4 ms·

> I'd assume that they could actually have a far larger market and profit by concentrating on scale rather than treating their products as luxury items I'm no

by pdonis 4y ago

> I'd assume that they could actually have a far larger market and profit by concentrating on scale rather than treating their products as luxury items I'm not sure that's true. The actual bottleneck with these games is not money but time and interest: you have to have a group of people who all like the same game, and you have to be able to get the group together regularly to play it. There are plenty of people who are interested, but I suspect that the vast majority of them are already players of whatever game they favor (if they haven't switched to something like World of Warcraft--see below), so I don't know that there's a lot of untapped market share. As for getting the group together to play, when all of the players are teenagers in school or college, that's relatively easy. It gets a lot harder when people are adults and have to work, pay mortgages, deal with various curve balls that adult life always throws at you, etc. And if you know you're not going to be able to devote the time to it that you used to as a kid when you learned the games (I started playing D&D in eighth grade, and spent far more hours playing it between then and graduating from high school than I have in all the years since--and my 40 year high school reunion is this year), it gets a lot harder to justify spending money on game materials. Another factor is the availability of online games like World of Warcraft, which I mentioned above. These games solve the time and interest problem in a way that can't help scaling much better than in person tabletop play: you can play from your computer at home and there are always other people online playing. There are also limitations, of course: for example, you can't make up your own adventures and you can't have house rules, which were both features of every D&D campaign I have ever encountered. But it's another factor that I think tends to limit the size of the available market for games like D&D. All of the above factors seem to me to indicate that there is a natural limit to the size of the market for games like the ones WoTC is producing, and the actual active market is close to that limiting size. If that's true, then the option of trying to make more money by scaling instead of markup simply isn't available to them.

Aeolun 4y ago
I’m still holding out hope I’ll be able to have a D&D renneisance after I retire (or maybe when the kids are old enough).
- joshspankit 4y ago
  I know 10yr olds were getting in to it about 5 years ago. That feels like the seeds are planted
- pdonis 4y ago
  I've had the same thoughts. :-)
- jqr- 4y ago
  You absolutely will. I just got back into it after a 25 year hiatus, and playing with young people that weren't even born back then, and having a blast in the process. There's a thriving comunity out there, and so far I've been welcome with open arms every time I've reached out.
- nycdotnet 4y ago
  look for “D&D Encounters” in your area. This is very common in game stores and they’re designed for drop-in players or first timers to try out D&D. This is how I got back into D&D 10 years back after not having played since the early ‘90s.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    Haha, I have no issues finding people to play with, but trying to find a solid block of a few hours of time is impossible.
- sklargh 4y ago
  You don’t need to wait. I run a group with a schedule specifically designed for parents of young children. (virtual, short sessions, immediately after bedtime). There are others!
wainstead 4y ago
I will add that sites like Roll20.net solve the problem of online gaming for D&D (and many other TTRPGs), but your points still stand.
TimPC 4y ago
I left the game as I got older. At the end of the day it just didn’t make sense to spend what magic cost if I could only play a few hours a week. It’s easy to spend over $3600/year on M:TG if you want to play competitively and that just doesn’t make sense to me if I’m getting roughly 100 hours of play in. I could do far better things with over $30/hour for hobbies.
- noxvilleza 4y ago
  (will try be a bit verbose here so that people who are not MTG fans will still be able to follow sorry if it's a slog to get through!) I was in a similar boat, though for a long time during university I shared a collection with a friend and we did a pretty good job at selling off stuff to keep the effective costs down. Since 2016, I stopped playing heavily rotational formats like Standard [for those unfamiliar, there's many different formats of MTG which are played and 'Standard' is one of the most popular ones in which you can play "all the mainline cards released from the last X sets", normally ~2 years worth], and moved to Modern [all cards printed since mid-2003 are playable]. My hope was that because of the longer (and growing) availability of cards, Modern would be more affordable in the long term - since decks would remain viable for long periods of time (perhaps with small adjustments with new cards coming out) and would retain value as a result. Then over ~20 months, that view changed a lot. First Wizards banned Oko & Mox Opal in January 2020. Firstly, these cards lost value directly - but they also caused quite a big shift in the metagame to the point where entire decks got awful, and hence less valuable. Then in mid-2021 they released the Modern Horizons 2 set, which had a massive impact on very many Modern decks (per MTGGoldfish, 8 of the 10 most commonly played creatures in the Modern metagame at the moment are from Modern Horizons 2). Once again, this totally decimated the value of many existing cards. I hate the sort of "MTG Finance" approach to the MTG scene, but like you say - it's hard to justify $30/hr for a hobby, and its clear that Hasbro will print whatever it takes to maximize their profits (even if it has a significant negative impact on existing customers).
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    Is there a format that's "only commons"? That would seem the biggest way to stick it to WotC: devalue their artificial scarcity while still enjoying the game.
godelski 4y ago
> I'm not sure that's true. The actual bottleneck with these games is not money but time and interest: you have to have a group of people who all like the same game, and you have to be able to get the group together regularly to play it. For campaign based games like DND and other RPGs I'd agree, but with the specific examples of MTG and 40k I highly disagree. You do not need to meet regularly for MTG (card) or 40k (miniature) style games as they can easily be played as one-offs. While RPGs have one-shots they are far less common and the overhead is quite high compared to MTG/40k (just show up with your deck/army). In addition to this, games like MTG and 40k are often played 1v1 (though can expand) and this makes the scheduling problem easier since you only need to find compatible times for 2 people rather than 3-5 (or more).
- simonh 4y ago
  Typical MTG and 40K players sing vast amounts of time into the hobby aside from the time actually playing. It's most obvious with 40K where you can spend weeks painting an army, but for both people also read the books, rules and supplements, spend time on forums, going to meetups and conventions. They're both massive time sinks. Says he that's been obsessed with 'tabletop' RPGs since the early 80s.

