D&D 4E What was Paizo thinking? 3.75 the 4E clone?

[occam]

Folks are making a WILD assumption that the creative minds at Paizo actually have the resources to understand their own business. If the world that Paizo think it exists in is the handful of folks that post on their boards, or they think that 5K downloads of their alpha document on a slow game news day when folks are killing time until the next new thing comes along = 5K or more orders of Pathfinder then they are in trouble. I think the Paizo Publishing might be like the old world TSR potentially repeating the same business sins.

I wouldn't bet against Paizo's sense of their business, given their track record. They did a great job with Dragon and Dungeon, and responded fantastically after WotC took those back with their Pathfinder and GameMastery lines, among other things. TSR was having financial management issues long before they went under. I may not like what Paizo is doing with PFRPG, but they're nothing like TSR in the '90s.

 

[billd91]

Just because you did not see it doe not mean it did not happen.

And this applies with Paizo as well, for those of you who seem to think Paizo doesn't do any market research or surveying other than monitoring its messageboards.

 

[Firevalkyrie]

And this applies with Paizo as well, for those of you who seem to think Paizo doesn't do any market research or surveying other than monitoring its messageboards.

The guys at Wizards talk about - and have been talking about for several years - the methods they use for market research. They send out surveys. They use focus groups both in-house and off-site. They, yes, pay attention to message boards, not just theirs but others also. So yes, there's quite a visible amount of customer research that they're doing. They just don't publish their data (directly) for public consumption; we can however take some strong guesses at the shape that data takes by looking at late 3E supplements, and he information released about 4th Edition.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Reading one of the links provided to insights from Ryan Dancey (?), the difference seems to be that TSR (eventually) looked at the cons of as a shore, and WotC seems to see it more like an opportunity.

Sorry, but I cannot follow this sentence.

I know that there were feedback requests from TSR, both in 1e and 2e days, because I provided feedback. Also, as the changes to the OGL/GSL demonstrate, Ryan Dancy's policies should no longer be assumed to apply at WotC.

Please note also that I am not saying that WotC is going to go down in flames, or that 4e will not do well, etc. I believe it is likely that 4e will do very well. However, I don't buy the idea that new players don't "find" 1e or 2e for any other reason than that those books are out of print. There are many players and DMs who prefer 1e, 2e, RCD&D, and even OD&D to 3e.....It seems like a form of willful blindness to assume that the same will not happen with 4e. Only, unlike previous editions since the days of 1e, 4e will be competing with what is effectively a previous edition that is still in print.

Finally, I don't buy either that TSR went under because it failed to take its customers into account. I personally think that a large part of the problem was that TSR tried to compete in the collectable card game market, and put resources into things like Dragon Dice. Had TSR stuck to what TSR did well, folks would be complaining about TSR's 4th edition now, instead of WotC's.

IMHO, of course.


RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

Absolutely. I completely understand the desire to tinker. I just think it's a bad idea to do it too much, when you're basing a product's attraction on compatibility with earlier rules.

From what I am seeing, Pathfinder is not simply "3.5 reprinted", but is in fact "4e as we wish it had been".....i.e., a 4e that builds on what has come before, rather than a 4e that does not.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Think of it this way: if some company made a new type of phone that was supposed to be better and more reliable for the same price as an old phone, and the majority of phone-users were converting to the new phones, which kind of phone would you be most likely to buy, honestly?

Heck, if you couldn't objectively say the new phone was better, I would buy whatever was cheaper. If I could subjectively say one or the other seeemed better, having the opportunity to try them both, and if the price was the same, I would choose the one that seemed better to me.

I really hope I am not all that unusual in this.

However, if every game system provided the same experience, no one would ever switch games. It isn't reasonable to assume that 4e (especially given the major contextual changes) is necessarily going to do what 3.x did (or what Pathfinder will do). I'm sure each game will be better at some things, and worse at other things. The thing that will decide most, I imagine, is which is better at what is important to them?


RC

 

[crosswiredmind]

Again, this differs from TSR how?

It doesn't. But the poster said that he had not seen any effort to gather any feedback. Well, that's not true. WotC has also stated that they conducted surveys. Just because they did not share the results of their market research does not mean that they have not done any.

 

[crosswiredmind]

And this applies with Paizo as well, for those of you who seem to think Paizo doesn't do any market research or surveying other than monitoring its messageboards.

Very true. My company does a ton of market research, usability testing, and similar research but we never share it with the public. It is a corporate asset and we don't want our competition to benefit from the research that we paid for. It is quite possible that there have been many different research efforts that we do not know about.

 

[The Little Raven]

Sorry, but I cannot follow this sentence.

Follow this statement by Ryan Dancey (emphasis mine)...

No customer profiling information. No feedback. No surveys. No "voice of the customer". TSR, it seems, knew nothing about the people who kept it alive. The management of the company made decisions based on instinct and gut feelings; not data. They didn't know how to listen - as an institution, listening to customers was considered something that other companies had to do - TSR lead, everyone else followed.

In today's hypercompetitive market, that's an impossible mentality. At Wizards of the Coast, we pay close attention to the voice of the customer. We ask questions. We listen. We react. So, we spent a whole lot of time and money on a variety of surveys and studies to learn about the people who play role playing games. And, at every turn, we learned things that were not only surprising, they flew in the face of all the conventional wisdom we'd absorbed through years of professional game publishing.

We heard some things that are very, very hard for a company to hear. We heard that our customers felt like we didn't trust them. We heard that we produced material they felt was substandard, irrelevant, and broken. We heard that our stories were boring or out of date, or simply uninteresting. We heard the people felt that >we< were irrelevant.

I know now what killed TSR. It wasn't trading card games. It wasn't Dragon Dice. It wasn't the success of other companies. It was a near total inability to listen to its customers, hear what they were saying, and make changes to make those customers happy. TSR died because it was deaf.

Now, you might have your anecdotes about filling out surveys or giving feedback or whatever, but Dancey had access to their records, which had ZERO customer feedback or profiling.

Also, as the changes to the OGL/GSL demonstrate, Ryan Dancy's policies should no longer be assumed to apply at WotC.

This isn't Dancey's policy... this is the policy of any successful game company, which TSR ceased to be because it dug itself a grave by not listening to it's fans. A company that successfully revives a dead game and grows the RPG market for the first time in a while isn't going to suddenly stop listening to it's customers just because one guy left.

Finally, I don't buy either that TSR went under because it failed to take its customers into account. I personally think that a large part of the problem was that TSR tried to compete in the collectable card game market, and put resources into things like Dragon Dice. Had TSR stuck to what TSR did well, folks would be complaining about TSR's 4th edition now, instead of WotC's.

That's great that you have your opinion about what did or did not cause TSR to die. Dancey, however, had cold, hard facts and his facts dispute your opinion directly: other companies, card games, Dragon Dice, and all that didn't kill TSR... being deaf to their market did.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

That's great that you have your opinion about what did or did not cause TSR to die. Dancey, however, had cold, hard facts and his facts dispute your opinion directly: other companies, card games, Dragon Dice, and all that didn't kill TSR... being deaf to their market did.

Actually, I think this was also what killed them, because they tried to make money with it without checking the market viability for it. It might just be a symptom, but it's certainly linked to it.

And to RC: Sorry I didn't post it clearer. I wanted to say TSR seemed to see them as a chore, meaning they did it because they felt they had to, but didn't really see it as beneficial or an opportunity to gather information or use it for marketing - much unlike WotC.