Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6658328" data-attributes="member: 82106">Well, which market results are those? Nobody really knows the story there. I've heard reams of speculation by 4e detractors, and that's about it. Nobody, except possibly WotC, fully understands the factors, but I see that since 2000 a new edition has arisen ever 3-6 years (3.0 in 2000, 3.5 in 2003, 4th in 2008, 5th in 2014). There are a lot of ways to spin all this, a lot of bits and pieces of information that can be gathered up and pored over. I think its better to stick to what we actually saw for ourselves. My conclusion is that all the screaming and chest-thumping had very little impact on D&D as a business. WotC continues to do what they have done for 15 years now, release substantial revisions of the game every time the previous edition's sales have begun to slow substantially. Meanwhile with each such iteration they've experimented in some fashion with the basic formula, to what appears to be little real concrete effect. 3e introduced the 'improved D&D' built with a generic d20 engine and OGL. 3.5 amped up complexity even more and put out a flood of supplements. 4e tried the modernization/improvement button again, plus some simplification and 'digital products'. 5e has eschewed, so far, the mass of supplements and instead paid much more careful attention to PR, while drastically cutting the budget and trying a 'D&D on the cheap' sort of business where the staff is bare bones, presumably hoping to improve ROI even at the cost of much less sales. So, we can guess that D&D could spend more or less money, but that RPGs are a marginally profitable business. You can expand your market by putting out more product, but ROI suffers. You can put out a small amount of product, but you limit your sales. It seems that the 5e approach to PR has at least worked for them better than the horrible silly 4e PR. Less SKUs may also be focusing more sales on fewer books, which is great for them. I don't see where any of this really specifically has much to do with the contents of the books, as long as its of sufficient quality. Really, the whole "edition war narrative" doesn't seem very compelling to me. I think some MBAs would be much better at explaining what WotC has been up to than some D&D fans.</blockquote>

Verification