How successful were the various editions of D&D?

[shadzar]

That's a harder question but probably a better one to determine success. How big a piece of the pie did D&D take?

you will become Games Workshop when you try this. remember they say D&D is not and has never been their competitor since they are in the "Warhammer business". they are #1 of 1.

OD&D was also #1 of 1, so you have to throw that edition out since there is only D&D pie at that point? OD&D ws competing with wargames, but the biggest available wargame to date doesnt consider itself in the same category as D&D.

your answer would always be D&D is the most popular TTRPG, until 4th edition, then PF took over.

just because all other TTRPGs were disastrous failures, it doesnt mean many of the failures with the name D&D were a success. you would only be picking the lesser of two evils.

definitely cant do it by length of an edition because the oldest will always win as 1E games are still being played, and new people are beginning to play 1E. thus cant do it by "in print" either, since D&D is no longer "in print", it is currently an obsolete game with no products available since what may or march? (board games dont count as they are not a TTRPG edition of D&D just some shit with the D&D logo on them like T$Rs crossstitch patterns and woodburning kits.)

[wotmaniac]

Ran across THIS NYT article from '08:

It also became a commercial phenomenon, selling an estimated $1 billion in books and equipment. More than 20 million people are estimated to have played the game.

While the article doesn't reference its figures, one would assume that, given the particular publication in question, there would be something to substantiate that.
I'm also assuming that the figures include all things D&D from inception to '08.

Just thought I'd throw that out there.

[shadzar]

relatively useless in regards to editions again because the ancillary and "franchise" products have little to nothing to do with editions. basically treating it as if it were NIKE, which is a name brand, and thus what HA$BRO is trying to make it, but finding out with movies, that the D&D name/logo doesnt turn a turd into a gold brick.

[tussock]

$1,000 million over 27 years ('81 to '08, as '74-'80 was slow) is pretty close to the numbers we've been throwing around, at 37 million PA. If it's inflation adjusted dollars it's fairly steady, but in fixed dollars 3e has to be far bigger than AD&D, up near $100 million PA at it's peak.

Oh, wait, 2008 includes the collectable minis craze, and that was a huge money spinner, which is why 4e was based on the minis game, even though minis were mostly bought for the tabletop game. Oops.

[Username17]

Ran across THIS NYT article from '08:

It also became a commercial phenomenon, selling an estimated $1 billion in books and equipment. More than 20 million people are estimated to have played the game.

While the article doesn't reference its figures, one would assume that, given the particular publication in question, there would be something to substantiate that.
I'm also assuming that the figures include all things D&D from inception to '08.

Just thought I'd throw that out there.

That would be from a WotC announcement in 2004 that they had sold over a billion dollars in books and equipment. The NYT was using what were then four-year-old numbers. But of course, since we're talking about the tail end of 3.5, I doubt it made a whole lot of difference. Some tens of millions of dollars more, but it doubtlessly still rounded to one billion dollars. In fact, I'm sure it still does today.

Basically it works out to 3e getting half the sales in nominal dollars for four years what AD&D and OD&D got in twenty. If you account for inflation, this means that 3e was selling at about twice the rate as pre-3e for those four years.

-Username17

[Desdan_Mervolam]

HA$BRO

That... Oh, that is just adorable.

Shadzar, on the bleeding edge of mid 90s contempt displays.

[Cyberzombie]

Basically it works out to 3e getting half the sales in nominal dollars for four years what AD&D and OD&D got in twenty. If you account for inflation, this means that 3e was selling at about twice the rate as pre-3e for those four years.

Seems pretty reasonable, given that 3E had the extra accessibility of the SRD/OGL and a brand name that was already built by many successful video games, and two editions before it.

Not to mention 3E was marketed a lot better than 2E, and had far more books than 1E ever did.

I think it's pretty clear the only failure of an edition was 4th.

[sabs]

3E also had the OGL and people writing world books, and alternate worlds that required the main book, and were fully compatible with the monster manuals, etc..

That helped drive a lot of player handbook sales.

[ishy]

Also, the internet happened and people had an easier time looking up what imaginary numbers like Fahrenheit and feet, inches etc meant in real, useful numbers.

[shadzar]

ergo, you cant weight one edition aginst another, so what do you weigh it against? the other most popular niche hobby of the time during each editions print run?

actually, that might work. but which niche hobby, for each editions?

[Username17]

Of course you can compare one edition to another. They had different marketing strategies and different contents, but sales are measured in real dollars and are very easy to compare. AD&D sold better than D&D, 2nd Edition and Red Box sold better than that, 3rd edition sold better than either of those, and 4th edition sucked balls and sold worse than 2nd edition (possibly worse than AD&D). And that is why 4th edition got canned partway through its third year and the other eiditions were all allowed to stay in print for 8 years or more.

