I think everyone can agree that Wizards of the Coast has issues with 4e and it’s digital initiative.
Yesterday’s announcement of the demise of the Gleemax Gamer Social Network experiment and the continued fan backlash over everything 4e is eating up at Wizards’ reputation as the trustworthy keeper of two of the world’s most popular hobby-gaming franchises.
I think Wizards knows this and is taking steps to deal with this.
Yesterday a friend of mine posted on Twitter about how he hated to be told by some stranger how to run is business. While I can sympathize, this morning I realized that there are cases where a business should stop and listen to the best possible consultants: Paying clients.
Having been a RPG customer for more than 25 years (15 buying and playing D&D) and having developed a community voice in the last year, I think I’m qualified to offer my views on Wizard’s marketing strategies of the last year.
Know your geeks
The past, current and future clientele of D&D are mostly geeks. I define them as people who spend a lot of time and energy mastering and enjoying their favorite hobby. The inherent technical challenge of mastering said hobby being part of the geek’s appeal for it.
D&D 3.x was an ever changing system that was a challenge to master. Us committed geeks did. We bought countless books, we poured over them, we tinkered with the rules and we created awesome campaigns.
Yes, D&D 3.5 (and its predecessors) had warts and some less than stellar components. Still we mastered them. The more adventurous of us even opened the game’s hood and fiddled with the engine to get rid of the warts we didn’t like (Save or Dies comes to mind).
We spent ungodly amounts of time templating leveled monsters for our adventures. Some of us then saved time by trading them in the safe harbor that was the OGL and in the less safe, but unpatrolled waters of forums and fan sites. We even bought the later Monster Manuals and adventure paths to stop spending so much time on prep.
A geeky fumble…
Then came Wizards of the Coast with the much awaited (albeit not enthusiastically) announcement of 4e and the slew of designer blogs on Gleemax/pre-D&D Insider.
While I was eager to see the new game and the previews did turn out to be more promising than I anticipated, what was the key message I continually got from it all?
D&D 3.5 was too hard, broken in places, too complex! D&D 4e will be simple, awesome and easy! No more spending hours prepping!
Huh, excuse me…. Is that how you reward us for all those efforts we spent on your game in the last 8-9 years?
We all agree that D&D 3.X had issues. Hell we’ve been playing with them for so long, but we learned them! We tamed them or at the very least we learned how to circumvent them and still had fun. We even grudgingly followed through the dubious necessity of upgrading to 3.5.
I think the biggest gaffe of 4e’s release is how the geek clientele was treated by the various ‘Change Agents’ of Wizards of the Coast. There was something not quite patronizing, a bit ‘we know better’ and a lot ‘this is soooo much better’ in the corporate message
I think 4e would have been better received if the changes had been presented as a dialog (however one sided it needed to truly be) in the lines of:
“How about them Save or Dies huh? Do anyone hate them as much as we do? Here’s how we think we could address them”
“How do you deal with an underpowered PC that sits on the side while the Wizard nukes the Battlemap? We think it would be more fun for the average gamer if we proposed a more balanced apporoach for 4e!”
I’m sure people more versed in the transition from 3.x to 4e will chime in and say that’s what the 4e design/marketing teams tried to do.
Well I believe the message was not properly delivered.
Instead, I’m willing to bet that many geeks got the impression that the 4e team decided what was fun and kept pointing to the less than stellar parts of 3.5 to drive the points home, regardless of how much fun we actually had with those very same parts! (Don’t quote me out of context please… he he he)
Geeks on both side
I don’t blame the designers though, because here’s the thing, the D&D 4e designers are geeks too! If there’s one thing you can’t do is stopping geeks from talking about something they love and spent so long tinkering with.
They did, and I’m happy they did… only they could have reined in their geekiness to spare ours.
I think what went bad was marketing’s leadership (or lack of) about shaping the message to the geek clientele and from the geek employees.
I realize that there are countless variables I can’t possibly know about that led to this publicity fiasco (the word is not too strong). There was the obvious power struggle behind the license, there were IP issues and Hasbro’s lawyers to deal with.
Plus, let’s turn the mirror around for a minute, there’s just no WAY to please geek fans when a major change is in the air. Trying to do so is corporate suicide, some people had to be pissed off, that’s the price of change.
However, the path that was chosen ended up causing unnecessary damage.
Here’s to next time and hoping that the geek psyche is better understood. Have a look at Magic’s R&D’s web content (and the content of Starcitygames.com) in the Ravnica years/8th Edition years, that was transition well done.
Taking too much on one’s shoulders
I think that Wizard of the Coast has tried to be a Hydra with way too many heads and it’s collapsing under it’s own weight. By shooting all over the place with printed games, digital initiatives and mass/viral marketing campaigns they managed to fail in multiple places. This makes the company look unprofessional and fuel the online pundits that gleefully chime in with easy (but well deserved) ‘I told you so!’s
The recent mea culpa and refocusing of efforts might be a step in the right direction, but the specter of the post 3.0 mass layoffs makes me a cautious customer (i.e is it going to be better or are they just going to throw a lot of people out on theirs asses and hope for the best with freelancers).
It’s a shame because D&D 4e is a very nicely designed game that brings heroic fantasy roleplaying in a new, not all that unfamiliar direction.
Let Geeks/Fans do what they do best.
I don’t think it’s too late to make the game reach it’s full early-life potential, a change of the message and the underlining philosophy is however necessary.
I think that the designers/developers should start pointing toward the (maybe hidden) complexities of the new game instead of comparing them to their equivalent from 3.5 all the time.
For example, they should start to massively sell geeks on the lie that monsters in the Monster Manual are. They need to show us just how downright easy it is to create a thousand monsters by tweaking the MM ones. They need to flood us with examples of properly created Skill challenges and dare us to do better!
If this has already been done, I blame poor research. Regardless, the message needs to be stronger to balance out the pundits and critics.
