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

[GreyICE]

Exactly. And that's why 4E was a failed edition.

Any new edition of a game is going to pick up some percentage of the current market. But when you lose at least half your customers, I find it impossible to describe that as anything other than a failure.

Really? If ANY edition managed to pick up the crowd lost from AD&D, it could sacrifice every single current player and still be the most successful edition since AD&D.

The market is contracting, and frankly WotC is one of the few companies with the sort of name and pull to get people back. Which was the point of the OP, honestly.

 

[Rogue Agent]

Really? If ANY edition managed to pick up the crowd lost from AD&D, it could sacrifice every single current player and still be the most successful edition since AD&D.

What relevance do you think that has to do with the posts you're replying to?

 

[GreyICE]

What relevance do you think that has to do with the posts you're replying to?

Everything.

 

[WizarDru]

But when you lose at least half your customers, I find it impossible to describe that as anything other than a failure.

Do we have any way to gauge if this is actually the case? Has there been data released by anyone to confirm either sales numbers or active gamers? I was under the impression we really still don't have any hard numbers at all concerning gamers or their preferences.

 

[Umbran]

But when you lose at least half your customers, I find it impossible to describe that as anything other than a failure.

And when you don't lose half your customers, what then? Does it then become possible?

So, establish they lost half the customers.

Otherwise, what we have is that you just find it impossible to describe as other than a failure, but for no actual reason.

 

[Rogue Agent]

Everything.

I want to assure you that your incoherence over the last several posts has been deeply moving for me. (Insofar as I'm backing away slowly from you.)

So, establish they lost half the customers.

It was cute having this conversation with you in 2011. In 2012 it's anachronistic. Nobody is disputing the publicly available sales numbers at this point and people from inside WotC have confirmed that the company considers 4E a market failure.

People disputing these things at this point are just clinging to their own denial.

 

[GreyICE]

Sure, but we also happen to know that Hasbro considers any property that is under $50 million/year a failure. And that would be every property in the pen-and-paper RPG industry, from White Wolf to Pathfinder.

I don't think there's any edition of D&D that will ever succeed by Hasbro standards, but that's neither here nor there. Every year D&D doesn't reach the coveted $50 mil goal, they'll be under fire to do it better. Just look at the long line of WotC products discontinued under fire (seriously, go look at the list of discontinued WotC products sometime. It's terrifyingly long).

 

[Jacob Marley]

Sure, but we also happen to know that Hasbro considers any property that is under $50 million/year a failure. And that would be every property in the pen-and-paper RPG industry, from White Wolf to Pathfinder.

I don't think there's any edition of D&D that will ever succeed by Hasbro standards, but that's neither here nor there. Every year D&D doesn't reach the coveted $50 mil goal, they'll be under fire to do it better. Just look at the long line of WotC products discontinued under fire (seriously, go look at the list of discontinued WotC products sometime. It's terrifyingly long).

Um, no. That's not what Hasbro said. Hasbro considered 50M to be the point of differentiation between Core and Non-core brands. Core brands would receive financing from corporate for product development whereas Non-core brands would have to fund product development through existing cash flows.

Sometime around 2005ish, Hasbro made an internal decision to divide its businesses into two categories. Core brands, which had more than $50 million in annual sales, and had a growth path towards $100 million annual sales, and Non-Core brands, which didn't.

Under Goldner, the Core Brands would be the tentpoles of the company. They would be exploited across a range of media with an eye towards major motion pictures, following the path Transformers had blazed. Goldner saw what happened to Marvel when they re-oriented their company from a publisher of comic books to a brand building factory (their market capitalization increased by something like 2 billion dollars). He wanted to replicate that at Hasbro.

Core Brands would get the financing they requested for development of their businesses (within reason). Non-Core brands would not. They would be allowed to rise & fall with the overall toy market on their own merits without a lot of marketing or development support. In fact, many Non-Core brands would simply be mothballed - allowed to go dormant for some number of years until the company was ready to take them down off the shelf and try to revive them for a new generation of kids.

​

You can read the full piece here.

 

[GreyICE]

Core Brands would get the financing they requested for development of their businesses (within reason). Non-Core brands would not. They would be allowed to rise & fall with the overall toy market on their own merits without a lot of marketing or development support. In fact, many Non-Core brands would simply be mothballed - allowed to go dormant for some number of years until the company was ready to take them down off the shelf and try to revive them for a new generation of kids.

But D&D needs marketing and development support. It can't afford to just sit there as an established brand like a board game can. Board games don't have to change. They don't have to evolve. D&D does. D&D needs marketing and development, without them it's dead.

So yeah, I think I meant exactly what I said.

 

[S'mon]

It was cute having this conversation with you in 2011. In 2012 it's anachronistic. Nobody is disputing the publicly available sales numbers at this point and people from inside WotC have confirmed that the company considers 4E a market failure.

I'd have to agree. Plenty of WoTC people have said 4e failed. WoTC gave up on it less than halfway through its predicted lifespan. Paizo say Pathfinder replaced D&D as market leader in 2010-11, and WoTC don't disagree.

Plus, and what surprises me more, all the survey polls I've seen indicate that a very large but fairly silent group of players never stopped playing 3e, they didn't convert to either 4e or Pathfinder though I suppose they may be buying some Pathfinder products.

I'm not sure by what metric 4e could be considered not to be a commercial failure, whatever its strengths as a game. Per Dancey it was supposed to turn D&D from a $25-$30 million business into a $50 million business, leading into a $100 million business once Hasbro got the videogame rights back. Instead it turned D&D into something closer to a $15-$20 million* business, judging by what I've seen of DDi numbers and sales figures.

*Probably lower this year, given the lack of new product. I remember looking over all the 2011 data I could get.