You're Selling a Community

Roleplaying game launches, and heck, even video game launches and television share one thing in common - you are paying to be in a community. It's the same sort of thinking that goes into "water cooler shows" on TV and HBO on Sunday nights, if you want to be a part of the "in" crowd on Monday morning, you need to pay for HBO and have watched last night's show. In that case, you are paying to be part of the community of viewers, and that gives you membership and the right to be a fan, voice an opinion, or be just as shocked as everyone else when the show kills off another major character or throws a major plot twist down.

Same thing with Pathfinder and D&D Next - you buy the game not for the game, but to be a part of the community. You log on the forums, find games at hobby stores, talk with other players about the rules, get excited with everyone else about the next book, and grow your personal identity within a community of players and DMs. Some people collect the books and that's great, but the heavy users are the ones involved with the community, participate in games, and vocalize their thoughts online.

It's the "network effect" in full play here, as laid out by the D&D 3.0 designers. D&D Next has tried to kickstart the "network effect" by doing a long play test session before launch. Pathfinder owns D&D 3.0's network, and has built its own powerhouse of players and community, so they have a huge head start. Pathfinder also has a huge "buy in" from existing players, the more books you own and tighter you are tied to one community, the harder it is to jump ship to another. There are always exceptions, and those looking to make a name for themselves in a new community, so naturally there is an attraction to switching. There is also system fatigue and the "new game" effect, and that is also a draw away from an established community.

This is really never 100% about the games, the games prove themselves and stand and fall on their own merits. If it's popular, the community builds. If there's strife and turbulence (D&D 4.0 in the later days), the community looks for alternatives. How successful a game is can be thought of as the multiplier for shifts in the movement of players to a particular community. Like a sandwich shop, you're either net growing in customers or net losing them. Each sandwich you put out, how clean the shop is, how your employees treat customers - those are the 'rules' of the game, and they influence if someone is coming back.

But really, you're selling a community, and when I buy a game, that's what I look for. Even single-player games on Steam have a community, and it's always fun to participate in them. Like an old TV show, I can go back and play a game without an active community and enjoy it, but it's always fun to be a part of the "in" crowd and talk about what you love with others.

A community isn't just players, it's people that make stuff for your game as well. D&D 3.0 shared the wealth and owned the market with the OGL, and it still does to this day through Pathfinder. Again, it's the "network effect" coming into play, the more people making stuff for your game, the more popular it is going to be. If the shelves are full of your game and third-party support, what are people going to check out? It worked with D&D 3.0, it works with video games, operating systems, and it's still working today.

Whatever the model D&D Next uses, I hope it is community focused. This has to be a 100% commitment across websites, fan sites, hobby stores, demo games, downloadable materials, online tools, support of the Youtube streaming video personalities, and even third-party support. You're not really building just the rules, that's the easy part, you are building a community.