D&D 5E "Labels" and D&D Gaming

[S'mon]

Today, 35+ are very active in the market. But remember that the market research under discussion was done back in 1999. That's before the boom of 3e, and again of 5e. The diversity of 3rd party materials (both game rules and physical aids like custom dice and GM screens and all) didn't exist. The market was a different place.

The 35+ of then are the 55+ of today.

Good point - I wasn't buying stuff in 1999; 3e brought me back and really it was 4e (& Pathfinder accessories) started my whalish habits.

One huge source of expenditure these days is plastic minis; not a thing in 1999.

 

[Lanefan]

Because the over 30 crowd didn't buy D&D books. That's almost word for word what Dancey said.

Based on what evidence did he say that, however, if no research had yet been done?

 

[Oofta]

Based on what evidence did he say that, however, if no research had yet been done?

Well, there always seems to be an age bias in the marketing. They figure that after a certain age, people are set in their ways so therefore there's no reason to figure out what they want.

I personally prefer long campaigns myself, but then again I also like playing all levels.

 

[Lanefan]

Because that's a proportion with little market presence.

Most over 35s are happy playing the game they already have. They already have a favourite system and a shelf full of books to go with it. They don't particularly want to spend the time and effort to learn a new system. And this does double for anything outside core. I can imagine you buying the core three books of each new version of D&D. But I simply can't imagine you, with your stated tastes buying any source material in e.g. the Realms or Eberron. Or the Critical Role setting. You've got your own setting.

Perhaps,

But what will I consider buying, and not be alone in so doing? Simply put, anything that is or can be made system-agnostic. Adventure modules. Magic item and equipment guides. Setting material if it appeals to me (e.g. when the CR setting comes out I probably will give it a good long look).

Of course. One thing to remember about when it happened is that the least financially successful version of D&D was 2e, not 4e. It both got overtaken in sales by a rival (the World of Darkness) and was so unprofitable (unlike 4e which was raking in about six million dollars a year through DDI even after the launch of 5e) that it helped drive TSR to bankruptcy. WotC might have bought the biggest brand in tabletop roleplaying, but it had been an utter mess for years.

True, and though there were myriad reasons why TSR had gone belly-up let's leave those for another day.

People who'd stuck with 1e through 2e were people (like yourself) who'd probably stay with 1e going forward. They were happy with their game. And the 2e fans who bought everything would probably keep doing so as long as there weren't massive changes.

By and large yes, though (as you'll anecdotally see by looking around even just in here) many did jump from 1e-2e to 3e when it came out.

That said, and this has bugged me about WotC ever since they took over, why not market to all of us? Put out 3e (and later 4e and 5e) but keep supporting the older editions as well via conversion guides, edition-agnostic material and adventures (or more conversion guides!), and so forth.

When 3e came out they dropped the TSR editions like hot potatoes. Then, rather incredibly (and IMO rather foolishly) they even more blatantly did the same to 3e when they released 4e. They've done the same with 4e on releasing 5e but at least they weren't so up-front about it.

But the other huge issue WotC had was that in the late 90s D&D was the old person's RPG.

So market to the old people!

The popular RPG among teenagers and 20-somethings was Vampire: the Masquerade. WotC's two goals were to keep the 2e spenders (they spent money) and to win back the teenagers and 20-somethings (they spent money). They had data on what sold for 2e (player facing splatbooks) but needed more on what people were playing instead of D&D.

The splatbooks sold in large part because they and some settings were all TSR had out there to buy. Meanwhile those other games had new core books to sell.

In part they did that. I don't know if the over 35s cutoff came before or after an initial scan of the results.

This is a very good point, and something I'd never considered.

So now my questions are these: what would the results have looked like had all the data been included; and does the full data set still exist anywhere such that those results could be generated if they don't already exist?

That's ... not my experience. But I live in London, and people move around in London. A year or two is normal and people move away for jobs. Also a group I was part of that lasted 25 years had campaigns for a couple of years.

Yeah, London is a completely different environment than the small city I'm in.

And because 1e sets things up for the very long haul that way. Apocalypse World sets itself up for 6-12 session campaign - with significant character arcs in that time and possibly rewriting the world (which was created fresh and collaboratively for the campaign). In Pathfinder it took us about a year to get up to a level in the mid teens.

I'd just barely be getting settled in to a 6-12 session campaign before it'd be over.

PF has lightning-fast level advancement by my standards, as do 3e-4e-5e. I'd spend half my time trying to figure out what my character could do, just get it sorted, then have to do it all again because I'd bumped.

