Joseph Goodman's Analysis of The State of 4e
Over
in this forum entry, Joseph Goodman, owner of Goodman Games, makes his analysis of the state of 4e, business-wise.
Its a very interesting analysis of things. He suggests that 4e is doing very well. He also admits that it is not doing as well as 3e did, and tries to justify why that would be. That is the really interesting part on a number of different levels:
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All of this research (which I ultimately decided not to publish) forms the historical context for my opinion of D&D 4E. 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. For twenty years following 1982, D&D sales never recovered their peak. Twenty years. From the vantage point of 1983, was D&D dying? In 1983, you could have said that. The twenty-year decline was starting. But D&D went on to have another peak in 2001."
This is interesting first because Goodman's research demonstrates that there were two peak years, 1982 and 2001. These were the high points of the hobby. Indisputably, cold hard fact. 1982 was the peak of the D&D golden age (red box and 1e), and 2001 was, of course, 3e.
Note that he also describes the 90s, so loved by the Swine, as a "trough". It was the low point, the worst crisis the hobby went through.
Now, if you ask me, this really does seem like Goodman is damning 4e with faint praise. He's admitting that 3e was a defining force for a generation of gamers, and that 4e just plain isn't. And he's trying to offer apologetics for that, basically saying "geez guys, we're still selling real good!". Yes, that may be true, but 4e didn't get to be the transformative force WOTC wanted it to be.
Now, what did 3e and 1e have in common? Oh yes, each other! In respect to everything that made it popular, 3e was a return to the sensibilities of 1e and a direct rejection of the crapulence that was 2e. Even the format of the 3e books were made imitative of 1e! Tweet and Cook figured out what it was that worked for D&D and built upon that, not without changing many things, but coming back to that essence. On the other hand, Mike Mearls and his crowd seem determined to move as far away from that essence as possible.
Let me remind both him and Mr.Goodman: 2e didn't fail overnight either. It was, as Mr.Goodman so aptly demonstrated, a long slow decline over a decade.
The real question, the one our fortune 50 business man Joe Goodman failed to answer is: "is 4e becoming more popular and successful, or less?".
RPGPundit
Currently Smoking: Poul Winslow 40th Anniversary "Tulip" + Altadis' Byzantium
Comments (35)
it is hard to define peaks and valleys for D&D because it went through at least 3 different business models.
Model 1 was "a core game".
Model 2 was "a core game with campaign settings and a matrix of supplements"
Model 3 was "a core game with limited supplements and a small amount of campaign material."
The peak year for Model 1 was 1981, but '82 and '83 were both over 75% of that year's core book sales.
1987 marks the advent of Model 2, and 1988/89 marks the debut of 2E. In terms of gross revenue, TSR earned a lot more from '87 on than it had earned up to that point. Highlights of the Model 2 years included numerous NYT best selling novels and a line of best selling computer games. This period is also the Golden Age of tabletop RPGs, where more diversity flourished in the market in terms of successful gaming companies (that is, companies able to support themselves by sales of TRPG products, with staff dedicated to writing, editing, graphic design, art, and business functions). During this period the industry focused on world-building. Game design advances, such as they were, often turned out to be designer fancies, rather than things that actually advanced the state of the art in terms of tabletop utility.
Model 2 hit a peak right around 1992, both for TSR and the wider industry, and by mid-summer of 1993 it had lost about half its volume in terms of gross revenues. This steep decline was later blamed on the emergence of CCGs, but when we carefully examined the data we found that the rot started at the end of 1992, and the corresponding growth enjoyed by Games Workshop during this exact timeframe seems to put lie to the idea that CCG's somehow "sucked the oxyegen" out of the hobby gaming industry. Rather, we attributed the drop to simple fatigue - too much product was produced too fast by too many publishers, serving too few customers, and they simply burned out. Also, TSR's acquisition engine had ground to a near halt during this period as well, which choked off the supply of new incoming gamers that the industry had taken for granted for so many years. Those new gamers were almost certainly better served (in the short run) by CCGs, so the gap that the TRPG industry created for itself was ruthlessly (but accidentally) exploited to the hilt in 1993, 1994 and 1995 by the CCG publishers - until they too fell off a cliff at the end of 1996.
The key to the Model 2 years was that all though none of the individual campaign settings in TSR's matrix did extremely well, in combination, they did very large volumes.
