It seems foolish to bet against a guy whose name is literally "Betts."
Fair warning.
So when are you going to be back in the Cities so we can reward you for Paizo's success with Lion's Tap?
Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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I'll be back briefly around Thanksgiving, and then probably for a bit longer in December. I've got a lot of family stuff to do this next trip, so while I'd love to take you up on the offer (and definitely will, eventually), I need to make sure all of the new babies and stuff are visited first, and I only have 5 days to fit in a ton of stuff.
I'll be back briefly around Thanksgiving, and then probably for a bit longer in December. I've got a lot of family stuff to do this next trip, so while I'd love to take you up on the offer (and definitely will, eventually), I need to make sure all of the new babies and stuff are visited first, and I only have 5 days to fit in a ton of stuff.
Well let us know when you do have time, we will take you then.
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Yeah it is interesting to see how far White Wolf has fallen. To go from nipping at DnD's heels to falling completely off the map is not good. Of course I stopped buying from them shortly after they nuked the oWoD and made the switch to the nWoD.Another quarter of my former favorite publisher, White Wolf, being 'sir-not-appearing-this-quarter.'
Ditto. I loved the Vampire and Mage sides of the old World of Darkness, as well as their Scarred Lands setting, and the Aeon / Trinity, Aberrant and Adventure! settings. (Ooh, Adventure!, how I loved that pulpy goodness!)
It's neat to see Green Ronin still plugging away. They had a ton of great stuff in the '3rd era,' like Plot & Poison, Hamunaptra, Mindshadows, Temple Quarter, the Psychic's Handbook, the Freeport Trilogy (and various other Freeport books), etc. And, of course, Mutants and Masterminds!
Yeah, ironicly when WW hosted the Fangs Fall Scarred Lands chats is how I got to beet and get to know Clark and Bill. They would come off and GM from time to time and when it first opened a few times late at night Clark and I would be the only ones on the chats.
The WotC Community D&D Insider group contains nearly 64,000 members. You are automatically added to this group if you are a DDI subscriber, and have also created a community account tied to that subscription. You are also automatically removed from this group if your subscription ends. Obviously that 64,000 represents some fraction of the actual number of subscribers, since it stands to reason that many (perhaps even most) of those who have DDI subscriptions don't bother at all with the official forums.
In other words, WotC has tens of thousands (and likely in excess of 100,000) of active D&D Insider subscribers.
Your call on the bet.
A couple of points:
1) I see that 64k number bandied about a bit, but I can't seem to find where it comes from. Granted, I don't have a DDI account and I never spent much time at the WotC forums even when I was playing their game, but I was just over at their DDI forums and couldn't get a bead on any membership numbers.
2) The post you are quoting talks about $$ figures, not number of players. Paizo can sell to 1/4 the total number of people and still be #1 in sales if they sell more than 4 times as much to each customer on average.
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Yeah it is interesting to see how far White Wolf has fallen. To go from nipping at DnD's heels to falling completely off the map is not good. Of course I stopped buying from them shortly after they nuked the oWoD and made the switch to the nWoD.Agreed, though I think its more sad than interesting. Mark Reign-Heigan (spelling?) really was white wolf's secret weapon. Pity everything happened as it did.
Anyways congrats to Paizo and to Catalyst.
I do agree it is a shame the company went down and people lost jobs. But it is also interesting to look back at what they did and see how they shrunk their own player base. I think that is something all current gaming companies should take a look at personally.
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Yeah it is interesting to see how far White Wolf has fallen. To go from nipping at DnD's heels to falling completely off the map is not good. Of course I stopped buying from them shortly after they nuked the oWoD and made the switch to the nWoD.Another quarter of my former favorite publisher, White Wolf, being 'sir-not-appearing-this-quarter.'
They still had a strong presence well into nWoD. It really was when CCP bought them and reduced their staff to a skeleton crew that they truly started to disappear.
