D&D 5E Is long-term support of the game important?

[Iosue]

I meant 120k and the source was the aceaum website. I have seen figures of 27 million dollars for 82 and 83 was 20 million. Apparently 2nd ed was still bringing in good numbers (40 million) but TSR was run appallingly bad. Shannon Appelcline figures seem to match up with what Gygax, WoTC TSR history page and others have claimed. Early 80's and 00's were the golden and silver ages of D&D AFAIK.

Here's the Acaeum page. The 1992 125,000 figure refers to the print run. It doesn't have the breakdown for that year, but we can assume it was not far from the 1984 numbers. 1984 had a print run of 124,821 total copies, 36,973 of which went to subscribers, and the remaining 81,048 which went to stores.

One thing to note is that throughout the 80s the print runs jump up by tens of thousands of issues each year, culminating in the 124,821 listed above. But 8 years later, the reported number is a mere 200 issues greater than the 1984 number. Either Dragon sales basically stagnated from 1984 on, or perhaps the 1992 TSR catalog was merely reporting the highest number of Dragon issues that had ever been in circulation in a given year. Even if the number is accurate for 1992, we're still probably not looking at more than 37,000 subscribers. And then in the mid-90s the Internet breaks out and store sales would only go down.

 

[Zardnaar]

Here's the Acaeum page. The 1992 125,000 figure refers to the print run. It doesn't have the breakdown for that year, but we can assume it was not far from the 1984 numbers. 1984 had a print run of 124,821 total copies, 36,973 of which went to subscribers, and the remaining 81,048 which went to stores.

One thing to note is that throughout the 80s the print runs jump up by tens of thousands of issues each year, culminating in the 124,821 listed above. But 8 years later, the reported number is a mere 200 issues greater than the 1984 number. Either Dragon sales basically stagnated from 1984 on, or perhaps the 1992 TSR catalog was merely reporting the highest number of Dragon issues that had ever been in circulation in a given year. Even if the number is accurate for 1992, we're still probably not looking at more than 37,000 subscribers. And then in the mid-90s the Internet breaks out and store sales would only go down.

It is still income for TSR though and apparently 2nd ed was doing well in revenue just expenses were bad. Like 1985 with 3000+staff and 70 company cars apparently. The main point still being the most popular editions were still 1st and 3rd ed or maybe B/x+1st and 3rd ed.

 

[N'raac]

The DMG states that they can be found in D3.

Seems to me I remember that footnote, now that you mention it. Thanks.

Just a note on the timing:

The Monster Manual was released in 1977
D3 Vault of the Drow was released in 1978
The Dungeon Masters Guide was released in 1979

There we go - I was thinking these were Gary's home game charts and perhaps a couple of creatures not in the MM got overlooked, but it seems the expectation is that every DM would have the D modules (or, more likely, substitute their own preferred encounters).

 

[Jester David]

They're not in debt for D&DN. DDI is enough to cover the R&D costs of D&DN.

Maybe. But probably not. There are a lot of other expenses related to DDI, including making the magazines, managing the online tools, and the cost to maintain the servers.
The R&D costs of D&D Next are going to be high, as it's covering salaried employees, likely with office space and benefits, for multiple years.

 

[jodyjohnson]

The numbers taken from the magazine disclosures themselves by MerricB is here:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?308250-How-many-people-subscribe-to-D-amp-D-stuff

At GAMA yesterday, Erik Mona had a slide showing 250,000+ Pathfinder Core rulebooks sold.

3.0 PHB sold just over 500,000. 3.5 PHB between 300k and 400k.

 

[jodyjohnson]

It is still income for TSR though and apparently 2nd ed was doing well in revenue just expenses were bad. Like 1985 with 3000+staff and 70 company cars apparently. The main point still being the most popular editions were still 1st and 3rd ed or maybe B/x+1st and 3rd ed.

Where do you keep pulling these whack numbers from?

3000 is closer to the population of Lake Geneva.

 

[Jester David]

That's exactly what it means. If his speculations...

And absence of information does not mean I'm wrong, it means we don't know if I'm wrong or right.

There's no reason to be an edition-war apologist, or to assume reasons for things that we don't have inside info on. Jester had no need to specifically bring up his speculations about 4e, and yet he did.

