Marketing criticisms miss the point

[amethal]

When I was at Wizards of the Coast, the company had an uncanny ability to squander and overlook this audience,

But that's all changed since you left ...

 

[DaveMage]

If he bought them all, then no one could have bought more.

Yep.

 

[delericho]

Even after reading his post I still don't understand what Wizards could have done differently...

What could Wizards have done better? All IMO, of course:

1) They could have talked less about how 3e sucked (the phrase "if 3e encounter design actually worked" comes to mind as the most notable example). That very quickly became obnoxious, not least because it utterly failed to line up with my experiences with the system.

2) They could have cut the attitude in general. Everything from suggesting we should just end our ongoing campaigns and start over, to comments about cloud watching came across as being overly authoritarian and arrogant.

3) Too much use of 'cool', 'awesome' and 'knock-down drag-out fight'.

4) Very recently, there was the gloating that they'd got the books and we don't. That was annoying.

5) They should have done what they said they were going to do with the GSL, not say one thing, then change their minds, then delay, delay, delay, and finally deliver... oh, wait, they haven't yet, have they?

6) They very definately should have delivered what they said they were going to deliver with eDragon and eDungeon. By now there should be, what, 9 issues of each of these 'monthly' magazines. How many have we actually had? (Yes, after a couple of months they said they were cutting back, but that's still not delivering what they first said they would.)

7) And then there's the D&D Insider. The less said about that, the better.

The funny thing is, they've produced a very good game. But the marketing had me fully expecting a train-wreck, and everything that's peripheral to the game itself seems to be made of FAIL at the moment.

 

[xechnao]

Yep.

I see your problem here. A better series model dealing with this would be a solid core regarding rules and the rest of products focused on adventures. Like Paizo seems to want to do for example.

Of course the D&D design model has been such that is based on providing the needed complexity by plethora of different builds on simplistic rules (library model) rather than achieving the same by slight build variations on more full and complete rules (true game design model). I believe this is both due to competency reasons (it is harder to build a fun game with complexity not based on libraries) and legacy reasons: how D&D developed and what it came to be.

The solution to this problem -if the market cares to solve it- would be that Wotc or someone with the marketing power of similar magnitude made a really good and attractive fantasy game designed like this. But I would not hold my breath

So, I guess your frustration here is and most probably will be just considered as a side-effect.

 

[Shazman]

For those who don't know ex WotC staffer JD Wiker had a post in his blog where he said that he isn't going to play 4e because WotC botched the marketing but everyone should check out 4e anyway. (I would link to it but A) I don't know how and B) it's on the Enworld front page).

While I applaud Mr. Wiker's willingness to be open minded and to remind everyone to be as open minded as he is I have to admit that I'm confused as to why he would stop playing a game because the marketing was botched.

First of all I'm not even sure I agree it was botched. This is clearly a situation where the fans are so divided nothing can really appease them. If Wizards had come out with 3.75 as some suggest it would have been met with just as much anger as 4e's arrival. Had they called it 4e but not changed all that much people would be just as angry. Wizards could have continued to produce 3.x books but only for so long, maybe a year more tops, before they've ran out of ideas for sourcebooks people would buy.

Even after reading his post I still don't understand what Wizards could have done differently to sell 4e to a fanbase where half of us want to kill sacred cows in order to make what we hope will be a better system and the other half would rather find a way to keep the sacred cows at any cost and improve the system around them. Short of releasing two versions of D&D at the same time (call one D&D: SCI*) or closing the D&D line I don't know what they could have done.

WotC certainly made mistakes. I'll agree with you there, but to say there's one perfect way to run it that would have avoided all this hate is sort of missing the point I think.

Yet even if I agree they botched the marketing I especially don't understand why you wouldn't play a game you would otherwise play because it was marketed poorly. I don't understand. Maybe someone can explain it to me. I know a lot of movies that could have used better marketing but that I love immensely and I know movies with great marketing that i hated. I don't see making a decision about a game like this based on marketing. Can someone help me understand?