Of course, every time I comment that White Wolf is dying someone pulls out their press release that lists a bunch of products coming out. However, they've switched to purely digital and print on demand with the occasional traditional book. While that will keep them limping along for a while, a dwindling game store presence means a reduced public awareness. Yes, die hard fans will buy the Vampire 20th Anniversary edition from print on demand. But new customers? Those come from being on shelves in game stores.
I think Wizards is making the same mistake right now. They are making good money from DDI. But if you aren't putting new books on shelves, people will stop being aware of your products. They haven't completely cut out the physical products, but they really need to ramp up again if they want to stay competitive.
Anyway, congrats Paizo! I'm also happy that Dragon Age is going strong. I need to pick up set 2 still.
Not sure I would say strong presence but they still had a solid core of loyal fans. CCP pretty effectively killed them as a major RPG company.
1) I see that 64k number bandied about a bit, but I can't seem to find where it comes from. Granted, I don't have a DDI account and I never spent much time at the WotC forums even when I was playing their game, but I was just over at their DDI forums and couldn't get a bead on any membership numbers.
If you're part of the DDI subscribers group, it tells you the size of the group. I had to go look it up in my own profile to get an up-to-date number.
2) The post you are quoting talks about $$ figures, not number of players. Paizo can sell to 1/4 the total number of people and still be #1 in sales if they sell more than 4 times as much to each customer on average.
Sure. I can do little more than guess at the value of each customer to Paizo. I was just pointing out that the whole "WotC would have to have lots of subscribers to compete!" thing isn't really a big deal; they've got lots of subscribers.
It seems foolish to bet against a guy whose name is literally "Betts."
Fair warning.
The amount of money I've lost playing Hold 'Em with my girlfriend's family tells a different story.
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I need to make sure all of the new babies and stuff are visited first, and I only have 5 days to fit in a ton of stuff.
They brew their own beer now. So after you have visited new babies and gotten your fill, you can eat a burger and drink a new beer. It's the perfect fix for having been crawled all over by new babies. ;)
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Sure. I can do little more than guess at the value of each customer to Paizo. I was just pointing out that the whole "WotC would have to have lots of subscribers to compete!" thing isn't really a big deal; they've got lots of subscribers.
[pure speculation] I would assume it costs a hell of a lot less to develop content and post it up on the DDI than it costs to print a book and ship it to someone, so, I would expect that WotC gets a hell of a lot more cash-in-hand vs. outlay from the DDI than Paizo gets from a subscription. Each additional online subscriber is just more money, with minimal added cost, for bandwidth. Each additional print subscriber requires another book to be printed and shipped. [/pure speculation]
Not sure I would say strong presence but they still had a solid core of loyal fans. CCP pretty effectively killed them as a major RPG company.
They were still showing up in the top 2 or 3 spot on ICV2's charts, that sounds strong to me.
I mostly judge by my anecdotal evidence of my local game store. They are pretty good about stocking at least one copy of new releases from major companies. I mean, they have a full set of Earthdawn books on the shelf. The top shelf used to be all White Wolf. It still is 2/3s WW, but I haven't seen a new release hit the shelf since early this year. And that was a print collection that came from 2-3 PDF releases combined together. That's the sort of thing a fledgling 3PP does to build traction. Not what a industry leader does to stay on top.
But unless CCP decides to sell WW, I don't have much hope that things will change. Who knows, maybe in 5 years Lisa will decide to buy White Wolf. ;)
Honestly, I was kinda surprised not to see Palladium on the list when the upstarts are there instead.
Really? How many new releases have they had in the last year? Palladium has been a zombie for the last decade. They survive through hardcore fans, but they spend more time reprinting old books than printing new ones.
I can't remember the last time ICV2 listed Palladium. I wish there was a good spot to find all of their old reports. I remember searching for them a while ago and looking at the trends over the last three years. I should have made a spreadsheet so I could pull it up quickly.
