D&D 5E Reasons Why My Interest in 5e is Waning

[Umbran]

If someone can do it commercially then it must mean, by definition, that it is commercially viable.

That one entity can do it commercially does not actually mean that any entity could do it. For example: Paizo can make a business out of selling core rulebooks. I, however, cannot. For me, it would not be a viable business.

That, of course, is aside from how "viable" is not the only thing that decides whether a thing is done. As has often been said: For a given investment of resourses, if WotC can make $X selling game supplements, and $2X selling something else... it is kind of the same as the game supplements not really being a viable choice, for them.

 

[pemerton]

If someone can do it commercially then it must mean, by definition, that it is commercially viable.

[MENTION=6701829]Trickster Spirit[/MENTION] answered this.

Another answer is: commercial viability is a relative thing - and as [MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION] points out, is relative in part to resources available, in part to other opportunities available.

It is commercially viable to make cars in China, but not so much in Australia. It is commercially viable for some families to invest in a second home as a rental property, but not for every family - even if they own their first home. That Paizo is in a position to expend (some of? the bulk of?) its capital making RPG products at a given rate doesn't show that WotC is in the same position.

Apart from anything else, Paizo does not have the opportunity to spend that money making Magic cards. WotC does. That's just one of a large number of ways in which their situations are different.

 

[Kramodlog]

I literally have no idea what you're talking about.

Just saw the date of your account. History seems to repeat itself.

Basically I was saying that there was a group of people who championed 4e back in the day. They tried to respond to people who were critical of 4e by defending it. By defense I mean calling them trolls. They often used the same argument you made: "A minority is critical, while a majority loves it so you are wrong."

 

[bmfrosty]

Just saw the date of your account. History seems to repeat itself.

Basically I was saying that there was a group of people who championed 4e back in the day. They tried to respond to people who were critical of 4e by defending it. By defense I mean calling them trolls. They often used the same argument you made: "A minority is critical, while a majority loves it so you are wrong."

Interesting correlation, but also with a bunch of interesting distinctions. I think these business discussion threads are a small but vocal minority of what goes on at enworld. I think it would be a much more interesting metric to compare volume of posts on each subboards and compare what people are talking about. Same metric could happen at reddit for comparison. Build the statistics.

Also there's a distinction between how people are enjoying the game vs how people perceive the companies involved. The parallel to me is Nintendo. They put out great video games, but are often seen as the lame duck. In most years they make lots of money while their competitors are losing money in an attempt to be the default set top box.

I love talking about business and business strategy. Lots of companies lose money to try and win something else, or hold course trying to regain profitability, or just get snuffed out completely due to decisions that seemed perfectly sane at the time they made them.

Its an interesting time out there for ttrpgs.

 

[Hussar]

Just saw the date of your account. History seems to repeat itself.

Basically I was saying that there was a group of people who championed 4e back in the day. They tried to respond to people who were critical of 4e by defending it. By defense I mean calling them trolls. They often used the same argument you made: "A minority is critical, while a majority loves it so you are wrong."

The presumption here is that even if the majority had loved 4e, then they would have kept 4e in print. Thing is, 4e had a pretty much unattainable goal - to become a core Hasbro product. To do so, it would have had to nearly triple the size of the TTRPG market, all on its own. Even had it been absolutely adored by every single D&D fan, it still wouldn't continue to be in print because there was no way it was going to achieve that goal.

Again, I'll ask you, why did we see the end of 3.0 after two years? Was it that hated by D&D fans?

That's the problem with this argument. "Well, this edition was popular with fans, therefore it must be commercially viable". That's only true if the fans are actually buying enough product to make it commercially viable, and that viability is set at a particular benchmark. People make a big deal out of Paizo being top of the charts for a couple of years. But, it was only top of the charts when it had to compete against non-D&D products. It's not that Paizo's market share has grown, it's that the market was just that much smaller. It wasn't that everyone who stopped buying 4e stared buying Pathfinder. They just stopped buying D&D products altogether (although I'm sure some bought Paizo stuff too).

The next three or four quarters are going to be very, very interesting times.

