quick introduction to myself so you know who is writing this:
I am 39 years old, male. I used to play AD&D 2nd edition a lot when I was 19 – 22, later my group switched to other products. Occasionally we return to D&D for one-night session.

When I reflect upon the reasons we quit D&D, I come to all of the marketing aspects:

Product: What did Wizards think they were doing by changing the product so much that it became a new game? Lots of unnecessary stuff thrown on the market, which work allright as an option, but make it way to complex at the beginning. It’s not about making the most powerful character, with the most amazing skills, it#s about creating a playable game. And the world with its thousand expansions became too big.

Price: Clearly, the amount you need to spend to get “all the stuff”, specifically when you update with new editions, is too high. In the “good old times” you needed the Player’s Handbook and the Dungeonmaster’s Guide. A character sheet and some dice. Everything else was option.

Placement: Maybe it is time to switch from tons of printed materials in expensive hard-cover books to downloadable files, pay-access to specific pages or something. The RPG community spends more time online then in shops.

Promotion: On this I agree with Greg. Wizards has to go out and meet the people. Out in the shops, out in the WWW. And yes, promotion is necessary to sell your products, but if you read professional literature, your customer should be the king, that’s marketing. Selling what you have and few want is SALES and I always felt like a liar when I tried to convince people to buy something they don#t want. Sorry for the excursion. Put some ads on some pages in the net, make people curious. Create places for people to meet. Spend time with them and understand them and then you can create the products again that are wanted.

YES, care for your world(s) and fans. Not for your shareholders. I know that’s difficult and if I were running the company, I am sure I’d have to find compromises as well. But a little re-orientation would be good and marketing is the key.

BR,

Thank you for your comment!

I think you misunderstood the part about being embrassed. D&D players (and roleplayers in general) are not embrassed towrd other players but toward the “non-geek” majority. I think it’s true.

And let’s face it, PAX, GenCon and DragonCon are all created for the geek like us

Otherwise, we don’t know much about sales numbers, but I guess they are lower than WotC would like to see.

I read the post about the “20 famous people playing D&D”, and articles like that are a good direction to make our hobby widely accepted.

I’m torn between the ideas about having daily content or not. Currently WotC has got daily articles, but I find many of them completely uninspired or/or uninteresting.

Yes, they are trying to sell stuff, but it’s matter how they do it ? I for example find their Facebook page extremely boring. Why ? Well, it’s maybe not the content itself, but the way it’s presented I don’t find myself involved. Even if they ask their readers about something it doesn’t sound like if they really care.

However I think WotC is heading to a good direction : they are planning to create a more user-friendly homepage, they start new columns, they make an open playtest. The virtual tabletop now enable to invite non-subscribers. I think all of these are good things.

Cain

Judging by the personal observation, industry sales numbers, and attendance at things like PAX, GenCon and Dragon*Con I am dubious on the whole “people are embarassed to play D&D” argument.

There have already been “cool and famous” people who have said they play D&D. Vin Disel would be top of mind, but there was a post in this forums (or the rpg one) not too long ago that had a large list of them.

I really could care less about “new and exciting content” every day. In fact, as a DM that kind of sounds like a nightmare. There is no way that I would be able to consume that much content, so I would constantly be behind the curve on rules errata / powers / etc. Wizards already HAS a content calendar that I can’t keep up with.

I will grant that some of the content they produce is terrible (their comics are especially bad), so I can get behind the “exciting” part anyway.

The twitter feed and facebook page are trying to sell you stuff. WotC is a company. That’s what companies do. They sell stuff. What, exactly, do you mean when you say “content”. What, exactly, does the author want to see? He says that he is going to provide hard advice and then he doesn’t.

It’s poorly worded (more than a little inflammatory), poorly researched, and doesn’t tangible advice for what would need to change for him to be happier.

His general argument is “give me lots of stuff that I personally think is exciting”, which is not really all that useful.