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

[Hussar]

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.

That's the point though. How have they tanked sales? DDi subs remain very strong and the reprints are strong.

Effectively 80 k ish subs is the same as pushing new books every month.

 

[Zardnaar]

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

Bubble burst 2004 or at least the d20 bubble. WoW turned up about the same time IIRC.

 

[Zardnaar]

That's the point though. How have they tanked sales? DDi subs remain very strong and the reprints are strong.

Effectively 80 k ish subs is the same as pushing new books every month.

It is revenue of about6-8 million a year. That means they lost between 66=75% of the 3.5 revenue and Paizo is making 11.2 million per year as of 2012. Any income over that is from reprints and left over 4E stock.

 

[Jester David]

That's the point though. How have they tanked sales? DDi subs remain very strong and the reprints are strong.

Effectively 80 k ish subs is the same as pushing new books every month.

Books sell far more than 80k.
It's very doubtful DDI subscriptions were unaffected by the ending of 4e, the reduction of content,NAND the cessation of the magazines.
And DDI is not pure profit, as it pays for the magazines, tools, and servers.
Regardless, even if DDI did not change by a single subscriber, without new regular books total profits would be lower.

The reprints did well, but they were expensive collector's editions with limited print runs. There was also only twelve over two years. And there hasn't been a reprint in many months. (But they also likely had lower production costs.)
Plus the reprints were a happy accident. The positive response to the 1e reprints allowed them to reprint the 3e and 2e books. That couldn't have been planned for initially.

 

[Hussar]

Sorry, by reprints, I was also including the pdf versions available as well.

The idea that print books are the way of the future is not really tenable IMO. I highly doubt that WOTC ever had the consistent income that it has with the DDI. Sure, one subscription is only 7 bucks, but, how much do you think WOTC got from a single book sale? At a guess, I'd say in terms of income for WOTC, a single DDI sub is similar to selling a single book every month.

Yup, you have to pay server costs and whatnot, but, we're talking far, far less overhead than actually producing a physical book every month. Most book sales are (more or less) finished within 3 months of publication. After that, it's pretty much not selling anymore. But the DDI sub just keeps going and going.

When people talk about sales, they mean gross, not net. Paizo's 11 million a year is in sales, not profit. Which do you think is more profitable, 8 million in an electronic product that has recieved no new content in months, or 11 million in book sales that require new physical titles every month to maintain?

As far as subscriber numbers go, you can go on the site and see how many have a subscription and have signed into the WOTC forums. That number has been about 80k for a long time now. And it's fairly reliable. But, it's also the low ballpark figure since it doesn't include anyone who doesn't go on the forums.

Like I said, I think that the days of "the D&D Book Club" are pretty much over. It's going to be subscription based services that is going to define the landscape going forward. DDI and Paizo have both proven that.

 

[Campbell]

The reason why this particular rabbit hole is not really worth going down has nothing to do with how well 4e sold. We don't get to live in a world where 4e never existed, and we don't get to push sales figures down any particular peoples throats in the effort to get them to stop liking the things they like. Businesses make decisions for all sorts of reasons - they even sometimes will kill a successful product line if they believe there is a reasonable chance that it will put them in a position to enable a more successful product line further down the road. Most businesses are not in the business of simply making a profit - the objective is to use your resources to make the most money possible. Sometimes the risks you take pan out and sometimes they don't.

All of the above is ultimately besides the point. The point is that no one here has more of a claim for their interests to be pursued than anyone else. Businesses need to look at the entire market and position a product that serves their customers' needs in the most profitable way possible. Sure, part of that means deciding which customers are worth keeping, but part of running a successful business includes not seeing things solely through past patterns. Past success is no guarantee of future success. Sometimes gambles work - sometimes they don't.

As fans it would do us some good to also take a moment and consider that maybe fighting these old fights isn't doing our community any good. Either we're going to like the new edition enough to spend money on it or we are not going to, and WotC will deal with the fallout of our decisions. Personally I'm not really excited about 5e's direction, but I respect it. I wish there was more of a drive for innovation and a stronger interest in more mathematically robust design, but I'm willing to cede that my interests might not align with their business goals. I'm willing to see what form the game ends up taking.

 

[Jester David]

The idea that print books are the way of the future is not really tenable IMO. I highly doubt that WOTC ever had the consistent income that it has with the DDI. Sure, one subscription is only 7 bucks, but, how much do you think WOTC got from a single book sale? At a guess, I'd say in terms of income for WOTC, a single DDI sub is similar to selling a single book every month.

Let's see, 1/5 of $40 is $8. So that's about what WotC gets per book. Minus development costs (writing, editing, art, layout, etc).
DDI is $5-7 depending on the subscription, but Digital River likely takes a chunk of that. They're not handling payment and customer service for free. And WotC still need to pay the same development costs for the magazines. Which should roughly be the same as a book given the amount of content in the magazines. (They might pay DDI freelancers less than book freelancers though.) But there's also the online tools, the staff that maintains and updates the tools, the server costs to host the magazines and e-tools, plus bandwidth.

So DDI likely works out to less than a poor selling book.
And it's uncertain how much DDI cannibalized books sales by making it easier to get content via the subscription than a hardback book.

