Wizards of the Coast and Golden Age of Fantasy

[Celebrim]

Your chart is interesting, but I'm curious how it was created? How to compare value of the dollars in various parts of XX century?

Pick up an introductory text book on engineering economic analysis. The basic idea is that the value of money changes over time (generally speaking, it is almost always less valuable in the future). For example, increases in wages paid to workers for the same work tends to reduce the value of money, since those increases are offset by increases in the prices of goods in services sold in order to pay for those wage increases. Since the government gathers alot of data on tracking the annual change in the value of money, its easy to compute how much more valuable a dollar was 30 years ago compared to now.

If you're really interested, I can get some formulas for you.

I don't have any evidences, but I'm not believeing, the product without any marketing or with '70 marketing can be sold as good as product supported by 2007 marketing.

Actually, it ends up working the other way around. At least in the USA, marketing in the '70's, '50's, and '30's was much more powerful and effective than marketing today. There are several reasons for that. First, when it comes to leisure activities, the USA is much less of a single culture today, and is instead broken up into numerous cultural groups - role-playing gamers, for example. There hasn't been anything like a real fad in the USA since the early '80's. There has for example, never been a TV show that was nearly the institution of 'I Love Lucy' in the 1950's, and never will be again. Secondly, there is simply a glut of entertainment options and marketing in the USA. It's impossible to pay attention to everything that is out there, and from a marketer's prespective no marketing media is nearly as effective as it once was because there isn't as many people paying attention to it. Network TV is competing with cable TV and video games and even things like youtube. Newspapers are competing with talk radio, and the internet. The mainstream press is competing with bloggers as content filters. Movies are competing with TV and at home video. Thirdly, the US public has become much more jaded when it comes to marketing. They simply don't trust the marketters any more. They are much more likely to be influenced by word of mouth than any form of advertising, because they mostly just subconsciously filter advertising out of thier perceptions. Marketers have to get bigger and flashier and more sophisticated just to get slightly worse results than they used to, and at that point, the American public is usually willing to pay a little bit extra to get no advertising at all.

 

[The Hound]

It's impossible, because D&D game is too difficult entertainment for masses. It's not impossible for nearly anyone to play, but I think 99/100 people don't have time and patience to play. A movie is 1-3 hours of entertainment prepared for you - you don't need to do anything, but pay, watch and forget. Book is similiar, but it's entertainment for one day. But D&D demnds you to do something, so 99/100 never won't bother themselves with it.

Which, if true, is an argument in favor or going back to 1e, as many seem to prefer. However, I would say that 99/100 people don't have the time and patience to be a *GM* but a far greater percentage have enough time and patience to learn enough of the rules to start as a first level player in a weekly session, and progress from there. After all WOW and its ilk require people to do a lot more than pay, watch for a few hours, and forget, and there are certainly 10s of millions of mmorpg players worldwide. I'm not saying that D&D can become as popular as massive online games, just that there is a vast pool of people out there who have the time to get into a role playing game if someone puts the idea into their head. And speaking of mmorpgs (stream of conciousness here) the reason those things are so popular is the social interaction, which is something that an in-person tabletop game can provide a much higher quality dose of IMHO.

PS: Supposedly, challenging board and tile games are a much more popular family activity in Europe than in the US. Maybe WOC could take advantage of all those people used to sitting around tables playing games in Europe and do more marketing over there.

 

[Steel_Wind]

PS: Supposedly, challenging board and tile games are a much more popular family activity in Europe than in the US. Maybe WOC could take advantage of all those people used to sitting around tables playing games in Europe and do more marketing over there.

Eurogames are designed to be played in about an hour, aim at featuring a few elegant rules pushing around wooden pieces.

Ameritrash games have little appeal in that market; let alone complex RPGs. That's just not a mainstream game in Germany.

Though if you really want to have some fun, start another thread singing the praises of Eurogames like Caylus, I'll see if I can get Michael Barnes in here posting and we can have a big fun fight about it.

 

[Celebrim]

PS: Supposedly, challenging board and tile games are a much more popular family activity in Europe than in the US. Maybe WOC could take advantage of all those people used to sitting around tables playing games in Europe and do more marketing over there.

While this is true, its more of a failure of distribution than anything else. The US had a board gaming reinnassance back in the 1950's, which resulted in a few companies getting a virtual lock on the shelf space ever since. Later, as gaming advanced, using more sophisticated 'technology' there was a board gaming reinnasance in Germany in the 90's. In America, though retailers aren't anxious to risk shelf space on virtually unknown games from the small publishers who carry those games in the US, so the European games haven't yet got alot of exposure. However, I'm a huge German board gaming fan, and based on my experience introducing those games to people Americans are as fanatical about playing them as Europeans.

Lately, I've been seeing a few titles showing up in book stores like Barnes & Nobles, so some of the german board games could take off here in America as word spreads around (I know that just based on Settlers of Cataan alone, I ought be getting commission from Mayfair games).

