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

[Jester David]

(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!

Mediocrity would count as a non-success, which in terms of the chart is the same as a failure.
For a business, either you make or surpass your goal or you don't. (Heck, for many businesses, increasing their profit by less than the previous year's increase is a failure.)

"Failure" unfortunately does imply 4e lost money or didn't make a profit, which I do not believe. Honestly, I only used "failure" because I couldn't think of a better word to describe "non-success". I wasn't particularly happy with that word choice. So there's a failure on the part of my vocabulary this morning. But my coffee is still brewing...

 

[Jester David]

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.)

You are of course correct. D&D was at it's most popular in that era, but we don't know if that extended to both product lines or if the split halved sales.

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.

It is also possible to just fire most of the staff and have just enough people to manage reprinting and keeping the books in print. You can sustain an edition on just reprints for a long time.

TSR's original plan was also to move the staff from D&D to other games, and cease new support for D&D, just letting new print runs make money. Board game thinking. That didn't work so well as none of the new games did nearly as well. But it might work better now with D&D being established. Just have the department work on other things and release a new D&D TT-RPG product far less often to maintain interest.

 

[Iosue]

Mediocrity would count as a non-success, which in terms of the chart is the same as a failure.
For a business, either you make or surpass your goal or you don't. (Heck, for many businesses, increasing their profit by less than the previous year's increase is a failure.)

"Failure" unfortunately does imply 4e lost money or didn't make a profit, which I do not believe. Honestly, I only used "failure" because I couldn't think of a better word to describe "non-success". I wasn't particularly happy with that word choice. So there's a failure on the part of my vocabulary this morning. But my coffee is still brewing...

What you're still missing is that goals can change.

Look, WotC was going to do something big in 2014. It was either going to be something along the lines of 4e, or a new edition. It fits right with the 5/10 year plan thing, it's a big anniversary. Something big was going to go down. Even if there was no public playtest, R&D would have spent the last two years putting together a big revision or new edition. Had the original creators of 4e stayed with the company, we might have seen more of a revision -- core books with Essential type classes included from the start, maybe. Since the creative team changed, what they wanted to do also changed. The current team wants to revitalize all of D&D's history, and get new players involved with a simpler set of rules.

Normally, this would be invisible to us until an announcement maybe a year before the new edition. They would never try a two-year public playtest because it would kill interest in the current edition and cost them far too much revenue. But WotC didn't have to worry about that, because with 4e they created a steady revenue stream that doesn't rely on pushing out paper-and-ink releases. Supplement that with reprints and PDFs of historic products to make money off of the history.

 

[Umbran]

Mediocrity would count as a non-success, which in terms of the chart is the same as a failure.
For a business, either you make or surpass your goal or you don't.

Business is *not* all that clear cut as you make it - if it were, business decisions would always be easy, and everyone would always succeed.

You don't typically have one goal. You have several goals, based on different metrics, and some of those goals may be more important than others - or seem to be, and you only discover later that they weren't. Maybe you make some goals, and don't make others. Goals are also set so as to be challenging - these days, if you actually meet all your goals, that often is considered to mean you weren't aiming high enough!

The point being, it is not at all clear cut that "didn't make all the goals" translates into "clear cause to cancel". What goals you miss, and by how much, can be important.

 

[Jester David]

What you're still missing is that goals can change.

Look, WotC was going to do something big in 2014. It was either going to be something along the lines of 4e, or a new edition. It fits right with the 5/10 year plan thing, it's a big anniversary. Something big was going to go down. Even if there was no public playtest, R&D would have spent the last two years putting together a big revision or new edition. Had the original creators of 4e stayed with the company, we might have seen more of a revision -- core books with Essential type classes included from the start, maybe. Since the creative team changed, what they wanted to do also changed. The current team wants to revitalize all of D&D's history, and get new players involved with a simpler set of rules.