Heck just look how much fan work has been invested in trying to ‘fix’ the Skill Challenges on Enworld. D&D 4e has now got it’s dedicated Geek Squad working at its rough edges (and its got some too, just ask Graham what he thinks of how character size interacts with weapon). This is an opportunity that needs to be grabbed much more vigorusly by Wizards of the Coast.
There’s a lot of potential fan/geek goodwill, just waiti to be tapped, to turn this thing around. Maybe enough to balance out the hate.
So here’s my suggestion to better sell 4e to the world:
The D&D Geek Manifesto
Wizards of the Coast, we ask you to do what the hobby has always done to make 4e a success.
Let the fans spread out the word, help US teach the game to others.
Make us some bitchin’ published adventures. Create non-RPGA gaming material that we, the fans, can use in cons and game stores*.
We, the current gamers, are your future livelihood. We will buy your supplements, we will teach the game to new players.
Don’t underestimate the power of the online writing community. RPG blogging is still in it’s infancy but its influence will rise.
We have the time and the energy to make a true, long term viral marketing campaign.
All we ask for, is your support and your help!
Continue making good games.
Hire more designers/writers.
Re-think your marketing campaigns.
We the fans will handle the rest!
Chatty DM
*I will be a DM in 2 of Montreal’s biggest cons in the next year, I’d love to have some exclusive D&D material for that!
102 Comments
I definitely agree that WotC needs to engage the fan community and work with it instead of against it. Many of the (former) 3rd party publishers are very good at that, and WotC could learn a great deal of how to do the same.
However, I think one of their attempts (that I liked quite a lot) was what you list as one of their failings. I think it was great for them to say “here’s what we didn’t like about the previous edition, and here’s what we did to fix it.” I may be in the minority (at least among internet commenters) but I never got the impression that they were telling us “you were stupid to like 3.x” or even “rule X is dumb”, they picked a problem and discussed openly what they didn’t like and how they were changing it. I much prefer the designers and developers to be open about their design goals instead of being a mysterious process behind closed doors.
Once again, chatty - nail. on. head.
I’d also add that the splitting of the core material (classes and races) probably wasn’t the best idea either, but that’s just asking for a dead horse to show up asking for a whipping.
I would mention the approach that Paizo is taking for it’s pathfinder game. The geeks are truly in a frenzy at the thought of having a chance to chime in with their own fixes, as well as playtesting. That seems to be the model for creating a game out of an existing community. The changes, for the most part appear to be in-line with what one would’ve expected from 4th edition, standing on the shoulders of giants past and all that.
Is it as easy as blaming hubris? Are the lawyers really to blame? I can’t help but wonder what “they” though was wrong with the 2E to 3E transition. I seem to recall it being much less melodramatic. You’re right about not being able to please everyone, but simply factoring in an acceptable loss % seems a bit…misguided.
I hope they have learned something from this, if nothing else, angry geeks are nasty enemies to have. Reaching for the stars is all good, but you ever see the craters they make when they fall!?
Donny_the_DMs last blog post..Oops…n00b mistake!
You know Chatty, I think you summed it up perfectly. While I have significant problems with 4e, it’s nothing that a few house rules couldn’t possibly fix. A huge part of my problem was how WOTC acted, like they knew fun. In truth, it was a “tyranny of fun” by WOTC…or actually felt like it on my end.
The 4e transition was not as smooth within the community as what I remember when we transitioned to 3e. Perhaps had WOTC presented it differently, and not apparently expect campaigns to end just to transition to 4e, then things might be less contentious in the community at the moment.
Hopefully, WOTC will heed your words
Toms last blog post..I Got Skillz
Oh No’z he done say teh “T” word! lol, you should read chatty’s earlier article on it, both sides are represented in reasonable fashion.
Donny_the_DMs last blog post..Oops…n00b mistake!
While I agree that a lot of the marketing had a sort of “Throw away everything you know, 4e is inherently BETTER!” vibe, I don’t know that your suggestions would actually fix all that much.
Wizards is a major corporation. This means that basically all design is by committee, and has to pass muster in fifty other departments before being completely mangled by PR and Marketing. After all that, it’s released in a form that it’s original designers would likely barely recognize.
This is why the rules lack cohesion and the book design makes no sense. This is why things seem to have been changed for the purpose of change. This is also probably the reasoning behind the screwed up marketing.
Of course, saying this, I don’t actually have a solution. I’m just saying that you can’t expect something with the coherent vision of a single person or small group, like the original brown books or the varied first editions.
That said, I’m still cautiously optimistic about future offerings for 4e. Hopefully we won’t get as mired in sourcebooks as we were with 3e, but the more they make at once, the more will be products of a single mind, and less mangled by departmentalism.
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Wow, I leave for home and get 4 comments! Woot!
@Dave: I know not everybody felt like that, chief among them you and Graham.
It’s just that I kept seeing, up to last week’s Wizard’s post on monsters ‘how in 3.5 it was just so much harder to…’
To which I answer:
We GET it, OK! Leave 3.5 alone and let 4e live on it’s own merits.
All polite like of course.
@Donny: It’s all right man, Tom is allowed to phrase it like that as I get what he means.
@Tom: The thing is, the 4e team never, ever had any goals or imposing their vision of fun on anyone. It’s clear to me that they listened to the players and read through Gigabytes of feedback to make 4e into close to what our D&D had become.
Most of my house rules and efforts to balance my player’s PCs agaisnt one another seemed to have been taken into account in 4e… How can I NOT like that?
It’s the way the message was handled I’m annoyed/disappointed with.
Go back to the 1st cheesy 4e video with the guy with an awful accent. Right from that point the word was out to focus on the weaknesses of the previous editions instead of previewing the awesomeness of the future game… Much like a negative presidential campaign.
THAT’s what I don’t want to see in the future.
