another rpg industry doomsday article (merged: all 3 "Mishler Rant" threads)

[seskis281]

Originally Posted by Erik Mona

There is no existing fallacy among gaming professionals, from independent operators like James Mishler to brand managers and major corporations like Scott Rouse, that "if it were good it will sell as well as D&D." Anyone with an even basic understanding of the RPG industry knows that _no_ pen and paper RPG will sell as well as D&D. It would take a CATASTROPHIC failure of game design, distribution, and probably the economy overall for the D&D business to falter to the point at which another company can even contemplate selling in the sort of numbers that Wizards sells.

Actually I didn't think there was amongst the publishing side - so my amends if that came across that way - but it does keep coming up around the various online communities amongst posters, and I've definitely seen it thrown as an argument against C&C, True20, etc., so I was just pointing it out as something that irks me....

Most gaming stores, if they carry RPGs at all, carry only Dungeons & Dragons. No, I'm not talking about good stores, but ALL stores that carry RPGs, which vastly outnumber the good stores. When Paizo was publishing 3.5 products with production values and quality equal to or exceeding that of Wizards of the Coast, we continually ran into retailers who refused to carry our line (or the products of any other publisher), because it "wasn't D&D". This is even though we published 100% official D&D in the form of Dragon and Dungeon magazines for FIVE YEARS. Many of the same stores that ordered a few copies of Dragon a month didn't bother to check out our stuff, and still haven't.

Well, you'll be happy to hear that locally Gnome Games in Green Bay has Pathfinder stuff in their "prime" rpg shelves, along with D&D on the top shelf and C&C (which makes me happy) in between the two.

Companies that are basically one dude with some desktop publishing software working out of his basement, or who only do PDFs, or who can't get the interest and attention of honest-to-god hobby distributors like Alliance or ACD are completely screwed out of participation in the "industry," and frankly aren't really a part of it.

Ah but here I have to disagree, if for nothing else than this:

The tradition of D&D back to the early days you mentioned.... was Gary and his kids and a few others sitting with a typewriter in his kitchen, putting product together by hand.

And while that's not a good "business" model for long term, it represents a tradition of creativity and passion that really wants for and needs the lone guy (or gal!) sitting at the computer making a pdf.... and whether you call it a part of the "industry" or not, it is a part of the hobby and, IMHOP, a part of the heart of it too...

I do thank you for your response here.

[Erik Mona]

Originally Posted by seskis281

The tradition of D&D back to the early days you mentioned.... was Gary and his kids and a few others sitting with a typewriter in his kitchen, putting product together by hand.

And while that's not a good "business" model for long term, it represents a tradition of creativity and passion that really wants for and needs the lone guy sitting at his computer making a pdf.... and whether you call it a part of the "industry" or not, it is a part of the hobby and, IMHOP, a part of the heart of it too...

I agree with this statement. I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting that the tabletop RPG _hobby_ is in danger of dying out in the short (or even medium) term. Lots of factors are actually making hobby businesses more lucrative than at any time in the history of tabletop RPGs.

The only trouble is, most of these do an end-run around the retail and distribution sides of the business. They are, in effect, operating parallel to the traditional RPG "industry," and aren't so much a part of it in the way that publishers were part of the RPG "industry" 10 or 20 years ago. If everyone shifted to a direct-to-consumer business model like patronage or PDF sales, for example, the local game stores would die out, which would mean the distributors would die out, which would mean the trade shows would be gone, and then just about all of the traditional trappings of the "industry" are gone.

But the hobby? It's like a cockroach. We'll be here forever.

--Erik

[ggroy]

Heh.

A "shadow" rpg economy?

[ggroy]

From Mishler's part III ramble:

I give the role-playing game division of the adventure game industry 10, maybe 20 years, before complete and utter collapse as an industry.

Famous last words?

[rounser]

I get cranky when I start hearing things from their sillier fans when they start putting Pathfinder on the pedestal of "Edition War Savior" more than anything.

