TheRPGSite

Why do RPGs always follow a periodical model of sales?  Why don't we see more evergreen models?

It's not just because RPG companies are predominately small operations.  Ever since WotC got hold of D&D, they have treated it as a periodical model rather than an evergreen one.  If anyone in the RPG biz should be able to think long term, it should be the largest player in the business supported by the giant Hasbro.

The only nice thing I can say nowadays about Palladium is that they seem to be the only company I can say uses an evergreen model.  They keep worthless crap like Recon and Ninjas & Superspies in print.  KS has only ever let a few things go permanently out of print.  Otherwise, products stay in the catalog forever.

SJG used to strike me as a company with a partially evergreen model, but not so much anymore.  FFG strikes me as potentially operating under a predominately evergreen model, but I haven't tracked them long enough to say one way or the other.

Risk and Monopoly are on store shelves year after year after year.  Why does our hobby not have a "Classic D&D" box set which is reliably on every store shelf year after year?  Clearly such a thing is not considered viable, otherwise we would be seeing an official product rather than stuff like OSRIC and the retro clones.

I'm not saying I don't like new games.  I'm just wondering why it seems our hobby lacks anything which is considered salable/marketable for longer than 5 years.

Interesting question!  

I am unsure why HASBRO(!!!) would not want an evergreen D&D to sit on the shelves next to Monopoly.

CoC is pretty evergreen.   The new "editions" are just new covers, some new layout and some stuff cobbled from previous edition supplements.

All I can say is that I firmly think that there should be a basic D&D game that is sold in the boxed games section for 30+ years like Monopoly. One of my biggest complaints about the industry is doing new editions rather than creating a wholly different game. 2010 D&D should be the same as 1980 D&D just with updated art/packaging.

But it's apparent that the IP holders don't agree.

Evergreen games all share two features: Their rules are easy to explain in their entirety to new players, and they can be played without any preparation.  Neither has ever been true of D&D.  Even in the simplest versions the rules as a whole are not quick and easy to understand (it's easy to explain how to play a level 1 fighter, but its hard to explain everything, and one player, the DM, does have to know everything).  And every roleplaying game requires preparation on the part of the DM to prepare the scenario, you can't just break out the game and play.  Consequently RPGs of the traditional variety will always be the domain of serious enthusiasts, and never a product for the much larger causal gamer market.  And this means that there aren't enough customers, specially not enough new customers, to support an evergreen model.  Unlike monopoly which seems destined to be owned by every human on Earth.

Because people who write for RPG's want a job in 5+ years?

Unless you're setting is unimaginably massive (most sci-fi), you're eventually going to either be writing metaplot books, or RIFTS: Greenland.

And while space is unimaginably vast, books filled with exciting locales that aren't "bigger and/or better" than the last tend not to sell well, much as we complain about power creep in a game line.

People love Arrakis because of the spice, and how pivotal it is to events in Dune, not because it's a Islamic-inspired Desert World. Take away the spice, and even a space exploration game would have the players thinking it's a "quaint" little world, before moving onto the "real meat" worlds.

Becaue in a niche market it makes far far better business sense try to sell a lot of things to a few people than a few things to a lot of people.

a) RPGs are much more broadly focused so tie-in material is a natural inclination.

b) D&D as a "mainstream" game was a fad like Furby or the Home-Alone Talkman.  It did really well for one or two holidays seasons (esp. the Basic sets), then started to lose momentum.  Lots of casual players stopped or people who received it as a gift but didn't "get it" also dropped out, leaving the wargamers who had already been around and the more serious players as a main source of revenue.  When you have a hardcore fanbase that's very slowly shrinking, you tend to milk it, hard, and you see that a lot in AD&D 2e as a lot of people just stopped playing D&D altogether to make time for other RPGs or just to get out of the hobby altogether.

Quote from: 837204563;395409Evergreen games all share two features: Their rules are easy to explain in their entirety to new players, and they can be played without any preparation.  Neither has ever been true of D&D.

I'm not convinced that is a foregone conclusion of the nature of evergreen games.

Keep in mind, I'm not necessarily talking about something that is going to sit next to Risk and Monopoly in Wal-Mart.  I'm talking about the same game being supported for longer than 3 to 5 years before trashing it and starting over with a brand new product with the same name.

