Licensing, OGL and Getting D&D Compatible Publishers Involved

[Umbran]

Of course we don't have real data, everybody is a privately held company, but the distributors survey is hardly a small percentage of the market as it's WoTC's primary selling method.

It may be their primary method of selling printed rulebooks. But we don't know how much they get in DDI revenue.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

You make it sound like a world with Pathfinder, and Mutants and Masterminds, and Spycraft, et.al. is a bad thing overall. You're perfect world would do away with a lot of things I like and strikes me as being rather lacking therefore. For me, the OGL has made the world, at least the gaming portion of it, a better place overall, with more opportunity, a greater gaming base, and a richness of variety.

The world is a better place when innovation occurs, but most innovation is built off of the ideas and work of others. Ideally, things like the OGL speeds up the innovation in gaming, rather than hinder it. When every company has to reinvent the wheel, so to speak, you are making a lot of unnecessary work and hindering the development of ideas.

I think pathfinder is the only one that actively makes the world worse for me (and even then it is by a very small amount) on the other hand I think true 20, and Mutants and Masterminds got better the farther they went from d20...

I don't want 30 different variants of D&D on the market, I would rather the 5-7 great makers of games come up with there own system...

 

[Warbringer]

It may be their primary method of selling printed rulebooks. But we don't know how much they get in DDI revenue.

True, but we can estimate based on subscription rates, montly and yearly rates, and some assumptions about the likelyhood that subs are actually payers and get a range of 5-8mm a year.

Not perfect, but probably decent for magnitude .

 

[Mistwell]

Advantages to Wizards:
1) greater exposure. Which is better

Their greater exposure is going to come through a new D&D cartoon, two new D&D movies, and a pretty big national media advertising campaign. Those things dwarf any exposure from tiny third party publishers so much it's essentially meaningless.

2) Larger pool of designers that are highly experienced with your game to choose from.

Money does this far better than anything else.

3) Higher sales ... indirectly. Here's the science of the OGL: You play a game, you get bored and move onto something else. But if you have a large pool of options for that game, you are more likely to stick with it that game.

I've heard this argument before, but I've never seen any evidence it actually bears fruit that way.

I really don't think there is a strong profits-based case in favor of the OGL for WOTC.

 

[Mistwell]

I call strawman.

Pathfinder was outselling 4e before 5e was announced.

It really wasn't. People making that argument were not counting DDI subscriptions, and yet the bulk of the WOTC sales model was focused on that. Once you add back in digital subscriptions from both companies, 4e and legacy 3e sales were outselling Pathfinder at the time.

That does not however mean 4e was doing well. From Hasbro standards, I think it was underperforming, and that is one motivating factor behind 5e.

 

[Mistwell]

Of course we don't have real data, everybody is a privately held company, but the distributors survey is hardly a small percentage of the market as it's WoTC's primary selling method.

The DDI was their primary selling method. They'd already gone from a hardcopy-based system to a digital-based system.

 

[Wicht]

It really wasn't. People making that argument were not counting DDI subscriptions, and yet the bulk of the WOTC sales model was focused on that. Once you add back in digital subscriptions from both companies, 4e and legacy 3e sales were outselling Pathfinder at the time.

If you say so, but color me skeptical.

The ratio of DDI profitability to Pathfinder Subscription profitability is conjecture for most of us. And there is no good way of non-insiders counting the number of PDFs Paizo sells either, so I just put that all as mostly a wash that is unknowable. I look elsewhere for my tea leaves and settle on book sales as the best measure an outside observer can use to make an educated guess. All the evidence points to Pathfinder books outselling 4e books at the time. Anecdotal evidence from a variety of sources strongly indicated that Pathfinder's popularity was beginning to outpace 4e's popularity even before the announcement of 5e. WotC was, to all outward appearances, floundering for a way to stabilize the brand before they finally threw in the towel and announced a new edition. I just can't believe that if WotC was happy with the performance of 4e (DDI included) they would have moved on to 5e like they have. 4e gave the appearance of a slowly sinking ship, crippled by a variety of factors and unable to regain steam. That assessment could be way of the mark, and maybe DDI subscriptions were a panacea of profit that WotC simply decided to discard because of whimsical caprice. But I doubt it.

 

[Mistwell]

If you say so, but color me skeptical.

I was basing it on pretty extensive analysis done before, but it's not positive. Which is why, ultimately, the answer is "we don't know".

So, to be clear, you admit you're not sure as well, right? That's what "skeptical" means, right?

Do you plan to continue to make firm statements in the future that you're positive Pathfinder was outselling 4e at the time, next time this comes up?

I'd love it for this aspect of edition warring to end. If we could all just say "we don't know", and leave it at that. But, that seems to be a hopeless desire at this point. I'm guilty of it as well. But, it's not a good habit.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I just can't believe that if WotC was happy with the performance of 4e (DDI included) they would have moved on to 5e like they have.

My brother in law always new my sister was what we called a 'bad student' as a kid.... when we went through some old files and found mine and her old report cards he looked and couldn't figure out why we called her that. She had 2 in the mid seventies, 2 in the low eighties and 3 classes in the mid eightis... My brother in law said if he or his brothers brought that report card home they would throw a party and say it was the best ever...

So we then showed him me and my brother the same year all had in the ninties... to us in my family it was a bad students report card, and it was better then he or his brothers ever had...

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I'd love it for this aspect of edition warring to end. If we could all just say "we don't know", and leave it at that. But, that seems to be a hopeless desire at this point. I'm guilty of it as well. But, it's not a good habit.

I even tried in my first post to say no one knows I just don't belive it... and I still found myself argueing