Ryan Dancey - D&D in a Death Spiral

[WizarDru]

Its a funny thing, but I remember being involved in gaming stores in the early 90's when people were saying CCGs and video games would kill tabletop RPGs. Hmm its 20 years later and DnD is still apparently dieing.

It should be mentioned that CCGs DID help kill TSR (which could have killed D&D)...but not by competition, but by the contribution of poor sales of Spellfire and anticipating a larger than existing demand.

The question many people are really asking, in essence, is this "Did the edition I like WIN?" WotC has no vested interest in sharing their financials with anyone but Hasbro, who has no desire to share that information at all.

Discussions of 4E PHB sales, as has been mentioned upthread, is indicative of nothing within a vacuum. We don't even know if WotC considers PHB sales important to their business strategy, let alone to the success of D&D as a brand. Are DDI subscriptions their actual goal? Minis sales? PDFs? Do they want to drive brand knowledge for Hasbro, rather than WotC's individual finances (and thus act as a driver to things like software products)? We don't know. And without knowing how WotC gauges success, it's pure speculation.

We know that Paizo wants to sell Pathfinder books and supplements. With WotC, their strategy could be broader, especially if driven from Hasbro. Comparisons cannot be direct, by necessity.

 

[Herschel]

This thread is still going?

 

[El Mahdi]

This thread is still going?

Not until you posted!

However, this post is by no means, meant to promote the continuation of this thread...

 

[AllisterH]

<snip>

Discussions of 4E PHB sales, as has been mentioned upthread, is indicative of nothing within a vacuum. We don't even know if WotC considers PHB sales important to their business strategy, let alone to the success of D&D as a brand. Are DDI subscriptions their actual goal? Minis sales? PDFs? Do they want to drive brand knowledge for Hasbro, rather than WotC's individual finances (and thus act as a driver to things like software products)? We don't know. And without knowing how WotC gauges success, it's pure speculation.

We know that Paizo wants to sell Pathfinder books and supplements. With WotC, their strategy could be broader, especially if driven from Hasbro. Comparisons cannot be direct, by necessity.

Wasn't here a survey done by Hasbro/WOTC to see how much public awaeness there was to the actual Dungeons & Dragons name?

Just that WOTC/Hasbro actually commissioned one (good polls/surveys aren't cheap) does give us some indication as to how the company views the brand itself.

 

[WizarDru]

Wasn't here a survey done by Hasbro/WOTC to see how much public awaeness there was to the actual Dungeons & Dragons name?

Just that WOTC/Hasbro actually commissioned one (good polls/surveys aren't cheap) does give us some indication as to how the company views the brand itself.

What does it tell us, though? It tells us that Hasbro wants to see how much the D&D brand exists outside of it's core niche audience. That doesn't tell us anything about their business goals or aspirations. It doesn't tell us if they aggressively pursuing market expansion, deeper support for existing customers or abandoning the market entirely. WotC has done a LOT of surveys: a survey of common players, a survey of what DDI customers are looking for and so on. Sometimes we can glean meaning from them (like the DDI survey) and other times, we can't get more than the vaguest notion of their intentions.

We don't even know at what level such decisions are made. We assume WotC controls their own destiny, but Hasbro may be more hands-on than in the past. They may decide that the entire WotC line is a loss-leader, just to keep D&D in print or the name in the public-eye. They may be focused on merchandising or future opportunities.

WotC's biggest survey, which Ryan Dancey himself made famous, was the 1999 Segmentation Study, which was the first serious baseline to D&D players ever done. WotC followed that up more than once to track how the demographics shifted. I'd wager they still do, however unobtrusively. But that survey was so old, it only listed MMORPGs under CRPGs and found only 8% of gamers played them...a number I'm sure that is drastically different today. WotC has always spent some money on market research...and I doubt Hasbro made them stop. If anything, they may have tapped Hasbro's wider resources in performing them.

All of which is a long way to say that we really don't know anything about WotC's business model from surveys any more than we do from amazon ranks or returned PHBs.

 

[Mirtek]

We don't even know if WotC considers PHB sales important to their business strategy, let alone to the success of D&D as a brand.

