Quote from: trechriron on November 13, 2024, 02:53:32 PM

Quote from: blackstone on November 13, 2024, 10:12:29 AMPersonally, I haven't bought a WoTC/D&D product for at least 20 years. They lost me at 3e.

You are not the target audience. WOTC D&D will find its audience and sell plenty of books to people who want this approach.

Except that's not true; when WotC ramped up the Wokeness starting around their Candlekeep product, they suffered an ever accelerating collapse of sales. As each book became MORE woke, it lost more audience.

The "target audience" DOES NOT EXIST. They claim the target audience is 'black women','LGBTQ+_Gaymers', "Asian & Pacific Islanders", "Latinx" gamers, etc. and sell these Woke agendas to the corporations that there are millions and millions of black people, so if we just fill the PHB art with black people you'll get MILLIONS of sales, because they'll suddenly care about RPGs.
Except they NEVER do. The black people who are already gamers DO NOT CARE (or do not care enough) about the representation to make a difference, they will either buy the product anyways or they never would. And no one who is not already a gamer will decide to become one because the 2024 PHB is full of illustrations of Obese Black Women Being Strong or something like that.
Same goes for every other group listed.

So the ONLY audience they're really targeting are the few thousand or so anti-liberal identity politics leftist activists, who all DESPISE D&D. They want to force D&D to be remolded into a propaganda tool for their totalitarian agenda, or to cease to exist altogether, but they won't ever actually buy the product (save a tiny group who make it their job to try to write or produce Woke D&D stuff).

Wokeness only kills profitability. It has no vast natural audience, as the 2024 elections proved.

Quote from: RPGPundit on November 22, 2024, 04:00:09 PM

Quote from: trechriron on November 13, 2024, 02:53:32 PM

Quote from: blackstone on November 13, 2024, 10:12:29 AMPersonally, I haven't bought a WoTC/D&D product for at least 20 years. They lost me at 3e.

You are not the target audience. WOTC D&D will find its audience and sell plenty of books to people who want this approach.

Except that's not true; when WotC ramped up the Wokeness starting around their Candlekeep product, they suffered an ever accelerating collapse of sales. As each book became MORE woke, it lost more audience.

The "target audience" DOES NOT EXIST. They claim the target audience is 'black women','LGBTQ+_Gaymers', "Asian & Pacific Islanders", "Latinx" gamers, etc. and sell these Woke agendas to the corporations that there are millions and millions of black people, so if we just fill the PHB art with black people you'll get MILLIONS of sales, because they'll suddenly care about RPGs.
Except they NEVER do. The black people who are already gamers DO NOT CARE (or do not care enough) about the representation to make a difference, they will either buy the product anyways or they never would. And no one who is not already a gamer will decide to become one because the 2024 PHB is full of illustrations of Obese Black Women Being Strong or something like that.
Same goes for every other group listed.

So the ONLY audience they're really targeting are the few thousand or so anti-liberal identity politics leftist activists, who all DESPISE D&D. They want to force D&D to be remolded into a propaganda tool for their totalitarian agenda, or to cease to exist altogether, but they won't ever actually buy the product (save a tiny group who make it their job to try to write or produce Woke D&D stuff).

Wokeness only kills profitability. It has no vast natural audience, as the 2024 elections proved.

I don't think that's how companies like WOTC perceive the question internally. I think the operative question is not "how many customers which we wouldn't otherwise get will this wokeness attract?". At this point, they have to know that number is insignificant. I think question one is "how many of our potential customers are demoralized or brainwashed enough to not balk at this", and the second question corollary is "of the number that will balk, is that loss worth taking in exchange for the positive press and/or DEI investment money we can get from being performatively woke?"

Quote from: ForgottenF on November 22, 2024, 05:19:31 PMI don't think that's how companies like WOTC perceive the question internally. I think the operative question is not "how many customers which we wouldn't otherwise get will this wokeness attract?". At this point, they have to know that number is insignificant. I think question one is "how many of our potential customers are demoralized or brainwashed enough to not balk at this", and the second question corollary is "of the number that will balk, is that loss worth taking in exchange for the positive press and/or DEI investment money we can get from being performatively woke?"

The issue with that strategy now is that a lot of the DEI investment funding is drying up. A good number of companies are dropping wokeness like a hot potato when the realization that they actually have to be profitable to survive sinks in. It is the same problem that forever plagues rabid progressives-eventually you run out of other people's money.

Quote from: Exploderwizard on November 23, 2024, 08:23:11 AM

Quote from: ForgottenF on November 22, 2024, 05:19:31 PMI don't think that's how companies like WOTC perceive the question internally. I think the operative question is not "how many customers which we wouldn't otherwise get will this wokeness attract?". At this point, they have to know that number is insignificant. I think question one is "how many of our potential customers are demoralized or brainwashed enough to not balk at this", and the second question corollary is "of the number that will balk, is that loss worth taking in exchange for the positive press and/or DEI investment money we can get from being performatively woke?"

The issue with that strategy now is that a lot of the DEI investment funding is drying up. A good number of companies are dropping wokeness like a hot potato when the realization that they actually have to be profitable to survive sinks in. It is the same problem that forever plagues rabid progressives-eventually you run out of other people's money.

