4Edition. Do you like it?

[Jester of the FoS]

And I see what you're saying about WotC selling their own product, and I have to agree with you, that they would be able to keep all the profits. All I can say is that I'm 100% positive there is a reason why they don't do this. It's not a hugely innovative idea you're suggesting; anyone with a set of eyes and an internet connection could see the example in action. There must be a reason why WotC doesn't do this. What that reason is, and whether it's a good one or not, who knows?

My guess is that is has something to do with them not having done it before. They've never taken money directly from the public before and always worked through two or three middlemen. There's also probably a substantial start-up fee for a payment system, packaging, and people required to organize the shipping.
However, I would argue that the set-up costs would be far, far, far less than the development costs of e-tools, which they've since discovered to be very high.

It just makes WotC seem very backwards and unprofessional.
Paizo, White Wolf, Goodman Games, Hero Games, and more all have the ability to ship books. It's *slightly* easier as they number of books the sell doesn't require a dedicated staff, but they also don't have the weight and power of the world's largest and most powerful toy company behind them and all the related contacts and distributor agreements (Hasbro.com also ships directly to the public).

This is why I'm calling out WotC as falling critically behind all the other RPG companies in terms of marketing innovation. They're coasting on the brand name, which can only take you so far. 4e is doing well, but not nearly as well as 3e did, and no nearly at the hyped peak that was the mid-80s. But both those times didn't have a huge popular culture wave of fantasy lead by Potter, the Rings, Twilight, and more as well as an acceptable of gaming and the geek lifestyle.
D&D should be HUGE right now!
It should be hard not to become zeitgeist juggernaut of a game. So why isn't it?

[Scipion_Emilien]

4e is doing well, but not nearly as well as 3e did, and no nearly at the hyped peak that was the mid-80s.

How did you come with that? I was under the impression 2 or 3 times more thant 3e (for the same time in the live in the line) and that it was a lot more popular than precedent edition. Heck, even webcomics artists like penny arcade and pvp online are now playing D&D because of 4e.

[Jester of the FoS]

4e is doing well, but not nearly as well as 3e did, and no nearly at the hyped peak that was the mid-80s.

How did you come with that? I was under the impression 2 or 3 times more thant 3e (for the same time in the live in the line) and that it was a lot more popular than precedent edition. Heck, even webcomics artists like penny arcade and pvp online are now playing D&D because of 4e.

Mostly from this:
http://www.goodman-games.com/forums/vie ... 07&p=25324

[Jester of the FoS]

Heck, even webcomics artists like penny arcade and pvp online are now playing D&D because of 4e.

No, they're playing now because WotC reached out to them and did promotional games with them. They reached out to gamers and brought them into the fold entertaining them, attracting their audiences, and more.
It was excellent, innovative, entertaining, and very well-done. If they made more moves like that to gain attention and expand the hobby they'd be doing better.

Instead, they dropped out of YouTube, have poor and often-delayed podcasts, dropped the ball on their digital tools, have almost NO advertisements in magazines, comics, etc. They pulled the magazine from stores keeping it from magazine racks where they might gain attention.

Unless you're already in the industry or hobby, you might have missed 4e or be unaware of current events.

[Scipion_Emilien]

Well for the sales figures there no way to know.During the release of 4e I saw others accounts that it was selling better. Heck they did a reprint run of the core books since they underestimate how many they would needed. This guy was the only one saying this.

[Unless you're already in the industry or hobby, you might have missed 4e or be unaware of current events.

Well that's quite a feat your asking from WoTC. I don't know of others gaming company who did it. And frankly, I don't know lot of other niche product who made that feat.

[Jester of the FoS]

[Unless you're already in the industry or hobby, you might have missed 4e or be unaware of current events.

Well that's quite a feat your asking from WoTC. I don't know of others gaming company who did it. And frankly, I don't know lot of other niche product who made that feat.

It's only niche because they'll letting it remain niche.

It had a cartoon in the '80s and a movie in the '90s. I regularly saw ads in comic books for the game and its product lines growing-up. I saw a few (bad) adds a few years back, mostly taking shots at Warcraft but nothing related to 4e or the launch of the new product line (even the new D&D Minis game warranted some comic ad space).

The game has the backing of Hasbro. To emphasis this let me remind you that two Hasbro products were featured in major big budget motion pictures this summer.
There is NO reason the game should continue to languish as a "niche" game.

[Jester of the FoS]

Speaking of WotC losing their innovation, for the third year in a row they've announced their annual pre-Christmas layoffs. This year's casualties include:
Rob Heinsoo, Logan Bonner, Chris Sims, and Stephen Radney-McFarland.

They join the recent likes of:
Jeff Grubb, Monte Cook, Sean K. Reynolds, Skip Williams, Jonathan Tweet, David Noonan, Stan!, and Scott Rouse.

