN THE US)? Here, spaces. Neutral towards metric/english, perfectly comprehensible, and diagonals measure easily. You want to defend people? You can defend people (and in a much more interesting manner than traditional 'aggro' mechanics). You play video games? Good on you. DnD 4E can do anything your video game can do, do it cooler, do it more interesting, and screw the stupid grinding everyone hates.



----

Here we are now, people. Don't start whining WotC doesn't do enough to bring in new players when you can click over to Penny Arcade and SEE how DnD 4E did everything you wanted to happen with their edition. And you killed it.

A video game is a passive medium founded on system integrity.
A role-playing game is an active medium founded on player trust.

I cannot possibly be more clear than that. These two things do not exist in the same market. Some niche cross over as always.

But put it another way, if you stick to your market definition:
You have WotC beer being sold to WoW Beer.

If you make this into an edition wars Asperger's soapbox, I will call a mod. (cf my comment about elitist Asperger's)

 

[Umbran]

Hey, folks!

I see borderline edition warring. I see appeals to (personal) authority. I see things getting personal. None of this is apt to lead to constructive discussion. If any of you continue down these non-constructive roads, we are apt to simply and quietly remove you from the conversation.

If you are not sure if this warning applies to you - assume it does. If there's a question, err on the side of being as polite as you can towards your fellow gamers - because that what you should be doing even if we aren't holding a banhammer over your head.

 

[GreyICE]

A video game is a passive medium founded on system integrity.
A role-playing game is an active medium founded on player trust.

I cannot possibly be more clear than that. These two things do not exist in the same market. Some niche cross over as always.

I'm sad you can't make it any clearer, because I must admit I have no idea at all what you were saying. But certainly there must be some overlap between the Video Game/MMO/Fantasy reader market and the potential Pen-and-Paper gamer market. I'd imagine it's very large. If we assume that maybe 5% of the "General Population" is part of the potential DnD market, then maybe 25-35% of the "fantasy video game player" market is part of the potential DnD market.

It's like, if you're making a niche beer that only a few people drink and want to expand your market, would you rather market to the people who drink Budweiser, or the people who don't drink beer?

 

[Console Cowboy]

I'm sad you can't make it any clearer, because I must admit I have no idea at all what you were saying. But certainly there must be some overlap between the Video Game/MMO/Fantasy reader market and the potential Pen-and-Paper gamer market. I'd imagine it's very large. If we assume that maybe 5% of the "General Population" is part of the potential DnD market, then maybe 25-35% of the "fantasy video game player" market is part of the potential DnD market.

It's like, if you're making a niche beer that only a few people drink and want to expand your market, would you rather market to the people who drink Budweiser, or the people who don't drink beer?

I will answer from a professional's point of view:
I would create my category and dominate it. I certainly would not try to run a same-as marketing scheme - particularly if Budweiser were a better beer than mine.

There are substantial barriers to over come for a cross over to happen. Counting on that to happen means that RPGs have to overcome many disadvantages in comparing itself to a video game.

So, yes, I would stay away from video games. IF I catch some of their market, it will be because I stand for something different and appealing with the added advantage of actually going for my target consumer.

This is like the first rule of marketing: segmentation.