Still nothing to laugh at. It's a nice chunk of money for sure. But not enough to sustain the department. And DDI only makes money so long as the game remains in the public's eye. If D&D stops being relevant the DDI money will dry up.

As far as subscriber numbers go, you can go on the site and see how many have a subscription and have signed into the WOTC forums. That number has been about 80k for a long time now. And it's fairly reliable. But, it's also the low ballpark figure since it doesn't include anyone who doesn't go on the forums.

Let's not get into that again. There's no way to know how reliable that figure is. It's done some wonky things in the past.

 

[Hussar]

I honestly think that you are very, very far off if you think WOTC sees 8 bucks for a 40 dollar book. I mean, distributer and retailer both get 100% markups, and you still haven't actually printed it yet. At a guess, I'd say that a 40 dollar book puts less than half what you think in their pockets. And that's still not counting the costs of developing the book in the first place.

And, note, your point about Digital River would not be based on a per sub pricing. It would be a flat fee - WOTC would pay them X dollars to handle the digital stuff, regardless of the number of subs. You can't really compare that way. It's not like Digital River is a retailer making profit from markup.

 

[sunshadow21]

On the DDI issue, one thing jumped out at me the second I tried it. It was very good for those who were already willing to invest and participate in 4E games and who are looking for 4E resources. It fails miserably as a marketing tool for newer players since the only way to know anything about it or the content on it was to actually go to WOTC's website, something not likely to happen without some kind of books and/or additional advertising to get the word out and visible to the general public. When it comes to marketing, books can to some degree market themselves, provided you can get them in a place where a lot of people will see them. This is why art is so important to rpg books; not only does it illustrate certain points within the book, but it doubles as advertising for the casual browser, giving you additional benefit for the cost of the art. It's no accident that Paizo still manages to sell books despite most of the printed content being available online; the artwork and the layout sell the books just as much as the words themselves. A pure web based presence would be near impossible to sustain at the same cost as a book based presence simply because it's so much harder to get enough people to actually come to and read your site long enough to secure a subscription. Also, you have to keep paying for servers and bandwidth or your customers lose access to everything; books, once the initial price is paid can keep generating attention for as long as people feel like looking at them for no additional cost.

Paizo's mixed approach is by far a more sound one than the DDI approach taken by WOTC. It feeds on the strengths of both mediums simultaneously, allowing each to strengthen the other, and the company's bottom line in the process, and relies as much on subscriptions as DDI does. DDI ended up cannabalizing book sales, negating whatever positives it may have provided; it didn't end up costing them money, I'm sure, and it probably did help support Next's development to some degree, but I seriously doubt that it reaped the benefits they were expecting, and it certainly didn't entirely make up for the lack of non-DDI products during the development period. In the end, subscriptions may well be the future, but the Paizo model is a lot more likely to be copied than the DDI model since it manages to embrace both the electronic medium and the traditional printed medium, which contrary to popular belief on the internet, is not going to go away anytime soon.

The OGL issue is actually very similar in the primary effect of cutting off cheap networking and advertising. The 4E license did a very good job of protecting WOTC's assets, but cut off a lot, and I do mean a lot, of comparatively cheap advertising that gave the 3rd edition, and d20 in general, such a wide word of mouth network. The OGL had holes, to be certain, and required a different type of business strategy than what WOTC was prepared for, but Paizo has shown that the holes can be filled in for the most part and that it's strengths can be emphasized so that its weaknesses have considerably less impact. WOTC's best bet for Next is to try some middle ground between the two extremes like Paizo has so that 3PPs feel like its beneficial for them to support Next just as much as they do PF.

In the end, the differences in the approaches and the net results that each company has gotten shows that long term support is indeed crucial, but, like others have stated, the nature of that support is critical. Paizo set up an environment that may have been a bit more expensive at first, but at this point is comparatively cheap to sustain, with 3PPs and a strong word of mouth network providing cheap and willing support and advertising for the many PF related product lines. WOTC chose a path that probably cost less upfront, but because they basically tried to do everything with very little to no outside support, sustaining 4E probably proved more costly than anticipated, and sustaining Next will have the same problem if they insist on going the same route. WOTC seems to rely on brand inertia carrying on forever and an ever flowing supply of rule splat books, which hasn't worked since late 3.5. Paizo relies just as much on new content, but the fact that it tends to be adventures and filling out their world rather than only new rules all the time greatly increases the value of the support given. Novels are actually a key player here in that WOTC has let this aspect of long term support wane, still relying on characters created during TSR's ownership of the brand, while Paizo seems to be doing a better job of keeping a good balance of sustaining older authors/characters and putting out new material at the same time.

 

[delericho]

Like I said, I think that the days of "the D&D Book Club" are pretty much over. It's going to be subscription based services that is going to define the landscape going forward. DDI and Paizo have both proven that.

Yep, I mostly agree with that, at least for games intended for long-term support. (Though Shadowrun and Star Wars may remain exceptions.)

However, the other model that I think is likely to have traction is the Kickstarter one: pitch the Core Rulebook for your game as your main goal, the rest the (fairly small) product line as stretch goals, and hopefully fund the whole thing up-front. But once that offering is all completed and released, you're basically done - there's probably very little money in a Kickstarter for "another 4 books for Numenera", or whatever.

But, yes, for D&D and Pathfinder, subscriptions are the future.