WotC's Nathan Stewart: "Story, Story, Story"; and IS D&D a Tabletop Game?

Forbes spoke to WotC's Brand Director & Executive Producer for Dungeons & Dragons, who talked about the 5th Edition launch and his vision for D&D's future. The interview is fairly interesting - it confirms or repeats some information we already know, and also delves a little into the topic of D&D as a wider brand, rather than as a tabletop roleplaying game.

In the interview, he reiterates previous statements that this is the biggest D&D launch ever, in terms of both money and units sold.

[lq]We are story, story, story. The story drives everything.[/lq]

He repeats WoTC's emphasis on storylines, confirming the 1-2 stories per year philosphy. "We are story, story, story. The story drives everything. The need for new rules, the new races, new classes is just based on what’s going to really make this adventure, this story, this kind kind of theme happen." He goes on to say that "We’re not interested in putting out more books for books’ sake... there’s zero plans for a Player’s Handbook 2 any time on the horizon."

As for settings, he confirms that "we’re going to stay in the Forgotten Realms for the foreseeable future." That'll disappoint some folks, I'm sure, but it is their biggest setting, commercially.

Stewart is not "a hundred percent comfortable" with the status of digital tools because he felt like "we took a great step backwards."

[lq]Dungeons and Dragons stopped being a tabletop game years or decades ago. [/lq]

His thoughts on D&D's identity are interesting, too. He mentions that "Dungeons and Dragons stopped being a tabletop game years or decades ago". I'm not sure what that means. His view for the future of the brand includes video games, movies, action figures, and more: "This is no secret for anyone here, but the big thing I want to see is just a triple-A RPG video game. I want to see Baldur’s Gate 3, I want to see a huge open-world RPG. I would love movies about Dungeons and Dragons, or better yet, serialized entertainment where we’re doing seasons of D&D stories and things like Forgotten Realms action figures… of course I’d love that, I’m the biggest geek there is. But at the end of the day, the game’s what we’re missing in the portfolio."

You can read the full interview here.

 

[Imaro]

Designer salaries at work are around 70-75k, sr manager $110-120k

Also, wotc is in Renton, south of Seattle and most likely employees live in Kent/Renton were rent is significantly lower: 1 bedroom start 900-1000 per month

Sources: glassdoor and zillow

Yeah this is why I was saying @pemerton's estimates might have been low... Outside of the costs for regular contributors to Dungeon/Dragon, plus their in-house writers/developers...I was also thinking about the programming/database aspects of DDI, the requisite testing, plus the fact that it had semi-regular updates to the data and bug fixes which implies that an operations team was also hired/kept on once the initiative team for creating the app got it to an acceptable level of functionality and stability... I also wonder how much money was lost on Gleemax and if this was from the same budget as DDI...

 

[Halivar]

Ah. I was counting products, not just splats. So, things like Eberron books, and FRCS and that sort of thing. That explains things.

Yeah, I suspect campaign setting, fluff, and adventures made the actual printed products under 3.x greater by far than 4E (though I haven't looked at the numbers). My original argument was that the crunch glut ramped up faster in 4E than 3E, with the further conjecture that the goal was a quick cash-in on player-oriented products.

 

[fjw70]

O

Designer salaries at work are around 70-75k, sr manager $110-120k

Also, wotc is in Renton, south of Seattle and most likely employees live in Kent/Renton were rent is significantly lower: 1 bedroom start 900-1000 per month

Sources: glassdoor and zillow

Designers designing what? What level designer? I have data that says graphic designers in Seattle average $55k (senior ones around $70k).

Obviously none of us can be sure what they make. The only semi-hard data was the advert for the entry designer at $40k around 7 years ago. But with talented freelancers that would love to work for Paizo or Wizards those employees don't have a lot of leverage to demand top salaries.

 

[Imaro]

O

Designers designing what? What level designer? I have data that says graphic designers in Seattle average $55k (senior ones around $70k).

Obviously none of us can be sure what they make. The only semi-hard data was the advert for the entry designer at $40k around 7 years ago. But with talented freelancers that would love to work for Paizo or Wizards those employees don't have a lot of leverage to demand top salaries.

Well I was more concerned with the actual coding...as in developers, but googling average salary of web designers in Seattle does come back with $71,000. Average salary of a web developer in Seattle is $84,000 and a .Net developer is $94,000...

Of coursed were still not considering managers, testers, DBA's, analysts, etc. and this is all outside of those who actually have to develop, design, etc. the books with the content to be utilized by DDI.

EDIT: I guess the biggest issue in guesstimating this stuff is that we don't know the team size, roles, etc...

 

[Mistwell]

What is the point of this salary discussion? I seem to have lost that in the midst of the conversation.

 

[Imaro]

What is the point of this salary discussion? I seem to have lost that in the midst of the conversation.