Sure. I can do little more than guess at the value of each customer to Paizo. I was just pointing out that the whole "WotC would have to have lots of subscribers to compete!" thing isn't really a big deal; they've got lots of subscribers.[pure speculation] I would assume it costs a hell of a lot less to develop content and post it up on the DDI than it costs to print a book and ship it to someone, so, I would expect that WotC gets a hell of a lot more cash-in-hand vs. outlay from the DDI than Paizo gets from a subscription. Each additional online subscriber is just more money, with minimal added cost, for bandwidth. Each additional print subscriber requires another book to be printed and shipped. [/pure speculation]
I would have assumed this also, however there have been many posts by paizo people (James Jacobs I think) to the effect that PDFs are only marginally cheaper than the printed equivalent. Obviously it saves something, but as I understand it the art, writing, developing, editing and so forth is the bulk of the cost.
Having said that - as you observe, the marginal benefit of each new subscriber is basically free money. Presumably there's some reason WoTC are moving more and more of their product online. Maybe it amplifies the benefit they receive from any marketing expenditure.
1) I see that 64k number bandied about a bit, but I can't seem to find where it comes from. Granted, I don't have a DDI account and I never spent much time at the WotC forums even when I was playing their game, but I was just over at their DDI forums and couldn't get a bead on any membership numbers.If you're part of the DDI subscribers group, it tells you the size of the group. I had to go look it up in my own profile to get an up-to-date number.
Ah, I see. I would have had no way of finding that out on my own.
So, 64k is still up to date? More or less?
Sure. I can do little more than guess at the value of each customer to Paizo. I was just pointing out that the whole "WotC would have to have lots of subscribers to compete!" thing isn't really a big deal; they've got lots of subscribers.[pure speculation] I would assume it costs a hell of a lot less to develop content and post it up on the DDI than it costs to print a book and ship it to someone, so, I would expect that WotC gets a hell of a lot more cash-in-hand vs. outlay from the DDI than Paizo gets from a subscription. Each additional online subscriber is just more money, with minimal added cost, for bandwidth. Each additional print subscriber requires another book to be printed and shipped. [/pure speculation]
Basically, yeah. Speculation, but reasonable, well-grounded speculation.
I would have assumed this also, however there have been many posts by paizo people (James Jacobs I think) to the effect that PDFs are only marginally cheaper than the printed equivalent. Obviously it saves something, but as I understand it the art, writing, developing, editing and so forth is the bulk of the cost.
I don't know any of these costs except for the cost of writing - the fee paid to the article's author for writing the content. It's usually no more than a few hundred bucks per article. Art is a significant cost, to be sure, and development and editing are handled by some of their in-house people. I'd be surprised, though, if the cost for any given article went above $2,000-3,000. And, with a subscriber base of 64,000, they'd be making around $500,000 every month off subscriptions; that pays for a whole lot of articles. There are other costs in there, of course - overhead, development costs for their non-article content, etc. - but financially it's always struck me as a pretty solid model given its adoption.
1) I see that 64k number bandied about a bit, but I can't seem to find where it comes from. Granted, I don't have a DDI account and I never spent much time at the WotC forums even when I was playing their game, but I was just over at their DDI forums and couldn't get a bead on any membership numbers.If you're part of the DDI subscribers group, it tells you the size of the group. I had to go look it up in my own profile to get an up-to-date number.Ah, I see. I would have had no way of finding that out on my own.
So, 64k is still up to date? More or less?
It's 63,900-something, as of when I checked a couple hours ago. The number has, historically, gone up each time I've seen it mentioned.
I went back as far as I could find and put the ICv2 Top 5 RPGS into a google spreadsheet.
World of Darkness was in solid 3rd place from Q4 2008 to Q3 2009. Q4 2009 they drop to 5th and then disappear from the list.
As I suspected, Palladium hasn't been on the list for as long as ICv2 has collected data. I suspect the last time they were a relevant force in the industry was last century.
