Thema: Marktentwicklung D&D und RPGs sowie andere "Hobby Games"

[Zechi]

Hier gibt es ein Interview mit dem WotC CEO Greg Leeds mit einigen interessanten Äußerungen auch zum Erfolg von D&D:

What are the results of that multi-year strategy?
Over-all our business is up significantly.  I think anyone you talk to about what’s going on with Magic and D&D will tell you that we are having very, very strong sales.  We are having very strong sales in digital, and we’re having strong sales in mass market, but our strongest sales are in the hobby shops.  So that’s working.  The best evidence of this is if you just talk to retailers about the last couple of years, the number of players that have been playing Magic and D&D, with a program like D&D Encounters, which is just completing its second season, the numbers are not falling off at all in terms of participation.  When you come to a place like Gen Con you can see that there are so many people interested in getting together and finding like-minded D&D players.  They love getting together. Now it’s happening in stores every Wednesday night on a regular basis. We are continuing to invest in great D&D content--the kind of content that gets someone not only to play D&D but also to go on Wednesday night to their local store and play with their friends.

[Zechi]

Teil 2 ist nun online, mit weiteren interessanten Äußerungen:

This year there have been some new developments in Dungeons & Dragons, and people are trying to read between the lines.  There have been some reductions in staff (a couple of long time people have left the D&D team), and also there has been a cutback in releases at the beginning of the year for D&D.  Are you reducing your emphasis on the role-playing game exploitation of the D&D property?No, we are not reducing the emphasis on the roleplaying game property for D&D.  I need to correct you.  We have had some long time staff leave, a couple of people, but we haven’t reduced the overall number of people working on D&D.  We are constantly adjusting and tweaking our organization.  I think that any healthy organization has some amount of movement.  With Dungeons & Dragons, because of that direct personal relationship that our staff has with the gaming community, our ultimate customers, when someone changes it’s far more noticeable than it is in many other businesses.  But, I can tell you that in my 20 years of management experience I don’t think that I have seen an organization more stable over a period of 15 years than we have had in Wizards of the Coast or D&D.  You take the average tenure of our employees working on D&D and it’s extremely high.  We will have and have had occasional turnover, but D&D is a healthy, thriving business on the role-playing side and will continue to be.

We are always looking at our releases trying to time them out and making sure we are putting out the optimal amount of content, which is a balance between our hardest core fans that could never get enough, and our newer fans who are trying to get involved in the property but can’t be overwhelmed by having too much information or feel like they can’t keep up.  So our programs on D&D are designed to optimize that balance of keeping our most faithful fans happy and be able at the same time to bring in new fans to the property.  And that’s how we are working on our release schedule.

I will also say that our release schedule is related to what we were talking about earlier: trying to drive people into the stores to play D&D and of course while they are there, purchase some D&D products.  That’s the optimal balance we are trying to hit with our program.

Another area of D&D that’s been successful recently is the board games based on the D&D universe.  Tell us about that program and where you see it going.Yes, the board game side of our business has been very successful, but we want to be careful that we don’t over saturate the market with the D&D board games, so we are constantly on the lookout for (just as we side on the RPG side) what is the optimal balance of the number of releases.  We have been very satisfied with the releases we have had and we will continue to have board games releases in the future but we will do it in a measured way and not try to overstep success and keep the market excited and interested for all the next products.

In terms of being sensitive to what the fans are saying, there are rumors that you are looking at some of your old products even all the way back to 1st edition D&D.  Are you looking at bringing back any of those products in a collector format or on any other basis?We are always on the lookout for what opportunities can come up based on what our fans are interested in from the past. I think the “red box” launch was a good example of trying to take advantage of interest in a retro product.  We will always be looking for that, but at this point we have nothing to announce along those lines.

Leider haben Sie nicht gefragt, wie er die Konkurrenz durch Pathfinder sieht, ein statement zum Pathfinder-Erfolg wäre mal interessant gewesen.

[Xiam]

Leider haben Sie nicht gefragt, wie er die Konkurrenz durch Pathfinder sieht, ein statement zum Pathfinder-Erfolg wäre mal interessant gewesen.

Können ja schlecht schreiben "Wir sind gut aber Pathfinder ist um Längen besser."

