Pathfinder 1E Pathfinder outselling D&D

[Starman]

"You must spread some Experience Points around before giving to IronWolf again."

That's exactly what I was thinking.

 

[S'mon]

If this is true, then it seems to me that the OGL didn't work out so well for WOTC. I doubt they envisioned that they would be competing against what is essentially their own IP in the future.


Pathfinder is still the relatively new kid on the block, you've got high sales as everyone checks out the game they've heard so much about, which after a few years will drop to a lower level. Further I would assume for both markets there is a point where they reach supplement saturation - where most players will have more material than they will ever use and will stop buying new content. I reached this point for 4e in 2009 - haven't bought a thing since Ebberon was released (Wouldn't have purchased if I had the 3e version). If I was playing pathfinder I would have bought little beyond core as the whole point of pathfinder (IMO) is still using my 3.5 books.

Of course if we're talking market share we could also consider other publishers and other games as well as previous editions - from what I read on this and other forums there are an increasing number of people checking out the older editions.

Paizo's model seems adventure-based though. Adventures sell less, but don't saturate the market the way Player Character crunch eventually does. I tend to think Paizo's business model is relatively evergreen compared to the 3e & 4e D&D player-centric approach.

 

[Xphile]

To put some perspective on the numbers.

To have team of 10 programmers working for me, I have to pay about 3000 to 5000 dollars a day (if the programmers were okay working for low wages).

To have a team of 10 writers working for me, writing game material, I would get away with maybe 1500 dollars a day, IF they cranked out top notch 100% usable right now material, otherwise I could drop their pay since they get paid per word written.

So coding is at least two to three times as expensive, just off the top of my head. Really, that seems to little, so I would guess that coding is about 10 times as expensive to buy than game design writing.

/M

On a per employee basis, I would agree. Programmers are more expensive than game designers. No matter what though, you have to pay your game designers, otherwise you don't have a game.

The question is, what is cheaper, those programmers or printing your material on dead tree? How many books do you think are in a normal run? 1,000? 10,000? At ten dollars a book, you are quickly hitting numbers where it is much cheaper to have someone modify an already existing program to add the small amount of material that you've created.

My argument wasn't that programmers weren't as expensive as game designers, it was more of the realm that creating and maintaining DDI isn't that expensive. I of course don't have numbers, but I would say that it is cheaper than dead tree and likely to get you more buyers. Of course nothing is as cheap as doing a "print to PDF" and throwing it up on RPGNow

As someone who both writes code and fiction, I'd say that if I could make half the money with fiction (heck, 25%) as with coding, I'd be writing full time. Code monkeys actually expect to get paid, and can get paid in many companies so there are market forces at work.

Correct. Writers get paid crap. But no matter how you distribute your product, you will still need those writers to create you a product. The cost comparison shouldn't be between the poorly paid writers and programmers, but between the two distribution models that are used.

I've seen the same sort of behavior from 4e fanatics (or fanatics of other systems). I don't think PF has any sort of lock on this.

Nor did I say they did. It is only in my opinion and from my stand point, there seems to be a larger or more vocal group of them. This could be because I haven't personally met 4E fans who were huge proponents or fanboys of the system. I'm sure there are those 4E crusaders out there, I just have been lucky enough to avoid them thus far.

The costs don't end once the app is written. Someone needs to maintain the code as the platforms they run on receive updates. Someone needs to make sure the app still works and if not, someone needs to update the DDI code to make sure it does. This is nearly a monthly need as security patches are rolled out.

Beyond just the continual maintenance of code there is the maintenance of the infrastructure it runs on - server hardware, operating systems, network, bandwidth, backups, the media to do those backups and the talent to manage all of that layer. Now that could be outsourced to a major data center, but it is still a monthly expense that adds up as the services scale up.

DDI is not a "program it once and forget about it" application.

Can't argue with anything you said. Any program will have maintenance costs, especially online ones. While it is a monthy expense, I doubt it is as large as anyone imagines. Look at the multitude of MMOs out there. Many of them also tend to have a 10$ month free, and many of them still make money hand over fist. Not all will be as successful as WoW, but I think that the maintenance costs will not be a major issue. Not for a system that likely only has 100,000 users and is mainly sending text back and forth.