Interesting to note how Shadowrun has been a fairly steady 5th place entry. Green Ronin does fairly well too, but they have several brands that are counted separately.
It's 63,900-something, as of when I checked a couple hours ago. The number has, historically, gone up each time I've seen it mentioned.
But if we go with that number, it's harder to say Paizo is on top. Let's revise that down a bit. How about 20,000?
The WotC Community D&D Insider group contains nearly 64,000 members. You are automatically added to this group if you are a DDI subscriber, and have also created a community account tied to that subscription.
As I understand it, that used to be the case, but for a while now new members are added regardless of having any seperate community account. It's pretty much a sum total of subscribers at this point, though there's a lag between cancellation and removal AFAIK.
Edit: And in response to Set above, mentioning relative costs of print versus DDI material. Depends on if they're still considering the original startup costs for the online material, even if it has long been written off as a loss. If they're still digging out of a hole, so to speak, I would bet money that they still won't hit break even in the next 5 years, even going with some of the best case scenarios for subscriber numbers.
I'm curious how this is reflected in FLGSes. I've found Pathfinder material more regularly than before this past year, but it still feels like the store considers Pathfinder second fiddle to D&D, given shelf-space and even knowledge of the product. Is this just around my parts?
My fave FLGS stocks much less PF than D&D. But it also all sells, whereas the D&D stuff just sort of stagnates. So you could say that the PF is a revolving stock, constantly making money, while the D&D is taking up space.
However, I happened to be there one day when the WoTC rep showed up, and because the owner of the store trusts me, I got to be a fly on the wall. The rep basically made sure that a huge chunk of space would remain devoted to D&D, regardless of number of sales, which is common in retail. Sort of similar to the way GW does it around here.
So, at least in my area, that's what accounts for the seemingly smaller Pathfinder presence, and the huge D&D one. However, ask any worker there, and they will tell you Pathfinder has been outselling D&D for most of the past year.
Palladium only really started to get hit (if I correctly recall Ken Hite's reporting in "Out of the Box" of the Comics Retailer surveys) some time around when the D20 bubble burst. Until then, it was one of the perpetual majors (with TSR/WotC and White Wolf).
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This is anecdotal too, but the last time I went to my local store (shout out Rivendells in Rehoboth, Ma), they had moved all the D&D books to the shelf where they place them spine out, and moved all the pathfinder books to the shelf where they sit cover out. They also had at least one of pretty much everything you can still get of pathfinder (AP, companions, hardcovers, etc, and only had a handful of WoTC books. Most multiple copies of the same book.
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Just to inject a bit of logic here, with the extremely low number of D&D releases in this time period, it's no wonder that Paizo placed above them. It's actually a pretty amazing testament to D&D's power within the industry that they can barely trickle out releases and still beat practically everyone out there.
Oh, and that site needs to update the WH40K line to read "Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader/Deathwatch/Black Crusade". Or just Warhammer 40K Roleplay, since the former is such a mouthful.
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Creative Director
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I don't know any of these costs except for the cost of writing - the fee paid to the article's author for writing the content...
Costs that factor into producing a PDF include (but are not limited to) the salaries of the people on staff who develop, edit, art direct, and lay out the Word/InDesign files, as well as those people who take those files and transform them into For-the-public-for-sale PDFs.
And the cost to the authors to write them.
And the cost to the artists to illustrate them.
And the cost to the cartographers to create the maps.
Really... the only thing we "save" on with PDFs is not having to pay for shipping or printing or storage. What's left behind (what I list above) is far from cheap.
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As I understand it, that used to be the case, but for a while now new members are added regardless of having any seperate community account. It's pretty much a sum total of subscribers at this point, though there's a lag between cancellation and removal AFAIK..
My subscription ended 6 months ago, and I have still not been removed. I still get community emails from wotc, in fact just today got invited to the virtual table top beta.
