D&D 4E Paizo and 4e.

[Aage]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke

Yeah, that explain why I hadn't heard of it... I feel so young

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Fact: Market research said New Coke tasted better than Coke and Pepsi. The reason it failed? Market research is nonsense.

That's not correct. The failure of New Coke proved one thing, and it wasn't the nonsensical nature of market research but the strength of brand loyalty. By discontinuing the original version of Coca-Cola, the company basically told its customers "Yeah, this drink you've known and loved for decades, that our own marketing has associated with the good times in your life, with Santa Claus and brave soldiers fighting World War II? We're taking that away, and giving you something else - but you'll like it, we promise."

That perception of discontinuity between Coke and New Coke is a salutary lesson in brand loyalty which can even override demonstrable facts of preference - and I'm sure that it is ultimately the major reason why Wizards of the Coast's Fourth Edition "sizzle" video emphasised that "the game remains the same". It's the sort of thing they stress heavily in marketing courses at business school - in fact, they taught us about it when I studied Commerce at high school in the late Nineties.

(Don't worry, it was compulsory. It's my brother who's the marketing drone, at least until working for PepsiCo drove him crazy. Now he's spent a couple of years shuttling back and forth between here, Europe, and South America.)

 

[Rechan]

The Cynic in me says that New Coke was just a ploy to up sales of Coke Classic. They present a crappy product, wait a month, then present the old product labelled as "CLASSIC" and bam, sales.

Which could very well be the ploy of 4e, but hey.

 

[The Little Raven]

The Cynic in me says that New Coke was just a ploy to up sales of Coke Classic. They present a crappy product, wait a month, then present the old product labelled as "CLASSIC" and bam, sales.

The thing is that New Coke wasn't a crappy product. The thing was that it was a replacement for the "old favorite," and that's what set people off. The fact that the traditional recipe was going to be phased out entirely is what motivated people to go off. And the reason they backtracked? They got a huge outpouring of mail, some of it from people that expressed the feeling that losing traditional Coke was like losing a family member.

 

[dmccoy1693]

The Cynic in me says that New Coke was just a ploy to up sales of Coke Classic. They present a crappy product, wait a month, then present the old product labelled as "CLASSIC" and bam, sales.

Which could very well be the ploy of 4e, but hey.

I don't see how, frankly, WotC could do that. Releasing a new edition is ALOT of work, and I am quite sure they aren't putting in all this work right now just to have it boost ebay sales of their old books.

Doing my own research on what it takes to start a RPG company turned up this little quote (reference):

Remember that a business plan isn't complete without an exit strategy. It's too easy to keep throwing money into a pit based on the hopes that next month the distributor that didn't pay you is going to come through or that if you can push out another big release you'll bring in the money you need.

At first I just thought this was merely good information. But then I remembered this quote (reference):

Yes, you saw that right. I've just added a news category for D&D 4th Edition News. Why? Because today I saw my first bona fide 4E rumour, and it came, aptly enough, from Eric Noah:
On a more serious note ... it is ironic that even yesterday I got some major scoops about the future of D&D. It is sounding like some of our most paranoid fears are in fact in the works.

-4E already in the works? Check.
-Even more miniatures-centric? Check.
-Much smaller bundles of game info, packaged and sold separately? Check.
-A plan to possibly sell off RPGs entirely? Check. (Apparently only miniatures and Magic are making any money for WotC).

Unfortunately I can't go into how I got the info or who gave it to me. And I don't think even WotC knows when they're going to announce anything. I got the impression that timing such an announcement with GenCon was no longer seen as optimal or necessary. But please take all as unsubstantiated speculation ... as usual!

emphasis mine.

It would only make sense for hasbro/wotc to have a plan to sell of D&D if it was no longer financially viable to keep it. Granted, the emotional attachment that the guys at WotC have to the game would make such a decision quite difficult, but considering that 4E was in the works more then a year before this leak was made public and it turns out wotc has already given us sufficient informaiton to believe that that it will have "Much smaller bundles of game info, packaged and sold separately" (random virtual minis, anyone?). While we don't know how mini-centric 4E is yet, I imagine it will be similar to SWSE. Saga edition owners, feel free to verify or say otherwise.

If all three of these are true (and it looks like they are), it would also be logical to assume that the last is, at least, partly true. But an alternative in the business plan could include something similar to this (reference):

But what about 4.5? 5.0? You'd have to be a fool not to expect them, and honestly I suspect they'll come a lot more rapidly from here on out. But you'd also have to be a fool to think that just because Wizards of the Coast will open 4.0 to some extent that they'll do so with all of their games in perpetuity.

The most diabolical plan of all would be to release an OGL for Fourth Edition, convert 90% of the audience (with the help of third-party companies), and simply decide not to release an OGL for the _next_ edition of the game. Boom. The genie is back in the bottle, the WotC people who thought Ryan Dancey's idea of the OGL was a bad one in the first place will be vindicated, and one company will once again have total control over the game we've all played our entire lives.

