Love the Game, Hate the Marketing

[The Little Raven]

Mourn , that was a well-thought out post. I disagree with you on the OGL, but it's clear that you understand it.

Thanks. Good to see we can disagree without misunderstandings.

I'm sorry about the sniping comment.

*shrug* It happens. I don't come onto the internet expecting to win popularity contests or hoping to make boatloads of new friends. I come to express my opinion, to take in other opinions, and discuss. I'm usually pretty strident which leads some people to doubt the sincerity of my arguments, because they think I'm just arguing for it's own sake.

I'm in game software development (which has a lot of parallels with RPG development), so I tend to view things in a manner very similar to the developers themselves, which is why I'm often found on their side, defending "dubious" decisions and whatnot. I'm a big proponent of Open Source Software, but a little more leery when it comes to RPGs (I was 100% behind the OGL initially, then my support waned over the years as I saw problems with it's "stated intentions" versus what actually happened with it).

 

[The Little Raven]

Well, I haven't seen the GSL yet, but they've renamed it due to 'Open' being a misnomer, and it's been said that it will be cast in such a way as to make complete games such as Conan and Spycraft impossible.

Well, they also renamed it so that people couldn't try and use an old version of the OGL with it, thus avoiding the changes that WotC wanted to make to it while also including additional value with the ability to put "Compatible with Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition" directly onto your products (something they discussed in the panel and mentions by Le Rouse, though it might be different in the final license). Whereas the d20 logo didn't really mean much, a modified D&D logo will mean a lot more to people.

I think Dancey was right about the whole 'network externality' thing. And I base that partially on my own experience.

Oh, I agree there. I've found it easier to find people for D&D than any other game, because of the network of people that know D&D (even if they don't play it all the time).

 

[Piratecat]

...And you're done. Thanks for stopping by and providing the epic fail of the evening, but now it's time for you to go. Complaining about word usage is the place people go to when they don't have real things to complain about.

Actually, you're done. See you in three days, and look for an email from me.

Folks, discuss without being rude.

 

[tomBitonti]

People are talking about an unreleased product 5 months before it exists. That's pretty good marketing.

So ... that's not a valid conclusion.

People would be talking about the product no matter what. The question should be more how positive is the buzz compared with how positive the buzz could be (or could have been).

I present the thesis as that the buzz is much less positive than it could have been.

Edit: So ... I should be a bit more careful about that. The difficulty is deciding how to measure the success of the marketing. Measuring the response of a subset of the market is only a partial indicator on the overall success of the marking, and the overall success is what matters. I, at least, don't have a very clear idea of the overall response, and am having a hard time even quantifying the market.

 

[JohnSnow]

So ... that's not a valid conclusion.

People would be talking about the product no matter what. The question should be more how positive is the buzz compared with how positive the buzz could be (or could have been).

I present the thesis as that the buzz is much less positive than it could have been.

Based on what? There's no way to determine how positive the buzz could have been.

Marketing is about controlling and dominating perception. You can change perception of a product, but if nobody knows about it, you're totally screwed. Some sure ways to penetrate the public consciousness about something are to generate excitement, mystery or controversy. That's because nobody can have an informed opinion until they see the finished product. So far, with the marketing of 4E, they've done all three.

I'd say they're doing a good job.

 

[tomBitonti]

Based on what? There's no way to determine how positive the buzz could have been.

Marketing is about controlling and dominating perception. You can change perception of a product, but if nobody knows about it, you're totally screwed. Some sure ways to penetrate the public consciousness about something are to generate excitement, mystery or controversy. That's because nobody can have an informed opinion until they see the finished product. So far, with the marketing of 4E, they've done all three.

I'd say they're doing a good job.

Ya, I put in an edit, but not quickly enough.

I do stand by my initial statement. Maybe it's good marketing, maybe not. Using just the number of viewers as a metric, the absolute number of viewers is not the right metric. We have to look at the difference between the number of viewers given the marketing as is, and the estimated number of viewers given no marketing at all, or given a different marketing strategy.

To add detail: Suppose you are currently pursing marketing strategy X, and have a market response of M(X), where a larger value of M(X) is better than a smaller value. You want to measure the effectiveness of X. Let O be a "minimal" or null strategy, and let Y be a competing strategy. You would be looking at M(O) and M(Y), and the difference between these and M(X). Somewhere you would throw in the cost of X, 0, and Y. The key point is that it's the difference that matters.

 

[Ander00]

I can't say I particularly like how it's being marketed, but then again I would've been on board with a fourth edition even before it was announced, so any mystery or controversy isn't really to my benefit. All in all, even though it doesn't please me how it's being done, I wouldn't call the marketing ineffectual.


cheers

 

[Incenjucar]

I'm hoping that, once the rules are released, and the older edition players have chosen whether or not they can play, they open up the marketing to new groups.

 

[Kaodi]

I'm just disappointed there was no debate about my shirt.

There was nothing to debate, my dear. Your exceptionally taste in attire robbed us of the opportunity for disagreement.

 

[Warbringer]

Some people seem to think that any employee of any company that says anything about a product is automatically involved in marketing...

OK, I am a marketer, and I can't tell you how much time and money my department spends trying to teach people that if you are affiliated wit a the company and talk about the company products you are marketing them, hence watch what you say. Also, I've fireed people for releasing any unapproved communications on products in development, good or bad...

Is Ari an employee? .. no, but he's affiliated by way of being a freelancer

Are other playtesters employees? .. for the most part no, but they are affiliated by way of the NDA.

Scott said it himself, as marketers they'd be nuts to let people become detractors while the product is still in development and their opinions without product to counter them carries far to much weight.

That said, Ari and John's opinions are biased towards 4adv because they have commented only the positive, but I bet you 17c the positive outweigh the negatives by a long shot.

To Ari, John, Scott (who rumor now has it wears a bullet proof vest) thanks for posting on the playtests.