I think we're trying to guesstimate the costs for getting DDI up and then running it... but like most of this stuff it's no way to pin down hard numbers...

 

[Mistwell]

I think we're trying to guesstimate the costs for getting DDI up and then running it... but like most of this stuff it's no way to pin down hard numbers...

Oh. Well, the estimate is going to be plus or minus a million probably, so I am not sure how dickering over $10K here and there is really going to help much achieve that estimate.

 

[Imaro]

Oh. Well, the estimate is going to be plus or minus a million probably, so I am not sure how dickering over $10K here and there is really going to help much achieve that estimate.

Honestly I'm not sure how we can get that estimate period... but hey everyone else is throwing out numbers and conjecture, so why not join in??

 

[aramis erak]

I think we're trying to guesstimate the costs for getting DDI up and then running it... but like most of this stuff it's no way to pin down hard numbers...

Looking at what's at glassdoor, wizards salaries run $65K to $117K (directors). A strong benefits package and overhead costs generally runs 30% of base salary (according to several CPA's I know, and some published overhead figures from the State of Alaska Dept of Commerce). So, costs to company around $85K to $152K per person. With only the top 4 being in the $152K slots...and most of the employees being paid around $75K, so costing around $100K.

It's safe to call the costs about $100K per person per year. The team was 8-10 strong during the playtest, but add 2 directors. So, estimate high, and call the dev costs about $1.1M per year.

We know that DDI brought in $10 per subscriber...
And Merric comes up with some minimums of 56K people subscribing in 2011... here - enworld thread
Assume only 97.5% due to CC handling... (1.5% to 2.5% is typical)

So, presuming it held true, that's $0.5M per month in. Single server op costs can be as low as $0.1K per month (I administer a large BBS; out rented server is $100/month, but that seems a particularly good deal, and supports a lower hits per month), but given the volume needed, probably on the order of $1K per month. Content creation adds costs, too. But it's a fairly safe bet that they're clearing $0.2M per month in 2011... however, it does drop off during the playtest, as content creation slows, then stops. And given that they have four $75K salaries listed at glassdoor for software engineers and developers, that's about $40K per month in expenses there.

Did it support 5E development? The math says "maybe, at first" - but with the caveat that we have no access to internal budgets, so we don't know what pool they came from. Still, if we assume about 1/10th as many subscribers near the end, it's breaking even.

 

[Kramodlog]

Now, as to profitability of 4e, well, we really just don't know. The presumed profitability of D&D 4e at the start of the public playtest for 5e isn't really an indicator on the profitability of 4e earlier on in its release cycle.

I didn't mention 4e's profitability. I said it wasn't a financial success. Those are different.

What we do know is that it wasn't a financial success. The first evidence comes from Ryan Dancey and the 50 million$ target that D&D didn't manage to reach. The second is market share loss. The rise of Pathfinder, the decline in ICv2's rankings, Mearls saying they didn't mean to lose half their fans, Monte Cook saying D&D only has a third of its base, Essentials, the fiddling with the release schedule of 2011 and finally 4e's cancellation are all indicators of that loss. The two year hiatus could fit in there too. Lack or loss of profits would also contribute to it not being a financial success, but we do not know anything about that a side from some people's wishful thinking.

We have no idea if 4e turned a profit and turning a profit doesn't mean that is a profit that is interesting. It is relative to whom you're dealing with. For a 3PP making 50,000$ could be pretty awesome. For WotC/Hasbro, 50,000$ seems low and not worth it, but hey how knows right?

Nor is it an indicator on the profitability of DDI, which didn't rely on new material to drive its revenues. (There is more than enough material coded into the DDI system to last any gaming group for quite some time, and the fact that it's still online is a testament to the fact that many gamers are still willing to pay a monthly subscription for it, long after any new content has been generated.)

What we can deduce from DDI is that it covers it maintenance cost, cause it wouldn't be up if it didn't. WotC ain't a charity. We can assume some profitability, since just maintaining it for the sake of it doesn't make much sense. But how profitable and where those profits go we have no idea and to say that it financed the playtest is pure speculation.

We do not know how Hasbro, WotC and D&D are structured financially. Where does the revenues of DDI go? Does it help pay the salary of Jen from legal at WotC or only those who directly work on 5e? Does WotC has a policy of getting revenues so? Big corporation can be very complexe, and saying revenues just go into paying salaries of employees is over simplifying. Even if it were that simple, we have no idea how many employees DDI could cover.

Heck, we have no idea if they actually wanted to release a new edition in 2014. For all that we know, the first playtests were just market research. Exects might have said "if you get X number of people to respond to the first three playtests, we'll finance the rest of the R&D and launch of 5e". From Crawford's comment about how they had to convince exects and give them frenquent reports, that seems plausible.