Plus, the cost of those coders is on top of the money you're already paying for your writers. And they're probably more expensive than any of the people they may have replaced within the organization as you've shifted away from printed books.

Just as there would be costs on top of your writers for any distribution model. My argument, and probably one I didn't state well, is that this is likely a lot cheaper than the normal dead tree distribution model. Especially if you can get reoccurring payments for exactly the same content.

Look at the release schedule for most of WOTC's products. They tend to release a new book every 2 months. Assuming that most people have a continuous subscription, or that those who only do X months a year are replaced by the same number of people, you're going to tend to get 20$ per DDI per new product.

I think there are some giant leaps of logic being made here. The vast number of posts and talk I see is of people pointing future Pathfinder players to the Paizo SRD or d20pfsrd to get their feet wet. An excellent way to see the rules without spending anything. Or I also see the $10 PDF recommended frequently before the full rule book. There a numerous low cost ways to intro one to Pathfinder without pushing them straight to the hardcover core rulebook.

I know in our group we switched to Pathfinder about 9 months ago. As GM I didn't push anyone to any of the hardcover books. I pointed them to the d20pfsrd, the $10 PDF. Now I think all of them have gone and bought the core rulebook and several have purchased the APG and Ultimate Magic and the Inner Sea Campaign guide - but not due to any pushing from me as GM.

While there may be some people out there doing that I think it is a leap to say this accounts for the majority of sales. Paizo puts out a quality product and people are willing to pay for and are attracted to quality product.

I will agree that there are cheaper ways of getting into PF than what I mentioned. Mostly that is due to my inexperience with PF, as I'm waiting for the starter set to come out before tossing my group at the system. It has just seemed to me that if you want to play Pathfinder, you also want to buy the books (after getting your feet wet). While for 4E, there is very little incentive for most players to buy the books themselves.

 

[Mark CMG]

I'd imagine WotC accounting would have to look at DDI's profitability in the same way they'd look at having a series of perpetually-updated software products, 1 or 2 magazines, and some books on the schedule every month, less the print run overhead. I'm not sure if 40-60 thousand units (at various rates) is quite the cash cow some imagine it to be. It might be as profitable or more so than having actual books that are showing diminishing returns (and might be why they curtailed book development) but it would seem to be far from the revenue stream some seem to suggest it to be.

The demands of a publically traded company must make game design somewhat more stressful. Between WotC's bottomline meetings and the looming Sword of Damned-if-you-do-Damned-if-you-don't-ocles in the form of business-model-booked lay offs, I'd imagine Paizo is the more comfortable place to work regardless of the profitability ratio.

So, three cheers for Paizo! Congrats to Paizo, where quality products are produced regardless of how people believe they sell compared to other companies. Congrats to Paizo, where the CEO and employees feel comfortable jumping online regularly to interact with fans and customers. Congrats to Paizo, where unemployment is not a quarterly concern.

Now, since I've recently been asked to step in for a GM who is moving out of town, I think I have a PF game to run for eight to twelve ravenous Paizo-fans.

 

[darjr]

Quest for Fun!: RPG Sales YTD

Black Diamond Games has a interesting post along these lines. Only one store, sure, but they've been reporting the trend for a while now. Pathfinder up 300% seems like a huge turnaround while the D&D drop off doesn't seem very drastic.

 

[Xphile]

Quest for Fun!: RPG Sales YTD

Black Diamond Games has a interesting post along these lines. Only one store, sure, but they've been reporting the trend for a while now. Pathfinder up 300% seems like a huge turnaround while the D&D drop off doesn't seem very drastic.

Overall it looks like RPG sales as a whole are going up, which is good for the industry as a whole. Of course I wonder if this a large increase in people who play RPGs, are have we as players started to diversify our portfolios of RPGs that we play.

