Ok, now i'm REALLY CONFUSED. AKA, do any of you think you know what WotC is doing?

[ProfessorCirno]

Corporate politics and errant management edicts kill companies as well. Leaning too hard in one direction usually tips the boat. What kind of fantastic business decisions have been taking place recently?

Perhaps the 20-40-year-olds know a little more about the good business than you are giving them credit for. I see thrashing about, sudden shifts in direction, weak communication, etc. That is not the sign of a health; it is a sign of trouble.

If I believed every passionate fans who are telling me something is dying then there would literally be zero products left.

The doom and gloom hearing here is the same we heard when Gamma World came out (They're going to cancel D&D!)

Or when Essentials came out (Welcome to 4.5, 4e lovers hah hah hah!)

Or when Dark Sun came out (Hope you enjoy them utterly ruining the old school setting!)

Or when Eberron setting came out (Remember Forgotten Realms, that's what your precious setting is going to become!)

Or when 4e came out (I give it a few months, tops!)

Maybe if someone who genuinely cared about the game and genuinely loved 4e and genuinely knew the ins and outs of the industry and they said there was a good reason to be very worried, I'd take it in stride. But that's not happening.

What is happening is that a lot of people that have been preaching the death of D&D for years, people who have done nothing but attack and insult WotC and 4e since the day it came out, are crowing on how they were apparently right "all along."

Edit: And wishing things would go back to the days of TSR is the very definition of nostalgia goggles. Boy 2e sure was fun, what with D&D literally choking itself to death and the company suing their own fans into oblivion.

 

[rounser]

Let's hear more aging 20-40 year olds with no placement in the industry and no knowledge of WotC's business practices tell us what will happen.

That doesn't even make sense. Teenagers aren't likely to know more about how to best run D&D, nor are senior citizens. Someone said something you don't like, so you're trying on ageism as a counterattack?

And there's only one D&D, and this is the first time it's in this environment. No-one I can think of is an expert, because if experts are behind the events of the last few years then they seem to be trial and erroring it out, else this wouldn't be being discussed. It'd be an assumed triumph, like the height of 1E, red box Basic and 3E.

 

[Korgoth]

Corporate politics and errant management edicts kill companies as well. Leaning too hard in one direction usually tips the boat. What kind of fantastic business decisions have been taking place recently?

Perhaps the 20-40-year-olds know a little more about the good business than you are giving them credit for. WotC? I see thrashing about, sudden shifts in direction, dropped products, weak communication, etc. That is not the sign of health; it is a sign of trouble.

Yeah, it's not looking good.

A juggler still counts as a good juggler until one of the balls hits the floor. Right up until it actually hits, the audience can think that there's some way he's gonna pull it out.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

It'd be an assumed triumph, like 3E.

Was this before or after 3.5?

Woops!

 

[The Little Raven]

And there's only one D&D, and this is the first time it's in this environment.

What does this mean? That this is the first time the D&D brand hasn't been at the top of its game? Did you miss the mid-1990s when TSR ceased publishing any products for 6 months because their D&D business model helped kill the company?

Last I checked, WotC could pay its employees and still publish products.

 

[rounser]

Maybe if someone who genuinely cared about the game and genuinely loved 4e and genuinely knew the ins and outs of the industry and they said there was a good reason to be very worried, I'd take it in stride. But that's not happening.

But that's the point, I'm not sure there are any experts. For instance, Dancey's insistence that D&D's success is nothing but network externalities probably informed 4E design - that the name was the important bit - and it hasn't exactly panned out like that. RPGs aren't an old industry, and the flagship is currently off the map, in uncharted waters. Some marketing theory might allow for some guidance, but basically it's a bit like the IT industry in that mistakes are being made along the way, and the experts are relying on tentative theories rather than experience.

 

[eyebeams]

Let's hear more aging 20-40 year olds with no placement in the industry and no knowledge of WotC's business practices tell us what will happen.

Listen, I'm just some schmuck with about 10 years of writing and content development experience who has been hired outside of the RPG field specifically because story worlds and settings are believed to be critical to intellectual property development.