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Creative Director
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Obviously not, but assuming those costs have at least been somewhat included in determining the price of the physical book, the PDFs are kind of a legal way to print money, I'd say (not that 100% of the money paid for a PDF is profit, of course). Or have the sales of PDFs started to affect the sales of physical books to an extent where you more or less have to sell x number of PDFs to even break even?I don't know any of these costs except for the cost of writing - the fee paid to the article's author for writing the content...Costs that factor into producing a PDF include (but are not limited to) the salaries of the people on staff who develop, edit, art direct, and lay out the Word/InDesign files, as well as those people who take those files and transform them into For-the-public-for-sale PDFs.
And the cost to the authors to write them.
And the cost to the artists to illustrate them.
And the cost to the cartographers to create the maps.
Really... the only thing we "save" on with PDFs is not having to pay for shipping or printing or storage. What's left behind (what I list above) is far from cheap.
Oh... don't get me wrong. I completely and totally agree with you that PDFs are like printing money... ESPECIALLY if you're doing a print copy of a book. Paizo does PDF versions of pretty much all of the products we do, after all. I was just pointing out to Scott that a PDF produced solely as a PDF and not a print product is not all that much less expensive to produce than a print product, and that there's a lot more costs involved than a pittance payment to the author. I might have misunderstood his post, of course...
In any event... Paizo is VERY PLEASED with the sales of both PDF and print books. Turns out, if you make things people want, they trade you money for those things! :-)
I don't know any of these costs except for the cost of writing - the fee paid to the article's author for writing the content...Costs that factor into producing a PDF include (but are not limited to) the salaries of the people on staff who develop, edit, art direct, and lay out the Word/InDesign files, as well as those people who take those files and transform them into For-the-public-for-sale PDFs.
And the cost to the authors to write them.
And the cost to the artists to illustrate them.
And the cost to the cartographers to create the maps.
Really... the only thing we "save" on with PDFs is not having to pay for shipping or printing or storage. What's left behind (what I list above) is far from cheap.
Right, I noted in my post that those costs exist. I only called out the author's fee there because I know what it is (and only because WotC advertises it).
In any event, congratulations to you guys for coming out on top in these rankings twice in a row! As if Pathfinder needed more evidence of its staying power. ;p
As I understand it, that used to be the case, but for a while now new members are added regardless of having any seperate community account. It's pretty much a sum total of subscribers at this point, though there's a lag between cancellation and removal AFAIK.
Do you have a source on this? My information came from either mudbunny or wolfstar, both of whom worked for (and may still work for - I don't actually know) WotC as community reps/managers. It's a few months old, but I never heard the thing about being automatically added to the group even if you have no community account.
What's interesting to note is this:
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.
I would think that most of the more regular or hardcore players are the ones more likely to get DDI or use Amazon (which ICv2 does not cover), while the new or less inclined players are more likely to browse and get one or two books as they look interesting. It would follow then that the retailers are seeing and selling to the new and hobby gamers of 4e and the more hardcore PF players, while DDI snatches up the more in-depth 4e gamers.
This would also reflect on WotC's moves for D&D Encounters and other systems that are oriented more at new or casual players and are aimed at getting them into retail stores, while I've found Pathfinder's organized play to be more oriented at the less "casual" gamers, thus bringing in the more "hardcore" players. This matches up entirely with ICv2's findings.
What's interesting to note is this:
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.I would think that most of the more regular or hardcore players are the ones more likely to get DDI or use Amazon (which ICv2 does not cover), while the new or less inclined players are more likely to browse and get one or two books as they look interesting. It would follow then that the retailers are seeing and selling to the new and hobby gamers of 4e and the more hardcore PF players, while DDI snatches up the more in-depth 4e gamers.
This would also reflect on WotC's moves for D&D Encounters and other systems that are oriented more at new or casual players and are aimed at getting them into retail stores, while I've found Pathfinder's organized play to be more oriented at the less "casual" gamers, thus bringing in the more "hardcore" players. This matches up entirely with ICv2's findings.