Why are they silly? Because you, a 4E fan, don't see anything to be saved from? An in-print 3E clone does represent saviour from the 4E game for some, make no mistake.

[Wepwawet]

What, there's another one?!
This guy is prolific

[jdrakeh]

Originally Posted by Intense_Interest

That said, look at the definable shill he makes at the end of this 3rd (and final!) rant.

Didn't he earlier assert that there is an industry-wide trend toward lowering the price of PDFs when there, in fact, isnt't?

[Vigilance]

Originally Posted by jdrakeh

Didn't he earlier assert that there is an industry-wide trend toward lowering the price of PDFs when there, in fact, isnt't?

Yes, in fact he said there was a "PDF price war" going on that was a "race to zero".

Neither of which are true in my experience.

There's some short term downward pressure on prices, cause the economy is crap, so there's going to be more sales, or more products created with a value in mind.

And of course, some folks might strategically price a PDF lower for some reason, like if they want a big base of core books to give them a bigger pool to sell supplements to.

But there's zero evidence that there's any sort of consistent downward pressure heading toward zero.

[Erik Mona]

Since I spent a lot of time that should have been spent proofreading the Pathfinder Bestiary to write my response to Mishler's latest post, I figure I might as well get extra mileage out of it by reposting it here:

James, you're probably correct to predict that the tabletop RPG industry in its current form is living on borrowed time, but even giving it 10 to 20 years is like kicking the ball so far down the field that you can't even see it anymore.

Think about the different between the RPG market 10 years ago. D&D2 was at the bottom of a long decline, with non-core books selling in the four digits and almost all of the steam out of the thing. The industry had survived the TSR implosion circa 1996, and 3E was in playtesting, with an uncertain future.

In the large break room at Wizards of the Coast, Ryan Dancey and Cindi Rice were holding bi-weekly "brand/category interface" meetings at which they attempted to explain the concept of Open Gaming and the d20 License to a largely incredulous design staff, but word of a D&D licensing operation had hardly escaped Renton.

There was no such thing as a "PDF Market" for games. White Wolf was ascendant. Pokemon was just gearing up, building on a trend started by Magic and radically changing the way hobby stores stocked their shelves, managed their cashflow, and balanced their product. And, frankly, the way distributors serviced their publishers and retail clients, managed their preorders and inventory, and set the bar for success.

Wizards of the Coast had a national chain of retail stores. They were also running Gen Con and Origins, having recently acquired Andon Unlimited.

Game designers and company men, for the first time since Gygax, were becoming millionaires.

Anyone making any kind of prediction around that time frame of where the business was headed in 10 years (or a "prophecy," if you will) would have probably failed to have predicted the following major market forces that have significantly shaped how games are bought and sold in today's industry:

1. Successful launch of third edition reinvigorates core RPG business.

2. OGL triggers an initially successful product boom that founds or firmly establishes companies like Green Ronin and Fantasy Flight, and briefly pulls companies like Atlas, Pinnacle, and Chaosium into its orbit.

3. Pokemon surges strong, then fades. TCG market continues to shake out "dabbler" companies too numerous to mention.

4. Monte Cook proves electronic PDF products viable, essentially creating a parallel distribution channel that cuts out traditional distributors and retailers, allowing semi-profitable boutique publishing operations.

5. Wizards of the Coast diaspora that founds companies like Paizo, Hidden City, Sabretooth, and Privateer Press.

6. Establishment of online retailers like RPG Now/DriveThru and Paizo.

7. Wizards undercuts online retailers by pulling extensive PDF catalog of the most popular gaming brand in history from all online retailers, removing the most reliable and profitable spine of the PDF "industry".

