Aside from launching a "kill ;em all and let the demons sort 'em out campaign", I thought this blog which was written by a long time poster over on CandleKeep may by of interest to people here.
KnightErrantJr has some very interesting things to say about the whole 4E debarcle.
Read on
[url=
http://knighterrantjr.livejournal.com/3 ... l:3bdop2l0][KnightErrantJR's Gamer Blog - Theories Abound[/url:3bdop2l0]
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Nov. 23rd, 2007 08:20 pm Theories Abound
With all of this talk about 4th edition and "firing the customer" and finding a new customer base and the like, I see a lot of statements about what the WOTC guys are thinking and why they are doing what they are doing. I don't think that we can, without being part of the process, honestly, with definitive authority, say why they are doing the things they are doing, or what is driving them beyond what they have already stated.
That having been said, I have some theories on this. I also want to say that I don't think there are any real villains here, just a series of events that moves the game in a certain direction, and while there are those of us it doesn't work for and doesn't serve, its pretty much the way things are right now.
Hasbro's Part (My Take)
Erik Mona on Paizo's boards pointed out that Hasbro is a big company that spends a certain amount on the employees that work for WOTC, and when you compare the profits they get back from the same expenditure of salaries in other areas, D&D, even if its profitable, most certainly doesn't have the same profit margin that the other Hasbro lines do.
Its also been stated that Hasbro really bought WOTC because they wanted the (at the time) massively profitable Pokemon card game. They likely didn't really even noticed that they also had picked up the D&D license along with everything else. In fact, they most likely didn't notice it much at all until the "Pokemon" bubble burst, and Hasbro started to look at how profitable the rest of WOTC was.
To this end, Hasbro really has never really known what to do with D&D. Its got massive name recognition, but few people really know what it is, and its still got a bit of the specter of the 80s mass hysteria going against it. Three years ago or so (about a year before 4th edition was authorized, apparently), WOTC execs mentioned, in an article in PC Gamer that they were trying to market the D&D "brand" in ways other than as a roleplaying game. Other than the miniatures game, which crosses over with the roleplaying game, this has largely not worked (i.e. D&D Online isn't near the player that WoW, or even Everquest II or Guild Wars is, and a direct to video D&D movie that was still pretty sad doesn't do much to "expand the brand")
I'm not sure if Hasbro directly ordered 4th edition (the designers seemed to indicate, during the GenCon interviews, that this was not the case), or if Hasbro just set a "benchmark" for where profits need to be, and releasing a new edition seemed to be the most logical way to accomplish this. Either way, I don't think that Hasbro gave specific order to change tons of things, or to pull back the licenses for various properties, but I do think that there may have been a bit of a push to redirect the demographic.
Why do I think this? Hasbro is a toy company. There prime demographics, the age groups they most comfortable marketing to, are much younger than the 30 year old age group that D&D currently plays to most. Hasbro is in unfamiliar, and unwanted, territory with an older demographic like this, and I think they would be much more comfortable with a younger crowd that naturally crossed over more with their other products.
In the end, I think Hasbro has, at most, said that they need more profits per product from WOTC, and that WOTC needs to pick up a younger demographic then they currently have. Neither of these things really makes them a monster, per se, and the biggest issue here is that it seems that Hasbro probably has set a certain deadline by which these benchmarks have to be set, and they don't know (and probably don't care to know) about the D&D playing community. In fact, they likely think of things in terms of their other lines. For example, they don't worry about the "Monopoly community" or the "Transformer" community, they only worry about the demographics of the people that have bought their stuff in the past and are likely to buy their stuff in the future.
Its sad, but is a reality of a property being owned by a large corporation. They aren't, by nature, going to be good at the "grass roots" kind of customer relations and feedback that many in the community may wish we had.
WOTC's Part
I think, by and large, a lot of the changes going on in D&D are being directed by the current pack of designers, within the parameters that Hasbro has set. I think a lot of the problem with the "feel" of the current edition is that WOTC is trying to simultaneously make a new game that will be easy and intuitive to a younger demographic (not dumbed down, per se, but something that, from the start, makes some logical sense to someone that has never had any exposure to D&D or its inspirational sources), and still have some classic elements that will appeal to long term gamers.