You read some press releases and a company rep posts on this board, so you probably have every reason to be snarkily credulous of everything the salespeople say. I'm sure they fed you the arguments somewhere.

Meanwhile, I think any reasonable person can see that D&D is a rudderless shambles right now, between its confused marketing, the turnover of its entire management staff, and a sorta-new edition.

I mean they've been doing it for the past two years, broken clocks, etc, etc, right?

As usual, I really don't care what people have been doing over the past two years, because in my experience they're typically doing it badly. Nothing has benefited my 1e or 4e games (yes, I like both, even though the Internet thinks this is Not Allowed) quite so much as ignoring the idiotic communities attached to both. So whoever you believe my comrades are, you're pretty much wrong -- and in your vehemence, I sense that this will not be the end of your wrongness.

Edit: WotC should have a bunch of settings and make a sharp divide and pump out products for them just like TSR because TSR went bankrupt doing that, always a fantastic business decision.

Neither you nor I know exactly why TSR went bankrupt. What you think you know is what a broker of TSR's sale told you while he was attempting to calculate the *lowest* possible goodwill value for acquisition as part of his campaign to sell you a different approach to the D&D business.

Now let's improve your reading comprehension. As I said in a passage you obviously missed despite it, well, being in the post, I am not advocating a return to the 1990s, because the 90s features a particular type of story world design that doesn't fit current trends. As I said, this was hardly exclusive to RPGs. *All* of the big, multi-contributor properties featured event-driven story arcs that were very "closed" -- where it was difficult to get past what a small set of characters were doing to expand the story world in a nonlinear fashion. We're talking about the era of Shadows of the Empire, speculation madness in comics and Voyager. This stuff was *all over the place* -- and it worked. It was even useful for the development of those properties.

Nowadays, worlds are developed in a much more sensible fashion. The Star Wars IP is a great example because there are multiple eras to explore, and plenty of room to move around without disrupting its core premises and motifs. This is in no small part because Lucasfilm stopped looking at the Star Wars universe as a nucleus of films surrounded by spinoff and secondary business, but as a story world worth management as a whole, where it can be organized to suit all creative interests.

You're right about the grip of terrible old people like me (and probably you) though. They should listen to us less. We laugh at guys like Drizzt, at JRPGs and anime, and following world canon and stories, but the kids think all of those are totally awesome. Basically, there's a better way out there, but we went "back to the dungeon."

 

[rounser]

What does this mean? That this is the first time the D&D brand hasn't been at the top of its game? Did you miss the mid-1990s when TSR ceased publishing any products for 6 months because their D&D business model helped kill the company?

No, that this is the first time it's coexisting with MMORPGs, Facebook, Wii, Kinect, a Games Workshop that seems to have a refined playbook, and so on.

TSR didn't even have to compete with M:tG until the nineties, and few doubt it was probably a factor in their being eventually needing to be "saved" by the company that made it, after they scrambled to compete in this space with limited success (e.g. Spellfire, Dragon Dice) given that M:tG was cutting D&D's lunch. And M:tG, Warhammer and WoW appear at least superficially to take slices out of the D&D potential or former audience. Heck, even WOTC designers play GW games if memory serves.

 

[shadzar]

Edit: WotC should have a bunch of settings and make a sharp divide and pump out products for them just like TSR because TSR went bankrupt doing that, always a fantastic business decision.

Yeah terrible business decisions and pretty much fraud and embezzlement that didnt have to do with D&D didn't play any part in that. Nor did the fact the CEO detested gamers in the first place...

Those aging 20-40 years olds are also the ones with money to spend and willingness to play.

Everyone is allowed to have their own dream of what they would do if they made the decisions, and the speculation here is based on that mixed with confusion about what is going on.

Sorry my near 30 years of computer programming isn't part of the gaming industry, but it does reflect bad when so many people can seem to do things and come up with better ideas for the digital portions of the "game" that the company doing it with multi-million dollar backer as its parent company.

Maybe if someone who genuinely cared about the game and genuinely loved 4e and genuinely knew the ins and outs of the industry and they said there was a good reason to be very worried, I'd take it in stride. But that's not happening.