That's an interesting point. Personally, I have little interest in picking up a D&D book I see on a store shelf. I keep abreast of all D&D releases, and I know weeks or months in advance exactly what I'll be buying - and typically through Amazon. Everything else is safely taken care of by my DDI subscription. I'm certainly not new or casual, and I imagine that a lot of more active D&D players follow similar purchasing habits.
I don't really have a clue, but I would predict this survey would underrepresent both "hardcore" groups - I would expect most who subscribe to fall outside of the "casual gamer" definition and they're also not counted in these figures.
I would expect the DDI only cohort to be growing, however. Consider WoTC's current focus on Asian fantasy. You wouldn't even know it was an option from their hardcopy catalog. Quite a distressing trend, in my view. :(
As I understand it, that used to be the case, but for a while now new members are added regardless of having any seperate community account. It's pretty much a sum total of subscribers at this point, though there's a lag between cancellation and removal AFAIK.Do you have a source on this? My information came from either mudbunny or wolfstar, both of whom worked for (and may still work for - I don't actually know) WotC as community reps/managers. It's a few months old, but I never heard the thing about being automatically added to the group even if you have no community account.
I think that Todd's incorrect. It's just something that is getting repeated (a meme) without actually being true.
As it stands, on July 6 this year, there were 56,523 members of the DDi group. As I write this, there are 63,987 members. It was 62,396 almost exactly one month ago.
It's going up fairly steadily...
Cheers!
Other things to note from the report and summary:
MtG has continued to rise past apparently big sales last year to do even better, and continues to be the reigning champion.
Special mention was given to the D&D board games as another big hit, ranking in at 6th for board games.
Even more surprising, D&D Miniatures ranked at 10th under collectable games, giving WotC two separate positions. Except, last I checked, DDM hasn't had an addition or expansion in, what, a year?
Even more surprising, D&D Miniatures ranked at 10th under collectable games, giving WotC two separate positions. Except, last I checked, DDM hasn't had an addition or expansion in, what, a year?
That's actually kind of bananas.
Not really, minis sell well. WotC apparently had a lot of plasticrack in backstock, and reissues were not unheard of. If the retailers wanted minis it's any easy thing to run a limited reprint run, they did it with the Underdark expansion at least once and the starter sets were reprinted to meet demand until the cancellation of official skirmish support.
The problems with minis were in product management, above the levels of the line managers. Demand for product continued, but the need for new sets was driven by skirmishers and compulsive collectors. When the needs of these customers changed so did the product line.
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ICV2 posts their Top 5 in hobby channel for Q3 2011.
Also, because I'm a jerk: Yes, DigitalMage, it was interesting to wait and see.
Not a jerk at all :)
So it does look like Pathfinder is perhaps eclipsing D&D as the better selling RPG, if the Beginner Box is included in RPG sales (and I think it should) then I am sort of expecting PF to be top for Q4 now as well.
So congratulations to Paizo!
I really wish we could get an idea not just of how well an RPG is selling but also how big its player base is - I stopped buying any D&D 4e books after the Eberron stuff and DMG2 but I have played more 4e in the last couple of years than I have PF, even though I have bought quite a few PF books in that time (both hardcopy and PDF).
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Even more surprising, D&D Miniatures ranked at 10th under collectable games, giving WotC two separate positions. Except, last I checked, DDM hasn't had an addition or expansion in, what, a year?That's actually kind of bananas.
the day they announced the end of DDM. And that there would be no new sets, both of the distributors. My home store uses put out emails "these 7 DDM sets buy one case, get 2 of the same set free" so I am sure there is some spillover from that out there
I really wish we could get an idea not just of how well an RPG is selling but also how big its player base is
That'd be neat, but I doubt anyone (including the companies making these games) has accurate numbers for that.