-Username17

[shadzar]

Of course you can compare one edition to another. They had different marketing strategies and different contents, but sales are measured in real dollars and are very easy to compare. AD&D sold better than D&D, 2nd Edition and Red Box sold better than that, 3rd edition sold better than either of those, and 4th edition sucked balls and sold worse than 2nd edition (possibly worse than AD&D). And that is why 4th edition got canned partway through its third year and the other eiditions were all allowed to stay in print for 8 years or more.

-Username17

do you fail to understand the concept that the marketing IS the problem with trying to compare them? internet didnt exist prior to 3rd in any real sense as it wasnt really there and hothing to market for 2nd. how much of the 3rd numbers do you take away to compensate for the new technology that it had that opened more channels?

how much of 3rd sold due to the internet?

does 3rd sales include the benefit from OGL products? how much do you take away from that?

we arent trying to rate the marketing department behind the editions, but the success of the editions. for what 2nd had to deal with to even get ON the market, it must be the best edition ever in terms of success because it made it past Lorraine Williams who hated gamers with a passion.

3rd was the least successful because it was near the dotcom bubble that also had the benefit of broadband internet. people actually had internet unbound by 14.4k baud, 2400 baud, and due to some lazy telephone companies, still 300 baud in the late 90s!

4th was just lucky to exist.

We have spent multiple 7 digits on 4th edition, why would we want to support anything other than it?

so where does 1e, OD&D, and BD&D fit in when you actually consider all those things?

you cant do straight numebs unless you are WotC trying to use the "20 million players" [in D&D's lifetime] as the current number of people playing the current edition, and falsifying the data?

sorry, Frank; you dont get to have your cake and eat it too.

i can come up with as many crazy ways that cannot in any way shape or form back up ANY TSR editions being more successful than ANY WotC edition all day long. we could double-talk ourselves to death, but it will prove nothing.

you cannot compare straight sales like a movie adjusted for inflation, because recent movies have had little impact from the internet unless you were a B-movie to begin with in which they claim pirating those movies make the movie earn more, because more people are talking about them and going to see them than the "blockbuster" designed ones. not to mention even the movies fail to acknowledge that the population has nearly doubled in what 20 years? so yeah more things sold because there are more people. you have bad data points at that state, and must compare relative populations to sales. you cant say

only 5000 copies of OD&D sold, so it was the worst evr, when it only MADE 5000 copies before it had to be replace or reprinted a few times.

you need to take those numbers of sales and see the percentage of the population made those sales. another flaw in comparing direct sales...nobody does this.

example:
AD&D sold more than half as many books as 3rd did. 3rd had twice the population to sell to than AD&D had.

thi would make it to where AD&D outsold 3rd because AD&D sold more based on population density (or something like that, the term isnt coming to me only density is).

[Username17]

do you fail to understand the concept that the marketing IS the problem with trying to compare them?

That's an insane position that makes no sense.

The success of the edition is simply the amount of sales it had. Period. More dollars equals more success. End of fucking story.

The success of the company is another issue entirely. TSR went actually bankrupt while they had $40million of sales a year. Because they had a cashflow problem and couldn't pay their creditors due to some stupid management decisions. They were actually in the black for the year when they had to go into receivership, but they had non-liquid assets and couldn't pay their printers and that was fucking that.

But how many dollars the company throws away on good and bad plans only affects the success of the company. The edition's success is just a number. We can argue about why the number was high or low, or what it meant for the company, but the number is just a number. Highest number wins, and the highest number was 3rd edition.

It's somewhat unclear whether the second highest number goes to 2nd edition or Red Box OD&D, because they were produced concurrently and TSR didn't always divide the numbers in their reports. But since they are both smaller than 3rd edition together, and both larger than AD&D or 4th edition individually, I think we can just have the Red Box and 2nd edition AD&D just share the 2nd place ribbon.

-Username17

[ishy]

do you fail to understand the concept that the marketing IS the problem with trying to compare them? internet didnt exist prior to 3rd in any real sense as it wasnt really there and hothing to market for 2nd. how much of the 3rd numbers do you take away to compensate for the new technology that it had that opened more channels?

When you're trying to determine how successful X was, you are not talking about the reasons why it was more or less successful than Y.
The reason why 3e was a bigger success than 2e might be because of the internet or whatever floats your boat.
But you don't adjust the success of something for how many challenges it had to overcome. Success doesn't indicate quality.

[RobbyPants]

Goddamn, it just kills him that something else could be more popular than AD&D. Bring out the special pleading!

[Emerald]

internet didnt exist prior to 3rd in any real sense as it wasnt really there and hothing to market for 2nd. how much of the 3rd numbers do you take away to compensate for the new technology that it had that opened more channels?

And how many 2e numbers do you take away to compensate for the fact that it had less competition from that very same technology?