This is not edition warring. I am casting no judgment on 4e. Or 2e for that matter as I also said it was a less popular edition. I actually quite like 2e, as it got me into the hobby and I never played 1e. It's not saying 4e was bad or terrible to say it didn't sell well. The world is full of excellent, amazing products that were bombs and failed to attract more than niche attention or have mainstream appeal. And there are many great RPGs out there that very few people like but are great games and have ardent fanbases.
Some of my favourite movies and TV shows were failures. Firefly is the obvious answer. The cancellation of Firefly and inability of Serenity to generate a profit at the box office are no reflection on the quality or my enjoyment of either than the short lifespan of 4e is on the quality or your enjoyment of that edition.

And I did have reason. You were commenting on how you really wanted them to abandon 5e in favour of a return to 4e. I commented that this was unlikely the ended 4e for no reason. Further discussion ensued.

No doubt some editions are more popular than others, but let's not pretend that we know which is which, 'kay? The topic under discussion is long-term game support, so these little speculations about 4e (and 2e) are looking more and more like edition warrior garbage. Which is a shame, because I was just starting to think that ENworld was cooling off enough to come back to.

We do know which are more popular. That's pretty easy looking back. 1e and 3.0 were boom times for the industry. The golden and silver ages of the game followed by lulls of 2e and 3.5e onward.
That's not edition warring any more than saying the "Connery" era of Bond films was more successful than the "Moore", it's just counting the numbers.

(Although, it has been reported that the 4e launch was very successful, that WotC said it sold more PHBs than ever before. Which likely meant the first print run of the 4e PHB was the largest and the books were heavily ordered by stores. But I've never personally been able to find a link to that.)

I'm truly sorry that this is a scary thought for you, and for what it's worth, I don't think D&D is going to disappear anytime in our lifetimes. Doom and gloom speculation is a popular pastime, but don't let it get to your head.

How is it not scary for you?

Is D&D the brand going to disappear? No. So long as the name is popular they'll keep releasing licenced products and likely use the IP for new board games and the like.
However, if the RPG fails to be successful twice in a row that they're going to shelve the RPG line. Just like WotC shelved Dreamblade, HeroScape, and a myriad other product lines that didn't achieve success. (I quite liked Dreamblade. It was fun.) WotC is not going to give the D&D Brand team a third chance.

Logically, there are really four possibilities tied to two variables:
1) D&D 4th Edition might have been successful or D&D 4th Edition might not have been successful.
2) The cancellation was motivated by internal politics or The cancellation was not motivated by internal politics.

You can set it it up like a grid:

[TABLE="width: 500"][TR][TD]
[/TD][TD]4e Failure[/TD][TD]4e Successful[/TD][/TR][TR][TD]Politically Motivated[/TD][TD]Option 1[/TD][TD]Option 2[/TD][/TR][TR][TD]Politically Unmotivated[/TD][TD]Option 3[/TD][TD]Option 4[/TD][/TR][/TABLE]

Option 1 and Option 3 are roughly the same. If the game was a failure (or even just less successful than intended) then the internal politics are irrelevant. However, Option 1 is a little unnerving as it means the early deaths of 3.5e and 4e might be repeated. Which doesn't bode well for the lifespan of D&D5.
Option 4 is the WTF reason. It's almost a non sequitur.
Option 2 is the scary one. Cancelling a successful product line for personal reasons. Wow. This really doesn't inspire confidence in the management. It would also have to be really upper management. In the shared "office politics" variable of Option 1, politically motivated cancellation is easier for the upper management (read: CEO) to approve because the game is failing. But in Option 2, it means the highest of the high in WotC needs to at least rubberstamp a four-year revamping of the product line.

I think we can safely eliminate Option 4 as a rational possibility.
And from what we know of the CEO of WotC, he isn't particularly motivated by D&D one way or another. He's a suit formerly from Hasbro, who is basically there to run the MtG company. Formerly of the Boys Toys division at Hasbro, he used to be in change of GIJoe, Transformers, and all the licensed action figures. So he's no slump when it comes to business. He's also unlikely to have any feelings regarding D&D one way or another, it's just a job for him. He's not going to cancel a game that's making money, so we can remove Option 2.