That's been the rumor for a while now, yeah. If only it was that simple. For one thing, the years of DEI money have had these companies hiring lots of progressive idealogues into creative control positions, and those people are less easily fired than one might think. For another, corporations are very good at deflecting the reasons for their failures. If NuD&D were to flop, Hasbro could just as easily blame it on the VTT project or go all the way to saying that post-COVID there just isn't a market for D&D anymore.  There's the signal-noise issue as well; with progressive control of the entertainment media, the corporations will continue to see over-represented positive feedback, even if profits are declining. That just makes it easier to misplace blame for why the product isn't selling well.

I do think a pendulum shift in the entertainment industry is coming, but I agree with the people who say it's going to be slow; 5-10 years or more. Even then, I'd guess D&D is one of the last places we're going to see the change. Compared to TV, film, videogames etc., the money involved in making D&D is chump change, so the stakes on making sales are smaller. Plus, D&D's audience contains a higher than average percentage of the aformentioned "non-noticers", who may not be fully woke themselves, but are not going to question wokeness when it appears.

Quote from: RPGPundit on November 22, 2024, 04:00:09 PMExcept that's not true; when WotC ramped up the Wokeness starting around their Candlekeep product, they suffered an ever accelerating collapse of sales. As each book became MORE woke, it lost more audience.

...

Wokeness only kills profitability. It has no vast natural audience, as the 2024 elections proved.

I'm not seeing any evidence of a sales slump. Wouldn't Hasbro have come in and cut the whole RPG business? They only care about profits, after all. I would like to see where people are getting your sales numbers from. Maybe post them here for consideration? What proof do you have that these identity politics are the primary factor affecting sales? Could it just be that the last couple of years' products suck?

I find the idea of D&D being used as a mechanism of leftist fascists to be a reach. Is it inundated with loud, woke hang-wringers? Sure. But an "Agenda (capital A)"? Maybe by accident. I don't see some plot to use D&D for an Agenda, only a strong desire to blow every culture-war thing way out of proportion with needless outrage—which these types do with EVERYTHING (on both sides). I have difficulty attributing that kind of emotional behavior to any thought-out plan. This is pure hubris and delusion.

I believe they have a target audience and are selling enough to that target audience to stay profitable in the eyes of the Hasbro Overlords. I also believe that TheRPGSite comprises less than 5% of that target audience. :-P

Is the woke stuff for everyone? Gods no. There are a remarkable number of threads I see on Reddit of people dumping 5e for OSR games. My evidence is anecdotal, but it seems to me to be losing ground. I don't believe WOTC has the hold on the RPG market everyone gives them credit for having. There are visible cracks in the armor. I also don't see enough stumping for NuSR stuff to say that the "woke" crowd is making any more headway there than WOTC.

But let's not mistake desperation for an "Agenda." Identity politics have become a vitriolic team sport. Most of this outrage is just desperate people screaming into the sky at any perceived "loss." (Again, on both extremes.) Maybe it's an agenda (small a) at a basic level, but I don't believe any more thought went into it than outrage and emotional angst towards "enemies" on the other team.

Once again, why attribute malice to something easily explained by incompetence?

Quote from: trechriron on November 25, 2024, 08:46:53 PM

Quote from: RPGPundit on November 22, 2024, 04:00:09 PMExcept that's not true; when WotC ramped up the Wokeness starting around their Candlekeep product, they suffered an ever accelerating collapse of sales. As each book became MORE woke, it lost more audience.

...

Wokeness only kills profitability. It has no vast natural audience, as the 2024 elections proved.

I'm not seeing any evidence of a sales slump. Wouldn't Hasbro have come in and cut the whole RPG business? They only care about profits, after all. I would like to see where people are getting your sales numbers from. Maybe post them here for consideration? What proof do you have that these identity politics are the primary factor affecting sales? Could it just be that the last couple of years' products suck?

Where are you seeing evidence that the sales aren't slumping?  If you are going to disagree (you're not just asking for evidence, you are actively saying he's wrong based on what you are "seeing.") with Pundit's numbers, shouldn't you have some evidence yourself?  As for the second part, you're making a distinction without a difference.  Calling a product "woke" and saying it "sucks" is totally redundant.  Woke cannot produce good products.  Ever.  The mindset of the woke prevents them from producing good products.  A woke person can produce something good at first, if they don't put any (or not very much) woke in it.  But the moment woke ideology infiltrates the product, quality is impossible.  Woke is the antithesis of merit, which means it is the antithesis of excellence.

I know it sucks to be a modern leftist.  You've gotten the reins of power, only to have reality come crashing down on you, that your ideas objectively suck (not necessarily "you" personally, though I generally find the folks who complain the most about politics as "team sport" tend to be the folks whose "team" is losing).  They can't work.  Understand that what you are feeling right now is the first step towards healing: the recognition of what is true.  You can reject it, and never manage to pull yourself out of the leftist delusion (which means you will always hook your future to unworkable ideas), or you can listen to reality and maybe start to change.

Remember, you can ignore reality, but you can't ignore the consequences of ignoring reality...