 

[Aeolius]

They will claim that 4th Edition abused their mother, killed their father and touched them in all the wrong places. The claim is usually that 4th Edition ruined D&D for them (a discussion for a different thread).

And here I thought 4e poisoned our water supply, burned our crops, and delivered a plague upon our houses!

To be fair, I did buy the 4e DMG, PH, and MM, when they were first released. Since I could not convert my 3.5e game and I had no intention of ending the campaign, coupled with the number of sacred cows that 4e sent to the slaughterhouse, I stayed with 3.5e. Mind you, 4e didn't ruin D&D for me. I still played D&D, albeit not the current edition. The same thing happened when I skipped 2e.

Also to be fair, I bought a handful of Pathfinder PDFs and then a few hardcopies. While I have never run a 4e or Pathfinder game, I currently own more Pathfinder books than I do 4e books.

Now if Paizo created a killer VTT, or partnered with the PCGen and MapTool folks, and made the app available for Mac OS, iOS, and Windows, THEN we're talking!

 

[Reynard]

To be fair, I did buy the 4e DMG, PH, and MM, when they were first released. Since I could not convert my 3.5e game and I had no intention of ending the campaign, coupled with the number of sacred cows that 4e sent to the slaughterhouse, I stayed with 3.5e.

I think in the skirmishes of the Edition Wars, it is often forgotten -- by "both" sides -- that a whole lot of people that stayed with 3.x, went to Pathfinder or otherwise aren't playing 4E, did in fact purchase 4E. I don't know what the sales numbers were on the PHB (and to a somewhat lesser extent, the DMG and MM) but I would guess they were an order of magnitude (hyperbole) greater than the sales of Essentials.

The differerence: a lot of people who ended up wanting to like 4E, didn't. Even after all the previews showing off stuff we didn't like, many of us still bought it, still tried it, even suffered through campaigns for months. And then, and I know I am going to get guff for this, Pathfinder came along and saved us.

It's not like 3.5 or Pathfinder are the greatest version of D&D ever, and I'm sure some folks threw up their hands and quit D&D altogether or retreated to the OSR games/earlier editions, but it had the twin strengths of being firmly rooted in D&D's legacy (the so-called sacred cows), and, Pathfinder anyway, being supported by a great company with high standards and a wide and deep talent pool.

In other words: Pathfinder gave those dissatisfied with 4E a quality alternative. For that, Paizo deserves every sale, and it may have reached a point where it's incumbent upon WotC to try and regain their share from Paizo in order to be truly successful (in the traditional table top D&D arena only, of course), especially since WotC has the added burden of corporate masters to please.

(In my own magical dream world, Paizo eventually buys D&D outright or secures the rights to the D&D brand for TTRPG games, so WotC can continue to use the brand to make awesome board games and other nifty licensed products; more likely, I think it is possible that someone much farther up the chain eventually notices Paizo and Pathfinder -- who knows, maybe his brother's kid plays it -- and Hasbro just buys and buries the company.)

 

[Redbadge]

Not surprised by this. Given the dearth of published WotC products recently, I wouldn't be surprised if "Bob's Random RPG" outsold D&D the last couple of months. It's not hard to beat a publisher who actually isn't publishing anything, and that is all Paizo has really done.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

As a senior developer/architect in a small company focused on MS web apps. I estimate that we could do something similar to the CB for about $250K to $300K. Maintenance on it would run up around 100K annual, if you wanted to do a decent job of tech support. You'd need a higher rate at start up for a few months. If you wanted it done really fast, those costs would go up sharply. We've done comparable or even larger things over a two year period, and met those rates, though.

OTOH, our company is in an area with a lot better cost of living than Seattle. Not sure what the factor would be for that, but double wouldn't surprise me.

Server costs aren't peanuts, but they are fraction of the development costs and tech support/maintenance employee costs.

None of this takes into account the non-technical people involved (publishing content) or any cost overruns from people not knowing what they were doing early.

So, not sure how profitable the whole thing is, but I'd say if they are pulling $400K to $560K per month, they are well on the road to profitablitlity, and it should get gradually better as time passes, initial investments are regained, and lessons are applied.