In some ways, I think that the WOTC guys may be a bit frustrated, because while Hasbro could probably care less if the "old guard" stuck around if the sales goals are achieved, I think the WOTC guys think that they are being good members of the gaming community by not totally starting over again and trying to keep some of us in the game. On the other hand, for a lot of people (though I have no idea what percentage this group represents) the half-measures to "build the bridges" to the past seem almost insulting.
In the end, the WOTC guys are, I think, in kind of a desperate position of having to make this work. I can see Hasbro doing one of two things if the sales don't start hitting certain marks. Either they sell of the property and wash their hands of the whole mess, which throws the whole gaming community into chaos until someone picks up the property and does something with it, or WOTC's current staff pretty much exits the game entirely, and in house Hasbro game designers take over to try their hands at making D&D a more mass market, younger game.
Not a good position to be in, and while I wouldn't make the decisions that they have, in this light its not too hard to see how they have come to some of the decisions they have implemented.
Theories on the Future
I think that even if 4th edition goes over, the drive to "standardize" the D&D brand will cause some changes if Hasbro keeps it. I can easily see that even if 4th edition is successful, Hasbro will likely want to be able to use people that are more "mainstream" game designers to work on the rules, and that D&D will become more of a modular, "lets play a scenario" kind of game than a true roleplaying game (something more like the Descent board game, for example).
I think that more and more there will be a drive, if the actual game settings (like Forgotten Realms and Eberron) continue in the future, to keep the history and backstory of those worlds simple so that designers that have never seen the settings before can work on them. In this regard, general themes will likely be much more important than deeply detailed and nuanced backgrounds.
Are there any bad guys?
I don't know if they are "bad" per se, but I do think in the midst of all of this there are some designers that have "always wanted to try" a given new rule or idea, or they have wanted to get rid of something that has bothered them about a given setting, and the drastic changes and frantic nature of the complete overhaul has given them a sort of aegis under which some of their personal preferences can be imposed. I think in some cases it may be a matter of confirmation bias as well. When some of the designers have had a problem with something, and they see a few voices agree with them, suddenly they feel like they have a mandate.
I also think that there are likely a few intermediaries that probably do have the ability to bridge the gap between knowing the fanbase and knowing what corporate wants, but I think that instead of making the effort to work as diplomats, we have some feeling that they might be "insulated." If the WOTC guys that have been there a while fail, its "their" failure, not the intermediary's failure, and if it all works, they get to deliver the good news. If D&D is sold off or Hasbro types take direct control, the intermediary's likely just get sent to a new job for a while, rather than be held accountable, so why make the effort?
So while I think there may not be any "villains" in this situation, I think there may be some people that have the chance to be heroes that have instead decided to try something they always wanted to or to coast through their job assignments, rather than try to do something that might be a bit more difficult to manage.
Something to ponder
It may be that while a lot of us have had this as a hobby for decades, that D&D is something that isn't going to last indefinitely. Three decades is a pretty good run for any cultural phenomenon, and it may be that its run its course, and no matter what kind of marketing happens, its not really going to "save" the hobby.
Here is something to think about. Mickey Mouse has great name recognition, and recognizability as an icon, as does, for example, Buggs Bunny. Neither of their characters has a regular, current media presence beyond being the "spokes cartoon" for their companies. They mainly show up in commercials or reruns. In fact, the only "current" regular presence good old Buggs has right now is as a semi-serious, horribly implemented cartoon about the traditional Looney Tunes characters reimagined as super heroes.
It could very well be that "our" D&D is soon to be relegated to our fond memories and will exist only without "current" support. It may not fade from the popular vernacular for most of our lifetimes, but this doesn't mean that it will exist in the form that we would like it to for the duration of lifespan as a pop culture icon. [/b:3bdop2l0]