 

[Thomas Percy]

I'm not saying that D&D can become as popular as massive online games, just that there is a vast pool of people out there who have the time to get into a role playing game if someone puts the idea into their head.

I see two difficulties more:
1. Time - game session takes +/-6 hours, in fact one day. If you work 6 days a week, it is not so cool to spend every free time for rpg only.
2. Mentality - most of non-players say: "Do you play this childish game about dragons and half-naked princesses. It's not for me!" and after saying that he/she goes at "Pirates of Carribean" to the cinema.

 

[Thomas Percy]

If you're really interested, I can get some formulas for you.

Yes, I'm interested. Thanks for help.

Actually, it ends up working the other way around. At least in the USA, marketing in the '70's, '50's, and '30's was much more powerful and effective than marketing today. There are several reasons for that. First, when it comes to leisure activities, the USA is much less of a single culture today, and is instead broken up into numerous cultural groups - role-playing gamers, for example. There hasn't been anything like a real fad in the USA since the early '80's. There has for example, never been a TV show that was nearly the institution of 'I Love Lucy' in the 1950's, and never will be again. Secondly, there is simply a glut of entertainment options and marketing in the USA. It's impossible to pay attention to everything that is out there, and from a marketer's prespective no marketing media is nearly as effective as it once was because there isn't as many people paying attention to it. Network TV is competing with cable TV and video games and even things like youtube. Newspapers are competing with talk radio, and the internet. The mainstream press is competing with bloggers as content filters. Movies are competing with TV and at home video. Thirdly, the US public has become much more jaded when it comes to marketing. They simply don't trust the marketters any more. They are much more likely to be influenced by word of mouth than any form of advertising, because they mostly just subconsciously filter advertising out of thier perceptions. Marketers have to get bigger and flashier and more sophisticated just to get slightly worse results than they used to, and at that point, the American public is usually willing to pay a little bit extra to get no advertising at all.

The things which make today marketing difficult, are it's oportunities too. New tricks to seduce to people. Eg. search engine optimization (SEO) - one can complay: "Because of this Internet, I must pay for this SEO", and another marketer can say: "Great! Now we have SEO to reach our Google-using-target". I'm marketing optimist .

And I see we (D&D players) are living in great times for fantasy, and it will be better (more, and more fantasy).

 

[w_earle_wheeler]

We are certainly living in a golden era of Fantasy and Comic Book movies. Sci-Fi, not so much... but close.

Sadly, I don't feel we're in a golden age for Fantasy, Sci-Fi and Comic Book print media. Though we may be on the cusp of some big breakthroughs.

 

[The Hound]

Sadly, I don't feel we're in a golden age for Fantasy, Sci-Fi and Comic Book print media. Though we may be on the cusp of some big breakthroughs.

Ummmm... If you live in the US or Canada, have you ever noticed the size of the science fiction and fantasy section in your Barnes and Noble or Borders? In terms of number of titles I'd guess its either the biggest section there, or else #2 or #3 behind Computer books and/or History.

 

[Thomas Percy]

Ummmm... If you live in the US or Canada, have you ever noticed the size of the science fiction and fantasy section in your Barnes and Noble or Borders? In terms of number of titles I'd guess its either the biggest section there, or else #2 or #3 behind Computer books and/or History.

Polish equivalent of Barnes and Noble is called Empik and there are only several shelves of fantasy and s-f materials in compare to 2-3 floors of the rest. Rpg, if present at all, occupies 1 small shelf, mostly Polish edition of D&D.

 

[Toben the Many]

I definately think we're living in the Golden Age of Fantasy. I and my friends talk about that all the time now.

WoW could be successful unless it were appealing for people to pretend to be dwarves, elves, orcs, etc.

Furthermore, I would submit that we are living in the golden age of Geekdom, not just Fantasy. The Star Trek franchise, Kenner's Stars Wars toys, geek toys like digital cameras, video phones, etc.

As far as what this has to do with D&D....

D&D is doing the best it's ever been doing with 3 million players. However, it's not reached the success of World of Warcraft. Why? Some say because WoW is visual. I disagree. When my group games, we break out the minis, the Dwarven Forge dungeon tiles, etc. Plenty visual. Then there's D&D online. Right now! It's still not as successful as WoW. Not even close.

Here's the thing, D&D has a high degree of entry level knowledge and effort in order to play. How did you get started in D&D? Most people have to be taught how to play D&D by someone else. There are a few self-taught people out there, but that's not many. Then, to achieve mastery, to get to the point where you never have to look at a book may take, what? A year? Two years? More?

With WoW, you install the software, you play. That's it.

Now, if you really, really wanted D&D to be wildly successful, you'd have to make it much easier to play. However, do we really want that kind of D&D? Probably not. Most of us like the complex rules, the numerous spells, etc.