Normally, this would be invisible to us until an announcement maybe a year before the new edition. They would never try a two-year public playtest because it would kill interest in the current edition and cost them far too much revenue. But WotC didn't have to worry about that, because with 4e they created a steady revenue stream that doesn't rely on pushing out paper-and-ink releases. Supplement that with reprints and PDFs of historic products to make money off of the history.

Maybe. But there are easier ways of celebrating the anniversary than tanking sales for two years, and making it much harder for new people to get into the game.
And the 40th anniversary was two months back. They missed it. They missed the associated free advertising. They're missing half of the 40th anniversary.

If they were just aiming to have an edition out in 2014 they would have started sooner or worked much faster.

 

[hbarsquared]

I don't think that's fair. I think we did need a new edition, and it needed to be 4e, not 3.75. We needed substantial revisions. It's not just a question of profit and greed; the system has its problems. It's bloated and filled with sacred cows, the math is strained, and there are a few wrong turns that 3e uniquely took as well.

The issue with 4e is that it took those problems and magnified them to previously unseen levels, discarded much of what was good about previous versions, and that they booted the OGL. And then went off the rails with some other new stuff they added.

The term "4e" has become so charged at this point that it's hard to imagine, but at one time it was up in the air what 4e was going to be, and there's every reason to think that a different game released under that moniker could have created a very different reaction. I think frequent revision is just inevitable. Product lines stagnate, profits dwindle, and the game's flaws start to wear on people. I think the only game that needs long-term support is D&D, period, not any specific edition.

Something to keeo in mind: the current concept and plans for the 5the iteration of D&D would not exist (presumably) without 4e.

Funny how things work out like that.

I like 4e. If I sat down for 25hours and thought about it, or had a blog, I might even prefer 3e (or 3.5?!?!).

At any rate, I'm pretty happy. I'm content with what I have: there are some really great 1e, 2e, 3e, and, yes, 4e adventures, and mechanics to all, that bring something to my games and my imagination.

I am also eager to see what 5e brings. I would, of course, presently prefer a fully supported 5e for 10, 15, 50 years. But I would also be okay with a constantly revised 5.1, 5.2, 5.75, 5.993 editions, or 5e v124. Really.

If it's a value, or a perceived value (perhaps), I'll give it a fair shake.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Something to keeo in mind: the current concept and plans for the 5the iteration of D&D would not exist (presumably) without 4e.

Probably true. And problematically true.

 

[Zardnaar]

Where do you keep pulling these whack numbers from?

3000 is closer to the population of Lake Geneva.

Straight form the horses mouth.

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/dndarchives_history.asp

This is also interesting. Print runs and the sources.
http://www.acaeum.com/library/printrun.html

30 year history, a bit yay for me but interesting.
http://pc.gamespy.com/articles/538/538262p1.html

1982 TSR breaks 20 million in sales. Sharon Appelcine in Designers and Dragons gave a figure of 27 million for 82/83 and B/x early 80's outsold AD&D. Gygax claimed 24 million IIRC, various TSR staffers have said KotBL sold 1-1.5 million. Other parts are a matter of public record in TSR court cases.

If you adjust the figures for inflation TSR era D&D broke the 50 million dollar mark. Ryan Dancey supplied the 25-30 million dollars per year on average but D&D did not make tens of millions of dollars from 74-80 or so just 1 billion in revenue/40 is an average of 25 million per year.

TL DR. TSR golden age, 3.0 silver age, 2nd ed and 4E the downturn editions.

 

[Remathilis]

Probably true. And problematically true.

Every edition is a reaction to the last. AD&D promised more options and clear rules than Basic. 2e promised to simply 1es bloat. 3e tried to reflect how 2e was really being played. 4e answered the call of imbalance and streamlined play. 5e calls back to the simpler time of modular design and classic gameplay. And the cycle begins again.

 

[Jester David]

TL DR. TSR golden age, 3.0 silver age, 2nd ed and 4E the downturn editions.

Well, 3.5e+ would be the start of the downturn, as that broke the 3.0e bubble.