Think I’ll stick with my Dungeon Masters Creed
:sigh: I dunno. Wizards’ fecked up the pre-marketing of 4e; that’s a given. They tried too hard to be a software house, not a book publisher. They rubbished the game we paid good money for in the hopes that would make us smack our foreheads and wonder what a pile of carp we’ve been playing all these years. We (quite rightly) didn’t like that.
I reckon the problem isn’t with Wizards’ designers. I reckon the problem is with them picking the wrong target audience.
In short: they got it wrong aiming for the Geek crowd. Yes, you. And me too.
We’re a demanding bunch. We expect things to work. We expect things to be accessible. We expect things to live up to our expectations. When they do, we shout it from the hills, and when they don’t, we shout it from the hills. We’re arguably the worst possible audience if you’re not going to get things right at least 95% of the time. Wizards’, right now, are nowhere near that figure.
If it takes the end of Gleemax and a shift in the focus of the novels (+ the Third As-Yet unreleased Bad News Item from Wizards’) to step in the right direction, so be it. Seriosuly, I doubt many folks will miss Gleemax anyhow. This means that they know there’s a problem, and they know they need to fix it.
Back to the audience.
The future audience isn’t Geeks. If that’s what they think, Wizards’ will be gone within three years. We’re too fickle, too easily sucked into other newer brands, and get too easily bored once we’ve mastered something. I mean, when was the last time you played Magic for 8 hours straight - honestly.
The future audience needs to be the same future audience it was at the start of D&D. It needs to be the kids and proto-Geeks who got into the game early and end up hooked well into their adult life. Someone who gets into gaming at age 12 will have a customer lifespan of 30+ years. Get ‘em at 24 and you’ve got them for 10 years at the most, probably less.
That 12 (ok, 8-14) demographic is a MASSIVE audience - the only possible future of D&D. They’re the legion of fans of superhero and action movies. They have the imagination. They have the time and willingless to learn, and - most importantly - they don’t have credit cards and have limited access to MMORPG gaming. So you’re not competing with something that’s got flashier graphics, lower price-to-entry and a simpler play experience neither.
D&D going online kills the very audience it should be enticing. Make D&D kid friendly and you’ll have gamers for life. Cut off their ability to buy monthly paper magazines (I’m not bitter
) and push the ‘net subscription model and you’re on a downhill slope.
Darned fools.
The thing is that Geeks like kidstuff, and vice versa. Target the kids and treat them with respect and maturity and you’ll soak up the Geek crowd too, naturally. Everybody wins.
greywulfs last blog post..TheWhereWolf: When hunting werewolves, it helps to be looking in the right direction.
Oh no’z! I try to make teh funny and it is FAIL! lol.
@greywulf - Good point. It is hard to market directly to a group that has no money…especially in the middle of a recession that isn’t.
The whole DDI thing really chapped my hide. Forget a “deal” I want my awesome print magazines full of fluffy, crunchy goodness - and ads for cool companies and products I would never have found otherwise.
You’re right about us as well. We ARE a really hard group to please. While we may agree on the basics, I bet even this group would be hard pressed on the details, to actually agree on what is “fun”.
Sometimes I kinda miss the old days, when the hobby was printed in a garage, with the sweat and blood of geeks used as ink. The whole Hasbro thing has never really felt right. It seems that the most precipitous decline of product quality coincided with the buyout. IMO, of course.
Donny_the_DMs last blog post..Oops…n00b mistake!
I wonder if anyone is out there telling my story. I am brand new to D&D. I am brand new to tabletop games. Here is my story:
I tried D&D in 3.5. I played for maybe 3 sessions out of a campaign. I found the whole thing unpleasant and not fun! I made a rogue (mistake) but didn’t quite understand what the deal with back stab was, so I ended up spending battle just rolling d4 damage while the Half Orc was swinging two axes. My character was flimsy and weak. I had a really hard time with ranged combat, et cetera.
Additionally, I had no idea about group combat. I had a fuzzy idea that I was pretty flimsy and shouldn’t be hit, but my desire to try to get my backstab dice put me in harm’s way.
Now with 4th it took one cover to cover reading of the PHB to *get it.* And that’s fun!!
The point is - I had no desire… NO DESIRE… to “master” 3.5. I wanted to play a game, not learn a math system. I wanted to have fun killing monsters and getting stuff with my party.
So I quit 3.5 and played WOW. Now that I’ve jumped back in with 4th, I play and also plan to DM, I listen to all the podcasts, read all the blogs, and am looking into systems like Shadowrun.
Basically — I am a brand new tabletop gamer that is very enthusiastic that has been won over by the design of 4th.
Who will teach these kids the game Greywulf?
Us…. the older siblings and geeky parents of said demographics. That’s why I clamor for the proper tools and support.
@ Trev - …and that is great! Welcome to the hobby BTW. Being of the exact opposite philosophy means little to nothing in this context. It’s a game, PLAY ON!
Having had to teach a fair number of folks the intracacies of 3.5, I can sympathize. It IS a complex system. That’s what some of us like. Others, not so much. Once again, that is all good.
3.5’s biggest flaw, IMO was exactly this problem. HOURS of homework and research involved for even a basic understanding, much less adventure prep. I admit, I’m a bit masochistic in this regard, but I also understand that this is weak sauce for many others.
Welcome Trev, and to each their own ; )
Donny_the_DMs last blog post..Oops…n00b mistake!
Chatty,
When I referred to the “tyranny of fun”, I meant that they have given me the impression to some extent. They tell me that fighters aren’t fun in 3x, but that’s odd because I usually play fighters. See what I mean?
It’s not that they are necessarily imposing their own brand of fun, just the marketing seemed that way to some of us.
Toms last blog post..I Got Skillz
I hopped onto the roleplaying thing late in the 3.5 iteration. I was 21, done with college and began looking into it. Note, I’m a geek, but D&D was taboo in my misguided firmly conservative Christian household (not saying that conservative christianity is misguided, I’m saying my family was misguided) so I know I’m a bit of a late comer to the game, but I must say that the point Chatty made regarding listening to the fan base really strikes a chord with me.