Take SFB as an example.  It certainly can't be explained easily or in it's entirety to new players.  SFB also takes considerable preparation to play.  Yet, the SFB Captains Edition Basic Set has been an evergreen product for 20 years.  The one you can by from Scifigenre, CCG Armory, or an Amazon seller is compatible with the same one I bought back in 1990.  As an older player, I could pick that game up and rekindle my romance with it, or join in with a group of brand new players.  Or, I could point a brand new player to buy that Basic Set.

SFB is also about as niche a game as you can get.  

As for the whole "having a job in 5 years", that's a consideration for the little guys, but shouldn't matter one tiny bit to a larger force like Hasbro.  You'd expect they would prefer to have a single evergreen product they release fundamentally the same but with a different cover every five years specifically so they could kick all those designer guys to the curb.  Instead we see the opposite.  The only examples of evergreen support are the little guys who should be cranking out a vastly incompatible version every couple of years to drum up sales, but aren't.  Meanwhile, Hasbro and WotC are reinventing the entire game every 2 years.

This also touches upon the retrorpg movement.  If D&D doesn't deserve to be an evergreen product, then it doesn't seem like anything in the hobby is.

QuoteBecause people who write for RPG's want a job in 5+ years?

This was probably a joke, but basically yes.

Back in the frontier gaming days of the 1970s, game designers were getting really new ideas all the time, and the game was morphing beyond recognition every few months. By the early 80s, Gygax had an AD&D that he was basically pretty happy with. And it was pretty much kept as-is for a long time. Even 2nd edition AD&D was pretty much a compilation of AD&D concepts. The concept was pretty clearly an evergreen model, even as things - of course - changed over time in response to changing thought.

But the really total shift to a periodical came with 4e D&D. And it came about basically because the writers want to be able to fill out word count quotas and get paid indefinitely. It came on the heels of a major switch to a format that uses up a lot of space and is very fast to write and requires and allows very little in the way of cross referencing or fact checking during the design process.

A 4e character class is incredibly narrow and takes up an eighth of a 100k word book. But it only takes two days to write. This way the authors can constantly "look busy" and avoid getting fired without actually putting in a lot of thought or requiring of themselves much insight.

-Frank

But how much money does SFB make?  Take a look at how the core rules are priced for example, it's a lot of money for something with low production values.  The master rules cost $50, and you can't even purchase them in a bound format.  That means they are charging $50 for running the pages off at Kinkos and mailing them to you.  That means they need to make a large profit off each sale, which probably means they aren't moving many copies.  So I grant that you can keep any product in print forever, but unless you have a huge player base the sales will quickly fall off.  You can get the occasional sale by keeping everything in print (this is how the Rifts line seems to work), but if you want to make money it's not the way to go.  And whoever buys the D&D license is going to want to make money off it.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;395592But the really total shift to a periodical came with 4e D&D.

I don't want to get into edition wars in this thread.  But the total shift to periodical came with 3e, not 4e.  

3e was deliberately made to be completely incompatible with all previous versions of the game.  The move to 3.5 was definitely not in keeping with an evergreen model.  The changes may not have made the game incompatible with 3e materials, but it had enough changes it was intended as a mandatory upgrade and not as just a polished path of introduction.

Prior to 3e, D&D fit an evergreen model.  3e firmly put D&D in the periodical model of reinventing itself from the ground up every few years.

Now I'm confused by what you mean by "evergreen."  D&D has never been evergreen in the sense that many board games are: there has always been a need for new D&D products to maintain the revenue stream.  I don't think that you could put 2nd edition in a box by itself and expect to support a company off that.  2nd edition had a ton of supplements, maybe not as many as 3rd edition, but there were still quite a few, and I'm betting that they were necessary to keep the money coming in.

The ultimate "rpg periodical model" without being an actual real magazine, was Mongoose during the d20 glut:  cranking out tons of junk every month.

Legitimate magazines have all kinds of information disclosure requirements dictated by law, which most rpg companies probably would not want to disclose.

Quote from: 837204563;395594But how much money does SFB make?  Take a look at how the core rules are priced for example, it's a lot of money for something with low production values.  The master rules cost $50, and you can't even purchase them in a bound format.