This is the same time that the White Wolf games rose to become the strong #2 behind TSR, and TSR's market share, as a percentage, declined even though their volume and revenues were higher than before.
1993 to 1999 are really an interregnum caused by the financial failure of TSR which can only partly be blamed on the drop in TRPG sales. Perhaps if TSR had kept its eye on the ball better, had better management, and been able to resist the CCG temptation they could have weathered the storm, but they did not do those things and instead they basically died. After Wizards bought TSR in 1997 it took a couple of years to sort out the merger, research the root cause of the problem and start working to rehabilitate the business.
Model 3 is of course 3E, and to a lesser extent 3.5E (although 4E seems to be going backwards to more of a 3E model). The Model 3 era never generated as much revenue as the Model 2 era. In fact, it eerily mimicked the Model 1 era, but unfortunately not adjusted for inflation. On the other hand, it appeared to at least be sustainably profitable which is more than one can say for Model 2. I have no arguement with Matt's pick of 2001 as the high water mark, certainly both for Wizards and for the industry as a whole. What I don't know is how fast the end came, or how deep the trough was from Wizards perspective. The early launch of 3.5 probably helped in terms of susaining the 3E momentum, but I think they robbed Peter to pay Paul, ending up with a much shorter cycle for the 3E game than they would have if they had waited another 2 years for 3.5. Again, we'll never know so that's just speculation on my part.
As to 4E and how it relates, I almost don't think it matters. The forces that are tearing apart the tabletop RPG player networks are utterly outside of Wizards' control, and it's become a true apples v. oranges comparison which means its really not fair to speculate much, so I just won't.
RyanD
RSDancey, would you mind telling us what forces you believe are tearing apart the RPG player networks? I'm curious.
Count me in on that conversation. If there's a solution to be had, then I need to know what the problem actually is before I can reasonably expect to fix it.
Vague claims of sales aside, I guess what I find very telling is that none of the gaming groups I am in touch with have gone to 4e - my current group, the other groups people in that group are also in, my old group in Tennessee... I've been around for 1e->2e and 2e->3e and each time saw total conversion from everyone we knew in a pretty short time. Now I'm seeing none. Sure, "small sample size blargle blargle" but to me it's quite telling.
Actually, he describes D&D sales in the 90s as a trough. That's not the same thing as describing the 90s as a trough. For someone who wants to be a pundit, you've got an awfully thin skin. Show us where the bad Goodman said mean things about stuff you like...
Except that the collapse of D&D sales, when it is generally accepted fact that D&D remained the best-selling RPG (with a possible brief exception in Vampire) would mean that all the other RPGs would likewise have collapsed in sales to still be under D&D.
"is 4e becoming more popular and successful, or less?"
How do we measure the popularity and success, and what are we comparing it to?
Are more people playing 4e now than one year ago... than six months ago?
How many books were sold this month compared to this month last year? Minis? Tiles? Modules? Other accessories like dice and power cards?
What is the profit now vs. a year ago?
What's our benchmark? Do we compare 4e now to 4e a year ago? Do we look at it compared to the release of 2e and 3e? Do we compare it to the other RPGs that released at about the same time? To other entertainment companies (video games, movies?).
Are more people playing 4e now than 1 year ago, or 6 months ago? Surely the answer is yes. Is 4e making more money now than before? I have no idea.
"Except that the collapse of D&D sales, when it is generally accepted fact that D&D remained the best-selling RPG (with a possible brief exception in Vampire) would mean that all the other RPGs would likewise have collapsed in sales to still be under D&D."
First: that depends entirely on how much higher D&D sales were than sales of other games.
Second, and this is important, so think hard: if you liked the games, does that necessarily mean they sold well?
Another thing to consider is the rising importance of DDI and an entirely new revenue stream now available to WotC.
With an ever increasing online presence, even if book sales drop, it might be considered an expansion year for D&D if people rely more and more on DDI. I know a number of people who have limited their book supplement buying habits because they can get the same rules from DDI.
Consequently, I see a problem for 3rd party companies in the near future if DDI becomes even more popular and WotC doesn't figure out some way to allow 3rd party companies to easily import new rules to DDI.
"The forces that are tearing apart the tabletop RPG player networks are utterly outside of Wizards' control, and it's become a true apples v. oranges comparison which means its really not fair to speculate much, so I just won't."
