When did I stop being WotC's target audience?

[Drkfathr1]

I feel a little like the OP, but I can see how I'm not the target audience. I used to be a completist, but haven't been for years. I realized I don't have to buy everything that comes out. Don't know if that's because I'm getting older, or if I'm just getting more practical in terms of what I'll use out of a library of 50+ rule books.

I'm 35 by the way, and have been playing since 1ED AD&D.

I think they had to switch their focus to younger players and had to try to catch the same folks that are into WoW, and that's not a bad thing, just natural progression. The game has evolved alot over the years, and will continue to do so.

I do wonder how badly the gaming community has fractured over the new edition though. It may not be as bad as many think, but I would love to see some accurate figures on how many "new players" will be brought into D&D vs. how many "existing players" will leave (by not buying into the new line).

Growing the game/hobby requires keeping the players you already have in addtion to adding the new ones. That's an important factor that I think many of us fear WOTC may have lost sight of. Although that's probably just a matter of perception, its still a very real concern.

 

[Cadfan]

The metaphor breaks down, though, because RPG's don't have diminishing consumer value like books and video games. This makes the situation even harder on RPG publishers.

I agree with most of what you said, but not this bit I've quoted. I think RPGs do have diminishing consumer value, almost exactly like books and video games. It diminishes at a lesser rate, but it still diminishes.

I think this is a big part of what drives new editions (1), and also what drives grognards away from new editions (2).

(1) tastes change, and a product is less valuable to gamers who are more in tune with modern trends.
(2) after doing the same sorts of things so many times, older gamers become unable to realize the same sense of wonder and enthusiasm they had when the game (and gaming) was new to them, causing bitterness and a tendency to blame younger gamers and new editions rather than a recognization that the change was internal.

I know my tastes have changed since I started gaming. I've watched the tastes of others change. Fortunately for me, my two highest priorities are respectively well served by 4e and system independant.

High priority number one is that there be an underlying game to the RPG. Too many RPGs just give you rules for simulating things, and assume that you'll just have fun now, because if you're simulating something cool, obviously you're having fun. This isn't so. For me, a game requires interesting decisions, so whatever the game focuses upon must include interesting decision making. 3e focused on combat, amongst other things of course, but definitely it focused on combat. And for all too many classes, there were too few interesting decisions to be made. 4e expanded upon this, and fully integrated a grid, increasing the amount of interesting decisions available. This wasn't the only solution (Paranoia has a different solution, Feng Shui has a different solution, other games don't really focus on combat in the first place, etc), but it was a good solution. Games that haven't got a good solution to this problem often end up as glorified sessions of dice gambling.

High priority number two is that I can DM in such a way that my players have fun. This is system independent. I get my biggest kick out of knowing that I ran a successful evening. I find that the best ways to get that rise out of your players are system independent, because they rely on player accomplishment rather than character accomplishment. This is mostly system independent because it usually involves solving mysteries or coming up with successful plans, although 4e's strong tabletop element allows for player accomplishment of the tactical variety.

 

[Aeolius]

For those keeping track, I’ll turn 43 in a few weeks and I started playing D&D with Basic D&D back in 1979. I’m not sure when I stopped being D&D’s target audience.

Until recently, I consider myself to be a self-titled leap-grognard, as skipped from 1e to 3e. I bought most of what 3e/3.5e had to offer, unless it pertained to a campaign setting I had no interest in (I prefer GH) or had little information I found useful. With the advent of 4e, a new generation of leap-grognard, those jumping from 2e to 4e, has appeared.

Granted, I haven't run a standard dungeon crawl since my 1e days, well into the time others were playing 2e. Did I stop being a member of their target audience at that time? My 3e games are set in unusual settings and I run my games online. Did that disqualify me from being in the target audience?

I know I am no longer part of WotC’s/Hasbro’s concern as, while I bought the 4e core books the day they were released, I didn’t care for them. I’m not on their radar for the DDI, as I use the Macintosh OS. I am also uninterested in Tiny Adventures on Facebook, but would welcome an official D&D presence on Second Life. I find myself looking over the WotC boards less each day, in favor of sites like Kobold Quarterly, Paizo, Phoenix Lore, and the like.

Perhaps I am 5e’s target audience.

 

[Fifth Element]

Except that they did.

They just didn't fix it in a way that satisfied you.

This right here. Everyone has such differing opinions about the good parts of each edition that one player's "fix" is another's "ruin", and another's "meh".

We can't take changes personally. Any changes made were presumably thought to be wanted by the greatest number of players. They may turn out to be wrong, but the designers certainly didn't set out to alienate a particular segment of the player base.

 

[DaveMage]

4th Edition is a response to many of those criticisms of 3rd Edition. However, Jeff Wilder, you are 3rd Edition complete-ist. So, for you, 3rd Edition either didn't have those issues, you found a way to circumvent them, or something else. 3rd Edition was already good enough for you. When 4th Edition arrived, you were already using a game system that was sufficient for you. There was not need for a new edition. And thus, you were not WotC's target audience.

Well said. And this is why Pathfinder has became viable.

WotC did not do enough with 4E to cater to many of us who are *happy* with 3.5.

