On the marketing of 4E

[Fifth Element]

Again, let me reiterate: they violated a bunch of basic marketing practices- that is objective fact- too numerous to enumerate.

"Marketing" and "objective fact" do not belong in the same sentence.

 

[Fifth Element]

Marketing didn't matter to me. Marketing rarely tells me if I'm going to like something; too much flash and not enough substance. It's the game I care about not the opinions of the people who make the thing.

Wise.

 

[Shroomy]

This.

The marketing failed to draw in people who *liked* 3.5 in the first place. It encouraged them to stay where they were and raised their doubts, to put it mildly. It's a lesson on what *not* to do when marketing a new edition of a very successful game/previous edition.

The game itself did the rest.

I liked 3.5e, like it a lot in fact, and I had no real problems with the marketing or the game itself. I'm not alone in my playgroup (which actually includes a trio of primarily Exalted players, in addition to a couple of people who played the older editions), and we're loving 4e.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

Honestly, the marketing didn't turn me off at all. Despite that I wasn't primarily a D&D player anymore, I was looking forward to the release of 4e and seeing what all the design team had done with it. It was only by my enduring poverty that I did not end up purchasing the core rulebooks on preorder.

I got the chance to read the books later, and play in a game or two. That's when I decided I didn't like it.

 

[Cadfan]

I don't think the marketing actually alienated 3.5 lovers. I think the marketing provided a flashpoint for people who were going to be angry anyways. Many of the more common criticisms of the marketing at the time simply weren't reasonable and generally boiled down to criticisms of the entire concept of a new edition. The most common criticism, that they "tore down" 3e instead of "building up" 4e, is fundamentally flawed for the simple reason that like it or not the two editions are in market competition with one another, and the selling points of the latest edition include, in prominent point, refinements of the prior edition. There's simply no easy way to say "we improved X" without suggesting to a certain degree that "X" was in need of improvement. And they had to say that, because it was directly relevant to the nature of the product they were selling.

 

[The Ghost]

Marketing does not explain the people who tried it (perhaps despite the marketing) and switched back.

Me!

I found WotC's marketing very annoying but it was not enough to keep me from trying the system. Much like how I find Subway's marketing campaigns annoying - I still eat at Subway. In the end it was the rules themselves that turned me off to 4e.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

While I don't know if better marketting would've made 4e more played, I think it did contribute a lot to the edition wars.

WotC told me in no unkind terms that the way I liked to play was bad, that I didn't know what fun was, that my enjoyment of certain races was bad, that my enjoyment of certain classes was bad, that settings I liked were bad, that the fluff I enjoyed was bad, and that some of the things I've done while DMing is bad.

That's not how you foster a big welcoming community.

Then they destroyed their third party support, slammed down on third party producers I liked, made it impossible for people who WANT TO WORK FOR 4e to do so, and made it illegal for me to purchase my .pdfs.

This is not how you treat a fan base.

Would better marketing improve 4e's sales? Probably not by a lot. As someone else said, 4e is still DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS, and the name has a lot of weight going for it. But it certainly made the split between fan bases a lot worse.

 

[Shazman]

Where a lot of criticism of the marketing arose was really surprising to me. The designers did something pretty unprecedented in game design in blogging about, discussing, previewing, and explaining the changes and development of the edition in the months leading up to release. And this is where they took the most constant flak. Every word was analyzed, developers were attacked for perceived "trashing" of 3e (where explaining why a change was made amounted to crapping on 3e). I don't know how bad it was perceived from their end, if we won't see that level of openness with 5e. I think we might in that much of this openness has continued through DDI and all the preview articles and Design & Development articles.

There is just a lot of nerd rage in the community anytime things change*. Look at all the rage that spread like wildfire from GenCon about the previews of the new Warhammer edition. The game isn't even developed yet and legions already hate it. Same as with 4e. So many people never even gave it a chance.

Personally, the marketing of 4e got me increasingly excited to play 4e. So much so I was running multiple preview games based off all the information members of the community accumulated (people equally excited). The game had a huge release and remains very popular. All in all, I'd say the marketing was a success. You aren't going to please everyone, especially in the geekdom. There were community splits over 2e and 3e as well, and there will be over 5e and 6e. Just the nature of the beast. But I loved the access we had to the design process this time around.

*by nerd rage, I do not mean criticism of the mechanical elements of 4e, but the people who became angry at the mere mention of a new edition, the same types who are angry when Marvel Studios announces a new superhero franchise, who assume it will completely suck, hate the person picked to play the hero, even before that person is announced, etc...