I harken back to the days of Paizo’s control of D&D. I mostly got the issues from my local library, and if there was something great in it, or an adventure I wanted to run I bought it. I remember first getting into D&D and I picked up the Maure Castle edition of Dungeon and I was absolutely floored, this without me even knowing the history behind it all. That being said, as time passed and I delved deeper into the system and read more I frequented paizo far more than I frequented WOTC forums. In fact, the only reason I browed WOTC forums was for Eberron related material. I never really felt a connection with WOTC. I remember being on the paizo forums and seeing posts from Jacobs and Logue and the high muckety-mucks that ran the thing and thinking, wow, these guys are in-tune with their audience. Now, again I say I don’t browse the WOTC forums all that much so who knows maybe James Wyatt posts regularly, I know Keith Baker occasionaly chimes in on the Eberron forums. Never-the-less I always felt that Paizo had it right and Wizards was just kinda like psh, we got the license and so the fans don’t really have a choice.
I tried to keep up with 4e news after it’s announcements, but mostly I felt like everyhing was a lot of secrets. To me it felt like Wizards was saying, ooo man, we’ve got some awesome things for you, but we can’t tell you what they are. That kind of Christmas mentality is great when your 7, not so thrilling when you’re twenty-something. Not to mention information was being distributed via their website, (which you’ve already mentioned, is an abomination of navigabilty and utility) forums, blog posts, etc etc. Contrast to when Paizo released its Pathfinder line they came right out and gave you teasers of information regarding the setting and whet your whistle almost every day with a post on their blog, easily accesible on their website, to make you want it even more. I was salivating over every juicy morsel. Now, I realize the inherent difference between marketing a new adventure path on an old system and a new system altogether may be completely different, but never-the-less I think the overall effect is the same. Listen to your fans, cater to them, pander to them and you may just learn something.
@ChattyDM Agree entirely! We’re here, ready and waiting to hand over the mantle to the next generation. Heck, for the past few weeks I’ve been having a blast playing the D&D Boardgame with my 6- and 10-year old. When they’ve played all the scenarios I’ll introduce them to 4e. Just because they’re not Wizards’ audience doesn’t mean they’re not mine
@Trev, welcome to the game
4e is a simpler, less mathematically complex and (dare I say it?) funner game than than 3e. Thanks for giving D&D a second chance!
I had a hard time going between 2.0 and 3.0, let alone 3.5. I have never played a 3.5 game, and don’t plan on it unless there’s a new DM who introduces it into the gaming group. As for 4e, I don’t really like the simplistic approach it seems to have taken. That is all I will say about it, as I know little to nothing about 4e.
We’re currently playing a campaign where the DM did an awesomely smooth job in converting us from D&D to Shadowrun ruleset (Very fun plot twist, but a headache to convert character sheets).
All in all, I think I have to do some research/play 4e before I say too much; there are too many people I know that bash it and won’t even try it, because they claim to be “purists” or something silly like that. (What the frack, I had to say to them).
Tenachs last blog post..Roleplaying, DMs and Blogs [2]
I’ve been gaming since 1978. I found the transition from 2E to 3E almost seamless. 3.5 brought D&D to almost exactly what I thought the game should always have been. I simply didn’t see a need for a new edition.
As a person with no interest in 4E I have watched it’s launch from a distance. If the Wizbro team tried to do a worse marketing job I don’t think it would be possible. They seem to have dropped the ball at every conceivable step. Gleemax is just the latest in a very long list of missteps.
Vote with your dollar. Don’t give money to people that fail this spectacularly.
I know nothing about 4e, I was a late comer to 3.5 and was kind of hoping to switch to 4e if its online system would work, because I have been playing with people in 3 countries using skype and a proper virtual tabletop would be very useful. But I won’t be rushing to buy a new d&d until that virtual tabletop is available. I think 3.5 is quite fine, and any of its problems for specific worlds or viewpoints can be adjusted by various amounts of house rules.
I think Trev’s point about it being annoying to “Master” is very true, and I think perhaps a more business-oriented approach might have been to release a kind of limited-use or limited-time alternative 3.5e based on simple rules and easy fun, to see if they could capture a younger or newer audience and lead them into the more complex game later. But the simplified version of D&D have always just been a little “alternative” box on page 351, and that isn’t going to change, so… 4e. Which I haven’t bothered with yet…
flashhearts last blog post..A World of Warcraft Business Model
Great stuff…
I have to disagree on 1 thing though. I don’t think they need to rethink their marketing. I think the 4e launch (online tools excluded) was brilliant from a marketing standpoint.
How else can you get to the top of the Amazon best-seller list?
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WotC shot themselves in the foot with the marketing of 4E; pretty much everything they did right with the 3E launch they did the exact opposite with the launch of 4E.
That said, the game itself is incredible fun and, in retrospect, I can look over my 4E books and my past few games, and compare them to my 3.x books and ongoing Pathfinder game… and you know what?
D&D 3.5 was too hard, broken in places, [and] too complex! D&D 4e [is] simple, awesome and easy! [And I no longer have to spend] hours prepping!
So, even though I think the marketing was bad, I’m not going to say it was incorrect.
Personally, I found 3rd edition to be a breath of fresh air, having survived revised 2nd edition. After the horror of enjoying a game DESPITE the rules, I felt like they had finally made “my” game. 3.5…well, lets just say, I wasn’t too happy with having to shell out another 100 bones, but I did it anyway.
I have a hard time understanding where the complexity issues truly are, but that’s not to say they aren’t there…just that I enjoyed it in context of where I had learned the rules.
IMO, losing backward compatibility was the biggest sin. Of all my complaints (and there are a lot of them) THIS one, to me is the biggest.
