Is the Split a Bad Thing?

[billd91]

Good or bad depends a lot on perspective. I can't see the split being good from WotC's perspective. That's market share lost for the foreseeable future. It's a qualified good for Paizo because it has been driving growth, but it still might have been better in the long term to serve as support for a single, unified monolith. The split is both good and bad for fans of 3.5 because there is ongoing support for a compatible game, yet it's not an exact fit and, worse, the product identity stayed with the new D&D edition giving it a big leg up on recruitment of new players.

While I love what Paizo has done with Pathfinder and play 4e unenthusiastically because I don't like it much, I think the split is a bad thing overall and has been a sharp blow to the D&D community.

 

[scruffygrognard]

Personally, it's a good thing. More flavors of D&D getting supported gives me (as a buyer) more options to choose from or avoid.

While I wish that the last two versions of D&D still held any interest for me, I can console myself by buying interesting D&D-variants like the Pathfinder Beginner Box or Adventurer, Conquerer, King.

Like others have said, I do think diluting the brand (and, consequently, the customer base) is very bad news for WotC and those small publishers looking to hitch their wagon to the official version of the game.

 

[S'mon]

The current split seems good for the hobby -there is a richer variety of games & stuff available than 5 years ago. I can't really see any way it's a bad thing, except possibly for WoTC, if it means less sales for them. Personally I've spent far more on WoTC 4e material than I ever spent on WoTC 3e material, but I don't know how typical that is.

Edit: The split in 2008 when WoTC dropped the OGL also helped drive continuing growth in the OSR; again more games, which I find to be a good thing.

 

[haakon1]

The split is both good and bad for fans of 3.5 because there is ongoing support for a compatible game, yet it's not an exact fit and, worse, the product identity stayed with the new D&D edition giving it a big leg up on recruitment of new players.

As a 3.5 DM who doesn't like 4e, if the choice is split or all 4e, then the split is good.

If the choice is continue 3.5 or split, obviously I would have preferred the former, since 3.5e is at best "pinning for the fjords" at this point.

While I love what Paizo has done with Pathfinder and play 4e unenthusiastically because I don't like it much, I think the split is a bad thing overall and has been a sharp blow to the D&D community.

I agree.

 

[Tymophil]

The split is a very bad thing in France...

D&D4 is no longer translated. Playfactory that held the license dropped out.
Pathfinder is so badly translated in my language that it seems to be translated into a third language.

So there is no D&D in French anymore in the shops.

When I try to introduce new players to the hobby, I use Microlite20, and its nice translation from the Scriptorium.

It is also a bad thing because, there are very few amateur scenarios available for D&D4. For years, I found that those scenarios were the best around. Now, I am stuck with my own stuff. It is fine for me, as a Dungeon Master, but it is bad if I want to draw new people to the hobby on the DM side of the screen, especially young people.

 

[El Mahdi]

Is it a bad thing? Yes

Did it have to be a bad thing? No

Ok, there's been more than enough pixels spent claiming that the RPG community is split by the existence of competing versions of D&D.

I don't accept this premise. I do not believe that the RPG community is split due to the existence of competing versions. The RPG community is split due to the way in which those competing versions were introduced and implemented, and the way in which they were supported.

It was not predestined that the community was going to be split. WotC could have avoided 99% of these problems by making DDI inclusive to all editions. And before anyone goes there, the idea that WotC would have hurt themselves by competing against themselves is just crap. The proof is right in our faces. A DDI that had support for all editions (in the form of character, npc, and encounter builders, along with rules compendiums and sales of electronic books), would have kept a revenue stream coming in from players of all editions, not just the currently supported one. It would have also provided a place for fans of different editions to mingle together, possibly even playing in eachothers games (even though not eachothers preferred systems) and maybe even leading to sales of new edition materials to those that wouldn't have otherwise bought them. And I think it would have had the added benefit of nullifying most of the edition warring right from the start. Sure, some edition warring is always going to be present, but the level of diviseveness would have been significantly less than what we have now. A lot of that goes towards the bad mouthing that WotC themselves did concerning past editions. Utter foolishness.

My question is, is this a bad thing?

