When did WotC D&D "Jump the Shark"?

[Zhaleskra]

I feel WotC jumped the shark sometime in 3.5 when they started promoting the "treat the DM as your doormat" approach. This feeling is based on comments elsewhere the suggested the idea that WotC promoted the idea that a DM has to allow something if it's in an official source, and he or she is a bad DM for saying "no".

 

[BlueBlackRed]

D&D jumped the shark when Hasbro bought them.

There have been some amazing things released since that moment, but the overall trend is downhill due to pure profit-seeking.

Pre-Hasbro WotC's goal of fixing the game and returning it to its loved status amongst us vs. Hasbro's WotC squeezing the game for every single penny it can grab.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Hrm, how to reconcile these two points of view? Both pretty much entirely based on anecdotes with no context. On one hand, syaing that WOTC's fan base got smaller is a complete assumption with no factual backing, but, on the other hand, "tons of people have a DDI subscription" isn't exactly scientific either.

Guess it's back to the three blind men and an elephant time again.

There are basically a few data points we have:

1) Industry info, not quantitative, but presumably the purveyors of this information manage to sell it to someone, so it has some value...

2) Amazon sales figures, questionable to draw too many conclusions from, but still indicative.

3) The actual WotC product releases. Hard to say exactly what they tell us, but we know that WotC is still turning out D&D stuff...

4) WotC staffing. We don't know for sure what this is, but we can at least tell when they add to or cut back from staff.

5) Size of the DDI group on the WotC boards. We know objectively this represents the lower bound on current active DDI subscribers.

1 & 2 both still put 4e in the top 5 RPGs and often in the #1 spot. 3 obvious shows they've changed focus, but equally obviously they are still releasing a decent amount of stuff. 4 appears to be unchanged for well over a year. 5 is up to 50822 members from 48k in Feb.

I wouldn't go out far on any ice and say this all tells us exactly what is going on or that any great conclusions can be drawn, but it is pretty plain that 4e is competitive with several other RPGs, one of which is its own evil twin. Hasbro apparently feels justified in maintaining the staffing for the product and producing a reasonable amount of material even if the mix is a bit different than it was a while back. Finally it is pretty clear that DDI has a fairly steady user base that appears to probably be growing slowly over time.

Nothing I see anywhere in any of this indicates a product in some kind of collapse or death spiral. People have claimed that "Essentials tanked" but again there isn't even the slightest evidence to back that up. The product is out there in a LOT of retail outlets, which seems to have been a major objective, and it appears to remain on the shelves, unlike many of the previous hardbacks which have slowly disappeared.

Aside from unsubstantiated statements by people that don't work for WotC and presumably don't actually have any more information than anyone on this forum D&D 4e appears to be doing OK. That could certainly be untrue or 'doing OK' could be unacceptable to the money people but AFAICT anyone claiming they know more is blowing hot air. I'm comfortable holding the opinion that the game is viable and will largely go on as it has, modulus some shifts which really are in no way unprecedented for D&D in its history.

 

[Fifth Element]

Pre-Hasbro WotC's goal of fixing the game and returning it to its loved status amongst us vs. Hasbro's WotC squeezing the game for every single penny it can grab.

Is that why they spent $1 million to acquire D&D? To fix the game and return it to its former glory?

I would have thought the goal would have been to recoup the $1 million investment and earn enough profit to justify the investment in the first place.

It's easy to paint Hasbro as an evil business out only to make money, but that's no more true of them than it was of pre-Hasbro WotC, which was in fact a business out to make money.

 

[billd91]

Is that why they spent $1 million to acquire D&D? To fix the game and return it to its former glory?

$1 million to acquire D&D? That's an odd figure. They acquired TSR lock, stock, and barrel for $25 million (with Five Rings Publishing as well, but even with that, I'd assume TSR made up more than half with more than $1 million of that being for the value of D&D).

Sure, they'd have wanted to recoup their investment. But I don't think that would have been the goal of picking up TSR in the first place. I doubt they sat around looking for things $30 million in debt to invest in and then turn around simply on the value of the bottom line. I think they actually did want to return TSR's flagship RPG product to glory by making it their own flagship product in tabletop RPGs as well.

It wasn't merely a financial investment, it was a prestige, profile-raising, and market expanding investment.

 

[Umbran]

I don't think WotC D&D has "jumped the shark".

"Jumping the shark" is doing something sensational and outrageous in order to bolster perceived flagging popularity. I don't think this has ever happened with WotC (or any other) D&D.

Putting out a new edition, to my mind, does not qualify - that isn't done to bolster flagging popularity, but to overcome the saturation issues of a niche market.

 

[DaveMage]

After thinking about it some more, rather than "jumping the shark" it's more long the lines of "throw everything against the wall and see what sticks."

