The Nature of Change (or, Understanding Edition Wars)

[FireLance]

Anyway, I think my favorite analogy is when your favorite "alternative rock" station becomes a "new rock" station and continues to play about half of what it was playing when you were still a freshman in college ten years ago, and half what we used to call "hard rock" or "heavy metal," up to and including Metallica.

I think that's a pretty good analogy. I've noticed something similar happening to me. Locally, there's one radio station that focuses on popular music, another that focuses on music from the last two or three decades, and a third that focuses on "Golden oldies". When I was just out of college, I listened mostly to the first. Now, I find myself listening mostly to the second. In twenty years' time, I think I will find myself listening mostly to the third. It wasn't that my tastes in music have changed. It's just that the music I enjoy has shifted from one station to another over the years. In fact, if my tastes in music had changed, I'd still be listening to the first station!

 

[RFisher]

It’s seems to me that the knee-jerk resistance to change should be roughly the same everytime. So, if you compare the amount of arguing during the various transitions, the differences won’t be due to “people just don’t like change” but due to something more substantive.

The big problem is that there’s not a lot of record of the gnashing of teeth and tearing of clothes from oD&D → AD&D. (And there was controversy even though oD&D was kept around.) There’s more from the 1e → 2e period. You have to normalize for that.

I suppose, though, that timing could actually have an effect on the knee-jerk reaction.

If you didn't think that 3e was D&D, then 4e probably doesn't look much better.

True for me. 3e was a different game masquerading as D&D. 4e looks simply like a different game. Just as RQ, T&T, &c. were different games than oD&D despite bearing some traces of D&D DNA.

But that’s OK. I was never expecting 4e to be D&D. ^_^

What do people hope to accomplish, when using (often derogatory) metaphors in discussions about the different editions?

Could the point be made without risking antagonizing people needlessly with thinly veiled insults (eg. comparing 4e to new coke)?

The problem is that I never intended the metaphor to be derogatory. And it wasn’t a thinly veiled insult because I’m not that subtle. If I intend to be insulting, it will be obvious.

It’s better to misread a post in a more positive light than was intended than to risk reading it in a more negative light than was intended. It’s better to misread mean-spirited as friendly joking than that to risk reading friendly joking as mean-spirited. When you fail at those, it’s better to ignore.

Basic netiquette from TCP-over-smoke-signal days. ^_^

If only I were better at following my own advice. ^_^

 

[Imaro]

Fully fulled character concepts are their own individual class in 4e, rather than cobbled together out of existing classes. This way of looking at 3e/4e multiclassing is thus kinda missing the point - they have different purposes, and certain goals are reached via different means in 4e.

I understand all of this, what I was saying is that it's easy to see from the blanket statement that the rules of SWSE were a preview for 4e...that many could draw the wrong conclusion since there are some pretty big differences in those two games. It's easy to site those differences now that 4e is out...but it wasn't nearly as easy or clear back then.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Could the point be made without risking antagonizing people needlessly with thinly veiled insults (eg. comparing 4e to new coke)?

The New Coke analogy- which I was among the first to bring up on these boards in reference to 4Ed- is not meant to insult 4Ed. Its not an insult, its an observation.

It is brought up because it is the classic example taught in MBA programs (like the one I went through) when illustrating the potential pitfalls of reading too much into your market research and overcommitting to a particular business strategy or product.

Coke, the dominant softdrink manufacturer, had been losing market share to newer, sweeter softdrinks, especially Pepsi. They did extensive recipe testing in product labs, and millions of dollars worth of real-world product testing, marketing research. After the new recipe kept beating the old recipe AND other soft-drinks in test after test, they released New Coke and started winding down production of the original recipe.

It was a popular flavor, a world-beater according to empirical data.

The problem was 2 fold- it didn't fit into the identity of the product it was meant to replace, but even more importantly, the existing customer base didn't want the new flavor if it meant giving up access to the old. They wanted both. While they expected New Coke to bring in new customers- which it did- they lost members of the customer base.

The rest is history. Sales rose sharply as new customers flocked to New Coke, but then declined steeply as the backlash began. It cost Coke a LOT, not just in expenditures, but also in market share.

We know WotC designers did market research, at least according to their own statements, and we have no real reason to doubt them.

Many of the changes they put in the game seemed popular as HRs or in playtest, in 3PP D&D variants, etc. Many things they took out seemed unpopular or in some way flawed- especially things that were frequently HRed away.

Right before printing, 4Ed must have looked like gold.

The problem is that, like New Coke, many players in the existing consumer base didn't like the complete aggregation of changes 4Ed introduced as a substitute for 3.X.* It didn't conform with the identity they saw in 3.X.

IOW, 4Ed risks becoming and is already seen by some to be the New Coke of the RPG industry.

(There were also certain PR blunders that also muddied the waters as well, but that is a different issue.)

* I should qualify that statement: it is based on a variety of polls on different RPG websites since 4Ed's release. Right now, we are seeing a sizeable number of the "old guard" who simply aren't playing 4Ed for a variety of reasons, but 4Ed sales of the Core 3 are high. Even if 4Ed IS the New Coke of the RPG industry, we won't know for some time- the product is simply too new.

