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Probably more like a few hundred.

May 5, 2012 -- 7:53AM, SamyMerchi wrote:

Unless you're a publicly listed company you do have the option of pursuing less profitable avenues if you want to. For example, a cellist's records might sell better if he switched to a guitar instead -- his guitar competitors might be selling three times his numbers -- but what if he really wants to play the cello? As long as you're not beholden to the public, you can choose to do things you *want* to do, even if they're not the most profitable roads.

I don't think it's true that all creative types automatically want the highest sales possible and are willing to conform to the best selling paradigm in order to sell better. Some people genuinely do have a vision and are willing to pursue it even if it means lower sales. 

So you're saying that Hasbro (NASDAQ: HAS), was forced to pursue the most profitable strategy, while Paizo (privately owned) could shoot for lower sales because they were pursuing their vision? But yet Paizo seems to be outselling Hasbro...

To be honest, sales figures DO only tell part of the story and are really only indicators to true objective statistics. And I'm not talking about "which system is better?" which is extremely subjective. I'm talking about which strategy is more profitable and which system is gaining players faster. We've already discussed that WotC lagging sales primarily has to due with a lighter release schedule but if we are going to talk about actual profitability, which determines the success of the strategy, then we have to know something about the profit margin - which we are not privy to. It is entirely possible that WotC is operating under huge profit margins (I'm being hypothetical here) and Paizo could be operating under razor thin profit margins (this seems more likely). At those coefficients Paizo would have to outsell WotC by many factors at the register to be turning equal profits. I am being hypothetical but this demonstrates how sales figures don't equal profitability. It also doesn't tell us about brand loyalty, that is players switching from 4e to PF or back, or whether players are simply playing both. The brand loyalty when measured in conjunction with profitability gives an indication of the long term survivability of the brand. But RPG competition is not a winner-take-all scenario, so is it quite possible that you have players who are playing both. Sales figures, when understood in relation to release schedule, do act as an indicator of increasing or decreasing brand loyalty (number of players switching brands) and in this case it seems to indicate the increase of PF loyalty. I'm saying this because it appears that the trend in Paizo-WotC sales (increase per time) favored Paizo over the period between the release of essentials and the core rulebook, two major rebranding events. [edit: I'm speculating on these trendlines from conversations I have had with owners of major FLGSs in the area, these are not based on actual sales figures] If both events were accompanied by massive swings in their direction and dips in the other direction, then this would seem to cancel each other out. That is, Paizo and WotC were just sharing the same customers who were buying both companies books. But it seems more likely that customers were ignoring the introduction of Essentials and heartily eating up the Core Rulebook. For me, this speculation is strengthened by the fact that we know about the survivability of the 4e brand. It's over. [edit: sorry if this is messy. I wrote this literally 2 minutes after waking up while still laying in bed]

I want to mention something else about how the survivability of a brand can be influenced by release schedule, but I plan to write a longer post on this later. Players, whether consciously or unconsciously, perceive that a brand is surviving. An RPG isn't like a short story, or like a tv mini-series. It's more like a soap opera or a comic book. As customers, we like to feel that we are getting involved with something living and breathing, that will continue to grow and develop. Nobody wants to spend a hundred bucks on an RPG knowing that no more supplemental materials will be released. The problem is, this is exactly what WotC does. When they introduce a new product, for example Gamma World or Dark Sun, they announce exactly how many products will be released before the product is axed. This really dampens the enthusiasm for these products. From the get-go, Gamma World was promised a core box set and 2 expansion sets. People begged and pleaded for more but WotC stuck to their guns. Dark Sun got 3 books (I believe), and encounters series, and 2 modules (if you count the gamesday adventure and I might be off here) and that is it. Then Dark Sun got axed. This "schizophrenic" marketing approach really makes no sense at all. The different games and worlds are not sufficiently developed to get players excited about them. I know that both worlds got a few articles in Dragon magazine, but if you know the quality of Dragon magazine, then you will know that these can hardly be counted.

It seems that what WotC did was to sit down beforehand and calculate the optimum, most profitable release schedule. They decided that they would be able to sell this many units to the current market without over-saturating, and then they would move on. This seems very cut and dry but it totally neglects the customer experience. Additionally, ignoring repeated and frequent customer requests to continue a product line, or to bring back into print books which went out of print far too quickly (Dark Sun books) leads only to an image of intransigence. To me, this is exactly where WotC has failed, and why WotC will fail. They do not listen to their customers. (Don't get me started on how they run DDi. They need to fire every single person on that staff from the top down and do a page-one-rewrite). Hopefully DDN will be a step in the right direction, but knowing the way WotC operates, it is hard to imagine that they will continue to listen.

Before I sign off, I want to emphasize that I am not laying the blame on designers such as Monte Cook, Rob Schwalb, Bruce Cordell or other designers. If anything, the corporate suits who are coming up with these failing strategies are the same ones who are hobbling their designers. I'm really wondering what drove Monte Cook away. Did somebody from WotC sit him down and insist that they integrate a CCG into DDN? Did they not-so-subtlety suggest on many occasions that a collectable aspect of the game be a very nice feature? Monte Cook and WotC/Hasbro didn't see eye to eye on something, and it wasn't the stats of the Mind Flayer. To me, this does not bode well for DDN, WotC and the future of the D&D brand.