EDIT: Frankly, I wouldn't call the plan Mona presented in the 2nd Paragraph as "diabolical," but rather what some may feel as a viable long term strategy to increase corporate profits. (For the record, I have NOTHING against a company making a profit as long as the consumer is not being "gouged" and gouging is difficult to do in a luxery/hobby market.) With this plan, those against the OGL can say, "Ok, we gave the OGL 2 editions now (or 3 if you count 3.5 as a seperate edition in all but name) and it hasn't done us much good. Lets release 5.0 nonOGL," and it will be difficult to counter.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

The most diabolical plan of all would be to release an OGL for Fourth Edition, convert 90% of the audience (with the help of third-party companies), and simply decide not to release an OGL for the _next_ edition of the game. Boom. The genie is back in the bottle, the WotC people who thought Ryan Dancey's idea of the OGL was a bad one in the first place will be vindicated, and one company will once again have total control over the game we've all played our entire lives.

This makes no sense. Why not do that now? You released a 3rd edition OGL, converted 90% of the audience, and now, boom. If you release a 4th edition OGL, convert the audience, and then try to drop the bomb, you'll have to do it in 5th edition. But 5th edition has to be significantly different from 4th edition. At least as different as 4th edition is from 3rd. If not, someone can just convert the old OGC with some string and duct tape. But if it's that different, how did converting them to 4e benefit you? Now you have to convert them to 5e, which is the tricky bit, especially if there's any extra resistance to the change due to the lack of an OGL, since those same third-party companies that helped make 4e what it was are going to be forced to stick with 4e, and will take their loyalists with them.

 

[carmachu]

Shortman, you must not have been around in the 80s. If you list cabbage patch dolls and beanie babies, believe me there was a time when D&D was that popular. It had its own cartoon. Schools had D&D clubs and some even had D&D classes. I'm not kidding. Maybe not everywhere, but it was a phenomenon for a while. Then it quickly went back to being "that thing that dorky kids did". But there was a brief shining moment when it was popular. But people knew what it was and regular kids wanted to play it. I'm not kiddinig.

You're also leaving out the "D&D" is evil phase as well.....chick cartoons and mazes and monsters......

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Erik seems to be using d20STL, SRD, and OGL almost interchangeably in that thread, and he should definitely know that the OGL genie doesn't BAM! go back in the bottle.

There are two ways that WOTC can un-OGL D&D:

1) Create an entirely new rules system that is not derivative of existing Open Content, and one which is impossible to derive from existing Open Content. This would pretty much mean abandoning the d20 system entirely.

2) Pretend the OGL doesn't exist and threaten to sue everybody.

Neither is very likely.

WOTC can certainly choose not to release a new SRD. They can refuse to issue a new d20 System Trademark License. Neither of these actions precludes third party participation via the OGL.

I'm curious what Clark thinks of Erik's take on that. (I'll defer to a bona fide lawyer.)

 

[dmccoy1693]

This makes no sense. Why not do that now?

The part that you quoted Mona wrote, not me. (As Mona said earlier, "Give credit where credit is due.") Why not do it now? Because the D&D community is being wiened off the OGL (has been ever since the release of 3.5), but is not off it entirely. The backlash Wizards got from pulling Dungeon and Dragon proved that. But now with that inhouse and with an online game that is (probably) WotC only, and with the rarity of WotC OGC (that may continue in 4.0) could work into WotC's favor to convert more of the player base into WotC book of the month clubbers.

You released a 3rd edition OGL, converted 90% of the audience, and now, boom. If you release a 4th edition OGL, convert the audience, and then try to drop the bomb, you'll have to do it in 5th edition. But 5th edition has to be significantly different from 4th edition. At least as different as 4th edition is from 3rd. If not, someone can just convert the old OGC with some string and duct tape.

Bingo.

But if it's that different, how did converting them to 4e benefit you? Now you have to convert them to 5e, which is the tricky bit, especially if there's any extra resistance to the change due to the lack of an OGL, since those same third-party companies that helped make 4e what it was are going to be forced to stick with 4e, and will take their loyalists with them.

EDITTED: Fire your old customers that believe in the OGL by "bungling" certain public relations things with a popular 3rd party company (Dungeon and Dragon), replace them with new ones by reenvisioning the game and removing some aspects that OGC (gnomes, bards), and release those one time OGC reenvisioned as non-OGC and much "cooler" then some 3rd party company that tried to release their own that stayed true to the 3.5 version. This teachs the new edition customers that WotC is the place to go for your gaming content and to ignore those pesky 3rd party companies since they don't have all the cool toys and are stuck with the PHB.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

The part that you quoted Mona wrote, not me.

That was clear.

Fire your old customers, replace them with new ones and teach them that WotC is the place to go for your gaming content and ignore those pesky 3rd party companies.

They could have done that with this edition. Hell, some people are saying they did do that with this edition. But the OGL is still there, there's an implication that we might see a more in-depth SRD as the core expands, and this is a lot of hard work that will need to be scrapped completely for 5th edition.

People have said that 4E is a completely different game than 3.5. It's not. It's way too similar to 3.5, if what you want is to isolate it from the open content of the 3.5 SRD. It's still the d20 system, but with some small changes to the core mechanics, and the trickle-down effects derived thereof. 5th edition will have to be a lot more different from 4E than 4E is from 3E if they want to completely cut it off from the OGL.