I think i see where your frustration is coming from, you don't want to lose 4th edition, well it will happen, so get ready for that now while you have time for it.

People can read the writing on the wall, such as was said by Erik Mona in regards to Borders as well other people who were customers could see strange things happening, such as is with WotC right now like when 3rd first came out and 4th.

Drastic changes in behavior send up red-flags for people to worry. We do play D&D after all, and over time have trained ourselves to look for these red flags, and in the game they are often plot hooks. What is wrong with people taking the plot hook when the red flags go up in the real world and seek to investigate and try to reason out what is going on?

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Listen, I'm just some schmuck with about 10 years of writing and content development experience who has been hired outside of the RPG field specifically because story worlds and settings are believed to be critical to intellectual property development.

You read some press releases and a company rep posts on this board, so you probably have every reason to be snarkily credulous of everything the salespeople say. I'm sure they fed you the arguments somewhere.

So you have just as much experience in this as I do, got it.

Meanwhile, I think any reasonable person can see that D&D is a rudderless shambles right now, between its confused marketing, the turnover of its entire management staff, and a sorta-new edition.

I think any reasonable person can see <my position>

That's the beauty of that statement - it can literally be applied to anything.

As usual, I really don't care what people have been doing over the past two years, because in my experience they're typically doing it badly. Nothing has benefited my 1e or 4e games (yes, I like both, even though the Internet thinks this is Not Allowed) quite so much as ignoring the idiotic communities attached to both. So whoever you believe my comrades are, you're pretty much wrong -- and in your vehemence, I sense that this will not be the end of your wrongness.

Don't even know what you're trying to say here.

Neither you nor I know exactly why TSR went bankrupt. What you think you know is what a broker of TSR's sale told you while he was attempting to calculate the *lowest* possible goodwill value for acquisition as part of his campaign to sell you a different approach to the D&D business.

What we do know is that one of the big problems TSR had was in fracturing their fanbase with multiple settings. In other words, people would be really into one setting and would not buy the products of the other setting. I mean, have you seen the graph of how many products were being released?

Now let's improve your reading comprehension. As I said in a passage you obviously missed despite it, well, being in the post, I am not advocating a return to the 1990s, because the 90s features a particular type of story world design that doesn't fit current trends. As I said, this was hardly exclusive to RPGs. *All* of the big, multi-contributor properties featured event-driven story arcs that were very "closed" -- where it was difficult to get past what a small set of characters were doing to expand the story world in a nonlinear fashion. We're talking about the era of Shadows of the Empire, speculation madness in comics and Voyager. This stuff was *all over the place* -- and it worked. It was even useful for the development of those properties.

Nowadays, worlds are developed in a much more sensible fashion. The Star Wars IP is a great example because there are multiple eras to explore, and plenty of room to move around without disrupting its core premises and motifs. This is in no small part because Lucasfilm stopped looking at the Star Wars universe as a nucleus of films surrounded by spinoff and secondary business, but as a story world worth management as a whole, where it can be organized to suit all creative interests.

Is this the same Star Wars IP that has slowly grown to be poisonous? Force Unleashed II didn't sell nearly as well as hoped and was ripped apart by gaming journalism - the most easy to placate reviews imaginable.

Having a strong and well defined setting can work against you. Again, this is the lesson TSR learned rather harshly.

Besides, I'm fairly certain surveys showed that most players don't even use preset settings, they make their own.

You're right about the grip of terrible old people like me (and probably you) though. They should listen to us less. We laugh at guys like Drizzt, at JRPGs and anime, and following world canon and stories, but the kids think all of those are totally awesome. Basically, there's a better way out there, but we went "back to the dungeon."

Man, speak for yourself . I love anime and jRPGs. Heck, I advertised Alshard, a very Japanese tabletop game on the "How to introduce new players" thread. Drizzt is silly, sure, but he's not as popular with the young kids as he used to be.

But that has nothing to do with this statement that 4e is doooooooomed, and that the reason is because they didn't split their fanbase apart enough.