When 3e came out in 2000, none of my friends in school got D&D books for their birthdays or other gift-giving holidays, they got Nintendo 64 games and brand-new Playstation 2s, and they'd only heard of the game at all because they'd talked about it with me. I was 10 at the time and my playgroup (several friends around the same age, none of whom followed D&D forums or the like) and our older not-at-all-internet-savvy DM only found out that 3rd edition existed because our library got copies of the new books a few months after they hit the shelves, otherwise we'd have gone on playing AD&D for at least half a year after it was released without even knowing a new edition had come out.

Making "compensation" based on external factors doesn't work because every edition had different beneficial and detrimental factors in its success and those many factors are far too complex to be accounted for by arbitrarily fiddling around with sales numbers.

you need to take those numbers of sales and see the percentage of the population made those sales. another flaw in comparing direct sales...nobody does this.

example:
AD&D sold more than half as many books as 3rd did. 3rd had twice the population to sell to than AD&D had.

Or, you can compare them to the population of tabletop gamers, which had nowhere near doubled and in fact had most likely started shrinking with the advent of other forms of entertainment.

We can go back and forth about fudge factors and manipulative statistics for a long time, but the bottom line is that while you can try to explain the numbers all you want, trying to change them arbitrarily so your pet edition "wins" is pure dishonesty.

[Cyberzombie]

As far as being a franchise builder, AD&D did very well. It's typical that the first game in a franchise has lower sales than its sequels.

These are the sales for Halo: http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Halo
Here is Final Fantasy: http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy

As you can see, Halo 2 and 3 beat out the original in sales, and they're all basically the same game. But neither of the sequels would have had as great sales had the first one not built the franchise. We can see examples of bad sequels with Final fantasy, where FF7 hit its height in units sold and then the series has gradually declined after that.

You really can't make any kind of case for AD&D or 3E being better than the other through sales. All we can really say is that 3E did pretty much how we'd expect a good sequel to do, and that 4E did not.

[shadzar]

We can go back and forth about fudge factors and manipulative statistics for a long time, but the bottom line is that while you can try to explain the numbers all you want, trying to change them arbitrarily so your pet edition "wins" is pure dishonesty.

rather than being green with envy at trying to reword what i had previously said, try reading what i said instead. i have said since the beginning we have no way to measure which edition did what due to all the mitigating circumstances and compound factors.

[deaddmwalking]

rather than being green with envy at trying to reword what i had previously said, try reading what i said instead. i have said since the beginning we have no way to measure which edition did what due to all the mitigating circumstances and compound factors.

Except total sales. That is a number that can be discussed objectively. Explaining the reasons for those numbers involves subjective analysis.

[Emerald]

rather than being green with envy at trying to reword what i had previously said, try reading what i said instead. i have said since the beginning we have no way to measure which edition did what due to all the mitigating circumstances and compound factors.

Except total sales. That is a number that can be discussed objectively. Explaining the reasons for those numbers involves subjective analysis.

Exactly. We can measure which edition sold best; we can't precisely measure why, which is what you (shadzar) have been focusing on, but the why doesn't matter.

[shadzar]

rather than being green with envy at trying to reword what i had previously said, try reading what i said instead. i have said since the beginning we have no way to measure which edition did what due to all the mitigating circumstances and compound factors.

Except total sales. That is a number that can be discussed objectively. Explaining the reasons for those numbers involves subjective analysis.

no it can't because you have nothing to quantify against, there is not standard. this is what people doing these kind of analyses are learning now because the change in times greatly affects the objectivity and gives false accounts of what is really happening, the WHY is a key factor in it.

hey we are selling more ITEM-X now so it is more successful than ITEM-A!

that claim is false when you realize ITEM-A was only available for a limited time in a limited amount in a limited location, and ITEM-X has an unlimited supply available to the entire planet.

it doesn't mean either ITEM is more successful, only your distribution channels are more successful for ITEM-X. give ITEM-A the same distribution channels andr the same environment that ITEM-X has and see what the truth really is.

that is why marketing and advertising departments use things like "total sales" as an objective view for naive consumers that don't know. it is actually taught in marketing classes to use such double-talk and misinformation because the common person doesn't get it because "math is hard" and statistical analysis is just math.

that is why you people still don't understand that |5| = |-5| from that thread long ago, because you don't understand simple math expressions.

[deaddmwalking]

that claim is false when you realize ITEM-A was only available for a limited time in a limited amount in a limited location, and ITEM-X has an unlimited supply available to the entire planet.

it doesn't mean either ITEM is more successful, only your distribution channels are more successful for ITEM-X. give ITEM-A the same distribution channels andr the same environment that ITEM-X has and see what the truth really is.

That's RIGHT! If Item-X is really Item-A, they'd be equally successful!