I think both Morrus and Umbran answered this well. Parts of this have been bad, parts good. I do however think the net gain in players was mostly insignificant compared to the number of current gamers. The divisiveness between players I think is a bad thing. Part of that is self induced, as Umbran said. But much of that was generated by WotC themself, which was a monumentally foolish thing.

All in all though, I'd say it's mostly negative. Especially in relation to how this could have been if dealt with respectfully and inclusively. If it had been implemented that way, I believe it would have been almost all positive.

My question to everyone is, is the split a bad thing? Have we wound up with two companies making half as much money...

IMO: Yes.

or do we have two companies making decent profit, where before we only had one?

Complete data here is almost impossible for us to know. We have some hard data, but not enough. So all we have are educated guesses and opinion.

My opinion: We still have only one company making decent profit (Paizo), and one that isn't (WotC, but only on the D&D brand).* But those are still qualified opinions. Paizo is making decent profit in comparison to what Paizo used to make. They've grown compared to where they were before Pathfinder, but they are not the size of WotC (just my opinion though). I also believe that the D&D division of WotC is a mere shadow of what it used to be. And that's a loss for everybody.

*(Based on each companies business expectations. Paizo's expectations were probably significantly less than what they achieved. WotC's expectations were likely much larger than what they've actually achieved.)

As I look, DDI Insider has 66615 members, up from just over 60k when I joined in September (a 10% growth in 4 months isn't bad). And that's just confirmed subs - the actual number could easily be in the 100 k range. Again, a pretty solid base for an RPG company.

I'm glad that DDI is doing respectably well. And also glad that it has increased. I am however quite saddened by those numbers as I believe that if a philosophy of inclusiveness had been imparted from the start, those numbers may be much higher. Even if the real numbers are more like 100,000, I believe DDI may have been more in the range of 300,000 to 500,000 if inclusiveness had been the watchword. All in all, I feel that's a loss for both WotC and D&D's fans.

Or to put it another way, do we have a situation where we had a sort of asexual reproduction of D&D, fissioning into two entities that are now growing into full size?

I don't believe so. There's currently no synergy being generated due to a lack of cooperation. As seperate, non-inclusive entities, I don't believe much growth is in the cards. They are probably about as big as they can get. Inclusiveness would have made the sum much larger than it's parts. In the current situation, such synergy is impossible.

If WotC's philosophy towards support of D&D changed to one of inclusiveness, I believe that synergy would generate a new golden age for D&D, including Pathfinder, and for all RPG's in general.

If the release and implementation of 5E is the same as for 4E, it won't matter if they've created the Holy Grail of systems - it will just be more of the same. More fracturing, more diviseveness, and even smaller pieces of pie for everyone.

 

[Rechan]

If you're not in a gamer-rich environment, it's not good. When you have trouble getting 5 people together, you can easily have 2 people who want edition X, two who won't touch edition Z, and one who roles his eyes at edition Y. And that's before you get into playstyle etc.

 

[delericho]

delericho - which evidence are you thinking of? As I said in the OP, we've got Paizo talking about strong sales with healthy growth. We have evidence that the DDI is healthy and strong (even going by 65k sub's, we're looking at a steady income of several hundred thousand dollars a month).

What evidence is there that overal sales are falling?

The evidence is that both companies are doing okay, as you (and, indeed, I) said.

 

[Argyle King]

I've noticed a lot of comments have been based around the health of WoTC and Paizo. As the current sales leaders, I understand that.

However, I'm curious how others view the health of the hobby as a whole since the 'split.' I feel that while it may be bad for D&D that the split is good for the hobby, the community, and the prospect of attracting new people to the hobby overall.

 

[Elf Witch]

I think only time will tell if the split has been bad for the hobby. I to have seen the issue of not being able to find players who want to play the same edition.

Even if Pazio had not come out with Pathifinder I don't think more people would have gone to 4E. The reason people looked for something else is that 4E didn't give them the DnD experience they wanted.

So those people would have either just kept playing an older edition or found a different system.

The 3.5 people who switched to Pathfinder are at least spending money on the hobby.

I think WOTC has learned a lesson and that is people won't just switch because it is DnD if the game changes to much. I also think WOTC made a poor decision to not at least allow the DDI to support older editions and have PDFs available of older editions. I know their logic was if we do that people won't switch to the new edition. The problem with that is that a lot of people did not switch and they lost a revenue stream.