Marketing criticisms miss the point

[National Acrobat]

Not that I am totally aware of everything the marketing tried, or was geared towards, but I can tell you that there is an average gamer out there that doesn't spend a lot of time online at forums such as this, or at the WoTC site, etc. There is only a small percentage of the gaming population that frequents places where the 'buzz' is out and knowledge of what is coming is well known.

My own gaming group, which fluctuates in size, but has twelve usual suspects, is a good microcosm of this. If the game were marketed towards the current group of players, then something needs to be done. Four of the twelve of us were aware that there was a new version of the game coming out until it was mentioned to them a couple of months ago. Their reaction was 'is it compatible with 3.5 or 1E that we're currently playing?' and those of us who knew said 'no'.

End of any further interest from the others. They love DnD, have been playing it for 20 years but since it wouldn't work with the load of manuals and books they had already bought, and since we only meet 1-2 times a month tops, it was merely a passing conversation.

The guys in our group usually buy their books from Borders, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, etc. and all of them said had there been some notice in said stores that a new version was coming, they might have paid attention to it. I'm not sure what could have been posted or placed, but apparently it wasn't enough to garner their attention.

One of the members of our group has a degree in Marketing and an MBA and he is of the opinion that there should have been more of a marketing focus for solid DnD players that don't spend a lot of time online. Not sure what could be done, but it's his opinion that the demographic in that regards was totally missed. Of course he said had the Dungeon and Dragon mags still been print, that might have helped.

 

[JDJblatherings]

"In the last eight years, we've given a lot of thought to the question of how to build fun, exciting and balanced encounters. We have found that by making monster roles more explicit, and by spelling out the differences between creatures meant to be encountered alone and those meant to be encountered as part of a group, we can speed up DM preparation, and make it easier to generate balanced encounters than ever before!"

How's that?

yeah., seemed to me "Number Appearing" did the job just fine in explaining if a monster was going to be met alone or in groups.

 

[billd91]

Particularly considering that many of the critics of 4e on ENWorld have bought the product.

Well, in order to be an informed critic, you have to get your hands on it, right? I know that it'll be tied up at the local library (assuming they even get the books) for months. My only recourse is to borrow it from a friend (who can rightfully be expected to want to read it himself), infringe the copyright with a PDF, or buy it.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Well, in order to be an informed critic, you have to get your hands on it, right? I know that it'll be tied up at the local library (assuming they even get the books) for months. My only recourse is to borrow it from a friend (who can rightfully be expected to want to read it himself), infringe the copyright with a PDF, or buy it.

Yeah and to be honest, based on his other posts, I'm pretty sure Doug would be amongst the first to say "You admitted you don't have the books, you don't know what you're talking about", so it seems really odd to be picky about this. Also somewhat funny as Doug has specifically stated, on several occasions, that "message boards are not representative of the real world", and now he's apparently assuming that because message-board D&D nerds like us bought the books whilst criticising the campaign, it indicates some level of success for the campaign? I mean make yer mind up

I know that I for one, picked up 4E *despite* the crappy marketing campaign and terrible, in some cases rather misleading, previews WotC gave us. In fact, to be VERY clear, I would have picked up 4E if I had heard PRECISELY NOTHING from WotC. Total dead silence would have been a certain sale, because it's 4E, baby. Instead we got stuff which indicated a game quite different from what was actually released (replete with Golden Wyverns, Dragons Tail Cuts, level limits on magic item usage and so on), and which, had it come out like that, I wouldn't have liked nearly as much. What I'm saying is: WotC NEARLY managed to put me OFF from buying a game that had they said nothing, I would have certainly bought. That's quite an achievement of bad marketing. Lucky for them it was only "nearly" I guess.

Personally I have a lot of criticisms of 4E, but I like it a lot better than 3E, which I had less specific criticisms of. It's an interesting situation, I think. I do think that, unless WotC pulls their finger out, and gets what they can realistically do with 4E straight, that it's going to be problematic for them. We were told that after release, then we'd see the real marketing. Still no sign. Maybe they're holding it until after the DDI actually gets operational, that would make sense.

 

[TheWyrd]

You know what I've never seen?

I've never seen a comparison between the changes made to the White Wolf World of Darkness and what happened between 3.X and 4E of D&D. In my opinion they seem to be fairly identical.

1. Mechanical changes that include standarization across rules.
2. Major Refluffing of the World.

 

[Scribble]

Well, in order to be an informed critic, you have to get your hands on it, right? I know that it'll be tied up at the local library (assuming they even get the books) for months. My only recourse is to borrow it from a friend (who can rightfully be expected to want to read it himself), infringe the copyright with a PDF, or buy it.

Whether or not you like it, or bought it just to critisize it, you still bought it.

Look at Titanic. Lots of people came out of the film thinking it was crap. But they still paid for a ticket, and now the film is the highest grossing movie of all time. (At least I think it still is.)

By the numbers, 4e's marketing campaign has been a success. It was designed to sell the core books, and it did.

Whether or not it can continue to be a success in the future is a different story, for a different marketing campaign. It may (will) try to capitalize off of the first campaign, but future releases still require future marketing.

If they make Titanic 2: Return of the Iceberg, and it's a complete flop, it doesn't take away the fact that the first one was the number one highest grossing film of all time.

 

[YourSwordIsMine]

People just need to vote with their dollar.

I, like with 3.5 will not be buying 4e; nor will I buy the corrected 4e (4.5/5e) when its announced/released in two years.

Unfortunately with all the pre-orders that have sold we can not make our unhappiness known to WOTC. What we can do is not to buy later books. Its as simple as that really. Just dont do it again...

 

[delericho]

I just think that JD's statment that WoTC marketing of 4th edition was a failure is absurd. The point of marketing is to sell your product. WoTC was sold out of 4th edition before it was even for sale in most stores. That, in business, is marketing success.

How much of the early success of 4e is down to the brilliance of the marketing campaign, and how much of it is due to D&D suddenly being in the news again, due to the death of Gary Gygax?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

How much of the early success of 4e is down to the brilliance of the marketing campaign, and how much of it is due to D&D suddenly being in the news again, due to the death of Gary Gygax?

Interesting point. But Gygyx seems to be mostly forgotten by the news by now, so I can't believe it still affects the current release. Unless maybe someone got interested in 4E, and saw the WotC pages, and _liked_ what he saw. Which means the marketing still worked at that point...

 

[nothing to see here]

How much of the early success of 4e is down to the brilliance of the marketing campaign, and how much of it is due to D&D suddenly being in the news again, due to the death of Gary Gygax?

Gygax's death gave the game a little bit of profile in major media and significant exposure in niche media for a few days, but you would be very hard-pressed to identify a buying demographic whose purchase decision would have been influenced by that event.