The ineptitude of the WotC/Hasbro marketing machine

[Qlippoth]

Re: Re: The ineptitude of the WotC/Hasbro marketing machine

I hate to disagree, but looking back upon all the episodes of Transformers and GI Joe I used to see as a kid and a teen in the 80's, I realize just how dumbed down they really were. With soldiers firing laser popguns with almost zero chance of causing casualties, and giant robots whose exploits that didn't cause ecological disasters on a titanic scale, their story lines, once golden to the nostalgic eyes of youth, have given me a somewhat rosy hue to acknowledge that I used to watch them.

True. The only "damage" done in those episodes affected equipment (outside of the occasional Cap.-Kirk-one-punch-knockout).

WOTC is in Seattle, I think Hasbro is in Conn..

Rhode Island, actually (I've done some market research work for them).

I too don't understand why Hasbro won't promote this property. The conspiracy theorist in me would LOVE to peg it on the dated "Better Gaming Through Satanism" trope, but that really doesn't add up IMO. One would think that the popularity of swords-'n-sorcery video/PC games would prompt them to put D&D more firmly into the spotlight. Unfortunately, even though it stands to reason that [highly biased personal opinion] D&D more or less spawned the concepts of these games, Hasbro feels it's a losing proposition to ask its customers not only to imagine something beyond what flickers on their monitors, but also to keep track of details beyond "Life" and "Mana"[/highly biased personal opinion].

I don't mean to disrespect anyone who enjoys online entertainment--it just makes me wonder how a company can own a product and not promote it to folks who, quite frankly, would really enjoy it.

 

[FireLance]

As for Hasbro and WotC not mixing it up and takng advantage of the possibilities, I'll chime in and say that I'm kinda glad of it.

Hasbro, on the whole, knows diddly about RPGs. They're a big company, and think like a big company, and have a big company's concerns. Those are usually antithetical to the needs of a niche market like RPGs. So, in general, the more directly Hasbro and WotC mix it up, the less we gamers are going to like the results.

So, in general, I'd prefer they keep their big, greedy, clumsy, large-corporate hands off my hobby. Thanks.

I actually agree with this. The potential upsides are great, but the potential downsides are too horrible to comtemplate. Imagine a D&D board game based on the movie...

 

[Ravellion]

I actually agree with this. The potential upsides are great, but the potential downsides are too horrible to comtemplate. Imagine a D&D board game based on the movie...

Back of the box blurb: "You are on a quest to bring the body of your dead friend Snails to elven priests who can bring him back to life. As you miss him dearly you are willing to go through a deadly dungeon to get to your goal."

 

[kkoie]

Re: Re: The ineptitude of the WotC/Hasbro marketing machine

It all comes down to marketing metaparadigms...

Wow your good man. My brain was ready to explode by the end of that.

 

[Barak]

You know.. I don't think I'd really want Hasbro deciding D&D needs to become a mass-market product. Don't get me wrong.. I'm far from an elitist, and the more people who game, the happier I am. But to truly give the game mass-market appeal, they'd dumb it down somewhat. Well, more then somewhat. When you want something to sell to the most people, you brings things down to the lowest denominator possible, while trying to keep the "feel" of it. And while they'd probably sell more copies that way, I doubt I'd want to buy one.

 

[jaerdaph]

The old question: why is it never advertised?

I wonder how many people who don't visit the 'net regularly even know about 3.5.

3.5 D&D is advertised in gaming and gaming-related magazines. And DUNGEON and DRAGON magazines are essentially one big advertisement for D&D, always have been. You certainly don't need to have an Internet connection to know about 3.5 - a reader of DUNGEON or DRAGON has known about it for months as the revision was covered in almost every issue since it was first announced.

 

[spacecrime.com]

I read an interesting story about Hasbro in this week's or last week's Business Week. (It's the one with the cover story about Verizon.) Basically it's about the "new" CEO, who isn't really new -- he's been semi-running the company for years, but the Hassenfeld family member in charge has decided to hand over all the reins to him.

I like what I read about the guy (who's last name is Verecchia, I think). He's not fancy, he's willing to experiment a bit, but he emphasizes basics and long-term profits. He says his favorite toy is the Snoopy Sno-Cone machine, because "it's like an annuity -- it just keeps on making money year after year." A lot of what he has done over the last few years is steer Hasbro away from expensive hot-licenses-of-the-moment and back towards evergreens.

I can see him pursuing a strategy in which Magic and D&D exist quite happily as evergreen products -- they wouldn't be hugely profitable in Hasbro terms, but they could be a nice steady return on investment. I could also see him cutting D&D (and perhaps even Magic) loose as part of an effort to cut costs and keep the company focused on its more usual audience.