I remember quite distinctly that the "marketing" of 4E, if you can call it that, shortly after the announcement of 4E, was essentlially trashing 3.5. They spent a lot more time talking about how this or that part of 3.5 was bad, than they did talking about the good parts of 4E, especially the specifics of why 4E was better. It basically amounted to hyberbole like "X about 3.5 was so horrible. It's so much better in 4E. We can't tell you why, but it's so awesome!" Saying your last prodcut was horrible, but your new one is awesome simply on the word of people whose jobs depend on you buying the new product is a lame and pitiful attempt at "marketing". Comparing people that weren't crazy about the coming of 4E to farmers shaking their fists at clouds or saying their games probably weren't fun if they actually used non combat skills like profession and craft in their games, didn't help much either. Add that to the fiasco that was the killing the print editions of Dungeon and Dragon and some other licenses, and it's almost like they didn't want many of thier current customers at the time to remain their customers. They were definitely giving the impression that they wanted to "fire" their audience and replace them with fans of MMORPGs.

 

[Shazman]

So? People constantly say that 4E plays better than it reads.
With a better marketing campaign more people would have likely playd 4E, if only to get something out of the books they preordered.
And when the initial statement is true, some of those people would have stayed with 4E, instead of not even trying it.[/QUOTE

INMHO it actually read much better than it plays. The math is so off, so skewed towards long grindy combats, it's just sad.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

That may be bad marketing, but I personally love a good design discussion, and I'm baffled by people who take offense. Of course, we see the same things here on the boards all the time, so it shouldn't' have surprised WotC at all.

All well and good, but when the tone of that discussion is "What came before was bad, this is much better," you're alienating those who actually what came before. You've just elevated opinion to the level of fact. IOW, you're telling them they had badwrongfun- and there go a few bricks into the wall.

In contrast, a design discussion couched in terms of "This is what we're doing, and this is why it rocks!" is an entirely positive tone, and doesn't cause a reflexive backlash.

I don't think the marketing actually alienated 3.5 lovers.

Oh, it did. I don't know how many, but it did.

I was at Gen Con 2007, when 4E had been announced, and there was a seminar about what 4E would mean for the third-party community.<snip the story>
WotC had no clear plan for how to proceed. It was nice of them to ask for input, sure, but it was still disheartening that they didn't have their act together.

In many businesses, heads would have rolled for that.

You ask for industry insider input quietly...and at a time interval before the product launch that allows you the ability to discuss and digest and possibly even implement some of that input. GenCon 2007 was in August right? And 4Ed was released in June 2008. That's a short period of time for that kind of process...and I think it showed.

The most common criticism, that they "tore down" 3e instead of "building up" 4e, is fundamentally flawed for the simple reason that like it or not the two editions are in market competition with one another, and the selling points of the latest edition include, in prominent point, refinements of the prior edition. There's simply no easy way to say "we improved X" without suggesting to a certain degree that "X" was in need of improvement. And they had to say that, because it was directly relevant to the nature of the product they were selling.

I disagree.

It is entirely possible- and is in fact a basic tenet of advertising- to build up your current product without tearing down your previous ones.

You don't say "we improved X" unless you objectively have- and I mean with real quantifiable numbers, not based on opinion polls. Best practice states that "improved" language should only creep into marketing when you've had a product rack up lawsuit after lawsuit (check the recall lists), stacks of customer complaints about frequency of repairs (watch out, Microsoft X-Box), or a genuine performance increase. There you can talk about how you've made the product safer, more reliable or more efficient in a statistically verifiable way.*

With D&D, you're talking about the rules of a game- "improved" is going to be in the eyes of the Beholderkin.

Instead, you say "We changed x" and tell people what that means for them. As the song goes, "You've got to aaaaaaac-cent-U-ate the positive!" You don't bring up potential negatives. YOU don't do it. You let Joe Customer find out the negatives by himself, or wait for your competitors to point it out.

The difference is that in one case, you're being explicit, and in another, you're being implicit. And believe it or not, that makes a HUGE difference in how your product gets received by the buying public.

If a big portion of your installed base goes into the store thinking "Those bastards gutted my game!" they're not going to buy. If, OTOH, they go in thinking "Did you hear, Fighters have more combat options!" you may make a sale.

* And sometimes even then, you don't use that language. Tylenol NEVER mentioned its improved safety precautions after the poisonings- they just instituted the changes and stayed quiet.