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WotC Makes Over $1B In 2021!
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<blockquote data-quote="Jer" data-source="post: 8540554" data-attributes="member: 19857"><p>This is the story that folks like to tell, but White Wolf and the World of Darkness had been in decline for a bit by that point. The reboot of their setting was a response to their decline as much as (or more than) the cause of it.</p><p></p><p>Personally I think that the decline of the WoD has more to do with its rise in the first place. The World of Darkness was a VERY late-80s/early 90s setting and making the transition into the 21st century was hard for it. As the vampires in pop culture shifted from "Interview with the Vampire" to "Twilight" the setting became more and more of a relic even as stories about vampires and other supernatural creatures became more and more popular. And White Wolf couldn't make that transition even with their reboot (in fact IMO their reboot took them FARTHER away from what was popular in the "supernatural romance" genre of the time as "Requiem" was more action/adventure in a lot of ways than "Masquerade" was). They had other game lines, but Vampire was their meat-and-potatoes.</p><p></p><p>IMO they also fell afoul of changing tastes in gaming books. The 90s were all about metaplot heavy books that you'd buy the next book to find out how the metaplot was progressing. By the end of the 90s people were getting tired of that - but WoD was so metaplot heavy that trying to extricate it from that model would have been incredibly hard.</p><p></p><p>ETA: I can't believe I forgot this, but they ALSO got into a legal dispute with their biggest fan group/LARPing organization over the trademark for "The Camarilla". That also played into their problems because rule number one of an RPG business is that when other people are doing unpaid labor to promote your game on your behalf you kinda shouldn't alienate them and make them not want to do that anymore. That whole "networking effect". (TSR did the same kind of BS in the 90s so it wasn't unique to WW by any stretch).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Jer, post: 8540554, member: 19857"] This is the story that folks like to tell, but White Wolf and the World of Darkness had been in decline for a bit by that point. The reboot of their setting was a response to their decline as much as (or more than) the cause of it. Personally I think that the decline of the WoD has more to do with its rise in the first place. The World of Darkness was a VERY late-80s/early 90s setting and making the transition into the 21st century was hard for it. As the vampires in pop culture shifted from "Interview with the Vampire" to "Twilight" the setting became more and more of a relic even as stories about vampires and other supernatural creatures became more and more popular. And White Wolf couldn't make that transition even with their reboot (in fact IMO their reboot took them FARTHER away from what was popular in the "supernatural romance" genre of the time as "Requiem" was more action/adventure in a lot of ways than "Masquerade" was). They had other game lines, but Vampire was their meat-and-potatoes. IMO they also fell afoul of changing tastes in gaming books. The 90s were all about metaplot heavy books that you'd buy the next book to find out how the metaplot was progressing. By the end of the 90s people were getting tired of that - but WoD was so metaplot heavy that trying to extricate it from that model would have been incredibly hard. ETA: I can't believe I forgot this, but they ALSO got into a legal dispute with their biggest fan group/LARPing organization over the trademark for "The Camarilla". That also played into their problems because rule number one of an RPG business is that when other people are doing unpaid labor to promote your game on your behalf you kinda shouldn't alienate them and make them not want to do that anymore. That whole "networking effect". (TSR did the same kind of BS in the 90s so it wasn't unique to WW by any stretch). [/QUOTE]
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