Can you expand on whatyou mean by that, the forces tearing apart the networks? I'm not sure what you mean.
GSL fiasco? DDI table top? MMO's? SOmething else?
MMOs are destroying the tabletop gaming networks. First and foremost, that's the root cause of all the other problems. This leads to several additional really bad things, like the best talent in design going to MMOs and not staying on the tabletop, and the acquistion engine for new players being almost completely obliterated. The growth for a "fantasy gaming nerd" now is Club Penguin -> Runequest -> World of Warcraft -> niche MMO. There's no point where they leave that track and pick up "TRPG" as a gaming option.
In addition to the monster eating the network, there are other factors at work as well that individually would be damaging but perhaps not ultimately fatal in the way MMOs are. Neighborhood culture is breaking down and kids are less able to group spontaneously but instead follow parent-programmed activity cycles. The D&D game has failed to produce a widely success mass market introductory product. Gender stereotypes which reduce the play of women are still afflicting the hobby. The accumulation of Grognards has reached epidemic levels so that new people to the hobby are likely to hear vastly more pessimism about how great things used to be than how great things are. The inflated costs of inventory carry have destroyed the fundamental business model of the full-line game store (despite a 400% increase in top line revenues in the past 15 years...)
Tabletop RPG as a hobby faced an inflection point right about 1990. Down one path it could have become something like the model train hobby - high end products purchased by upscale customers willing to support a niche hobby for the next 30+ years as they aged through their peak earning years and into retirement, and down another path it could try to stay relevant in the 16-24 year old demograhic that had been its natural home since inception. Unfortuantely, it picked the latter not the former, and when something came along which was simply vastly more suited to that age demographic, TRPG as a business had no possible response.
(It could still become a Model Railroad industry, btw. That door is far from closed.)
Unfortunately, @bcwalker, there's no fixing this. Instead, what's going to happen is that MMO are going to continue to evolve until they reach the point of being able to deliver a fidelity of experience better than the tabletop ever could - and then they'll keep evolving past that point to deliver experiences we can only just now begin to imagine. The technical limitations people often cite are going to just be blown away by the combination of Moore's Law and a business model that is about a million times more profitable than the tabletop model. Our kids will play in virtual worlds that would seem like hallucinations to us today - Clarke's Law will obtain, and this advanced technology will be indistinguishable from magic in a lot of ways.
For people in my age demographic, we'll keep playing RPGs (when we can find the time and find a group, and find the interest) but there will never be a viable new generation of gamers coming up behind us.
RyanD
Ryan has posted on this before, here even. You can look up older threads to learn more.
Just to give you a few examples of many though, via a few simple comparisons, WOTC's online Magic Tournament has just over 135,000 registered players. Last year at Gencon the Magic booth (4x) and play areas took about (8x) the space that the D&D booth and gaming space did. I deliberately counted the square footage allocated to each becuase I was curious.
WOTC pays for that space, and it allocated the lions share of that space to Magic. Why? Becuase the Magic is bringing in the revenue to pay for that space. If we take those numbers as a simple baseline, it means there's about 35,000 registered D&D players (That's GM's and players).
For tabletop. They have to get together to game. They have to travel. They have to coordinate a playing schedule. And, the real kicker... they have to find new players if old players quit, or move, or are kicked out of the group.
Compare this to say... World of Warcraft. There are over Eleven Million Players. Conservately you could say a Million a day log in to play. No need to coordinate schedules, the chances of finding an ad-hoc group of characters that are your level are about certain.
Eve Online... 55,000 log in each and every day. Actually more than that, but there's a peak every afternoon of around 55,000 or so these days.
In summary... Online games are now a Multi-Billion dollar Industry. Tabletop RPG, if you are lucky, and count every single company, might just equal 1/10th or 1/20th of that. The way games are being played is changing,and fast.
The only thing I don't agree with you about, Ryan, is the design talent that is going into MMO's. Technically, I guess they are good, but when it comes to story and immersion, nobody is breaking beyond the "computer as GM" model and until they do (or until we get functional AI), they'll never achieve the creative freedom and true sense of open-endedness that a tabletop RPG has. Clearly, they are commercially successful despite that, but I think there is a minority of players who will always be more satisfied with the open-ended imagination of the TRPG experience and will gravitate towards that, if the marketing reaches them.