In my earlier rants, I compared 3rd and 4th to AD&D and D&D (respectively) I still hold that analogy up. Newer players, especially younger ones seem to like not having to spend hours upon hours doing what folks like me take for granted, and excellent case of YMMV.
That’s not to say it is a kid’s game by any means. My days of trash talking 4E players are over. I like chocolate, you like strawberry, it’s that simple. There are a bunch of really good ideas in 4E, enough that I DO dream about somebody homebrewing up a playable “Chocoberry”. Pathfinder is stopping just a bit short of that, but it hasn’t reached final yet either.
Donny_the_DMs last blog post..Oops…n00b mistake!
I don’t really think I can even comment on some of the stuff that’s been said, but
This.
This is the most important statement about 4e that I’ve read in a while.
Yes, some of the current audience likes having complex, convoluted crunch.
But y’know what? WotC doesn’t care about that. Nor should they.
As with every industry with an audience, D&D’s audience constantly shrinks. Unless the adjust their design to the new audience.
I mean, imagine if Ford was still making the Model T. Same gas mileage, safety features, and all. You think they’d still be in business? But even without going to that extreme, the import car manufacturers are driving the local ones out of business, because the import manufacturers are better at playing to the new generations.
So this! This is what WotC decided to design for. This is what WotC needed to design for.
You liked Save-or-Die spells? WotC doesn’t care. The game is being redesigned to make bringing in new generations of gamers easier, and the new generations of gamers don’t want Save-or-Die spells. So goodbye sacred hamburger.
Thing is, a lot of us who have played for some years have also developed these tastes. Or, more specifically, we only played the old ways because they were the only way available. And we have been silently rebelling against those 20-to-30-year-old ways for years.
But if I were to go off on how much I love the changes, I’d be accused of “drinking the koolaid”.
But to hear it put this way from someone who is a brand new gamer, who had problems with 3.5e, and found 4e to be designed in such a way that a newbie could just pick it up and GET it?
Well, that’s why we have 4e. And that’s why we needed 4e.
Trev, you win an internet.
@ graham - an excellent argument for releasing 4E as a standalone, buffed up mini’s game or MTG: The RPG? only half kidding! It IS possible to have ones cake and eat it too.
I understand that has parallels to the old gluttonous TSR implosion, but the time are different, and so is the market.
Water under the bridge now, but I can’t help but wonder…And no kool-aid for you ; ) The game stands on it’s own merits - there’s plenty of room for everyone to be right.
Donny_the_DMs last blog post..Oops…n00b mistake!
…got quiet all of a sudden…I can haz boot in the head?
Donny_the_DMs last blog post..…Cant….resist…..angst…..Ah heck, here you go!
“Make us some bitchin’ published adventures. Create non-RPGA gaming material that we, the fans, can use in cons and game stores*.”
You had me at hello.
@Graham - Best. Idea. Ever.
Somebody needs to buy the domain goodbyesacredhamburger.com
Sorry, that idea just tickled me. Hehehehe!
Geek’s Dream Girls last blog post..Are your Instant Messaging Buddies in the Monster Manual?
Hmmm… funny, I never even realized that WOTC had messed up their marketing. Didn’t they have to do a second printing before the game even came out??? What did I miss?
I was excited by pretty much everything I’ve read/watched since last year. And not just because I wanted change for the sake of change - I was running a 3.5 campaign and the warts were bugging me. I liked hearing that the designers had been listening to players and drawing on their own games to shape a new edition. I enjoyed reading the design articles on the web page and listening to the podcasts (doing my geekly research) because they explained exactly why they felt something needed changing, or how they approached the change. When someone does that, and it makes sense to me, it makes me happy.
I dunno, I suppose if your point of view is just that the marketing needed to do a better job of drawing in new players… well, they said several times over the last year that the first focus would be on established players, and would then concentrate on new players. I’m thinking the strength of the product is drawing in new players regardless.
@Ablefish -
From what I can tell, the “messed up marketing” is regarding those crusty old players who didn’t see the warts and felt like WotC was insulting something they loved.
But there’s always warts. Those that don’t see them are just convincing themselves they don’t actually exist. And those that take offense to someone pointing out the warts are just over-sensitive.
But as for whether they messed up the marketing? Not a bit. They could have been a bit more tactful, like ChattyDM’s suggestions, but 90% of those who were offended would still have been offended. As it was, they managed to upset the least amount of people they could, by being transparent about the process, and then listening to the feedback they got.
And oh, yes, they listened to the feedback.
A single forum post, by a random forum member, for instance, changed what gods were alive or dead in the Forgotten Realms book.
And does anyone else remember “Golden Wyvern Adept”?
So, honesty, feedback, acting on that feedback, and creating a whole lot of hype as well, culminating in a massive launch with massive acceptance.
I’m not sure just what more they could have done.
Oh, and just to add something:
No.
Just, no.
For some, yes. But as a general statement, blatantly false.
This is the same fallacy that Shamus Young continually talks about. Difficulty is not depth. Difficulty, by itself, is not rewarding to most people.
If even a strong minority of geeks wanted a game that was technically difficult, then Synibarr, SenZar, and FATAL would be far more popular.
They are not.
This should tell you something.
We want a game that is technically complete. For this, we are willing to accept a certain amount of difficulty. Most of us do not actually want the difficulty. We just accepted it as an inevitability.
Except greywulf.
The most popular RPG systems of all time have always been about 60/40 between “simulation” and “game.” D&D, Shadowrun, CoC, WoD, etc.
Technically compotent, reasonably complete, and with good fundamental guidlines on how the GM can rule on things that aren’t covered. But with enough abstraction and a sound underlying “math” that makes everything work and a good sense of “fun” to let everyone overlook the rough spots.
Some very popular games have been able to survive, even thrive, with a much higher “simulation v. game” ratio. Traveller, Gurps, and Champions come to my mind in that regard… mostly, because they are games about being technically complex.