The Master Rules are not the introductory path to the game or the "basic" product.  The basic set costs anywhere from $25 to $35 depending on where you shop.  It also includes a bound rulebook, mapsheet, counters, SSD book, and the basic accoutrements of play.  Not saying that might not be seen as high, but the standard product is not 1000 pages of looseleaf rules.

The Master Rules are for those who are already into the game and just want another copy of all the rules.  In fact, I'm amazed that one is still offerred.  It was a interrim product offerred in the early 90s for Commanders Edition players to upgrade to the Captain's/Doomsday edition.  It wasn't supposed to be offerred in perpetuity.  Yet, it is.

SFB also requires allegedly sizable licensing fees be paid each year to avoid the Star Trek Technical Manual license evaporating in a puff of smoke.

But earnings are a fair point.  Perhaps the sales of a D&D Classic game wouldn't be worth Hasbro's time.  I honestly have a bit of a problem accepting that.  Obviously they feel the D&D brand is strong enough to put on Toys R Us shelves as starter sets, Ravenloft Boardgame sets, and alongside Avalon Hill branded niche games.  It has really only sold as the brand name for years now, because it has no inherent product identity anymore due to the multiple revamps over the past decade.

Obviously, I'm not talking solely about D&D.  Equally obviously, the limited number of game publishers in it for the long haul narrow things down as well.

Quote from: 837204563;395596Now I'm confused by what you mean by "evergreen."

The core rulebooks of AD&D were intended to be the core products indefinitely.  They remained essentially unchanged throughout their run.  The game was not reinvented midstream.

AD&D2 is a good example because the corebooks were 90% compatible with all 1e materials and Basic materials.  Despite the cover design change in the mid 90s, the game retained the same rules and text.  People could and did play with a mix of Basic, AD&D1, and AD&D2 books.

That was not possible with 3e.  3e invalidated everything that came before whether it was a core book or a supplement.  4e did the same thing when it was released.  Neither are the same game as what came before.  They are not intended to be evergreen.  They are intended to be remade every few years and use the brand name to lure people into another game.

Just having a bunch of supplements doesn't mean anything.  Just because you have supplement X doesn't mean you don't plan to sell the corebooks year after year.  Evergreen doesn't mean you can't support the line with supplements.

Hopefully that clarifies my angle on things.

But 3e materials were all intended to be usable with the 3e core books. 3.5 was a change, but not one that specifically invalidated the 3e books. People could, and did, and do play with a mix of 3e and 3.5 materials. The fact that 3e was a different game than AD&D doesn't mean it wasn't intended to be evergreen by itself. Hell, it wasn't even called Advanced Dungeons & Dragons - it was simply called "Dungeons & Dragons" and the 3rd edition therefore refers to being the iteration after the Basic/Expert rules rather than the iteration of AD&D after 2nd.

4e is the point where they literally start having monthly updates and planned obsolescence. 3e could have been kept alive indefinitely as an evergreen product. In fact, pathfailure people claim to be doing exactly that.

-Frank

Quote from: Gabriel2;395393The only nice thing I can say nowadays about Palladium is that they seem to be the only company I can say uses an evergreen model.  They keep worthless crap like Recon and Ninjas & Superspies in print.  KS has only ever let a few things go permanently out of print.  Otherwise, products stay in the catalog forever.

It may be easier to go the evergreen route like Palladium, when it is a small one-person operation (ie. Kevin).

Time spent on creating a completely different new core ruleset, is time that isn't spent on cranking out new supplement books.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;395601In fact, pathfailure people claim to be doing exactly that.

We'll see in a few years whether they go the "thriving by inertia" evergreen route of Palladium, or if their true colors actually resemble WotC or Mongoose.

Quote from: Gabriel2;395589Meanwhile, Hasbro and WotC are reinventing the entire game every 2 years.

They're not the only ones doing this.

Mongoose has been doing this for their product lines too, like clockwork.

For example, the first Mongoose Runequest 1 (MRQ1) was first released in mid-2006 and petered out by early-mid 2009.  They released around 50 titles for MRQ1 over three years.

The second Mongoose Runequest 2 (MRQ2) was first released this past January 2010.  So far over the last six months, they already released ten MRQ2 titles already (not including unreleased titles in the pipeline).

