D&D 4E Ben Riggs' "What the Heck Happened with 4th Edition?" seminar at Gen Con 2023

James Gasik

We don't talk about Pun-Pun
What was TSR trying to do? Make money from the game, the brand, and games/hobbies in general!

Products of your imagination - they weren't giving away those products for free!
Well yeah, the ultimate goal of any company is to make money- got to keep the lights on somehow. However, there is a key difference between companies run by gamers who are passionate about the hobby, and those who are run by soulless corpo types who barely understand the product they are producing.

Say, Larian studios vs. Electronic Arts, if you will.
 

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pemerton

Legend
Yeah, so? I don't see what your point is. Could WotC have not had better motives initially than Lorraine Williams?
My point - primarily in reply to @Lanefan - is that commercial publishing houses will act as commercial publishing houses.

The days when TSR or WotC would publish something because it demands to be published were gone, in the former case, probably by the early 80s, and in the latter case, by the time they purchased TSR and possibly before.

That's before we even get to the question what would it mean to be a custodian of D&D? That can't possibly mean, as @Lanefan asserted, continuing to publish modules for Moldvay Basic. Even if there are things that demand to be published regardless of their commercial prospects, those would not be such things.
 

Micah Sweet

Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
What was TSR trying to do? Make money from the game, the brand, and games/hobbies in general!

Products of your imagination - they weren't giving away those products for free!
It is possible to focus on making the best game you can and make enough profit to keep the doors open. The proportion of attention is falling too much on the profit side and not enough on the "make a great game" side in my opinion.
 

pemerton

Legend
It is possible to focus on making the best game you can and make enough profit to keep the doors open. The proportion of attention is falling too much on the profit side and not enough on the "make a great game" side in my opinion.
Well they set out to make a great game with 4e D&D, and you (along with many others) didn't buy it.

So now - as @Hussar has noted over several posts in this thread - WotC does opinion polling and market testing for every little bit of design.
 

Micah Sweet

Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
Well they set out to make a great game with 4e D&D, and you (along with many others) didn't buy it.

So now - as @Hussar has noted over several posts in this thread - WotC does opinion polling and market testing for every little bit of design.
They did set out to make a good game with 4e, and I deeply respect those designers for it, even if I didn't like the game they made. It's a shame that WotC's desires for profit were unreasonably high at the time, but good on the designers for following their muse.
 

Hussar

Legend
They did set out to make a good game with 4e, and I deeply respect those designers for it, even if I didn't like the game they made. It's a shame that WotC's desires for profit were unreasonably high at the time, but good on the designers for following their muse.

That’s… problematic.

So much of the design of 4e was grounded in trying to grow the market. So I’m not sure how much they were “following their muse” and how much was following profit.

Which is always true for any commercial product. There’s always a balance to be found.
 

Micah Sweet

Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
That’s… problematic.

So much of the design of 4e was grounded in trying to grow the market. So I’m not sure how much they were “following their muse” and how much was following profit.

Which is always true for any commercial product. There’s always a balance to be found.
I'd love it if that balance was less dominated by the question, "How can we squeeze the most money possible out of the gaming community? Our shareholders aren't getting rich fast enough". I'm not saying profit isn't an important consideration. I just don't think it needs to be chased as far as possible, as fast as possible, and nothing else matters unless it contributes to higher profits.
 

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