Synibar, H.O.L, SenZar, Palladium, Gloriantha, Amber and Pendragon… well, they all get the ratio way “wrong” for Joe Average Gamer and remain niche titles or urban myths. (And yes, I’ve played HoL)
Just wanted to agree with Trev’s post - at least for me, 4e has been nothing but fun. I played AD&D in high school, then took a 22 year break! I bought 3.5e when it came out, tried to read the books, but it never really clicked.
Then, for whatever reason - time, money, energy - when 4e came out it seemed like the right time to start again. Now I’m DM’ing a party thru KotS - 5 players, 4 of whom played in high school, and the 5th is the 9-year-old son of one of the players. And we are all having a blast.
As far as the “simplicity” of the 4e rules, I find that I am devoting maybe 10% of my time to understanding the rules, and 90% on adventure and encounter preparation. This obviously works out much better for both the players and for me.
Seems like if WotC has muddled everything up, at least they are muddling in the right direction.
The Tucson RPG Guild, which is the largest organized roleplaying group in the southern half of the state, just started a homegrown shared world campaign to replace Living Greyhawk, which the group had participated in for years. Killing Living Greyhawk left dozens of people disconnected from Wizards. When the time came to vote for what system to do the share worlds in, the overwhelming vote was 3.x (including Pathfinder). The second largest voting block was for Savage Worlds. There were no votes for 4e.
Bravo sir. I agree on all counts with your post. What really stuck it for me was your point on prep work. It’s true that 4e is streamlined and takes less prep, but for some reason that bothered me… though I could never see why. Why would making things easier be upsetting? I guess us 3.5 zealots have developed some masochistic tendencies towards the game. I enjoy spending four hours pouring over supplements to make a third level character! I enjoy finding new rules and expanding upon old rules to create unique and homebrewed campaigns and encounters. I enjoy the prep time! I guess some of us have just come to enjoy the subtle complexities, and multi-faceted rules system that 3.5 has to offer. I’m a rules-lawyering masochist, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I can see how someone could see the marketing for 4e as… a bit heavy-handed, let’s say. But it seems to have worked. And, objectively, I couldn’t say any of it was wrong, though perhaps it could’ve been put another way.
Where marketing really dropped the ball was on the online stuff, though. Gleemax… did anyone have a firm idea about what it was supposed to be? And then, on the other hand, Insider… the marketing was sure there, but after all the hoopla, it’s vaporware for the release date? Seriously? Heads should’ve rolled for that. (Maybe they did. I don’t know.)
Now, I’m a fan of 4e. It’s a pretty awesome game. Not flawless, certainly not the best I’ve ever played, but a solid, enjoyable roleplaying game. But at this point, I’m almost willing to believe that it succeeded more in spite of WotC/Hasbro than because of them.
Ninetails last blog post..Gleemax’s Failure and other thoughts
AMEN Reverand Chatty
Joeys last blog post..Dragons! – Part 3 – Encounter of the Good Kind
Insightful and well put!
The current 3.5 playerbase are the best acquainted with the third edition rules, so to tell them that the game is too complex is ludicrous. Third ed is only too complex to draw new players; the existing players have already learned or house-ruled the system until they are happy with what they’re playing.
Converting these contented players has to be a matter of offering benefits - if you don’t do this, it’s just pushing a new product for a profit’s sake, which a lot of people have accused them of doing. Whatever 4E offers that 3E doesn’t to the experienced player, that’s got to be their marketing platform to appeal to these people.
Jonathan Drain’s last blog post..The Three Minute Monster
Absolutely YES they messed up the marketing.
Did you see any TV ads for the new Edition? Radio ads? Adverts in magazines? Internet promotion outside of wizards.com themselves (Hint: no point advertising on your own site. We’re already there!). Did you see any promotional copies of the books being sent out to any respected reviewers - and I’m talking BOOK and FILM reviewers here (like http://www.aintitcool.com, newspaper reviewers, etc)? Copies in libraries with big cutouts of the monsters on display? ANYTHING AT ALL outside the “aim at existing D&D players” comfort zone?
I certainly didn’t, not here in the UK, at least. I suspect it was the same in the US and elsewhere too.
And they aimed at we existing D&D players, and managed to hack off a fair chunk of us too. You know what though - it didn’t matter because we bought the books anyway. We’re like that. A new Edition of D&D was going to hit the bestsellers list despite Wizards’ marketing efforts, regardless.
What they promise and what we want are two different things. Sure, they listen to their fanbase for the little things, but ignore us while we’re shouting ourselves hoarse. We wanted a free PDF preview of the rules (much like the one that came with Keep on Shadowfell). Tack on a small adventure, and you’ve instantly got a way for the curious (ie, potential new customers) to try out the game without shelling out cold hard cash. We want a boxed set of minis where we know what we’re getting. I understand the economics of random boosters packs, but why the heck doesn’t Wizards sell a box of “40 Kobolds”, “30 Orcs”, “20 Heroes” AS WELL? It’s ludicrous that there’s still no “Keep on Shadowfell” miniatures pack. It would FLY off the shelves, folks! Sure, give us collectable boosters (’cos they’re fun too), but c’mon Wizards - you’re missing a terrific revenue opportunity here.
We wanted a Start Set, right from the start. Keep on Shadowfell came close. If only they’d included Dice, proper character sheets and a few unpainted plastic minis, eh?
Personally, I don’t want Wizards’ to do the whole DDI thing. I want it, but I want someone else to do it instead. Wizards’ software track record isn’t good. If they’d announced “……. and we’ve teamed up with Bioware to create a cool character generator and dungeon building online experience” it would be Right Here, Right Now, it would be amazing and they’d have my money every single month, without fail. Instead, we’re stuck in some strange warped reality where they’re trying to tell us that a slapped-together search crippled p***-poor database lister Rules Compendium is The Next Wave. Oh, please.
