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

[Alzrius]

I think the key quote is the Hasbro execs were of the opinion that WoW was eating their lunch.

There is a tendency for some executives to become focused on certain issues, whether it's a buzzword ("synergy," "leverage our core competencies,") or an en vogue strategy, (well, the pivot to video didn't work as we hoped, so let's look into generative AI! gotta sell more widgets...).

I don't know that the Hasbro executives were correct- they could have simply seen that World of Warcraft (which is D&Dish) was a massively successful MMORPG that was generating recurrent subscription revenue, and said ... "Hey, we want that!"

Snarf got it right. The takeaway of that point (as I recall Riggs presenting it) was that the lead-in to Fourth Edition was marked by the Hasbro executives looking at a game that had all the trappings of D&D becoming a global phenomenon with players in the tens of millions, forking over subscription money every month, and they wondered why D&D wasn't doing that. This (along with, if I recall correctly, the idea that WoW was siphoning D&D players, and that was why the 3.5 PHB sales were trailing off) became the impetus for 4E's creation.

 

[darjr]

If you're referring to my second paragraph, I put that there because I'd made those points in some recent threads regarding Riggs' book, and I thought it'd be conspicuous if I brought up his seminar without taking my previous statements into account.

That said, I don't think it's controversial to say that works of history where the historians openly present their opinions about the people they're covering create the appearance of partisanship. Riggs' book is a definitely a valuable read, and is absolutely the best coverage to date of the Lorraine Williams years of TSR's history. And of course, he's a gifted writer with a talent for creating entertaining reading, as well as presenting a lot of valuable research (though I wish he'd stop having certain things appear only in his Twitter feed (or X feed, or whatever it's called now); seriously, Ben, put those charts in the book!).

But every time Riggs refers to Gary Gygax as "Saint Gary," it weakens his credibility as a historian. I know a lot of people like to say that "objectivity" doesn't exist, since everything is filtered through the lens of perception, but that doesn't mean that it's not valuable to at least try to check our own biases (at least when writing a history book), rather than openly indulging in them.

Thanks, I can certainly appreciate being clear about prior statements.

 

[Dustin Cooper]

It'd be interesting to see the data on how much subscription money actually came in for the online services. Like when I started playing in the latter days of 4e, pretty much everyone seemed to subscribe and were happy with what they were getting. Like I don't doubt that some people paid once and were done, but I'd want some evidence that there were enough of those people to be a significant problem. I also feel like most of us weren't bothering to buy most of the physical books (personally I only grabbed the Rules Compendium to have an easy reference at the table and just printed out stuff from the online builder otherwise until I started DMing), which makes me wary of reading too much into the sales of the PHB alone. Like it's quite possible that my group was the exception and that the number of people subscribing was negligible, but I'd want to see the data before coming to too firm of a conclusion on how much money 4e was making comparatively to other editions.

 

[FrogReaver]

It'd be interesting to see the data on how much subscription money actually came in for the online services. Like when I started playing in the latter days of 4e, pretty much everyone seemed to subscribe and were happy with what they were getting. Like I don't doubt that some people paid once and were done, but I'd want some evidence that there were enough of those people to be a significant problem. I also feel like most of us weren't bothering to buy most of the physical books (personally I only grabbed the Rules Compendium to have an easy reference at the table and just printed out stuff from the online builder otherwise until I started DMing), which makes me wary of reading too much into the sales of the PHB alone. Like it's quite possible that my group was the exception and that the number of people subscribing was negligible, but I'd want to see the data before coming to too firm of a conclusion on how much money 4e was making comparatively to other editions.

It’s also worth noting there were pirated versions of the character builder tool and this was much closer to the Wild West Napster style downloading era.

 

[darjr]

It'd be interesting to see the data on how much subscription money actually came in for the online services. Like when I started playing in the latter days of 4e, pretty much everyone seemed to subscribe and were happy with what they were getting. Like I don't doubt that some people paid once and were done, but I'd want some evidence that there were enough of those people to be a significant problem. I also feel like most of us weren't bothering to buy most of the physical books (personally I only grabbed the Rules Compendium to have an easy reference at the table and just printed out stuff from the online builder otherwise until I started DMing), which makes me wary of reading too much into the sales of the PHB alone. Like it's quite possible that my group was the exception and that the number of people subscribing was negligible, but I'd want to see the data before coming to too firm of a conclusion on how much money 4e was making comparatively to other editions.

There is a thread here where we got to some idea about how many subscribers were there. Eventually WotC disabled the mechanism we used to count subscribers.

 

[FrogReaver]

There is a thread here where we got to some idea about how many subscribers were there. Eventually WotC disabled it thiugh.

Wait, Wotc disabled one of our threads?

 

[darjr]

Wait, Wotc disabled one of our threads?

No, the mechanicism we used to count subscriptions

 

[Reynard]

It will be interesting to see if WotC manages to kill off 3PP support by over reliance on beyond and the new VTT.

 

[FrogReaver]

No, the mechanicism we used to count subscriptions

Ah! Got ya. What was the count at before disabled?

 

[darjr]

Ah! Got ya. What was the count at before disabled?

I knew that would come up. I’d have to go find the thread, unfortunately.