So that leaves Option 1 and Option 3.
There could be some politics that hastened the end of 4e. In this case it didn't need to be a failure, but it had to be less successful enough that the CEO could be convinced to end the RPG product line. But all the current D&D staff are either people who helped make 4e or were heavily involved with 4e, so it's harder to imagine reasons they'd want to cancel the game they created.
The division of the fanbase might count. Having edition warring doesn't provide a nice environment for new players to join. But making a new edition to end fighting over editions seems unlikely.


Tying this back on-topic, it emphasises that the edition being successful is important and that sustained success is key. 4e was wildly successful at launch, but evidently sales were not sustained. So you need to have sustained sales to maintain success. Which means long-term support.

 

[Jester David]

Here's the Acaeum page. The 1992 125,000 figure refers to the print run. It doesn't have the breakdown for that year, but we can assume it was not far from the 1984 numbers. 1984 had a print run of 124,821 total copies, 36,973 of which went to subscribers, and the remaining 81,048 which went to stores.

One thing to note is that throughout the 80s the print runs jump up by tens of thousands of issues each year, culminating in the 124,821 listed above. But 8 years later, the reported number is a mere 200 issues greater than the 1984 number. Either Dragon sales basically stagnated from 1984 on, or perhaps the 1992 TSR catalog was merely reporting the highest number of Dragon issues that had ever been in circulation in a given year. Even if the number is accurate for 1992, we're still probably not looking at more than 37,000 subscribers. And then in the mid-90s the Internet breaks out and store sales would only go down.

It should also be noted that TSR did overprint a lot of product and had stacks of product sitting in its warehouse for years, as well as numerous storage depots (many of which were forgotten).
So the 125,000 print run might not mean that was anywhere close to the number of copies that actually left the building.

 

[Umbran]

Logically, there are really four possibilities tied to two variables:
1) D&D 4th Edition might have been successful or D&D 4th Edition might not have been successful.
2) The cancellation was motivated by internal politics or The cancellation was not motivated by internal politics.

(1) Above may be oversimplified, as it contains no middle ground. Mediocrity is a possibility.

The books generate $X revenue. DDI generates $Y revenue. There are $A, $B, $C costs, there's a rise and/or fall in any and all of these numbers. There's some goals (which are not necessarily all revenue-driven) set for individual products, and the product line as a whole, and so on. It is possible, in fact, for two people to see the same data, and come to different conclusions about the current value and possible future performance of the line.

So, maybe 4e was doing merely okay, but someone charismatic has a thought that a different design would do better, for example.

Moreover, check out the news today from GAMA:

"There's some interesting philosophy stuff -- WotC says they will continue to sell 4E until interest goes away. They want to sell D&D to people in any format they can, whether that be old editions, video games, or other branded products. They are very much against the "edition war" philosophy.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php#ixzz2wQAAPyT3"

That doesn't even sound like a full fledged "cancellation". Middle grounds, people! Look to the middle grounds!

 

[delericho]

We do know which are more popular. That's pretty easy looking back. 1e and 3.0 were boom times for the industry.

The one nitpick I'd make of this is that we don't know that 1st edition was the popular edition in the early 80's - we know that the Basic sets in both B/X and BECMI were phenomenally successful - indeed, IIRC they were the #1 and #2 best-selling versions of the game ever. (You did, of course, note up-thread that they were around at this time.)

(Although, it has been reported that the 4e launch was very successful, that WotC said it sold more PHBs than ever before. Which likely meant the first print run of the 4e PHB was the largest and the books were heavily ordered by stores. But I've never personally been able to find a link to that.)

I believe it was a tweet by Mike Mearls, to the effect that the 4e print run was bigger than the 3.5e run, which again was bigger than the 3.0e print run (for the initial run of the PHB). But, alas, I can't find a cite for that either.

Tying this back on-topic, it emphasises that the edition being successful is important and that sustained success is key. 4e was wildly successful at launch, but evidently sales were not sustained. So you need to have sustained sales to maintain success. Which means long-term support.

Yep. Someone up-thread mentioned something that should be quite obvious: Hasbro won't pay designers to sit around doing nothing. That means that they either need to be working on support books for the current edition or they need to be working on a new edition. Those are pretty much the two choices (well, except for "not working there" and "working on something else"). So, if we want the edition to survive a long time, it needs long-term support.