The thing is that 4e is GREAT. It’s a brilliant, brilliant revision that will sell anyhow because it is very, very good indeed. It’s much more GM friendly than 3e, easier for players to grok and has the potential for expansion without the cancerous growth that befell 3e. Right now, I’d LOVE a book chock full o’ new Powers for the existing Core classes (because there’s so few of the blighters in the PHB). Compare and contrast with “Please Wizards no! Not another book of crummy Classes, broken Feats and half-hearted rehashes” that plagued their 3e releases.
Marketing? Guys, it sucked. Sorry.
I probably didn’t catch quite as much of the 4e pre-release fanfare as some of you. But I was paying attention. I was enthusiastic about some of the cruft from 3e being cleaned up, removed or just plain worked around. I think largely they did play up the new game. Probably they shouldn’t have mentioned as much about the problems with 3e until after the books were out. That’s probably where the negative reaction comes in. They were basically pointing out problems with their own product and until the release date they were not providing you with any method of mitigating said problem. This didn’t really help people who were running a game at the time.
Game complexity isn’t what you really want in a core book. One of the things that had my jaw dropping the first time I really read a White Wolf book was how ingenious they were with some of their examples on how to use a simple stat+skill roll to resolve even complex, multi-step actions while still allowing a rather fine expression of how difficult it is and what sort of effort is required. The actual mechanic was simple enough, the examples were mainly there to give you ideas on how to use it effectively. That’s what you want in a core book. Complexity can come from supplements tailored for people who want something different. Especially with D&D where they’re previously had no problem putting rather substantial alterations or additions to the rules into non-core books in the past.
I kind of missed the viral marketing. I know two people who I spoke with about 4e before it released. One was enthusiastic and one was determined to not like it because he had too much invested in 3e books.
My experiences with 3e were very mixed. Most of the games I played in were run by a die-hard rules lawyer who’d been number crunching since the AD&D days. The rules were used not to facilitate play but rather to occasionally showcase what I could do if I put all my eggs in one basket so to speak just to handle one niche situation and then bludgeon me back to doing nothing but “I swing” which I was doing in AD&D. I got familiar with the rules piecemeal in self defense. This is why I haven’t sat down to familiarize myself with the 4e book. After reading some of the posts above, however, I think I will read up on it next time I end up in a D&D game. If nothing else I read up on Opportunity Attacks just now and some part of me is still shocked they’re not the broken, fugly mess that Attacks of Opportunity always were. Damn things were my nemesis the whole time I played in 3e.
Morning all! I’m sleep deprived and my ears are still ringing from Chris Martin’s strangely high pitched voice. (What a show!)
I see that this post sparked a lot of points of view, I can only afford to address one, the most rantish … Graham’s third comment
@ Graham: What a geek/Nerd wants in a ‘project’ is challenge. I agree that my choice of the term ‘Technical difficulty’ was not optimal. I should have said ‘challenge’ ‘intricacy’ or something that requires one’s focus and effort for a time to master.
All my nerd projects, mastering D&D 3.0/3.5/4e and this writing this blog , were tackled because I was intrigued by the depth of the field and the complexity of the systems/processes involved.
I’m sure I’m not an exception, but closer to the average geek/nerd.
@Trev: Hi there, welcome to the blog! Yours is possibly the most significant comment on the subject in a long time (no offense everyone else). I’m glad you stepped up as I could not discuss this issue from the perspective of a new player (being in the ‘I RPGed for 25 years’ crowd).
If there are a lot of players like you, then regardless of Marketing ‘Faux Pas’, D&D 4e is guaranteed a resounding success.
So. Cool.
I have to mirror some of Trev’s comments re: being a new player. I am by no means a new player. However, I’ve recently introduced a friend of mine (Jimmy) to D&D 4e. I used to DM for him 11 years ago under the AD&D rules.
He loves it. He told a friend of his about our short game (designed to get him caught up to the main group in XP and game mechanics knowledge) and his friend (Pat) joined us last night. Now another friend of his is interested.
Pat (the guy who joined last night) was coming from a PC game RPG background with only second-hand knowledge of D&D of any edition. It took 40 minutes to make his character (a Dwarf Cleric). That’s it. Last night, he only had 1.5 hours to play. We wrapped up the game, he headed out… and came back three minutes later. “Guys, I have 15 more minutes. Can we play a bit more?” There’s no better gauge of success in introducing a new player to this game than someone wanting to eek out every last minute of play possible.
I have to say that’s thanks to 4e and not my DM’ing. I’m not a bad DM, but this was just an intro adventure. I created a very simple haunted manor scenario for them to test out the rules (checks, combat, etc.) and get in a bit of roleplaying with each other. It was the inclusiveness of 4e that did it. Regardless of any gripes that anyone may have of 4e, it is incredibly and wonderfully inclusive. As a Cleric, the brand-new player (Pat) was really excited that his role didn’t consist of giving up his actions to heal people. He could bash some heads and help out. The new player who brought him in (Jimmy) loved his Wizard because it gave him what he wanted: choice and flexibility without having to choose spells without knowing what the day would bring and being rendered potentially useless.
Both are having a great time and, at this early stage with them, I lay the credit squarely on the shoulders of WotC and 4e.
Aside: The one problem I have with 4e is the sheer amount of extra tools needed to play smoothly and quickly: battlemat; battlemat representation of some kind (minis or whatnot); power cards; tokens for combat challenge, hunter’s quarry, warlock curses, divine challenge, bloodied, slowed, etc.; and simple flash cards to remind people of constant status changes (+2 defenses from Second Wind, +2 AC from the Paladin’s Shielding Smite or +3 from the Cleric’s Righteous Brand, etc.).
Rafes last blog post..Side Session: Player Catch-Up
There are no sweeter words for a GM teaching a game to a new player.
Thanks for sharing that.