Financially if you are still playing 1e you are. It's a game that has been basically out of print for 30 years (yes I know about the recent deluxe editions). WotC is a business.

Out of print for 30 years now, sure, but at the time of the survey it had been OOP for less than ten years and still had a fairly strong player base.

Financially, if I'm a company I want to market to everyone I can, not just to a select group.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

Financially, if I'm a company I want to market to everyone I can, not just to a select group.

You still need to pick a priority demographic to focus your marketing towards. Part of being a distinctive brand or a product line within that brand is having a core consimer base with a distinct identity that your product caters towards.

 

[Lanefan]

Honestly, @Lanefan, you've got it backwards. They didn't design 3e to run 1 year campaigns and then market 1 year campaigns. They learned, through the market research that was done before 3e was designed, what some people were actually doing at the table.

I took the liberty of inserting the bolded word into your quote, to make it more factual.

Let's not forget, prior to that WotC market research, no one had that slightest clue. There was no market research done. At all. As mind boggling as that is, it's still true. No one had the slightest clue what the "average" gamer did.

All very true.

That's why they did that market research. To find out what the average gamer who was going to buy books (and that's the important caveat) did. Which revealed that D&D was largely a suburban phenomenon primarily geared towards young men in their teens and early to mid twenties. That's where the largest buying block was.

We'll never know, unless the raw data of all responses to the survey is still out there somewhere.

But I'm a cynical SOB particularly when it comes to business, and as such it's my contention that WotC very much saw short campaigns as a means of encouraging DM turnover and thus - as a DM on average buys something like 4 to 5 times what a player buys - a means of increasing mid-to-long term sales; and so they geared both their research results and their game design toward this end.

 

[Lanefan]

Today, 35+ are very active in the market. But remember that the market research under discussion was done back in 1999.

Actually the research itself was done in more like 97-98, wasn't it? The report came out in 99.

That's before the boom of 3e, and again of 5e. The diversity of 3rd party materials (both game rules and physical aids like custom dice and GM screens and all) didn't exist. The market was a different place.

Yes and no. Even then there were many 3rd-party materials (though not including rules as those hadn't been opened up yet) on the market - dice, screens, play aids, (metal) minis, etc. - though that market was catering to various games rather than primarily D&D.

 

[MoonSong]

By and large yes, though (as you'll anecdotally see by looking around even just in here) many did jump from 1e-2e to 3e when it came out.

That said, and this has bugged me about WotC ever since they took over, why not market to all of us? Put out 3e (and later 4e and 5e) but keep supporting the older editions as well via conversion guides, edition-agnostic material and adventures (or more conversion guides!), and so forth.

When 3e came out they dropped the TSR editions like hot potatoes. Then, rather incredibly (and IMO rather foolishly) they even more blatantly did the same to 3e when they released 4e. They've done the same with 4e on releasing 5e but at least they weren't so up-front about it.

At the time WotC was still trying to make sense of what made TSR flounder. Beyond just mismanagement, they came to the conclusion that TSR had been severely unfocused when it came to marketing and knowing their audience. Remember, they still supported both lines (Basic and Advanced) for about three years, between 1997 and 2000, so it wasn't an overnight thing.

In the end they needed to have a single Dungeons and Dragons game with a clear and focused brand. Continuing support for older edition would have muddied that brand.

Financially, if I'm a company I want to market to everyone I can, not just to a select group.

They had to pick whatever made business sense to them. TSR's demise showed them they had to focus their marketing, just like 4e showed them they shouldn't laser focus it.

It is a balance game between growing the audience and pleasing the hardcore fans. Not many new players, the core audience shrinks and ages away. Not enough support from the core audience, you just lose a ton of money.

 

[billd91]

Because the over 30 crowd didn't buy D&D books. That's almost word for word what Dancey said.

IF he said that, he was being stupid because it biases the study. But I doubt he ever said it. His document stated they selected the 12 to 35 age range to keep the study manageable and based on their internally determined probable market. He dangled the idea of doing a broader survey of the whole market, indicating at least a recognition that the picture of the market they were building was incomplete.

He made a big deal about TSR failing because of not knowing its market and then they pretty much cocked it up with their big study... at least the one they touted.

 

[Hussar]

Based on what evidence did he say that, however, if no research had yet been done?

You're presuming that they only ever did one study? That no preliminary research was done? That they just picked numbers out of a hat?

That's just mind bogglingly stupid if true.

Or, could it simply be that older gamers slow down their buying? I dunno, seems pretty likely to me.