Since they don't even bother to list it separately in their annual report we can make an educated guess. Especially if you know what the IFRS (e.g. IAS 14) say about what you're required to mention separately

Its a funny thing, but I remember being involved in gaming stores in the early 90's when people were saying CCGs and video games would kill tabletop RPGs. Hmm its 20 years later and DnD is still apparently dieing

And compared to back then it unfortunately is. Sales have much declined since the golden days. The question would be whether we reached a stabilization in the saturation and decline stage or if it continues to go down

There's one simple explanation for this: ego.

Some individuals are so resentful about the fact that they themselves are not calling the shots. If they cannot have something (their way), then nobody else can have it. They rather see something destroyed which is a product of somebody else calling the shots.

Which you could equally apply to all the glee during the 3.5 to 4e transition phase with which some people greeted every slaying of a sacred cow that was dear to a lot of other peoples.

 

[Cergorach]

As we've seen and heard in the last ten years, WotC/Hasbro has a whole different set of expectations of a succesful product (line) then all the other RPG manufacturers. The move from 3.5E to 4E was less about a better system as it was more about selling more of the 'same' to the customers. While 3.5E was more of a tweaking of 3.0E, this whole Essentials thing seems like a whole different direction (although that might just be my perspective). Between 3.0 and 3.5 there were three years. Between 4 and 4Essentials there's two years, at this rate we'll see 5E in 2013. The time between cycles seems to be getting a lot shorter and that isn't driven by gamedesign, but purely by the salesdespartment (getting as much profit as quickly as possible).

As such I think that the change to the Essentials line was promted by Hasbro management that D&D wasn't hitting the expected sales quotas and needed profit margins, that usually results in "Change things to become more profitable or we'll close you down!". I don't think the Essentials line won't change things in the direction WotC was expecting (I think they'll loose more paying customers then they'll gain), so I think it's only a matter of time before Hasbro puts D&D in the freezer. WotC already dropped the RPG/miniature lines of SW, because they weren't profitable enough for Hasbro.

I expect we'll see (in 2011) either more freaky/desperate directions for the D&D brand, a significant reduction on D&D releases or seeing D&D put into a cryogenic freezer for revival in a decade or two. Maybe Hasbro will do licenses from time to time (as they did with GI JOE en Transformers).

The edition change over at White Wolf was also pretty much the beginning of the end for the nWoD property. Maybe the WoD MMO CCP is working on might revive the property, but I seriously doubt it.

 

[Mark Hope]

The edition change over at White Wolf was also pretty much the beginning of the end for the nWoD property. Maybe the WoD MMO CCP is working on might revive the property, but I seriously doubt it.

The WoD MMO is going to be based on Vampire: the Masquerade, an OWoD property. It will be interesting to see how that plays out. While the NWoD is continuing, I think it's a smart move on the part of CCP/WW to support the OWoD in this way (along with offering the OWoD line through POD.) Good time to be a WW fan in some ways

 

[Cergorach]

The WoD MMO is going to be based on Vampire: the Masquerade, an OWoD property. It will be interesting to see how that plays out. While the NWoD is continuing, I think it's a smart move on the part of CCP/WW to support the OWoD in this way (along with offering the OWoD line through POD.) Good time to be a WW fan in some ways

If the MMO is indeed based on oWoD, that would make me very happy, but I haven't seen an official statement from CCP. Also don't expect to much from WW pnp support. WW has been part of CCP for years and we still don't have an EVE pnp RPG even though it was rumored/promised when CCP 'bought' WW. Mayve the WoD MMO is different, but don't expect to much.

nWoD has dropped of the top 5, which is bad for a company that has long been the #2 RPG manufacturer, with Paizo being the new #2, WW isn't even the #3 anymore. WW has killed of their Vampire CCG (in September) and moving to 12 book releases a year in total divided for all their games (Vampire, Exalted, Changeling, Scion, nWoD). They do have some additional electronic releases, but I don't know if there are any new titles among them. IMHO that's every indication that WW is pretty much on the back burner of the RPG industry...

And to be honest I have this sneaking suspicion that WotC is next to go on the bench.

Edit:
Found WW announcement on EVE RPG almost three years ago:
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=373477

 

[WizarDru]

Since they don't even bother to list it separately in their annual report we can make an educated guess. Especially if you know what the IFRS (e.g. IAS 14) say about what you're required to mention separately.

IFRS? IAS 14? Sorry, have no idea what you're referring to, here. Is this SEC legislation?