Now, if the MMORPG crowd manages to actually come up with a model that incorporates human GM's, dynamic storylines and interactions, open-ended setting design by users (I mean where the hell is my Over the Edge MMORPG?), then we'll see a real evolution to the TRPG hobby.
So any edition which does not eclipse all previous records is, in your mind, a failure?
"...transformative force..."..? Pardon?
3E was a success because it somehow mimicked 1E more than 2E did? 4E is apparently a failure because it did not?
Your commentary is hard to take seriously.
walker,
If you look at 4e and late 3.5 modules, there is no freedom or creativity needed to DM them. That´s why tactical railroading and the structural abolition of strategic gameplay in D&D are so huge an issue. And that´s what I fight for since way before 4e.
Walker makes some good points. AI is a notoriously hard problem in computer science. One that has largely been uneffected by Moore's Law. In specific limited area computers can subsitute for humans and being a GM of a tabletop roleplaying game is not one of them. The MMORPG can subsitute for the rules but for roleplaying, for everything else outside of the rules the MMORPG does not substutite.
The few areas the MMORPGs handles it handles very well. It handles them at a time of your choosing and at a pace you set. It works especially well if you desire to compete against other players as it is a utterly impartial referee.
What this has done is pared away most anybody who is not interested in roleplaying away from RPGs. What left is a core group that are interested in getting together with friends periodically to play in a game powered by the creatively of a GM. A smaller market.
The trick is getting to a stable point where we have a predictable stream of new gamers
Sett, we're on the same page. I gave up on WotC sponsored products for this reason long ago. It does seem like their strategy is to try and copy the MMO experience on paper, but in doing so they are slowly jettisoning the one unique thing that TT RPG's have, the immersion and roleplaying that results in human imaginations coming together.
I also agree with your analysis, Rob. The market is smlall, but I think it could be bigger with more marketing and communications power behind it.
@Dancey: I concur. I came to more or less the same conclusions some time ago, and I'm not certain that TRPGs can be saved without ceasing to play to MMO's strengths (and thus argue for their superiority). I think that, for continued relevance, TRPGs have to go into a different direction entirely.
@Walkerp: The common gamer doesn't give a shit about the strengths of human GMs. What WOW offers is what they want.
@walkerp - Gee... Immersive storylines with an MMO and a GM are already being done, at CCP no less... You really should spend some time trying out Eve Online.
The important storylines are dynamic. They are being directed by the players in massive corporations, and by individual pilots. I should have recorded my last run through Russian space, when I scouted for an outlaw band. They told me, they had a contract on a specific target on 0.0. They really didn't, but it was just to get me to go along with them. What it really was, was a defensive probe to see how far a small group of pilots could get into Russian controlled territory.
The Russians spotted us not to long after we rolled in, and setup an ambush at the far side of a stargate, with warp disruptors bubbles, the works.
We went through the stargate and the fight was on. I was in a stealth boat, unarmed, but concealed with a cloaking device. It was one of my best boats, took months to build. The CAG called for a withdrawal, there were so many hostiles at the gate, I was sure to get de-cloaked and burned making for the stargate, so I rolled out and warped deeper into Russian Territory, and then waited out the blockade for awhile. One of the flight crew lost a T2 boat, A very expensive loss.
When it was apparent they weren't going to leave the stargate unguarded, I did a full stealth scout of the system, and then went deep into Russian Territory through maybe a dozen other systems scouting all the way, charting russian built space stations and defenses meeting up with the band at another rendevouz and then eventually exiting Russian controlled space through a quiet sector back into hi-sec space.
It was memorable. I haven't got that much pure adrenaline off a tabletop game in some years. It me vs. ten, maybe up to fifty other hostile pilots. Their best laid defensive plans couldn't stop me from rolling right through their territory.
If I had had a Cynosural Generator with me, I could have opened a stargate to allow an entire fleet in to rampage through their territory.
The best game designers aren't going into tabletop RPG's, they are getting out of college or tech school and going straight to work (For much better pay) at MMO's and electronic game companies. They are making the $$, they can afford to pay for the talent, and they do.
How would this conversation be different if WOTC had actually gotten the VTT working at release? They seemed to have given up on that concept which I believe will really hurt them in the end. Being able to log on, find a people all over the world and play D&D seems like a winner to me.