FrankTrollman, you are obviously talking about the products being evergreen within a timespan of perhaps 2 or 3 years.  I'm, perhaps unfairly and idealistically, thinking about a longer timeframe.

Perhaps it would be better to phrase it this way.  Why do RPGs not seem to have an identity outside their brand name?  As far as long term play is concerned, the D&D mechanics are irrelevant.  A player from 1992, 2002, and 2009 will all have vastly different ideas of the mechanics of how playing D&D works.  None of the three are playing anything resembling the same game mechanically.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but it really seems like this is considered the norm in RPGs.  There is no mechanical identity to the games.  They are just brand names.  This is even supported in the Palladium evergreen case above.  KS doesn't really give a damn about his game's mechanics, thus the current state of his rules.

Hopefully that's not seen as moving the goalposts, because that's not the intent.  It's just that there aren't many stable elements of our hobby.

Quote from: Gabriel2;395605Hopefully that's not seen as moving the goalposts, because that's not the intent.  It's just that there aren't many stable elements of our hobby.

The fantasy rpg tropes are fairly stable: elves, dwarfs, orcs, goblins, fighter, wizard, cleric, thief/rogue, medieval weapons, castles, trolls, dragons, etc ...

Quote from: Gabriel2;395605FrankTrollman, you are obviously talking about the products being evergreen within a timespan of perhaps 2 or 3 years.  I'm, perhaps unfairly and idealistically, thinking about a longer timeframe.

No. I'm talking about how the 3e version of Oriental Adventures was still being used entirely successfully with materials published by WotC seven years later and that right now there are Pathfinder books published this month that people are using successfully in their games with the Oriental Adventures hardback that was now published nine years ago. If you have some other meaning of "evergreen" I don't even know what it is. The entire hobby is still only four times that age.

-Frank

Quote from: FrankTrollman;395608No. I'm talking about how the 3e version of Oriental Adventures was still being used entirely successfully with materials published by WotC seven years later and that right now there are Pathfinder books published this month that people are using successfully in their games with the Oriental Adventures hardback that was now published nine years ago.

I can see your argument about D&D3.0, even if I don't agree with it.  But Pathfinder is irrelevant to the conversation because it isn't D&D.

So let's take this beyond D&D.

I've named the Star Fleet Battles Captain's Edition Basic Set as a game which is 20 years old and, for good or ill, is still purchasable under the same name with the same rules and a familiar format.  I know this because I recently got a new player into the game (great spaghetti monster forgive me).

So, just name some current games that existed at least 10 years ago and are still currently supported.  The current editions must have the same mechanics and more or less the same core product(s) as back then.  The gist is that they must be identifiable by someone who hasn't kept up with gaming for the past 10 years who is only looking at product spines.  To use your example, D&D is going to jump off the shelf but not be the D&D the player is going to identify with.  The currently supported edition is not the same product.  The same person isn't going to have any fucking clue what Pathfinder is and isn't going to have any inclination to look at it.  It's not the same product either.

Maybe I'm wrong.  Maybe evergreen products of this sort are much more common than I think.  That's why I started the thread.

Would "Call of Cthulhu" be considered an evergreen title?

Outside of rpg games, what would be considered "evergreen"?

For example, which of these would be considered "evergreen"?

- Ozzy Osbourne
- the Beatles
- chess
- poker
- CSI, CSI: Miami, CSI: New York
- Motley Crue
- Nirvana
- Cher
- Sheryl Crow
- Guns 'N Roses
- Wile E. Coyote
- Ani DiFranco
- Britney Spears
- Al Sharpton
- Miami Vice
- Mr. T
- Gary Condit
- John F. Kennedy
- New Kids on the Block

?

Quote from: Gabriel2;395620So, just name some current games that existed at least 10 years ago and are still currently supported.  The current editions must have the same mechanics and more or less the same core product(s) as back then.

Well, there's your problem, negation is included in your premises. Something is "still supported" in the RPG industry if they are still making rules for it. If something is "supported" for ten years, then the rules won't be the same as they were ten years ago.