[kalgani]

Durfte er wahrscheinlich nicht fragen

[Archoangel]

Naja ... etwa so aussagekräftig wie ein Parteipolitisches Statement nach einer Wahl.

[Zechi]

Wie zuvor die Aussagen von Lisa Stevens sind natürlich auch die von Greg Leeds mit Vorsicht zu genießen, da er natürlich eine bestimmte Agenda verfolgt. Wie immer werden ja auch keine konkreten Zahlen genannt oder gar ein Vergleich z.B. zu dem Erfolg der 3E gezogen. Nichtsdestotrotz sind einige der Aussagen, z.B. zu den Board Games oder Zahl der Mitarbeiter die mit D&D befasst sind, interessant.

Gruß Zechi

[Archoangel]

Das auf jeden Fall. Wobei er natürlich auch Recht hat, dass die Mitarbeiterveränderungen wohl nur so extrem wahrgenommen werden, da man sich im Hobby-Genre bewegt. Darunter "leidet" ja neuerdings auch Ulisses.

[Marleron]

Ansicht eines kleineren RPG Herstellers ( Cuthulu Tech) zum Markt.

[Zechi]

Es gibt mal wieder neue IcV2 Rankings und zwar hier. Zwar funktionieren offenbar noch nicht alle links und die Tabelle für die RPG wird hier noch nicht angezeigt.

Offenbar behauptet aber Pathfinder Platz 1, wie man hier lesen kann:

Paizo’s Pathfinder, #1 in the roleplaying game category, continued to gain momentum, with sharp differences in the number of releases between It and WotC’s category-defining Dungeons and Dragons.  Some retailers told ICv2 of differences between the customers of the two games, with D&D 4.0 appealing to new players and people that don’t want to get super-involved in an RPG, and Pathfinder the choice of players that want to spend more time on playing.

[Selganor]

Wieso? RPGs sind doch unter http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/21403.html schon online

[Zechi]

Wieso? RPGs sind doch unter http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/21403.html schon online

Jetzt, aber nicht als ich das obige schrieb.

[TheRaven]

Dragon Age? Ok ... so ein unglaublich farbloses und langweiliges System.

[Zechi]

Hier findet sich eine interessante Meldung von IcV2, die man so nicht erwarten würde. PC und Video Spiele haben hiernach stark nachgelassen, während "Tabletop Hobby Games" (zu denen auch RPG wie D&D gehören) stark wachsen (in den USA). Wer hätte das gedacht.

Folgt man dem Link auf IcV2 kommt man auch zu der Liste mit den erfolgreichsten PC bzw. Konsolen Titeln im Jahr 2011:

1. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (360, PS3, Wii, PC)**
2. Just Dance 3 (Wii, 360, PS3)
3. Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (360, PS3, PC)**
4. Battlefield 3 (360, PS3, PC)**
5. Madden NFL 12 (360, PS3, Wii, PSP, PS2)**
6. Call of Duty: Black Ops (360, PS3, Wii, NDS, PC)**
7. Batman: Arkham City (360, PS3, PC)**
8. Gears of War 3 (360)**
9. Just Dance 2 (Wii)
10. Assassin's Creed: Revelations (360, PS3, PC)

[Archoangel]

Naja ... es kommt ja nichts Neues im Video-Game Bereich. Was die Top-10 gut spiegelt:

Teil

3
3
5
3
12
X
X
3
2
ähm ... 2?


Im Kino sah es letztes Jahr ja auch nicht besser aus: die 10 erfolgreichsten Filme hatten 8 mal "Teil X".

Saure Gurken Zeit im Kreativitätsbuiseness. Und auf was freuen wir uns dieses Jahr? Richtig! Diablo III ... (qed).

[Zechi]

Das ist mir auch aufgefallen, wobei ein Nachfolger (egal ob Film oder Computerspiel) ja nicht zwingend bedeutet, dass dieser nicht innovativ ist. Es gibt ja durchaus Fortsetzungen/Nachfolger, die sogar besser als das Original sind. Das muss man sich im Einzelfall anschauen, aber du hast natürlich Recht, dass die erfolgreichen Titel in diesem Jahr eher nicht unter diese Kategorie fallen.