D&D 3.x Will 4e last longer than 3e?

[The Ubbergeek]

Wasn't Gary quoted to be a lousy businessman?

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Wasn't Gary quoted to be a lousy businessman?

Perhaps, but that doesn't mean he can't count.

 

[SteveC]

I really can't see any meaningful parallels drawn between Monopoly and D&D. One is a ubiquitous board game that is gathering dust in the closet with underneath hungry hungry hippos and operation and the other has a smaller but more active consumer base that care about it enough to argue with each over an edition that won't be coming out in another 6 months. Is there anything D&D can gain from Monopoly?

Perhaps it can be used as another example of "30 minutes of fun in four hours!"

Seriously: I think there are a number of parallels.

Monopoly was extremely popular in an era without a large degree of competition. It came out and became the definition of a boardgame in the US.

Since then, I think that many people have realized that there are a lot of problems with the game, not the least of which is that you basically know when you've lost a game of Monopoly long before the game comes to a merciful end for you.

If Monopoly were released today, in a world of Settlers, Carcassonne, Apples to Apples, etc...it would be a blip on the radar at best. People pretty much buy Monopoly today as a gift for their game loving relative or because "it's the best!" and they've never even heard of other games.

I can see a lot of linkage to early D&D along those lines. If OE of D&D was the product that was being sold these days, would people still be playing it in any serious numbers? Frankly, I doubt it. That's coming from someone who's played every edition of D&D.

--Steve

 

[The Ubbergeek]

Perhaps, but that doesn't mean he can't count.

No, but I'd be leary to be 100% taking what he says on things like sales.

 

[The Little Raven]

So now you're calling Gary a liar, right?

Is he claiming he has the sales records of a company that he lost control of roughly 23 years ago, from the time of his departure up until the present?

I have the record from every car, chainsaw, lawn mower, dvd player, power tool, or electronic gizmo I've ever bought, but I can't tell you how much any but the last one cost.

This is irrelevant to discussing business records.

All either of us can do is speculate without hard data, so this is nothing more than a pissing contest. In terms of profit, sure 3e probably made more money, due to the inflated price tag, but in terms of sales, I'd bet AD&D 1e had it over 3e's best in spades.

Once again, you're going on opinion, and I'm going on fact. It's a fact that Charles Ryan claimed that D&D was selling better (note the difference between higher sales and higher profit margins) a few years back than it was during the "peak" of the 1980s. Since Gary's last experience with D&D is from that peak, and Charles Ryan has the benefit of two decades of sales figures since that time, I'm gonna go with the most recent data.

 

[The Little Raven]

Perhaps, but that doesn't mean he can't count.

You can't count numbers you don't have. Now, unless you can prove that Gary somehow has TSR's sale records from 1985-1997 and then WotC's sales records from 1997-2007, his counting of the sales from 1974-1985 don't tell anywhere near the whole picture, and thus can't be taken as an authoritative source on what edition of D&D sold the best.

 

[The Little Raven]

"I'm simply suggesting that he made a comment without having all the facts. In his opinion, D&D [was] selling better...That's great, but unless his data goes [forward] to [now], it's incomplete."

Given two people, one with the complete data, the other without the complete data, I am going to trust the one with complete data. And in this case, Gary is the one without the complete data.

Right now, you are arguing based off your instincts and a guy with woefully incomplete data's instincts vs. the guy with all the data. It's an argument that simply isn't persuasive. If you had no dog in this race, I am guessing you would doubt you as well

Mistwell, I love you in a purely-platonic-but-still-in-my-pants kinda way.

 

[Celebrim]

Are you suggesting we bookmark this thread and check back in 70 years? I think you're missing two points:

1. D&D has only been around for 33 years. When Monopoly was that age, the rules were not solidly established yet.

I'm not sure I have a stake in this argument. It seems to me both irrelevant as a proxy argument for what is really being argued and to be greatly oversimplified in this role by both sides. But if you believe that Monopoly was 30 years old when published in 1933, then I suggest you didn't read Mistwell's history closely enough. You should read it again. Despite the misleading annotation, 'The Land Lord Game' is not Monopoly 1.0, nor can monopoly be strictly called 'The Land Lord Game 5.0'. Monopoly is more closely related to the Land Lord Game than D&D is to Well's 'Little Wars', but we don't call Canasta 'Gin Rummy 2.0' either. We recognize that they are separate games. I think there is dubious value in making such artificial parallels as 'Monopoly 2.0' except to note that game technology can evolve.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

You can't count numbers you don't have. Now, unless you can prove that Gary somehow has TSR's sale records from 1985-1997 and then WotC's sales records from 1997-2007, his counting of the sales from 1974-1985 don't tell anywhere near the whole picture, and thus can't be taken as an authoritative source on what edition of D&D sold the best.

Okay, you've convinced me, if the current designers say the earth is flat, and someone else says it's round, I should believe the former. Got it.

 

[The Little Raven]

Okay, you've convinced me, if the current designers say the earth is flat, and someone else says it's round, I should believe the former. Got it.

Can't deal with the fact that maybe Gary Gygax doesn't know how D&D fared after his departure from the company, but the people who currently own it might since they have all the records, so you resort to some ridiculous statement like this?