*Sacred Cows Intact

I guess you missed the part of the article about how 4E wasn't his thing becasue of all of the D&D staples they changed. If he wants to not play the game because of the horrible marketing, and the butchering of so many sacred cows, that's his right. The marekting of 4E went far beyond poor. They attacked 3.5 and the types of games 3.5 fans played repeatedly. A lot of text from their excerpts, editorials, blogs, and playtest reports were devoted to bashing 3.5 followed by saying "This is so much better in 4E. We can't tell you why, just trust us." That space would have been put to better use showcasing the good points of 4E. The marketing was insulting and condescending to many fans. That's as good a reason as any not to support the company.

 

[xechnao]

What could Wizards have done better? All IMO, of course:

1) They could have talked less about how 3e sucked (the phrase "if 3e encounter design actually worked" comes to mind as the most notable example). That very quickly became obnoxious, not least because it utterly failed to line up with my experiences with the system.

2) They could have cut the attitude in general. Everything from suggesting we should just end our ongoing campaigns and start over, to comments about cloud watching came across as being overly authoritarian and arrogant.

3) Too much use of 'cool', 'awesome' and 'knock-down drag-out fight'.

4) Very recently, there was the gloating that they'd got the books and we don't. That was annoying.

5) They should have done what they said they were going to do with the GSL, not say one thing, then change their minds, then delay, delay, delay, and finally deliver... oh, wait, they haven't yet, have they?

6) They very definately should have delivered what they said they were going to deliver with eDragon and eDungeon. By now there should be, what, 9 issues of each of these 'monthly' magazines. How many have we actually had? (Yes, after a couple of months they said they were cutting back, but that's still not delivering what they first said they would.)

7) And then there's the D&D Insider. The less said about that, the better.

The funny thing is, they've produced a very good game. But the marketing had me fully expecting a train-wreck, and everything that's peripheral to the game itself seems to be made of FAIL at the moment.

It seems that on established trends, marketing is about teasing. Even if it will annoy you or frustrate you it really does not care that much as long as it draws your attention and does not alienate you from the general trend. I mean their teaser was D&D(3e) versus D&D(4e). It was not D&D versus other rpg games.

 

[DaveMage]

So, I guess your frustration here is and most probably will be just considered as a side-effect.

The funny thing is, in moments when the whole thing doesn't depress the hell out of me, I realize that my wallet is really, *really* much happier now. I've already saved around $90 in the last month because of the edition change (using amazon prices). And, if I were on board for 4E, I'd be paying the $9.95 a month for the DDI, so that will be saved too.

Of course, I'm sending Paizo about $40/month (Pathfinder Adventure/Pathfinder Module/Planet Story) so I'm getting my fix, but its still weird not buying the latest stuff with the D&D name on it.

 

[Hussar]

Living City was a huge hit, but at its height it only had about 7,000 players. The last number I was officially quoted by WotC for Living Greyhawk was 15,000 active players, meaning players who had played at least two four-hour events in the last year. I have reason to believe that number stayed relatively stable over the year or two since, so I think it's an accurate estimate.

There may be 150,000 gamers on the RPGA mailing list, but 15,000 probably represents the maximum current size of the "core" RPGA audience you're speaking of. A lot of those people are casual players who may have polished off their two slots at a single game day, so if you trim a bit of fat you're at about 10,000 members. Or so.

A lot of those guys really do buy everything, and just about every one of them certainly has a complete set of core rulebooks and two or three class books useful for one of their characters. A small percentage are "completists" who purchase just about every single book. Many fly from convention to convention, or drive long distances to play exclusive events. The RPGA is a lifestyle for a lot of people. These folks are hard core, and they spend a lot of money on their hobby.