IMO, this edition has had more experiments in it than any other.

To Wit:

1. Spreading out the Core. Rather than all the "traditional" stuff being in PHB1, DMG1, and MM1, they deliberately spread it out over multiple core rulebooks.

2. Defined ending. Rather than have a game which potentially goes on forever (no level cap), 4E defined the end of the game as level 30.

3. Deleting/changing so-called "traditional" aspects of the game (Vancian magic, cosmology) and changing back a bit with Essentials.

4. Electronic "magazines". No more print copies of Dungeon and Dragon magazines.

5. DDI. Full support (at least, that was the initial intent) for the game using an online subscription service.

6. Essentials. A base of evergreen products that defined the core game. While this is similar to what was the plan with 3.0 (all supplements expect the player/DM to have the core books and that's it), Essentials has a greater number of products in the definition of "core".

7. Smaller game books. While they may have abandoned this with their latest book, they released a number of smaller softback books.

8. Board Games. Rather than stand alone board games that had little to do with the RPG, this time the Board Games incorporate rules of the RPG in them.

9. Collectable Cards as supplements. Jury is still out on the popularity, and they have received mixed reviews, but this is a step in a direction that is eyebrow-raising to say the least.

10. Splitting the D&D team into RPG and "other". While board games and the collectable cards may be part of the "other", time will tell what this "other" group produces.

If nothing else, they should have a lot of good info on what works and what doesn't for the next iteration of the game...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

$1 million to acquire D&D? That's an odd figure. They acquired TSR lock, stock, and barrel for $25 million (with Five Rings Publishing as well, but even with that, I'd assume TSR made up more than half with more than $1 million of that being for the value of D&D).

Sure, they'd have wanted to recoup their investment. But I don't think that would have been the goal of picking up TSR in the first place. I doubt they sat around looking for things $30 million in debt to invest in and then turn around simply on the value of the bottom line. I think they actually did want to return TSR's flagship RPG product to glory by making it their own flagship product in tabletop RPGs as well.

It wasn't merely a financial investment, it was a prestige, profile-raising, and market expanding investment.

I think both can be true. I seriously doubt WotC acquired D&D with the sole idea that it would be a feather in their cap. They did it because it was possible, it fit in with their business competency, and they figured they could recoup their investment. At the same time it certainly made them the leading company in the RPG industry and gave them a product with a lot of recognition.

It is really impossible to say what exactly the calculations were there, but surely making an adequate return was high on the list. $30 million is a LOT of money, certainly in the RPG industry.

 

[Fifth Element]

$1 million to acquire D&D? That's an odd figure. They acquired TSR lock, stock, and barrel for $25 million (with Five Rings Publishing as well, but even with that, I'd assume TSR made up more than half with more than $1 million of that being for the value of D&D).

Why do I remember a story about a $1 million cheque? Maybe it was $1 million cash plus $24 million in debt assumption?

Whatever the number was, it was still an investment.

Sure, they'd have wanted to recoup their investment. But I don't think that would have been the goal of picking up TSR in the first place. I doubt they sat around looking for things $30 million in debt to invest in and then turn around simply on the value of the bottom line. I think they actually did want to return TSR's flagship RPG product to glory by making it their own flagship product in tabletop RPGs as well.

Yes, but why did they want to do it? Was it out of the goodness of their hearts? Or did they have the same motive that all business have: in the long run, to make money?

It wasn't merely a financial investment, it was a prestige, profile-raising, and market expanding investment.

What good are prestige, a raised profile and an expanded market to a business? Increased profits, that's what.

 

[billd91]

What good are prestige, a raised profile and an expanded market to a business? Increased profits, that's what.

I think that's cart before the horse mentality. Why does a gamer get into the game publishing biz? To make tons of money? It's my understanding that's rare. They do it because they think they can turn their interests and passions into income-making enterprises.

If it were just about making money or growing the bottom line, I'm sure they could find more effective ways of doing so than publishing games. But they choose to do so in the gaming realm and that says they want to do something more than just increase their profits. They want to do it in a particular way and with particular types of products.

There certainly are businesspeople who do think to do just about anything they can in order to increase profits. It's how you get huge corporations like Philip Morris with tentacles in all sorts of non-tobacco-related industries. But companies on a smaller scale usually focus on a particular type of product or competency because that's what segment their directors want to serve. Acquiring TSR couldn't have been WotC's best way of increasing their profits. But I think it was seen as a great way to grow the company in a particular way, serving a particular set of customers, satisfying a particular set of their directors' passions, and picking up a particular mind share among consumers. While those might have also had the benefit of increasing their profits, I doubt that was the primary reason.