But I can still buy (http://www.amazon.com/Players-Handbook-Core-Rulebook-I/dp/0786915501/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1279864465&sr=8-1) a 3rd edition Player's Handbook, and I can get an adventure that is vaguely compatible with it that was published in the last thirty days. Those two publishing events are ten years apart. What the fuck do you want?

There are more people playing 3rd edition games in gaming conventions than anyone has ever been able to wrangle together GURPS tables. For that matter, does GURPS count? What about HERO system? Both of those are essentially recognizable from their halcyon days in the mid 1980s.

-Frank

Quote from: ggroy;395625Outside of rpg games, what would be considered "evergreen"?

For example, which of these would be considered "evergreen"?

- Ozzy Osbourne
- the Beatles
- chess
- poker
- CSI, CSI: Miami, CSI: New York
- Motley Crue
- Nirvana
- Cher
- Sheryl Crow
- Guns 'N Roses
- Wile E. Coyote
- Ani DiFranco
- Britney Spears
- Al Sharpton
- Miami Vice
- Mr. T
- Gary Condit
- John F. Kennedy
- New Kids on the Block

?

What?!

Dude, what RPGs should be comparing themselves to are RISK, Clue, Monopoly, Stratego, Battleship, etc.. there are shitloads of GAMES that are evergreen.

That said, the "evergreen" model might not be practical for all RPGs, the smaller ones probably need something beside that. But one of the biggest mistakes made by the RPG industry was not having an Evergreen version of the D&D game (probably the Basic/expert set) that would not actually change rules every three years.  

RPGPundit

HASBRO already screwed up the "evergreen" model with some of the traditional family games that they own the rights to.

 Specifically: RISK.

The standard version our distributor sends us is in a red, white, and black box with odd symbols for the armies and the country/continent colors aren't what people are used to.
 I get customers walking in that want the RISK that they grew up with to play with other dating/married couples or their kids - and the current version is NOT what they want. They wanmt the classic map, the little clear boxes to hold the aermies, and the pirces in classic shapes. *

Hell, there has been at least four versions of "Connect Four" in the past seven years that I've worked at the game store.  Some of those changed packaging or artwork as well during the time the version was abvailable.  They can't even let 'Connect Four' alone for pity's sake.


- Ed C.

*...and  I wasn't even talking about RISK 2210, RISK: Godstorm, or the temporarily/limited availability of RISK: Lord Of The Rings, RISK: Transformers,  RISK : Star Wars,....etc

Quote from: FrankTrollman;395601But 3e materials were all intended to be usable with the 3e core books. 3.5 was a change, but not one that specifically invalidated the 3e books. People could, and did, and do play with a mix of 3e and 3.5 materials. The fact that 3e was a different game than AD&D doesn't mean it wasn't intended to be evergreen by itself. Hell, it wasn't even called Advanced Dungeons & Dragons - it was simply called "Dungeons & Dragons" and the 3rd edition therefore refers to being the iteration after the Basic/Expert rules rather than the iteration of AD&D after 2nd.

4e is the point where they literally start having monthly updates and planned obsolescence. 3e could have been kept alive indefinitely as an evergreen product. In fact, pathfailure people claim to be doing exactly that.

-Frank

The "planned obsolescence model" [POM] is alive and well at WoTC. In this year-old thread entitled "ENWorld and 5e Threads", I specifically discuss POM in posts #18, #28, #55, and #69, and I even briefly mention you getting clusterfucked on RPGnet in post #55.

http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=14595

I'd elaborate more, rather than pointing out an old thread, but I'm on a muscle relaxant right now for an injury, and it's making me too loopy to think. That thread is relevant to this discussion...

Edit: Just remembered to link the thread... :o

Oh hell yeah. WotC was writing 3.5 with the idea that a 4th edition would come out eventually to replace it. 4th edition was written under the assumption that it was a placeholder before 5th edition was revealed. While I don't think they know what the next edition will hold (or even who will write it, subject to the constant firings), that there will be a next edition that will replace rather than supplement the old is not even at issue. No one seriously believes otherwise. D&D Essentials is supposed to be "evergreen" but that's a fucking joke - once 5e comes out (and it will come out), printings of Essentials will cease. And that's assuming that there are ever any of the bonus printings we're being promised. I remind you: if you go to a game store today, you can buy a 1st printing 4e PHB1. In fact, that's the only kind of PHB1 you can buy. Anywhere.