I think we need to seriously reconsider keeping the TRPG audience that wants games which feature elements that boardgames, CCGs, MMOs and CRPGs do better than TRPGs; we should consider ceding that audience to those other media and instead seek out a new audience that wants what the TRPG medium offers as strengths.
This is not going to be the same audience as we have now. The game that captures this audience will not be like D&D4 or 3.X; it likely won't look much like AD&D1 or 2e. It may be like OD&D or BECMI, in that the actual rules will be slim in number and open to rulings by the GM. What it has to be is friendly to the old-school approach to interaction with the environment; the GM describes the world around your characters, and you describe what your character does and how he does it- then the GM makes a ruling. The rules exist to provide a common frame of reference--so that you and the GM know how smart Bob is, or how socially-aware Jane is--but little else.
Investigation works for TRPGs. Intrigue works for TRPGs. Both of them are heavy on interpersonal interaction, and both of them are well known to possess and use forumlae for creating content. (i.e. procedural shows, spy novels, detective serials) Neither of them rely heavily on visual input; you can safely dispense with most of it, and instead replace it with aural input without a meaningful loss of information. We have examples of investigation in Call of Cthulhu, intrigue in Spycraft (especially when modded to favor wit over action), artistic/literary romance in Pendragon and L5R (when played properly), and more popular romance in the long-defunct Sailor Moon RPG.
It's a risk, a big one, but one worth considering.
The important storylines are dynamic. They are being directed by the players in massive corporations, and by individual pilots.
Yes, and this is one of the many "tricks" that MMORPG use to get around the problems of dynamic content. Doesn't change the limitations of it's environment. Also I am fully aware that the conveniences of MMORPGS has a huge impact.
I realize that RPGs will never make a comeback against MMORPGs. Yet RPGS offers things that MMORPGs don't offer. Or CCGs or any of the new games that pared off so much of the original audience of RPGs.
The question now becomes how we continue to foster the strengh of RPGS and get the hobby on a sustaining basis. In my mind the key elements are handheld computer devices and Virtual Table Tabletop.
Handheld computers like netbooks and e-book readers allow the reduction of the cost of printing while offering advantages.
Virtual Table Top will grow in parallel to the rest of the hobby. Its importance is maintaining the social network of gamers by allow gamers anywhere in the world to form groups and just play.
Wizards dropping the ball on its VTT will haunt the industry as one of the great missed opportunties. However I believe it can still recover because of the sheer size of it's fanbase.
For anyone else annoyed with WotC's not following through, and
feeling the need for a VTT, the group I am with has been using MapTool
from http://www.rptools.net/ to replace our battlemat and mini's as
most all of us bring our laptops to the game anyway. It's chat
function also helps for planning between players if you don't want the
DM to hear. I haven't tried it as a VTT for gaming with people in
other rooms/houses/etc but have no real doubt that it would work if we
got some kind of voice chat/teamspeak going. I'm not sure that
I'd want to try a game with just text/chat.
@cnath - I think the biggest key to VTTs is a more effective(read easy) system to setup. I guess I don't mean on the computer end, I mean on the actual physical end. Personally I've always though we could see a revival of the TRPG with VTTs and more portable computer systems once cheap and better Projectors come to market. The biggest draw back to VTTs is that they are primarily limited to computers and such displays.
Aside from that I think the technological tools are more or less there to make a Virtual Table Top RPG work. Although I will have to wait and see what Dragon Age and Spore: Galactic Adventures (this one in particular) will be able to produce. Say what you may about EAs DRM practices, the technology in Spore seems fairly close to what the TRPG community needs to actually bite into the MMO circle as an alternative product. Lots for prebuilt easy to use components (that look nice), but open to more 'advanced' fussing.
Call me crazy but Spore (adding in more options for weapons/items) + randomizers like Alderac Entertainment Groups "Ultimate Toolbox" (for the 'lazy' pickup game DMs) + the combat system backbone of 4e (would personally prefer 3e but 4e seem better designed for computer adjudication), and you have D&D:Online.
The other key would be to not alienate your user base by making your system single platform only (WotC DDI tools I'm looking at you). Unlike the wider computer gaming world, if you're expecting living DMs to make games run then you need ever last one you can get.