KQ interview with J. Goodman

[kitsune9]

Link

Goodman explains some of the recent comments he has made regarding 4e sales, which caused a decent amount of debate on our little site.

An interesting read for sure.

Cheers

Interesting article. Thanks for providing.

 

[Mark]

Regardless, the point of it being specifically purchasing highlights an important point: your relevance as a D&D player to companies making this stuff is based on how willing you are to buy stuff. If you are already satisfied with your current collection, you have written yourself out of the equation of relevance. Still, in theory this shouldn't matter because, after all, you're satisfied with your collection. Mr. Goodman is, if nothing else, a very savvy business man and has rightly detected the correlation between internet user posts and resulting purchases/non-purchases (ie: nearly unrelated).

Generally speaking, that argument only holds water if the people not buying your stuff (you being a publisher) aren't buying anything and have no money, which is generally untrue. If you could find a way to win over the people currently uninterested in your stuff so that they would spend their money on your stuff, you would. Their relevance doesn't decrease with your inability to capture them as customers. Note that he doesn't actually claim that customers at FLGSs aren't split, just that retailers are satisfied and some players are excited.

 

[BryonD]

Mr. Goodman is, if nothing else, a very savvy business man and has rightly detected the correlation between internet user posts and resulting purchases/non-purchases (ie: nearly unrelated).

So why did Necromancer run into the issues that Clark recently posted about?

To me it is a simple issue of Joesph's savvy including being in exactly the right niche for sales to the 4E market.



Separately, has there EVER been any claim by anyone that 3E is selling as well now as 4E is selling now??? It seems a total red herring argument point to me. Is this where the lines are now being drawn? Congratulations to 4E, the 1 year old game is outselling the 10 year old out-of-print game.



I agreed with 90% of what he said. But I thought pointing at game stores as some kind of proof that the divide is purely an on-line phenomena was silly. Particularly as game stores continue to dwindle and die and be less and less a part of the overall market.

I very much agree that 4E has tapped into a lot of new players. And that certainly off-sets the divide to some degree. It remains to be seen when these new fad gamers will start spending money month after month and how many will have moved on to some other fad within the next couple years. Being an easy grab-and-go game is a double-edged sword.

 

[Badwe]

Yes, there have been numerous threads every time there is even a hint that the amazon sales ranks tip in favor of 3.5 over 4e (even when it turns out to not be true), so people really are questioning that 3.5 is outselling 4e. It is one of the many reasons threads like this - where people alternate between questioning how profitable someone running a business REALLY is and then criticizing them for trying to be more profitable- become tiresome..

As for wotc's ability to win people over, it's all about how willing they are to be won over. If someone is a gamer with very specific tastes, extremely discerning in the quality of a book, and unwilling to buy any book or other product if it A) costs the slightest bit too much or B) fails to meet the specific tastes or exacting standards, it is EXTREMELY hardto market to that gamer. Even if the argument is that these new players are so fad driven that they will shrivel away as quickly as they come (an argument with even LESS factual support than other arguments in this thread), the savvy gamer would be competing with the fad market for ability to appeal to. The savvy gamer would have to show that the effort to consistently appeal to them is a better return on investment than just searching for a new fad to cater to. If this new audience is not, in fact, driven exclusively by fad markets but is a new demographic that consistently spends more money, then the previous set of gamers will have become completely edged out.

WotC and goodman are a business. Goodman has the guts to admit what nobody else will: he makes what sells. He accepts, and doesn't belabor, that what he prefers is not what sells. If you are someone who considers that kind of attitude a flaw or even unacceptable, congratulations! you might not be worth making products to appeal to.

edit: forgot to complete one of my sentences.

 

[Jack99]

I find it ironic that Mr. Goodman is one of 4E's biggest supporters despite the fact that he perfers earlier editions of D&D.

I think it's been a while since you could make a decent buck of 1e

 

[Mark]

ultimately the order of magnitude argument is one that would probably be doubted by avid 3.5 fans/4e unfans even if he spelled it out to the penny. This should give you an idea of my skepticism towards their skepticism.

Yes, there have been numerous threads every time there is even a hint that the amazon sales ranks tip in favor of 3.5 over 4e (even when it turns out to not be true), so people really are questioning that 3.5 is outselling 4e. It is one of the many reasons threads like this - where people alternate between questioning how profitable someone running a business REALLY is and then criticizing them for trying to be more profitable- become tiresome.

WotC and goodman are a business. Goodman has the guts to admit what nobody else will: he makes what sells. He accepts, and doesn't belabor, that what he prefers is not what sells. If you are someone who considers that kind of attitude a flaw or even unacceptable, congratulations! you might not be worth making products to appeal to.

I'm not seeing who in this thread you seem to believe you are debating. Could you please quote people's posts for the above arguments? I'm afraid you've lost me.

 

[ggroy]

I think it's been a while since you could make a decent buck of 1e

Even during the days of 2E AD&D, some of my friends who were hardcore 1E AD&D fans (who were not interested in 2E at all), still continued buying new modules and fluff-heavy/crunch-lite splatbooks over the 2E era. 2E stuff was relatively easy to change back to 1E, such as converting back the THAC0 numbers for example. Several friends continued on buying many "new" 2E Forgotten Realms splats + modules and the few "new" 2E Greyhawk modules released, for use in their 1E AD&D games.

So even with a new edition (ie. 2E AD&D), some hardcore fans of the previous edition (ie. 1E AD&D) were still buying a lot of "new" edition stuff for their previous edition games.

This time around, it would be interesting to see how many hardcore 3E/3.5E fans are buying 4E splatbooks and/or adventure modules for use in their 3E/3.5E games. (I haven't tried converting any 4E modules to the 3.5E ruleset).

 

[Jack99]

Even during the days of 2E AD&D, some of my friends who were hardcore 1E AD&D fans (who were not interested in 2E at all), still continued buying new modules and fluff-heavy/crunch-lite splatbooks over the 2E era. 2E stuff was relatively easy to change back to 1E, such as converting back the THAC0 numbers for example. Several friends continued on buying many "new" 2E Forgotten Realms splats + modules and the few "new" 2E Greyhawk modules released, for use in their 1E AD&D games.

So even with a new edition (ie. 2E AD&D), some hardcore fans of the previous edition (ie. 1E AD&D) were still buying a lot of "new" edition stuff for their previous edition games.

I am not sure why you quoted me.

 

[ggroy]

I am not sure why you quoted me.

I was commenting on how it was possible to make a buck from 1E players, for many years after 1E fell by the wayside.

 

[Hazard_53188]

I find Joseph Goodman's interview quite interesting especially since my personal spending habits are well reflected in it.

I spent quite a bit on 3rd edition when it first came out and I spend quite a bit less on 4th edition now but that has nothing to do with the relative strengths and quality of the two editions.

3rd edition was a "perfect storm" for me. It came at a time when I had loads of disposable income and after years of playing the same OoP edition (1st), I was receptive, ready for a new edition and excited about playing on a supported edition again. All the 3rd party products available added to the excitement and I found myself buying way more than I could possible use.

When 4th edition came out, I was still receptive but had come to the realization that with 3rd edition I had bought way too much so I decided to take it easy this time around.

But had 4th edition not been released, Wizards wouldn't have gotten any more money from me since I had already stopped buying 3rd edition for a couple years.

So, this is my long winded way of saying I understand when he talks about the early spike of 3rd edition sales and I can also understand why it may not be happening for 4th edition.