It is somewhat difficult to figure out WotC's plans for future development. In no small part because either bad sales or a marketing director with bipolar disorder has caused them to radically alter their direction. Several times a year. Most recently they said that they were going to put 4e D&D on the shelf for seven months while they make their Essentials line, but seven months is a long time in 4e's market direction. It was seven months between Scott Rouse saying that the PDFs would get updated to include errata (Sep 08) and WotC pulling the PDF sales altogether (Apr 09). It was seven months from them saying that they would not produce 4e D&D in 2008 (Jul 07) to them releasing the now infamous Tiefling & Gnome video (Feb 08). Going by past behavior, the chances of them actually completing the Essentials line and going back to regularly scheduled 4e books without a major direction change is slim to none.

In short: yes, the POM is a real thing. But it's not the only thing. We're now not only dealing with a "patch it later" mentality and the virtual certainty that people will come in to rewrite the core books in a few years. We are also looking at something that looks for all the world like panic in the face of freefall. The complete abandonment of marketing strategies half a year or less after they have been articulated. Right now we are in "the year of the threes" but the DMG3 has been cancelled. It didn't even have time to come out an be made obsolete by the DMG4, because the entire marketing direction was canned before that could happen. By the time sales figures were in for Martial Power 2, there was no Arcane Power 2 on the schedule.

This of course makes the entire "patch it later" methodology even more reprehensible than it normally is. There's seriously no guaranty that "later" will ever come. The unplanned obsolescence comes so fast and furious that it is implausible to assume that any future products within the edition will necessarily materialize.

There will be 5e. The question is whether anyone will be left who doesn't suffer from such severe event fatigue that they just don't care anymore by the time it does.

-Frank

Quote from: FrankTrollman;396018It is somewhat difficult to figure out WotC's plans for future development. In no small part because either bad sales or a marketing director with bipolar disorder has caused them to radically alter their direction. Several times a year. Most recently they said that they were going to put 4e D&D on the shelf for seven months while they make their Essentials line, but seven months is a long time in 4e's market direction. It was seven months between Scott Rouse saying that the PDFs would get updated to include errata (Sep 08) and WotC pulling the PDF sales altogether (Apr 09). It was seven months from them saying that they would not produce 4e D&D in 2008 (Jul 07) to them releasing the now infamous Tiefling & Gnome video (Feb 08). Going by past behavior, the chances of them actually completing the Essentials line and going back to regularly scheduled 4e books without a major direction change is slim to none.

With such regular annual firings of WotC employees in the D&D division, they can use this "churn" as "plausible deniability" in the "covering your ass" PR type crap.  (ie.  "The guys who said 'this' or 'that', are no longer employees of WotC").

Blame the previous "regime" for all the present problems.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;396018D&D Essentials is supposed to be "evergreen" but that's a fucking joke - once 5e comes out (and it will come out), printings of Essentials will cease

Wonder if the 4E Essentials books will ever see any revised printings with errata added.  If it turns out the 4E Essentials titles sell even worse than the original 4E core books, I doubt they will even do any reprints.

With the existence and popularity of the DDI character builder, I doubt we will ever see revised printings of the crunch heavy splatbooks (with errata added in), such as the "Players Essentials:  Heroes of ..."  and older "* Power" books.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;396018There will be 5e. The question is whether anyone will be left who doesn't suffer from such severe event fatigue that they just don't care anymore by the time it does.

Wonder if Mike Mearls et al, will still be around WotC when 5E is being designed.

For that matter, in principle they can even outsource the design and development of 5E D&D to a reputable freelancer.  (ie. Perhaps they'll choose somebody like a Steve Kenson).

I would buy a Steve Kenson 5th edition D&D. Gay wiccan magic tree sex and all.

-Frank

Wait...there's people that argue WotC isn't using a POM sales model?
I grokked when they released a 3rd Edition D&D; a new company bought the IP, and wanted to generate new sales along with put their own spin on the IP.

3.5 was the first sign of a POM model to me, especially since they basically re-printed the entire line for 3.5 (yes, there's compatibility, but that's not the point; they re-released a lot of 3.0 softcovers with updated content as hardcovers in 3.5)

4th Edition with DDI?
That's WotC looking to switch from a customer-product business model, to a subscriber's model.

