Quote from: Dimitrios;781246While I generally try to just talk about the game and ignore edition warring, I have to say I was truly amused by a (presumably) 4e fan bitterly claiming that "It's not that hard to make #1 on Amazon anyway".:rotfl:

I guess I better get to work on my memoirs, then. Under his worldview, my reminiscences about my first trip to the barber shop should easily crack Amazon's top 10.

Quote from: Dimitrios;781246While I generally try to just talk about the game and ignore edition warring, I have to say I was truly amused by a (presumably) 4e fan bitterly claiming that "It's not that hard to make #1 on Amazon anyway".:rotfl:

  Well, the PHB arguably has a small advantage in that it's not splitting sales between print and eBook formats, like nearly every other book ... but it's still an awfully impressive achievement and a good sign for the edition and the hobby as a whole.
 
  And I say that as someone who's still not yet sold on the edition.

Quote from: Will;781042I'd also add D) WotC business 'planning' was utter Keystone Cops.

Halting OGL, fumbling with GSL, making a bunch of promises that they then failed to uphold (they had initially promised anyone buying a physical book would get a pdf, too), their yanking of all PDFs, their chatter about doing so because of 'piracy' (which was an UTTER pile and also nonsensical -- what, pulling legal PDFs is going to make piracy go down?)


I was VERY interested in 4e until WotC shot their own feet to a fine red mist.

This is how its been with WOTC marketing for a long time now. Their botch record with marketing board games has been worse. They make good games. But their marketing division seems to sometimes be actively working to kill the company. Or at the very least abysmally incompetent.

Which is why some look at 5e and just wonder when its going to happen.

Quote from: Omega;781266Which is why some look at 5e and just wonder when its going to happen.

Yeah, my concern is that WotC marketing will not see 5e succeeding by any metric other than beating Pathfinder immediately, and forcing the design team to "adjust" like it did with Essentials if it doesn't.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;781241True, but irrelevant to the period under consideration. My point (which I admit I may have been approaching elliptically) was that part of the reason that Pathfinder matched and surpassed D&D in sales during those periods was that Paizo was putting out more stuff for people to buy.

Maybe, but we'll never know for sure.

Quote from: Mistwell;781235I like sports too (I am a former ESPN message board mod).  Which is why I debate sports - on sports boards.

Anything can be turned into a sport. Even your profession.

QuoteI don't.  I think companies are fictional entities composed of human beings.

You think companies are fictional?

Alas, in the US we have things like the Hobby Lobby decision.

Quote from: Endless Flight;781308You think companies are fictional?

I think in terms of talking about companies as entities, they are fictional.  Which is why I said they are fictional entities.  Companies are just groups of people gathered together to focus on selling one or more products or services, which we call companies so we can categorize them for various taxes and laws.  But it's not a tangible thing or entity - companies don't do marketing, humans do the marketing.  Companies don't care about consumers, humans do (or don't, depending on the human).  The company doesn't "think" anything - it cannot care, because it isn't really an "it" at all.

Which is why I named the names of the people who work at WOTC on D&D for you - so you don't dehumanize it as some corporation (or the even more dehumanizing mega-corporation). And I do the same with Paizo.  Lisa Stevens and Erik Mona are who we're usually talking about when we say "Paizo", along with some other fine individuals like James Jacobs, Rob McCreary, Owen Stephens, Jason Bulmahn, Sara Marie, and a host of others (about 46 people total I believe, to D&D's roughly 13 people, though the comparison is not exact due to general office people covering a variety of duties in WOTC and Hasbro at large).

These are all real people.  When you say Paizo cares about consumers more than WOTC's D&D division, you're saying that set of names I named earlier cares less than the set of names I just listed for Paizo.  And my experience definitely says otherwise, and I have serious doubts that you have sufficient experience with the current D&D group at WOTC to draw the conclusion you've drawn about how much they care about consumers.  

If you disagree - name the names of the people at WOTC D&D's division who you found did not care about consumers, and tell us about those events.  Tell me what Rodney Thompson did.  Or Greg Bilsland. Or Shelly Mezzanoble, or Liz Shuh, or anyone there right now, tell me what they did that you found demonstrated a lack of care for consumers.  

See what I think is actually going on is you say "Hasbro" and then dismiss it as some giant dehumanized mega-corporation based on vague impressions you got from events many years ago involving people who don't even work there anymore - and then I think you weigh those against actual interactions with the good people at Paizo that are much more recent and personal with you because that's where your experience is focused these days, and you conclude from that very unfair comparison that Paizo cares more.

But that's not a fair way to analyze it, because it means you have not seen how interactions go with the current group working on D&D.

So, tell us your experiences that led you to draw that conclusion that Paizo cares more than WOTC's current D&D group.

Quote from: Will;781319Alas, in the US we have things like the Hobby Lobby decision.

Or hooray, in the US we have things like the Hobby Lobby decision, depending on your perspective.  Which, of course, is waaaaay off topic so let's not presume your view or my view is shared by others here.

