The Nature of Change (or, Understanding Edition Wars)

[Scribble]

Sorry scrib, you quoted me while I was editing so this nonsense about your dentist is lost on everyone but me

Damn you and your thread time travel powers! hrmmm maybe I will call you The Rouseinator from now on.

 

[Imaro]

I make no claim that you think it is at all *right*. But your phrasing does seem to imply causation.

Let me restate - yes, folks die in sports arguments. I find it difficult to believe that the death has anyting at all to do with the sports, or love of the game, or what have you. For things to get that heated, and for someone to go that far over the line, something else has to be happening in there somewhere. It isn't all about the sports. Agreed?

Now, clearly Edition Wars aren't at all equivalent to murder. But that doesn't mean the example's useless. For many months, a large portion of our community behaved in manners we largely agree are inappropriate and counterproductive for these forums. People who knew better, who admitted they knew better, chose to abandon civility.

Why is it so odd to think there's something in that situation that's not about the game, that there's something else (perhaps several something elses) going on here?

We are a community, a small society, right? We should expect some social dynamics to be at work, beyond just what we individually like and don't like about a game. We are not rational robots or Vulcans (at least, most of us aren't ).




I think the OP, and others, have pointed out several times now that it isn't "fear" of change. Drop the word fear - it is loaded and doesn't really apply. Resistance does not equal fear.

Anyone here ever been subjected to the book "Who Moved My Cheese?" Much of it is nonsense, or oversimplified. However, it has some basic concepts within that ring fairly true. When people have a way of doing things that they are comfortable with, they will often resist changing it, and will resent attempts to change it. This is not "fear".

Fair enough...is it then more accurate towards the OP's point to say that resistance to change is not what I feel causes edition wars?

Where is the evidence that "fear of change = edition wars" is the hypothesis presented by the OP? As far as I can tell based upon my reading, that is not the case, but I'm happy to consider citations that might support it.



Cheers,
Roger

Then maybe I don't understand what you believe the OP's point is... could you perhaps clarify for me?

 

[Imaro]

That is the way the world works bro. People didn't know they wanted a game where you pretend to be an elf killing dragon until Dave and Gary made it and sold it to them. Before D&D people were happy to pretend to be Napoleon or Rommel moving little lead armies around on a map. Then Dave and Gary showed them a new way to play a game.

Emphasis mine...they didn't try to change their game of pretending "to be Napoleon or Rommel moving little lead armies around on a map." into something totally different...they created a new game for a totally different purpose.

 

[Scott_Rouse]

In all fairness, people didn't know they wanted Crystal Pepsi either.

You can toss about the names of a million failed brand extensions to try and draw comparison to the shift from 3e to 4e and I'll throw out a million more that didn't fail (Diet Pepsi, TDK R/W CDS, Lexus, EN World, etc).

D&D as a game has been evolving since day 1. Dave and Gary (and the people who followed in their footsteps) progressed the game as a business and the players did it as a hobby. It is and will continue to be an ever evolving game. You as a player can either follow it along it's path and remain a customer or get off the edition train at some point and still remain a player. My job is to make sure the train keeps moving and and make sure most of you want to keep on riding.

 

[Scribble]

Then maybe I don't understand what you believe the OP's point is... could you perhaps clarify for me?

My thoughts are:

When things change people freak out. Eventually they stop freaking out and realize the change does not signify the end of the world, or the begining of a perfect world. Just a slightly different world. At that point while it might be different, we go back to a relative status quo.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Sorry scrib, you quoted me while I was editing so this nonsense about your dentist is lost on everyone but me

It wasn't lost on me, either, I read it early enough.

"Don't sell the customers what they want, convince them that they want what you're selling."

Depressing.

Really? Didn't you write Grim Tales? Did you do no advertisement for that?

If Scott or Mike see a certain critique flaring up for their game how it doesn't support X, but they think that if you use Y in a particular way, you have Y, is that wrong of them to show this? Is this depressing?

"Hey, you know, if you got some tea stain on your tablecloth, put some milk on it while it's still fresh - that will make it easier to wash the stain out!"
"You dirty capitalist! You try to cover up that your frigging tea leaves stains, and then you want to sell me milk to fix it?!"

 

[Mallus]

Emphasis mine...they didn't try to change their game of pretending "to be Napoleon or Rommel moving little lead armies around on a map." into something totally different...they created a new game for a totally different purpose.

This sounds suspiciously like a claim that "4e isn't D&D".

 

[Umbran]

Fair enough...is it then more accurate towards the OP's point to say that resistance to change is not what I feel causes edition wars?

Your feel what you like, of course.

Just as I feel "love of debate" doesn't adequately explain the observed behavior. I don't think resistance to change is the One True Answer either, but I can see how it may well have played a major part.

 

[Scott_Rouse]

Emphasis mine...they didn't try to change their game of pretending "to be Napoleon or Rommel moving little lead armies around on a map." into something totally different...they created a new game for a totally different purpose.

But the point still remains that prior to D&D, wargaming had a completely different status quot. D&D evolved the standard for gaming the same as happens in other product categories. Music played live progressed to music you played on acetate at home, to music played on the radio,... to music that you take with you and download digitally.

Can you imagine the state of D&D (and quite possibly the RPG hobby) if WOTC just allowed D&D to die on the vine like TSR did with 2e? How much would you be complaining if we broke the game and then just stopped making stuff for 2+ years. If we did that, sure there would be OGL stuff and other systems, but I gaurantee you the hobby would be way different.

 

[Darrin Drader]

That is the way the world works bro. People didn't know they wanted a game where you pretend to be an elf killing dragon until Dave and Gary made it and sold it to them.

Call me a bit naive, but based on the accounts of the initial rise of D&D in 1974, Gary and Dave didn't need to do a lot of convincing. People were intrigued by the concept, they tried it, and they liked it. The initial print run of D&D was 1,000. And from there it exploded as people were exposed to it. That's not a corporate marketing strategy, D&D started at the grass roots level and became huge through the perfect storm of cool new play style, cultural awareness, and controversy. Marketing played a factor eventually, but it didn't start out as anything other than this small experimental new game.

And what does the customer want? If I ask 10 of you what you want in a RPG I'll likely get 5 different answers. If I take those answers, measure them, and apply the results, I bet we start to get a RPG that is different enough that suddenly the edition wars begin.

As someone pointed out several months ago, if you get ten people together who want to buy a cat, the shop owner shouldn't sell them a turtle. There are numerous ways that OD&D departed from miniature wargaming, and yet this newest edition has more in common with wargaming than OD&D or any version we've had since. The official brand has gotten so far away from the original game that it's no longer recognizable as the same. 4E is not a continuation along an established line that has gone on for more than 30 years as much as it is a reinvention. I think the reason that 4E is having a hard time gaining acceptance, particularly among the core audience, is because the majority of the people wanted refinement, not reinvention. Had you given them that, there wouldn't be as much discontent right now.

There was really no need for such a huge departure from the previous editions, people still would have bought it because it's D&D. This brings me to the point that the true reason for making the game so different was to eliminate backwards compatability. If people can no longer use their old stuff, they're forced to buy new stuff, which is where we come back to selling the people what you have rather than giving them what they want. This strategy all falls down due to the fact that gamers are smarter than that and they have other options. Lots of them.

In all fairness, people didn't know they wanted Crystal Pepsi either.

Or New Coke.