Smart, if you can pull it off. But it's looking like WotC didn't take into account upkeep on DDI.

Quote from: Novastar;396140Wait...there's people that argue WotC isn't using a POM sales model?

Yes. On EnWorld, even discussing the idea that 4e is a product limited in time which will itself be discontinued, repudiated, and replaced is an offense. Like, literally the mods will lock your thread and give you a warning because those thoughts are unutterable. They've explicitly stated that as policy.

It's less official, but still nonetheless true on RPG.net. A thread speculating on when 4e might be discontinued, who might be tapped to write the next major edition, or what such an edition might contain will get filled with trolls, insults, snark, and bullshit by 4rries. And when the mods step in, they will go after the original post for "stirring up trouble" and not the 4e hardliners who throw insults around like they were Zimbabwe dollars.

Quote4th Edition with DDI?
That's WotC looking to switch from a customer-product business model, to a subscriber's model.

Smart, if you can pull it off. But it's looking like WotC didn't take into account upkeep on DDI.

The problem with the subscriber model is that they haven't shown people things they actually want to subscribe to. Mike Mearls has written more than a dozen Skill Challenge overhauls. I am not going to pay money for that. Especially since none of them actually address the core problems with the Skill Challenge dynamics.

They need a hard copy magazine again, so people who subscribe actually get something. Also, they need to come up with a sales pitch that is different from that of an abusive boyfriend. The "I know the last rules didn't work, but I got new rules, rules that will be better. This time for sure!" pitch is not very persuasive after you've done it a half dozen times in a single year.

-Frank

Quote from: FrankTrollman;396148They need a hard copy magazine again, so people who subscribe actually get something. Also, they need to come up with a sales pitch that is different from that of an abusive boyfriend. The "I know the last rules didn't work, but I got new rules, rules that will be better. This time for sure!" pitch is not very persuasive after you've done it a half dozen times in a single year.

-Frank

The problem with that, is increased overhead for a print product, and the very likely scenario that people like me will buy individual issues, but not a subscription (I only buy what interests me. Even Rifters get short shrift from me...).

I'm not sure I'd want to buy "this version of the rules!" in hardcopy, anymore than pay for a softcopy, though.

Presumably almost everyone who plays Pathfinder would be a customer of Wizards if they hadn't changed the rules so much (and the same for retro-clones, although they seem to be much less popular).

So they must believe that the gain from people buying the new version of things they already have is greater than the loss from people sticking with the old version.

I would have thought that the type of customer who automatically buys the new core rules would automatically buy the new class book or the new setting as well, meaning that there would be no need to come out with a new, incompatible ruleset. But obviously they don't agree.

Quote from: Age of Fable;396212I would have thought that the type of customer who automatically buys the new core rules would automatically buy the new class book or the new setting as well, meaning that there would be no need to come out with a new, incompatible ruleset. But obviously they don't agree.

I think you'll get a lot of people who will buy the PHB, maybe even the entirety of the "Core Books", but unless you hook them there, they aren't likely to buy anything further.

Quote from: Novastar;396225I think you'll get a lot of people who will buy the PHB, maybe even the entirety of the "Core Books", but unless you hook them there, they aren't likely to buy anything further.

I don't know whether it's even about hooking them. The old D&D boxes used to promise "a lifetime of adventure" or something similar, and the evidence seems to be that lots of people took that at face value and happily played for years without ever thinking to buy supplements.

This is what drives companies to the Periodical Model. Let's imagine an alternative world where D&D and AD&D had been kept in print as "Evergreen" products all the way from the 80s. We'll even imagine that this has been a wild success, and that there are now 10 million regular D&D/AD&D players.

So what do TSR/WotC get from this wild success? Well, in core book sales, all they get is new growth and replacement copies. And since RPGs only really need to be owned by one person per group, their market isn't even 10 million players but more like 2 million groups. So if we assume a churn and replacement rate of about 5%, then TSR/WotC are selling 100,000 core sets per year (a set being either a D&D box or three AD&D books, naturally). Sure, they can try to sell settings/adventures etc. (which, core setting sets aside, can be seen as a Periodical bolt-on to a core Evergreen model), but history has shown that they struggle to reach much of the market with those.