by pdonis 4y ago

Aeolun 4y ago

I’m still holding out hope I’ll be able to have a D&D renneisance after I retire (or maybe when the kids are old enough).

joshspankit 4y ago
I know 10yr olds were getting in to it about 5 years ago. That feels like the seeds are planted
pdonis 4y ago
I've had the same thoughts. :-)
jqr- 4y ago
You absolutely will. I just got back into it after a 25 year hiatus, and playing with young people that weren't even born back then, and having a blast in the process. There's a thriving comunity out there, and so far I've been welcome with open arms every time I've reached out.
nycdotnet 4y ago
look for “D&D Encounters” in your area. This is very common in game stores and they’re designed for drop-in players or first timers to try out D&D. This is how I got back into D&D 10 years back after not having played since the early ‘90s.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  Haha, I have no issues finding people to play with, but trying to find a solid block of a few hours of time is impossible.
sklargh 4y ago
You don’t need to wait. I run a group with a schedule specifically designed for parents of young children. (virtual, short sessions, immediately after bedtime). There are others!

wainstead 4y ago

I will add that sites like Roll20.net solve the problem of online gaming for D&D (and many other TTRPGs), but your points still stand.

TimPC 4y ago

I left the game as I got older. At the end of the day it just didn’t make sense to spend what magic cost if I could only play a few hours a week. It’s easy to spend over $3600/year on M:TG if you want to play competitively and that just doesn’t make sense to me if I’m getting roughly 100 hours of play in. I could do far better things with over $30/hour for hobbies.

noxvilleza 4y ago
(will try be a bit verbose here so that people who are not MTG fans will still be able to follow sorry if it's a slog to get through!) I was in a similar boat, though for a long time during university I shared a collection with a friend and we did a pretty good job at selling off stuff to keep the effective costs down. Since 2016, I stopped playing heavily rotational formats like Standard [for those unfamiliar, there's many different formats of MTG which are played and 'Standard' is one of the most popular ones in which you can play "all the mainline cards released from the last X sets", normally ~2 years worth], and moved to Modern [all cards printed since mid-2003 are playable]. My hope was that because of the longer (and growing) availability of cards, Modern would be more affordable in the long term - since decks would remain viable for long periods of time (perhaps with small adjustments with new cards coming out) and would retain value as a result. Then over ~20 months, that view changed a lot. First Wizards banned Oko & Mox Opal in January 2020. Firstly, these cards lost value directly - but they also caused quite a big shift in the metagame to the point where entire decks got awful, and hence less valuable. Then in mid-2021 they released the Modern Horizons 2 set, which had a massive impact on very many Modern decks (per MTGGoldfish, 8 of the 10 most commonly played creatures in the Modern metagame at the moment are from Modern Horizons 2). Once again, this totally decimated the value of many existing cards. I hate the sort of "MTG Finance" approach to the MTG scene, but like you say - it's hard to justify $30/hr for a hobby, and its clear that Hasbro will print whatever it takes to maximize their profits (even if it has a significant negative impact on existing customers).
- ethbr0 4y ago
  Is there a format that's "only commons"? That would seem the biggest way to stick it to WotC: devalue their artificial scarcity while still enjoying the game.

godelski 4y ago

> I'm not sure that's true. The actual bottleneck with these games is not money but time and interest: you have to have a group of people who all like the same game, and you have to be able to get the group together regularly to play it. For campaign based games like DND and other RPGs I'd agree, but with the specific examples of MTG and 40k I highly disagree. You do not need to meet regularly for MTG (card) or 40k (miniature) style games as they can easily be played as one-offs. While RPGs have one-shots they are far less common and the overhead is quite high compared to MTG/40k (just show up with your deck/army). In addition to this, games like MTG and 40k are often played 1v1 (though can expand) and this makes the scheduling problem easier since you only need to find compatible times for 2 people rather than 3-5 (or more).

simonh 4y ago
Typical MTG and 40K players sing vast amounts of time into the hobby aside from the time actually playing. It's most obvious with 40K where you can spend weeks painting an army, but for both people also read the books, rules and supplements, spend time on forums, going to meetups and conventions. They're both massive time sinks. Says he that's been obsessed with 'tabletop' RPGs since the early 80s.