pickin_grinnin
Explorer
I do have a very different perspective, for a couple of reasons. One is that I'm looking at things from a business perspective, keeping the realities of running small niche businesses in mind. I have had a lot of experience with that. I was a programmer/designer throughout the dotcom era. A LOT of bad business decisions were made by companies during that time, from mom-and-pop operations all the way up through huge corporations, and I saw them on a daily basis. The economic upturns during that period were very obviously indicative of a bubble, but very few people seemed to realize that at the time. I could see it, so when the bubble burst I was prepared for it, and adapted accordingly. Most of the people I worked for and with (and others in the industry) were shocked and surprised by it, and ended up in really bad positions afterwords.
In addition, I have done a lot of work since that time (in various capacities) on a consulting basis with relatively small companies, including small publishers. I have seen most of the stereotypical mistakes they make. Among those is the tendency to make desperation moves when they have economic downturns, to not do their homework when trying to figure out why their sales have dropped, and to not closely examine the real wants of their customers (as opposed to what they think they will want).
What does that have to do with the topic at hand? Gaming is an industry. White Wolf was a company, with a product and customers. General business rules apply. There is a reason that most small businesses fail early, and that many small businesses fail when they hit their first big economic slump. This situation is no different.
After typing out this post, I realized that it was pretty long. The next three paragraphs are brief summaries about the rest of the post, in case you don't feel like reading the whole thing.
White Wolf didn't understand the reasons that their sales were going down, and apparently didn't understand the state of the market at the time. They made a lot of bad basic business decisions that could easily have been rectified with better research into market conditions and the actual wants of their customers, both current and potential.
They overestimated the number of players that would stay with them, and underestimated the number of new players who would jump on board. It looks like they thought that trying to appeal to younger gamers (as opposed to keeping the adult feel of the game) would help their sales, without realizing that in doing so they were taking away parts of the games that made them so successful in the first place. That's the same mistake Wizards of the Coast made with D&D 4e.
The longer stuff...
I remember the rpg slump of the time, and recognized it as a temporary situation. It happens in many industries. I have been gaming since the late 70s, and have seen the gaming industry go through a lot of ups and downs. When White Wolf first announced that they were going to bring on Gehenna and end the oWod, it struck me as a desperation move, particularly in light of the general industry sales slump of the time (which was well known and widely discussed).
Taking a large existing system that has had a lot of support in the past and completely re-doing it is a very risky move. If you don't have a lot of money set aside (like Hasbro) and don't have a number of other marketable products, it can destroy a company, which is exactly what happened here. They obviously made poor decisions, most likely because they were desperate. If what has been said earlier in this thread is true, they didn't do appropriate market research, or they would have realized that the whole gaming industry was in a slump at the time. If they didn't realize that, they had their heads in the sand - it was a very well known thing at the time.
There are a number of things they could have done that would probably have worked better than introducing the nWod. One would have been giving the customers what they were asking for the most. Back at the time, the big push was for more types of vampires and more playable monster races in general. WW resisted that for a long time, but finally started to give in and introduce more playable vampire types. They really dug in their heels about more playable monster races, though, for some unknown reason.
Another approach would have been creating some new games altogether that either used the oWoD core mechanics or featured some sort of new game engine that they could use in common. They really should have been doing that all along, though. Diversification is always a good thing, even if it means developing new things and setting them aside for a rainy day.
Yet another approach would have been to hunker down, shrink a bit, put out fewer products each year, and wait out the slump. That often involves firing some people, but going lean and clamping down sometimes works for small businesses (though there are a lot of variables to consider going in).
The path they took was to simply shut down all development on their core product and try to launch another one. That's very risky, but was further complicated by not taking into account the reaction of their customer base. That's a big mistake. You never want to alienate your core customer base. Adding new customers is a good thing, but alienating your core base during a slump period is virtual suicide.
They made the same mistake that DC and Marvel continue to do with their universes. Since the 80s, every time they hit a slump they tend to do something to "reboot" or "clean up" their universes, often claiming that it's too hard for new readers to get involved in the titles (which is complete BS). They get a lot of publicity out of it, and a lot of people rush to buy the new titles, but two years later the excitement (and sales) die down. Along the way they alienate a lot of their long-term customers, which doesn't help long-term profits at all. That's why the comic companies rely so heavily on character licensing, movies, and toys these days. Sales of the actual comic books continue to decline, even when you take electronic versions into account.
White Wolf - and roleplaying game companies in general - can't rely on licensing, toys, movies, etc. to shore them up. Outside of D&D, they aren't going to get exposure in the general media when they make a major change. Even D&D can't rely on licensing, toys, movies, etc. to cover for decreasing sales (not completely, at least), even though it has the most recognition among the general public and the power of Hasbro behind them.
RPGs are a niche product, for a niche audience. They have never been more than a blip on the general public's radar, and probably never will be. Though everybody knows about D&D, the number of people in the general public who play it is very tiny. To make a living (or run a company) off a niche product, you need to know your audience VERY well, and make decisions that will make them happy. You also need to have a very, very clear idea of how much competition you have and the general state of the industry. To know all that, you need somebody on board who has a very good understanding of running small niche businesses. That's where a lot of RPG companies fall down.
Just for the sake of argument, let's say that scrapping the oWoD and creating the nWoD was a decision they had made after doing some very serious research into the state of the market and what their customers wanted. Previous comments in this thread would tend to contradict that assumption, but let's go for it.
If you are going to do something like that, you need to figure out what doesn't work in the old system and what does, and only change the parts that are too clunky. The good part about the nWoD was that they tried to tighten up the mechanics. The bad part is that they threw the baby out with the bathwater, tossing out the really great parts of the oWoD that are part of what made it successful in the first place.
For example, they should have retained the magic system. I don't know why they thought that going with a stereotypical approach to magic would be a good move, but it wasn't. The magic system is what made Mage unlike any other rpg at the time.
There was no reason to rewrite the basics of the vampire clans. There was nothing wrong with them, and keeping the same flavor of each vampire type would have made the game more attractive to their existing customers, many of whom had a definite fondness for one or more clan types. Changing them is like saying "We're rebooting Superman. He is now a green magical shapechanger, but we're keeping the name." That's not going to sit well with most existing customers.
Changing the art to be less mature-looking (and manga-ish, in some cases) made the system look like all the others out there. Though art should be a minor thing, it actually makes a big difference when selling written materials. The art was always one of White Wolf's strong suits, and trying to make it look less "adult" simply made the game look less intense.
I suspect (but can't prove) that the White Wolf people thought they could attract younger gamers with a change to the look-and-feel of the game and that they needed to do a complete re-write of everything to justify completely scrapping the old system. The problem with that is that a complete re-write alienated much of their existing customer base, many of whom refused to even try the new game. For those who did (like me), making the game less adult in feel and going a more simplistic, stereotypical magic system took away everything that made the game interesting in the long run.
Let's be honest, too. Though I think White Wolf was being more desperate than greedy, a lot of people in the gaming community saw the change as being motivated by greed (and many still do). It's not hard to see why people think that. White Wolf should have anticipated that, and had some really good publicity in place to counter it.