What I don't see is Hasbro trying to go "mass market" with D&D. There's some nice products they can and probably should do -- the board game that they've been developing being the most obvious one -- but I just don't see it being worth the effort. The game at the heart of the brand is extremely complex, and it's aimed at an audience that's much older than Hasbro's usual audience. The brand also has at least as many negatives as positives to its image -- not the Satanism canard, which at this point probably gets spread by gamers more than it does by religious fanatics -- most of them moved on to other crusades years ago -- but the "uncool geek" image.

If I were the CEO and I were making decisions about D&D, I'd ramp down R&D, keep a small design team on doing new products and occasional revisions, rely on the D20 publishers for most of my product support and enjoy a steady income from the property. If I were feeling ambitious, I'd try to make it part of a long-term plan to build an adult strategy gaming hobby market, but I'd try to do that on a small budget over 10-15 years. If the small and steady strategy didn't generate an ROI comparable to my other lines, I'd turn around and license it out -- there's several potential buyers out there, and a steady income stream on almost no investment would be very nice. It's basically a mature product, so I'd treat it that way and look for ways to gently milk the cash cow for years to come.

darn but I'd like to rule Hasbro,

 

[Scarbonac]

Re: Re: Re: The ineptitude of the WotC/Hasbro marketing machine

I thought they were coming out with D&D action figures. Weren't we all making fun of seeing a Drizzt with kung-fu action grip a year or so ago?

I wouldso be buying one of those if I saw one.

An ''Anatomically-Correct Priestess of Eilistraee in Full Ritual Garb'' put out by Penthouse or Hustler would be cool, too...

 

[Umbran]

What if it is their "big, greedy, clumsy, large-corporate hands" that have their itchy trigger finger over the "Jettison WotC into the Sun" Button? (which is of course red in color, as are all very important buttons ).

Thanks to the OGL, Hasbro no longer has the ability to launch D&D into the Sun, to be lost forever. They do, however, have the ability to mangle it beyond recognition.

There is no point in denying the fact that if D&D doesn't make a lot of money, we'll be seeing 4.0E three years from now. If D&D is tied in with a TV show, lunch boxes, action figures - the whole mass-market spiel - there is a good chance that WotC might be able to delay 4 edition a while longer.

In order to sell lunch boxes and action figures, you'd have to turn it into a kid's phenomenon. D&D is not currently targetted at 8 year olds, and I think none of us here would really want it to be.

Is it bad if Hasbro makes D&D more main stream (as unlikely as the case maybe), with a popularized hobby we may see an increase in greater gaming material and more of it.

It isn't bad to popularize it, if you don't dumb it down in the process. Right now, D&D is a thinking person's game. Do you really want them mucking with it so that it sells better to children or folks who sit on the couch, swill beer, belch, and watch Cops and 101 Things Removed from the Human Body?

If that mean another corny D&D cartoon, or poorly painted action figures, then so be it. I'd like to see D&D be successful, even if it means "selling out" to pop culture and fads.

If you want a golden age to last for any period of time, selling out to pop culture and fads is exactly what you don't want to do. Pop culture and fads have little staying power. We don't need a flash in the pan, Cabbage Patch and Pet Rock phenomenon.

Hasbro may know very little when it comes to RPGs, however they do know about running a successful business.

Correction - Hasbro knows about running a successful big business. They've been big for a long time, and to my knowledge they haven't recently demonstrated ability to work with smaller things properly. It's possible that their current mostly-hands-off approach is their own recognition of this.

If they can create a tie in that hooks up with D&D - great; however that does not mean that they'll start writing new books or creating new adventure paths. Hasbro needs to take the "older brother" role and help Wizards figure out how to increase their marketability.

Has it occured to you that the simplest way to increase marketablility is to change the product? And that the changes required to give the product mass appeal would ruin it? You say it doesn't mean they'll start writing new books and such - how on Earth do you figure that? You expect them to create a new hook and not tie into it directly?

Did we see television spots - even on the nerdy channels - did we see adds in main steam media at all? Yes, D&D was featured in Maxim, but what else?

People frequently forget that mass-market advertising isn't cheap, and like any investment there's risk invovled. It's priced for the likes of car companies, Coke and Pepsi, major cosmetics corporations. As I understand it, typically major advertising campaigns are measured in terms of small percentage changes in overall sales. For Coca-Cola, a small percentage change is still a massive amount of money. For WotC, a small percentage change may not even pay for the advertising.

The last thing D&D needs is Hasbro to say, "We've thrown a lot of money into trying to increase your market, and we haven't seen any return on that investment." If Hasbro does not make much effort in promoting D&D, they cannot be disappointed in their efforts, or feel they have thrown away money. At the moment, D&D makes a profit, albeit small by Hasbro's standards. If they spend lots on advertising, you risk effectively decreasing the profits. Givent hat things are not bad right now, do you wna tot take that risk?

Simply put, at the moment it does not seem to be broken. Do you then want to try to fix it?

 

[MadScientist]

Wow! I never realized that KotOR used d20 mechanics! The TV spots just made it seem like a standard 3rd person action game. I think I've just been sold on it though. If I hadn't of heard this I probably never would have seriously considered buying the game.