Quote from: Mistwell;781334These are all real people.  When you say Paizo cares about consumers more than WOTC's D&D division, you're saying that set of names I named earlier cares less than the set of names I just listed for Paizo.

Not only that, but since the staff at these places are changing all the time, you're talking about a different group of people at any point in time.

Every decision made by both WotC and Paizo boils down to maximizing profit. That's what all successful businesses do. Personifying companies is dumb.

Quote from: Haffrung;781337Not only that, but since the staff at these places are changing all the time, you're talking about a different group of people at any point in time.

And they also sometimes switch employees.  And pull from the same smaller company, like Green Ronin.  Some people who used to work for one company, now work for the other company.

For example:

Mike Mearls did work for a large number of OGL companies before he came on board with WOTC.  He did work for Goodman Games, Fantasy Flight Games, Sword and Sorcery, AEG, Necromancer Games, Mongoose Publishing, Fiery Dragon, Atlas Games, Paradigm Concepts, Green Ronin, and Malhavoc Press.  He also worked for related companies like White Wolf and Decipher.  And he was a lead editor along with Erik Mona on Paizo's Best of Dragon #1 compilation.  I think it's a sure bet if WOTC hadn't snatched him up, Paizo would have.

Rodney Thompson is a former Green Ronin guy, now at WOTC’s D&D group.
Jeremy Crawford is a former Green Ronin guy, now at WOTC’s D&D group.
Chris Perkins is a former TSR guy, and then Paizo guy (Shackled City), now working at WOTC’s D&D group.
Matt Sernett is a former Green Ronin guy, who also did some work for Paizo (magazines), who is now at WOTC’s D&D group.
Chris Sims is a former Paizo guy (Beastiary 3) now at WOTC’s D&D group.

So what, were these guys concerned with consumers when working at Green Ronin and Paizo and other companies, and suddenly didn't care anymore once they joined WOTC's D&D group? Did the people who used to work at WOTC and now work at Paizo suddenly start to care only once they arrived at Paizo?

The claim is just bunk.  Both groups of people care about consumers roughly equally.  In fact, most of the people at each of these two companies know each other and are friends with each other.  We might sometimes think of them as competing sports teams, but everything people have said from both companies over the years tells a different story - they like each other, and are fairly similar to each other, and have similar backgrounds, and often used to work together on RPG products.

If we're really going to go down this road...

Reality isn't literal.

When we talk about a fictional entity having thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, we are inferring from aggregate behavior that impact us.

Just like real people. Because while I can infer all of you exist, I don't know for sure. I don't necessarily know anyone exists as a thinking being rather than as one component of the hive demon holding me in its thrall.

And while this all comes across as pedantic or silly, the point is that, ultimately, our ability to slap labels on things is empirical. So we totally can talk about how much WotC or Paizo cares about customers by distilling the overall behavior of both companies and their representatives.


That SAID, I don't see any evidence that Paizo cares more or less than WotC for customers.

Quote from: Mistwell;781336Or hooray, in the US we have things like the Hobby Lobby decision, depending on your perspective.  Which, of course, is waaaaay off topic so let's not presume your view or my view is shared by others here.

Someone suggested that it's inherently obvious that corporations are not people.
Clearly, a number of people disagree, and also clearly I am not presuming the view is universal.

So of the two of us, who is being more off-topic?

(Although I was intending it more as a semi-humorous riff on politics as happens to interact with esoteric gaming thread)

Quote from: Mistwell;781334See what I think is actually going on is you say "Hasbro" and then dismiss it as some giant dehumanized mega-corporation based on vague impressions you got from events many years ago involving people who don't even work there anymore - and then I think you weigh those against actual interactions with the good people at Paizo that are much more recent and personal with you because that's where your experience is focused these days, and you conclude from that very unfair comparison that Paizo cares more.

But that's not a fair way to analyze it, because it means you have not seen how interactions go with the current group working on D&D.

So, tell us your experiences that led you to draw that conclusion that Paizo cares more than WOTC's current D&D group.

It's not about taking a tricorder and measuring the "caring" levels of individuals and plotting them on a graph. It's about assessing the actions of the entities. Let's say, theoretically, that the caring levels of individuals of Company A are off the charts. They are a bunch of huggable cream puffs filled with love for their customer base. They meet and propose to give each and every one of their customer base a personal home visit and a cookie. But when they consult their superiors, and are limited by their funds, they can't do any of it. And are so devastated that the message they deliver instead of the cookie is a little off in tone.

Meanwhile Company B is filled with mercenary individuals, existing only to feed on the souls and wallets of their customers. Yet, cackling gleefully, they follow processes from Dr Flim Flam's Book of Marketing, they have a generous budget, and happen to deliver great value and are loved by their customers.

Which company cares more? Company B. Only results matter.

Aaaand The Shadow sums up my much longer and less coherent ramble into a laser point.

sigh

Kudos, Shadow.