D&D General RPG Theory and D&D...and that WotC Survey

[Aldarc]

I mean, there's a big assumption there about people actually being able to retire anymore...

And in other cases refusing to do so...

 

[overgeeked]

 

[Parmandur]

View attachment 157006

Well, there is am entire science on how to correct for this, and I am sure that the firm WotC hired did their due diligence.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Ok, fair enough.

Now, what evidence do you have that Frog God Games or Goodman Games' audience is older, younger or the same distribution of ages as WotC's?

I don't...
that means the over 35, err, 55 TTRPG market is more wide open then I thought!!!

 

[Hussar]

I don't...
that means the over 35, err, 55 TTRPG market is more wide open then I thought!!!

Heh.

But, that is my point though. We have a tendency to allow too many of our own personal biases dictate how we view these snippets of information. I mean, sure, we have the original WotC survey and @Lanefan talks about how it excludes a segment. But, let's not forget, it also excludes anyone outside of the US as well. Which means that there was a significant exclusion of designers of D&D. Anyone who was part of TSR UK - a pretty significant chunk of brain power - would have been excluded as well. For some reason, that never gets mentioned.

Heck, look at this site. How many people involved in EN Publishing would be excluded from the survey?

Does that mean that WotC thinks that only the US market matters? They had no interest in publishing outside of the US? Of course not.

The problem is, there's just pretty much zero actual information to work from. Just some vague notions and that's about it.

 

[Willie the Duck]

The problem is, there's just pretty much zero actual information to work from. Just some vague notions and that's about it.

Definitely, in particular we have one quote about not using responses from certain demographics, without really know the context around it (as in, when did you they not use them, and for what reasons?). Didn't include them in marketing decisions around a specific product rollout or never at all? Didn't include them because they didn't care about their purchasing power or because something in the response profile made it unable to be confirmed to be representative? We know practically nothing about what actually happened, and thus have a lot of empty space to fill in with our own pet notions.

 

[Umbran]

Well, there is am entire science on how to correct for this, and I am sure that the firm WotC hired did their due diligence.

Yes, I agree. WotC probably hired some competent data scientists for the effort.

However, when we look at EN World posts and see what looks like a trend supporting our hypotheses or conclusions, we have to beware of the several potential biases in that perception.

 

[Umbran]

Definitely, in particular we have one quote about not using responses from certain demographics, without really know the context around it (as in, when did you they not use them, and for what reasons?). Didn't include them in marketing decisions around a specific product rollout or never at all? Didn't include them because they didn't care about their purchasing power or because something in the response profile made it unable to be confirmed to be representative?

There's also cost/benefit elements that can impact such choices. Twenty years ago, how much extra cost and time would be needed to extend the effort to other countries or demographics? What was the size of the market in those places? Would research in those further areas have led to revenue sufficient to justify the effort?

We have academic interest in the findings. They had commercial interest. That our interest is different does not mean their study was flawed.

 

[Umbran]

Oh, and as if we had asked for it, XKCD comes to the rescue today:

(Selection Bias)

 

[JiffyPopTart]

I am fully on your side here. At one time I was answering all surveys and in some I was going very deep into what I would like to see. But as the game evolves, I get the distinct feeling that my voice does not matter one IOTA simply because I am no longer the target audience. Or at least, I feel that I am no longer a target audience...

I super sympathize with this post. My enlightenment came around the psion era when no more base classes seems to have hardened into a design principle.