Yes.
But not something that requires a large amount of focus or effort to play.
Easy to learn, hard to master, is a good way to do things, I agree.
The problem (and this was a significant problem that I’ve witnessed personally by bringing in 5 new players over the course of the last 2-3 years) is that 3.X was not easy to learn.
Oh, it was much better than many other systems.
But after 3 years of playing, one of my players can still never remember when her caster needs to roll an attack, and when the opponent needs to save. (The fact that occasionally both need to happen makes things even worse.)
3.X was moderately difficult to learn, hard to master.
It’s missing one key point that can open the game to new players, while still giving us the challenge of mastery.
4e brings it in to the “Easy to learn, hard to master” realm.
Ain’t It Cool News: http://www.aintitcool.com/node/35776
Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB121487030020517745.html?mod=2_1578_middlebox
Wired: http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/06/dungeons-dragon.html
Cable TV: http://youtube.com/watch?v=71_RWFMhJ2Y
My impression is that they’ve done a good job at marketing to non-geeks and lapsed geeks. (And I’m sure there’s more of that coming.) They’ve done a bad job marketing to fans of 3.5, and I doubt that will significantly change.
Dave T. Games last blog post..Vote Today or Face a Red Dragon
Dave said, “They’ve done a bad job marketing to fans of 3.5, and I doubt that will significantly change.”
You said what I meant! for some reason, I couldn’t communicate worth a flip!
Tomcat1066s last blog post..Gleemax is Dead…is WOTC feeling OK?
Dave, Massawyrm at AICN was a playtester for 4e, and (as with other playtesters) had to sign an NDA. Michael Zenke over at Wired is a long-time gamer who had the opportunity to be a part of the playtest too. The WJS article sounds a lot like it was initiated by the WSJ as something newsworthy rather than something Wizards’ actively went out and sought. But hey, at least it was a non-Geek news source
None of this is what I’d call a good job of marketing a new product - it’s good news by accident rather than design. At least 3rd Edition could splash it all over the news stands for months before thanks to Dungeon mag and Dragon mag. Oh, wait……………
greywulfs last blog post..Comments on TheDungeonMastersCreed: I see this has resurfaced after yesterday’s post on my side… Nice to see it re-distributed… I still disagree with the 1 Core book thing but . . .
@greywulf -
And how many people who weren’t already fans bought, or even knew of, Dragon or Dungeon at the 3e switch?
Yeah. That’s about as many as I thought.
@Graham
With the release of the D&D movie (which was, arguably, BAD marketing
), Baldur’s Gate, the existence of the print magazines, adverts in the computer game press, Planescape:Torment and other things I’m sure I’ve forgotten, probably quite a few. Add in the D&D Boardgame (available at Toy Stores of all places!) and the few years either side of 3e’s launch wasn’t bad at all.
Sure, it could have been better - what marketing couldn’t be?
But 4e’s marketing strategy……… ouch.
Love how animated these conversations get, still feels odd that nobody has started cussing up a storm yet ; )
So what definition of marketing are we using here anyway? Common sense would say that it would be a marketing type that doesn’t leave enough of your fans p*ssed off to start a continuation of your “flawed” and cruddy leavings.
Speaking of said leavings, I see Paizo just announced 25,000 downloads of the Alpha 3 pdf. Impressive, I’d say. Luckily, that just means there will be something for everybody when the dust finally settles.
As to the fate of 4e, I see the “cancerous growth” claiming this now healthy game just as it has all of it’s predecessors. Company has to profit, and geeks need their fix. The big question is whether 4e will still be simple and fun like it is now, when each level brings a choice between 100+ powers scattered across 6 splatbooks and 4 “core” books, against the 44 variants of the common kobold.
Anyone else see a vicious cycle revving up for a repeat?
Donny_the_DMs last blog post..…Cant….resist…..angst…..Ah heck, here you go!
{And how many people who weren’t already fans bought, or even knew of, Dragon or Dungeon at the 3e switch?}
Point of fact: there were ads for 3e in mainstream magazines because part of the goal of 3e marketing was to convince former players to come back to the game after years of being away. I don’t recall all the mags that got ads, but I know one of them was Maxim.
I don’t know if 4e was advertised in any magazines at all.
I was pretty much out of the RPG loop when 4e came out, but I certainly didn’t notice a “botched” marketing campaign. I’ve mentioned here before that I’m an ex DnD player (somebody said “I don’t play but I think about it everyday”) that was unable to muster the time and mathematical skills to play 3e.
I hadn’t bought a DnD supplement for years. Hadn’t bought Dragon or Dungeon for years. Now I own all the 4e stuff, and I signed up for the free account on WotC to read Dragon and Dungeon. I’ve spent more time and money on 4e than I have on any RPG is a decade. The PA/PVP podcast is probably the best marketing idea they’ve ever had, IMO.
Now, I do both marketing and sales as part of my job, and I’ll tell you this - if you think that WotC did a bad job marketing 4e, then you are communicating from your nether portal. They designed a great system, accessible, with wide appeal (that happens to use a bunch of extras that they happen to make..), they promoted it well enough that lapsed players and potential players could learn about it and check it out, and now they are selling the books like mad.
I’m sure sorry if the dedicated hardcore 3e players feel slighted or something. But 3e was broken, IMO, in many more ways than 4e. If you feel insulted by that, suck it up, buttercup. WotC maybe hasn’t done the best possible job - I agree with Chatty on that score, but saying they botched the marketing is off-base.
I’m fully onboard the 4E bandwagon, but a lot of what got the grognards to drop AD&D2nd for 3E was not done during the run up to 4E. With D20’s initial launch, we had a year of excellent preview articles in Dragon. For 4E, we had to go out and buy $20.00 books like Worlds & Monsters…
Sorry, but I don’t pay people to look at their ads. (This is why I haven’t touched an issue of White Dwarf in over a decade.)