But, [MENTION=55961]goldomark[/MENTION], if (and I am saying if) WOTC stays top of the charts, how long will it be before you change your tune? Your entire argument presumes a pretty swift fall in rankings for WOTC D&D. What will you do if you are wrong and WOTC stays top of the pile?

 

[Kramodlog]

So again, why 3.0 after only 2 years. Yup, Cook planned 3.5 from the start, but it was supposed to be a couple of years more down the road. People didn't complain about 3e though. It was a pretty darn well received. So, what happened? If there is a correlation between views on message boards and sales, doesn't that mean that 3.0 sold about as well as 4e?

Um, you say people liked 3e. People didn't like 4e. So that doesn't contredict the point that sells are linked to comments and you haven't demonstrated that 3e wasn't successful financially like 4e. All evidence you have gave us is that 3.5 was made, thus 3e wasn't a financial success. By all accounts it was and this is why no clean slate was needed. 3.5 was made instead of 4e, there was no 2 year pause of published material. It was a revision for popular game and a nice new pile of money coming in*.

* I mean aren't the people who defend the slow release schedule also the ones who say that core books are super profitable and WotC just need those to make money? Why would WotC refuse the revenues of new core books being sold? Now this was a pre-World of Warcraft period. PnP RPGs were doing well. Semi-new core books have lots of advantages.

 

[Kramodlog]

But, [MENTION=55961]goldomark[/MENTION], if (and I am saying if) WOTC stays top of the charts, how long will it be before you change your tune? Your entire argument presumes a pretty swift fall in rankings for WOTC D&D. What will you do if you are wrong and WOTC stays top of the pile?

Kill myself, there are no other alternatives.

Lol, kidding. We'll see. I see a steady drop in the ICv2 ranks simply because WotC isn't printing any books. I can be proven wrong. But even a drop doesn't mean D&D, the PnP RPG and/or brand, will be flushed by WotC. Depends on the goals they have. D&D the brand can still be used while the RPG is dropped because the RPG didn't make enough money*. That would be terrible. I do not care about other products. It could drop in rank and they still make two adventures a year, keeping it as a palce holder for the brand. That is boring and I'll go elsewhere.

It could also go very well and they increase their release schedule. Then we will have content to talk about and not WotC's business model. Me included.


*But it could be there fault, you know. Like they didn't make enoug books to make enough money. Sort of self-fufilling prophesy. "D&D isn't profitable so lets make the least possible books. See, with our slow release schedule we didn't make much money. We drop the RPG!"

 

[Kramodlog]

Interesting correlation, but also with a bunch of interesting distinctions. I think these business discussion threads are a small but vocal minority of what goes on at enworld. I think it would be a much more interesting metric to compare volume of posts on each subboards and compare what people are talking about. Same metric could happen at reddit for comparison. Build the statistics.

Also there's a distinction between how people are enjoying the game vs how people perceive the companies involved. The parallel to me is Nintendo. They put out great video games, but are often seen as the lame duck. In most years they make lots of money while their competitors are losing money in an attempt to be the default set top box.

I love talking about business and business strategy. Lots of companies lose money to try and win something else, or hold course trying to regain profitability, or just get snuffed out completely due to decisions that seemed perfectly sane at the time they made them.

Its an interesting time out there for ttrpgs.

Indeed. I love talking about the business side of RPGs. It still can get emotional, amusingly enough.

I like to read fluff, but forums are not a fertile place for those discussions and I am not sure why. Seems talking about math, feats and brokenness is more concensual. Sort of.

 

[Manchu]

Does ICv2 count Amazon and the box chains? I have a feeling they will make the most from 5E as people who are new to D&D or returning after a while seem to be driving a good amount of sales (anecdotally).

 

[Kramodlog]

Does ICv2 count Amazon and the box chains?

ICv2 doesn't count online sells. I do not think they count big chains either, but I could be wrong on that one.

Their method of counting needs explaining too. They just call stores or send forms and ask them who sold the most RPGs. No numbers are asked. Yeah, not great. But it is the online metric we have.