These customers are, without a doubt, the bedrock of Wizards of the Coast's RPG business. They can be counted on, more or less, to buy the books. If WotC can hook them into a monthly subscription (which will not be difficult), they will have a very solid foundation on which to build an enormously successful online business.

When I was at Wizards of the Coast, the company had an uncanny ability to squander and overlook this audience, but these are the players that fuel the Magic: The Gathering business on the DCI side of things. Shortly after I joined the staff in 1999 the RPGA became an official part of DCI (the Magic org play division). I am not sure, but I believe that the RPGA database has been merged with the DCI database, so that RPGA members are DCI members and vice versa.

I have a strong feeling that Wizards of the Coast, taking the success of Magic's relationship to its tournament players to heart, no longer takes the RPGA members for granted. In 2000 it would have been unthinkable to center strategic and game system design decisions around the needs of the RPGA, which was mostly an afterthought in those days as far as strategy was concerned.

I don't think Wizards is trying to target this audience specifically (book trade sales probably dwarf this audience by an order of magnitude, for example), by any means, but I definitely think this is an interesting lens through which to view the rules changes and overall strategy for the new edition.

--Erik

Thanks Erik. It's nice to know that I'm not way off in tinfoil hat land with these thoughts.

Since you might know, you say 15k (ish) LG players. What about the other Living campaigns, like Xendrik? Any ideas on numbers there?

 

[qstor]

Forgive me, but can we call this a Rouse-roll?

Don't encourage him.

Mike

 

[Imaro]

Going into a second print run before your first print run has even hit the street IS a blockbuster by any stretch of the imagination. Unless the first print run was incredibly small. Possible, but highly, highly unlikely considering WOTC usually prints in the tens of thousands even for late era 3e splats. We're probably looking at 150k worth of books in the first run alone.

Are you sure about this? I see people bemoaning the inability to buy books, but in actuality it seems to have been first, the gift set people can't get, and secondly only from places like Amazon and Buy.com ( in other words big discount retailers). I have seen numerous places where one can still order the gift sets online (for a slightly to much higher price) and the individual corebooks are still for sale even at places like amazon and buy.com. I think this may moreso speak to WotC deciding to release a gift set that is actually cheaper than the individual books and comes with a slipcase, as well as most customers not wanting to pay the MSRP (myself included since I got my books with a friend's discount at Borders).

It's his second point that I agree with the most, that WotC seems to be pretty much marketing a whole new system, rather than just hammering down the "proud nails" (or whatever that term is they were using in those design articles a few years ago).

I agree, more or less.

I would even go a little further and say it's not just a system change...it's a fundamental change to what is D&D. And before everyone starts I don't mean what is D&D to individuals but instead what has been the common D&D mythos throughout 1e, 2e and 3e. Yes it evolved and expanded from 1e to 2e... then shrank and became minimal from 2e to 3e but it was still there, no matter how miniscule throughout those editions. Even though it's hard to believe, some people actually enjoyed the D&D mythos...

I know I personally thought Planescape and Dark Sun were some of the most imaginative, exciting and interesting settings to ever come out of WotC (whether they were your cup of tea or not) and I think WotC really dropped the ball as far as utilizing it's mythos during 3rd edition. This is one reason I think 3PP did so well in the setting and alternate fantasy games area of the d20 publishing field. IMHO WotC chose not to put it's best foot forward against settings like Scarred Lands, Iron Kingdoms, Midnight, etc. instead playing it safe and saw later just how profitable a good, original and innovative setting could be.

The problem is that I feel now they really think the new is what sold these settings rather than the innovation and originality. Big mistake IMHO, I don't want a bootleg Planescape or bootleg Dark Sun, I think a better idea would have been to start from ground zero with these settings as they appeared in 2e. Alas one of the reasons I bought 4e was the hope that PS was going to be done for it, but now I see it isn't going to be PS, but a remix of it. Sometimes there's value in classics as opposed to "the new shiney" YMMV of course