 

[Switchblade]

Personally I don't mind that I think 4e is rubbish as 3.5 had a good enough run that there are enough books to keep me going. Even better, when 4e came out I got to pick up lots of books I wouldn't have otherwise bothered with as they were dirt cheap. More that enough to soften
the blow of wasting money on the 4e players handbook.
(Bit disapointed that they only got 2 fiendish codexes done though. I'd have liked to a Neutral Evil fiends codex but that's neither here nor there)

If you have every 3.5 book is it really worth getting upset over not liking 4e?

Ignore it and enjoy playing the system you prefer.

 

[Irda Ranger]

I have a question about the "D&D must evolve or go out of business" argument. Why isn't D&D like Scrabble, Chess or Monopoly? They don't evolve, and they don't go out of business either. (And the different "versions" of Monopoly don't really count - they're the exact same game with a different color scheme and names). Companies still make a profit selling those games, and people keep buying those games (either new gamers or gamers replacing a worn out set). In theory, couldn't TSR still be around selling the Basic Set to the new generation of gamers on the same basis that Hasbro is still selling Monopoly, Life and Clue?

I think the Supplements could also still be selling. TSR went cost-over-profit with their boxed sets in the 80s, but paperback gazzetters (e.g., "Supplement IX: Ravenloft") can be printed relatively cheaply and in quantities well matched to demand.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I have a question about the "D&D must evolve or go out of business" argument. Why isn't D&D like Scrabble, Chess or Monopoly? They don't evolve, and they don't go out of business either. (And the different "versions" of Monopoly don't really count - they're the exact same game with a different color scheme and names). Companies still make a profit selling those games, and people keep buying those games (either new gamers or gamers replacing a worn out set). In theory, couldn't TSR still be around selling the Basic Set to the new generation of gamers on the same basis that Hasbro is still selling Monopoly, Life and Clue?

I think the Supplements could also still be selling. TSR went cost-over-profit with their boxed sets in the 80s, but paperback gazzetters (e.g., "Supplement IX: Ravenloft") can be printed relatively cheaply and in quantities well matched to demand.

All the examples you mentioned are competitive games. They are a different ball of wax completely. This is why D&D is headed in that direction too.

D&D is an IP
An IP is an asset
A publicly held company needs as much profit from its assets as it can get.

Collectible competitive games are hot sellers.
Make D&D a collectible competitive game = profit.

 

[Cadfan]

I have a question about the "D&D must evolve or go out of business" argument. Why isn't D&D like Scrabble, Chess or Monopoly? They don't evolve, and they don't go out of business either. (And the different "versions" of Monopoly don't really count - they're the exact same game with a different color scheme and names). Companies still make a profit selling those games, and people keep buying those games (either new gamers or gamers replacing a worn out set). In theory, couldn't TSR still be around selling the Basic Set to the new generation of gamers on the same basis that Hasbro is still selling Monopoly, Life and Clue?

I think the Supplements could also still be selling. TSR went cost-over-profit with their boxed sets in the 80s, but paperback gazzetters (e.g., "Supplement IX: Ravenloft") can be printed relatively cheaply and in quantities well matched to demand.

That's an easy question to answer.

Because in a roleplaying game you're playing a character, and the sorts of characters that people want to play change based on what's popular in fantasy literature, movies, and television.

If the primary reason that people played chess was because they liked pretending to be a rook, then chess would no doubt wane in popularity when pretending to be a rook fell out of favor in comparison to, I dunno, pretending to be a little top hat or a boot.

But that's not why people play Chess, so that doesn't happen.

Fantasy literature is different these days, in comparison to the days of yore back in the 70s or 80s. The same is true of movies. And comic books. And Saturday morning cartoons. And a whole new genre of stuff from Asia has shown up and stuck its foot in the door. Heck, since D&D was first written, at least two entirely new genres of fantasy literature have come into existence: Romantic Fantasy, and New Weird. And they've got their own conventions and character archetypes, and if you want to appeal to people who want to roleplay characters, you have to let them roleplay characters they like.

 

[Schmoe]

The problem with RPG's is that any profit you might derive from a gamer is only once-per-product. You buy one (maybe two if it's core) book, and the revenue stream begins and ends with that purchase. In order to keep the stream flowing, you have to keep printing new books. Eight years later, you've got complete market saturation. The only people buying your previous books are new gamers, and new content for old gamers is hard to come by.

That's not a good reason for a dramatic shift in games, though. For example, I bought many, many 3.5 supplements. I think it's accepted that, perhaps, WotC needed to do something new with the game to continue to draw revenue from the people who have "everything", and 4e was certainly warranted by those criteria. However, 4e marks a dramatic shift to the point where I'm not buying 4e. It's not that I'm not buying because I have everything. Actually, I'm looking at buying Pathfinder stuff. It's that I'm not buying because the direction of 4e is a direction I don't really like. And I think that is the heart of Jeff's question. Why did WotC choose a direction with 4e that was such a radical departure from previous versions, when they could have retained many buyers by building on previous versions instead?

My guess is that WotC felt there was a large market of potential players that were put off by fundamental aspects of earlier versions of D&D, and they felt that the potential market was greater than the market of loyal customers they already had. For the math inclined:

(Potential market gained by dramatic shift - loss of current market due to dramatic shift) > (Potential market gained by continuing current direction - loss of current market due to continuing current direction)