We're deep in to pulling-numbers-out-of-my-ass land to speculate on how setting books and adventures might sell in Evergreen reality, but my gut feeling is that the late TSR model probably was actually the best one (i.e. throw lots of shit at the wall). The market of people who will buy a setting book/adventure is a small subset of the whole game market, and no single setting book/adventure will appeal to all of them, so if you're publishing only one setting you're leaving on the table. If you publish 1,000 you're going to cannibalise your own sales, yes - so the trick is to find the middle ground which works for your market over time.

Anyway.

It's now 2010 in our Evergreen thought-experiment world, and someone at WotC has a brand new idea. They're going to bring out a brand new version of D&D that's incompatible with the old, and support it with yearly "core" rules updates that you have to buy in to to stay current. They're going full on Periodical.

The marketing flip chart says that even if only 25% of current groups move over to the new model, they'll still sell nearly three times as many books in 2011 as they did this year. Then if they manage to keep just 50% of those people on the periodical train, they've still upped yearly sales by 25% - and these are pessimistic estimates.

"But wait" says the bigwig "we need to do a lot more work to produce the new edition and the updates, and we're only getting 25% more. Why bother? All we do now is re-print old books and laugh our way to the bank"

Ah, says the marketroid, this is where the genius bit comes in. DDI rules subscriptions. There would be no point to these without the periodical model, but with it, you're now getting something from everyone who plays, not just one person per group. So even though we're predicting our user base will be just 12% of what it is now - but getting everyone to pay us every year to keep playing, we're going to increase the market we sell to more than ten-fold.


Or in other words - Periodicals mean sales year after year, and so will return the same profits as an Evergreen on a small fraction of the player base.

But the periodical model tends to inevitably suffer from a decay of its user base. Its a sucker's bet, you're mortgaging your own future.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;396395But the periodical model tends to inevitably suffer from a decay of its user base. Its a sucker's bet, you're mortgaging your own future.

Yeah, but who stays in a job for long these days? That's the next guy's problem.

And even if WotC are worrying about that, it's easy to convince yourself at the start of the process that you can continue to attract new players in something like the old numbers after you move to the new model, and so the problem should take care of itself.

And then if that turns out not to work you can launch things like D&D Encounters ;)

Quote from: Grymbok;396400Yeah, but who stays in a job for long these days? That's the next guy's problem.

Or the point where you release an "all new!" edition, yet again.

Strange that they cancelled Dragon magazine, when that's a way of continually selling to the same people.

Quote from: Age of Fable;396497Strange that they cancelled Dragon magazine, when that's a way of continually selling to the same people.

Yeah, that was a huge mistake. They wanted to cancel Dragon Magazine and sell that kind of product to be monthly in hard back form for $30 a piece. Of course, that particular golden goose turned out to not actually be full of gold when its belly got cut open. Cue surprised gasp.

-Frank

Quote from: FrankTrollman;396499Yeah, that was a huge mistake. They wanted to cancel Dragon Magazine and sell that kind of product to be monthly in hard back form for $30 a piece. Of course, that particular golden goose turned out to not actually be full of gold when its belly got cut open. Cue surprised gasp.

In 2006, paid circulation for Dragon was either 46,250 (http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/222703-dragon-magazine-circulation.html) or 41,220 (http://www.dquinn.net/dragon-magazine4/). The discrepancy is maybe cause they took the count from different issues? But from the former link, we know the trend was downward.

The current DDI membership is something over 37,085. That's the current number of people in the WotC community group for DDI. You don't get added to that group unless you log into the community site; just being a DDI subscriber won't do it. So the number is higher than that, but we have no idea if it's 10% higher or 100% higher.

And, of course, seven bucks a month versus fifteen bucks a month. Y'all can do the math.

The Print version was seen in more places. The stupidest thing WotC may have done was to stop PAIZO from publishing hardcop versions of DRAGON and DUNGEON magazine.

 You could see copies of it on sale in KROGERS grocery stores. (Besides places like BORDERS) In someplace like the Midwest - thats penetration of a hobby or sub-culture  - that your flagship magazine is for sale and can be seen in a place like KROGERS.

- Ed C.