Some big names in the most recent, including some with credits on the core 4e books. Radney-McFarland is most noteworthy for penning probably a fifth of all the magazine's contents.
It's probably pretty tight in the offices, with the restrictive hiring freezes during the recession.

[HuManBing]

The first list of names I'm not familiar with (probably been out of the DnD loop for too long). The second list of names sounds like the key core designer talent for 3rd ed's first few books.

I'd always gotten the impression that the second list of names (Grubb, Cook, et al) left WotC more because WotC had a habit of cycling out old staff into new writers, to keep the talent fresh. I have no idea if this is accurate or not, but if it's true then it could be that the first list of names is a similar phenomenon applied to the 4th ed?

But no doubt the offices' profit margins are hurting. Everybody's hurting in this economy... it's just up to the individual corporations whether they want to go innovative (such as saving printing costs with pdf sales) or hunker down and weather out.

[alhoon]

Actually the link is personal opinion Jester, not facts.

[Jester of the FoS]

Actually the link is personal opinion Jester, not facts.

Personal opinion by someone who was researching to write a book on the industry. I think he does a fair job establishing his authority.
And while he says, at it's peak, 3e did better, he does emphasise that 4e is doing better than 2e, 3.5, and other periods in the industry.

[HuManBing]

Actually the link is personal opinion Jester, not facts.

It actually reads much more like a frank calling-to-accounts by an industry insider. The writer is the owner of Goodman Games, a third-party DnD publisher, so his experience with the industry is intimately tied with DnD's own fortunes.

I also like how he has a "day" job working at a Fortune 500 company. I have no doubt that the steady income from there means he can afford to be less profits-oriented with Goodman Games.

This may be his opinion but it seems backed up by years of experience and actual realworld knowledge of what goes on behind the scenes. As he lays out in the post, he has to deal with placement, advertising, and dealing with retailers and store managers. Based on this, my journalistic and lawyerly instincts are telling me that his opinion is pretty damn relevant.

However, much of what he says actually may go either way in our current debate on WotC's policies. A few examples:

1. Online profits are still a minute fraction of the industry. Most of the profits come from bricks and mortar gaming shops. Wizards could afford to terminate the PDF sales because they're insignificant compared to the profit chains of store shelf sales. PDF sales are the fastest growing dimension, but that's hardly saying much because they're relatively negligible still.

2. 4th Ed's sales are very robust. Distributors and retailers alike are supporting it strongly. The industry has had two peak years, in 1982 and 2001, and all the rest were years of decline or a trough. Compared to the peak years, 4th ed currently is not as high, but that's a false comparison. The product is selling and selling well, and that's a good sign for the industry.

Final point: Goodman rarely comments on the business side of the industry, but when he does, it does appear that he comments from a position of exhaustive research and extensive professional insider knowledge.

[alhoon]

Humanbing and Jester: OK. You convinced me that his personal opinion counts a lot.
On the other hand... it's a long post! Could someone of you be so nice as to summarize that laaaaarge educated personal opinion based on facts?

[Jester of the FoS]

I'll edit out as much as I can and emphasise what I can.

I really like gaming, game stores, and playing games, and it is for these reasons that I traditionally do not discuss the business side of the industry in public forums.
... and now many gamers perceive Goodman Games as one of the more successful RPG publishers.

I own Goodman Games but don't run it full time. ... I personally have a full-time "business job" at a Fortune 50 company, where I manage a large staff running a billion-dollar division. Goodman Games is an extremely enjoyable outlet for my love of the hobby, but it's not how I pay my bills. ... I wrote my first RPG at the age of 10, self-published my first work at 17, had my first professional contract at 18, had my first staff writer job at 21, and have been involved professionally in the gaming industry ever since.

I believe brick-and-mortar hobby stores are the lifeblood of the industry. ... these stores that introduced me to the hobby, along with many other gamers. ... No online experience can match this.

Second, hobby game stores serve as community centers.

Third, speaking as a businessman, hobby stores are by far the largest market for games. The online market (including print, PDF, and POD) simply can't compete. ... Yes, PDF sales are the fastest-growing sales segment, that is true, but the hobby market is HUGE compared to the online market - orders of magnitude larger. If you support retailers, they will support you, and that effort pays off tenfold. (There's a reason Wizards could pull their entire PDF backlist without blinking an eye. Those of us with good retail distribution are among the few observers to understand this.)

... direct retailer feedback is a significant feedback channel for me, and one that I believe is much more significant for me than for most other third-party publishers. Those of you who follow these forums have seen my Game Store Review Thread, and have a sense of just how frequently I visit stores.
It is based on these feedback channels that I evaluate the industry. .

And now to the question at hand: How is 4E doing?

4E is doing well, very well. I'll define the parameters of "well" below. First, let's dispel a couple myths.