 

[Wayside]

It's a bit of an insult--to the people doing the bashing. During blind taste tests self-identifying Pepsi and Coke fans preferred New Coke, and it was only after the identities of the products involved were revealed that people started to get redonkulous:

In 1987 The Wall Street Journal commissioned an interesting survey of 100 randomly selected cola drinkers, of whom 52 declared themselves beforehand to be Pepsi partisans, 46 Coke Classic loyalists, and 2 new-Coke drinkers. In the Journal's blind taste test, new Coke was the winner with 41 votes, followed by Pepsi with 39 and Coke Classic with 20. Seventy of the 100 people who participated mistakenly thought they had chosen their favorite brand; some were very indignant. A Coke Classic drinker who chose Pepsi said, "I won't lower myself to drink Pepsi. It is too preppy. Too yup. The New Generation--it sounds like Nazi breeding. Coke is more laid back." A Pepsi enthusiast who chose Coke said, "I relate Coke with people who just go along with the status quo. I think Pepsi is a little more rebellious, and I have a little bit of rebellion in me."

Pasted from here, originally taken from Introduction to Statistical Reasoning, Gary Smith, McGraw Hill, 1998, pp. 186-187.

It's too bad we can't do a blind edition test, since if ordinary people construct elaborate identities around beverages I can only imagine the hilarity that goes on in Joe Gamer's brain.

 

[Ydars]

The idea that EN World is irrelevant and not a "representative sample" of typical gamers is crazy for one reason; this is not a democracy where one person gets one vote. Your "market weight" to WoTC depends on how much you spend. The more you spend, the more they should care.

It would not surprise me to find that several thousand people on this board have 50+ 3.5E books (I know I have) because a) many of us are committed (obsessed) D&Ders and we over-represent DMs as well. Not everyone here will have this many books, but I bet alot of us do, perhaps 1-2000 people (the regular posters). So these 1-2000 people might have say, 50,000-100,000 books between them, plus another 30,000 "normal" DMs (I am NOT one of these, let me tell you ) who might have 5-10 books. That is alot of sales (0.1-0.5 million) when you think that total D&Ders are only 5-10 million, so only 1-2 million groups (average group is 5 if we look at 4E design goals).

If we add in the assumption that many of players own NO books (in my experience, only the DMs tend to own any books) then we make up a significant percentage of total WoTC and 3PP sales, just on this board.

You can change the assumptions, but anyway you cut it, committed gamers are probably worth an order of magnitude more purchasing power than the average gamer and I think it might be closer to two orders of magnitude.

So I hope WoTC is listening!

 

[Darrin Drader]

So I hope WoTC is listening!

I'm certain they're listening, but what can they do at this point?

 

[Ydars]

1) Create 4.5E version of D&D that takes on board the criticisms of 4E and resolves them. I know some people will say this is wrong, but the opinion polls on this site indicate that many people who think 4E is not for them would respond better to a fundamental re-jig than continuing in the current direction. I think they have lost so much of the highly committed and commercially important fan-base that they will need to do something now rather than wait for the train-wreck that 4E is becoming.

2) Produce a workable, fair and equitable GSL that allows 3PP to produce original, quality adventures, settings and splat books without allowing them to produce whole new game systems.

3) Buy me a large pizza for being sauve enough to save their hides for them .

 

[Hussar]

/snip
I'll add a few more questions to my "edition-wars debate" list:

What do people hope to accomplish, when using (often derogatory) metaphors in discussions about the different editions?

Could the point be made without risking antagonizing people needlessly with thinly veiled insults (eg. comparing 4e to new coke)?

I too would love answers to this. This is a drum I've been beating for over a year with the whole, say what you mean thing and don't rely on tired, over used memes to try to make your point.

The New Coke analogy- which I was among the first to bring up on these boards in reference to 4Ed- is not meant to insult 4Ed. Its not an insult, its an observation.
/snippage for length

But, it is insulting. You admit yourself that it is too early to know if there is any real comparison between the New Coke debacle and 4e. So, people who trot out this horse for the comparison are doing so in purely speculative terms. The trouble is, no one bothers to say that up front.

No one says, "Hey, in three or four years from now, maybe the release of 4e will look like the release of New Coke. We'll have a better idea once the dust has settled. " No. It's, "Hey, half of En Worlders haven't switched over for whatever reason, 4e is obviously the New Coke and DOOMED TO FAILURE!! ((usually adding the suckitude caveat as well))"

Then people turn around in wide eyed innocence and wonder why a bunch of people who actually like 4e think this is a crock of . And thus is born Edition wars.

The funny thing is, if you are very specific in your criticisms of any edition, there's almost no problem. Discussions might get heated, but rarely devolve into edition war territory. It's only when people want to stick in airy fairy high altitude generalizations that edition wars start.

 

[NN]

Well I am absolutely delighted with 4E.

It means I can now play 3.xE without having my grognard membership revoked.