Myth #1: "We can publish the same book in 4E that we did for 3E, and use that as a yardstick for sales." Simply not true. Log on to dndinsider.com and you'll understand why. You have to understand Wizards' digital initiative (and its many ramifications) if you intend to publish 4E books at all.
Myth #2: "Distributors do not support 4E." Simply not true. The pre-orders on Dungeon Crawl Classics #53, #54, and #55 were larger than anything I had seen in years. More recently, Level Up #1 sold out its first wave of distribution sales in under 48 hours, then sold out the second wave of distributor restocks a week later, and distributors continue to place huge restocks. There is significant distributor support for 4E.

Myth #3: "Retailers do not support 4E." Simply not true. This sort of claim is where the debate breaks down, because one gamer can say, "4E isn't selling at my local store," and it's hard to refute that. Store-by-store experiences do indeed vary widely, and the truth is that there are many individual stores where 4E isn't selling well. It is these stores, and gamers who trumpet these stores, that have led to many claims regarding 4E not selling.
I've personally visited 47 different game stores so far this year. Next time someone tells you "4E isn't selling at my local store," remind him that he's discussing 1 store. Aside from those personal visits, I've spoken on the phone with probably 100+ other game stores, gotten direct feedback via a Dungeon Crawl Classics sale.... There are hundreds of stores that participate in each of these events individually, probably thousands overall if you compile the various lists.

...let's discuss the meaning of "doing well." First, some historical context. Before I founded Goodman Games, I wrote a book on the history of this industry. It was something of a research project that turned into a book. I was planning to start a game company, and I wanted to do it right, so I researched the history of the three primary publishing categories. Most of the gaming history that gets published these days is product-focused, with an emphasis on creators, artists, inspirations, and the like. My research was focused on the business strategies of the companies involved.
Dungeons & Dragons has had two, and exactly two, peak years. The first was 1982. The second was 2001. The mid-80's were a declining period, and the 90's were a trough. From a business perspective, the creatively-much-admired 1970's were really a low point for D&D. Fast growth, but very low sales volume compared to the years to come.

From 1974 to 2009 is 35 years. Or, roughly two generations. D&D has roughly one peak every generation. 35 years total, 2 of which were great, and the other 33 of which were "okay."

But what do people compare 4E to?

One of the two best sales years in the past 35 years of D&D. Not the other 33 years.

Is 4E doing as well as 3E sales in 2001? Definitely not. That was the high point in a generation.

Is 4E doing as well as D&D sales in the times of 1974-1981? 1983 through 2000? And approximately 2002 through 2008?

Yes.

So, is 4E doing well?

Yes. In the 35 year history of D&D, we stand at a high point. D&D is selling more copies, reaching more customers, supporting more game stores, than it has during most of its history.

Will 4E do as well as 3E?

Maybe. But frankly, who cares? That's like asking if 4E will do as well as AD&D did in 1982. Or as well as 2nd edition did. Or as well as the little white box. Anybody who's ever had a job where they're accountable for sales numbers -- and I've had a lot of these -- knows that there are some marketing events that simply hit the ball out of the park. 3E was one of those, and it will be hard to top for a generation to come. It was a once-in-a-generation feat, just as D&D sales in 1982 were a once-in-a-generation feat.
From where we stand now, at the very beginning of 4E, I see a long, strong run ahead of us. Just as in 1982, it may be another twenty years before the generational peak of 3E is reached again. Or it could be next year, when the economy improves. Just as in 1983, who can say?

[HuManBing]

This was the meat of what he had to say, as I understood it:

However, much of what he says actually may go either way in our current debate on WotC's policies. A few examples:

1. Online profits are still a minute fraction of the industry. Most of the profits come from bricks and mortar gaming shops. Wizards could afford to terminate the PDF sales because they're insignificant compared to the profit chains of store shelf sales. PDF sales are the fastest growing dimension, but that's hardly saying much because they're relatively negligible still.

2. 4th Ed's sales are very robust. Distributors and retailers alike are supporting it strongly. The industry has had two peak years, in 1982 and 2001, and all the rest were years of decline or a trough. Compared to the peak years, 4th ed currently is not as high, but that's a false comparison. The product is selling and selling well, and that's a good sign for the industry.

[alhoon]

Thank you both that was very educating what I was looking for.

I still don't believe PDF's are neglible income though. Not as much as half, sure, but most of my 4E books and late 3E books are drivethruRPG purchases. Before they canceled the PDFs I bought more than 10 OD&D PDFs too.

Perhaps they gain less (for some strange reason) from PDF selling than book selling.


However: I don't like being overlooked. 4E books are now expensive for me, hard to find and uncomfortable to carry. So I don't think I'll buy them.
But I'll buy adventures. And maps. I like their maps.