8. WizKids invents and exploits affordable pre-painted miniatures.

9. Wizards does it better, creating a new sub-category for retailers and a healthy revenue stream for itself.

10. WizKids flames out spectacularly.

11. InQuest, Dragon, Dungeon, Comics & Games Retailer, Scrye: DEAD.

12. Blackhawk Distributors: DEAD.

13. WotC gets out of the retail, magazine, and convention business.

14. Peter saves Gen Con.

15. Peter almost loses Gen Con.

16. WotC releases 4th edition, a major revision of the most popular brand in the industry. It does OK, but for a variety of reasons fails to re-ignite the fire of 3e's launch.

17. WotC doesn't release 4e under the OGL, creating a host of interesting dilemmas for a lot of companies, who react in a host of interesting ways.

18. White Wolf releases a lackluster revision of their core RPG, then gets bought by a hugely capitalized Icelandic MMO company.

19. Global economic recession.

20. New technologies such as iPhone apps, virtual tabletops, and augmented reality hint at major paradigm shifts to come.

In 1999, the most talented prognosticator and industry expert could not have guessed a fifth of those things, no matter how many years they had spent writing a column for a gaming magazine, running a store, or even publishing RPGs.

Ryan Dancey probably would have come closest, and that's only because he was at ground zero of about a third of the things on the list.

If the RPG industry as it is today has 10 or 20 years of gas left in the tank, it's going to be around for changes like the ones listed above that none of us have even thought of yet.


P.S. One more thing I just remembered.

I seem to recall it was your old magazine, Comics & Games Retailer, but it may have been another that ran a column by Mike Stackpole that lamented how Wizards of the Coast was mis-managing the Dungeons & Dragons brand, offering $1 million to buy the brand with no questions asked.

That was about a year before 3e came out. I remember it because someone, I think Ryan Dancey, was so bemused by the idea that he pinned the article to the corkboard outside the D&D R&D department.

That was about 1999, which goes to show how reliable decade-out predictions are in this business.

--Erik

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Originally Posted by Wepwawet

What, there's another one?!
This guy is prolific

It sure drives a lot of interest to his blog. Sometimes it helps just to be controversial, not to be right.

[wedgeski]

Originally Posted by Erik Mona

That was about 1999, which goes to show how reliable decade-out predictions are in this business.

--Erik

Hmm. I predict Erik's post will be quoted a lot in the next few years. ;P

[Vigilance]

Originally Posted by Erik Mona

I seem to recall it was your old magazine, Comics & Games Retailer, but it may have been another that ran a column by Mike Stackpole that lamented how Wizards of the Coast was mis-managing the Dungeons & Dragons brand, offering $1 million to buy the brand with no questions asked.

That was about a year before 3e came out. I remember it because someone, I think Ryan Dancey, was so bemused by the idea that he pinned the article to the corkboard outside the D&D R&D department.

That was about 1999, which goes to show how reliable decade-out predictions are in this business.

--Erik

It was indeed Mike Stackpole.

And even more amusing (in light of what later happened), one of the reasons he felt the D&D brand was being mismanaged was because TSR had never adopted a sweeping metaplot to drive their RPG lines, as FASA's mech games had done (which were what Mike was working on at the time).

His contention was that TSR's collapse was because the lack of a metaplot had burned the audience out.

At least, that's how I remember his article where he expounded on what TSR had done wrong and made his offer to buy the brand.

[thecasualoblivion]

Originally Posted by rounser

Why are they silly? Because you, a 4E fan, don't see anything to be saved from? An in-print 3E clone does represent saviour from the 4E game for some, make no mistake.

I'm talking about the people who think 4E is going to fail and Pathfinder will take its place as the RPG leader.

[xechnao]

Originally Posted by Erik Mona

The main advantage Erik Mona has (or, rather, the main advantage of his employer) is that he works with an Open Game Licensed version of Dungeons & Dragons, which allows his company to tap into the largest player network in the industry.

The main advantage Erik Mona has is that he was publisher of official Dragon and Dungeon magazine and helped him build a name, perfect for serving as the standard bearer of the displeased fans of some practices of Wotc business plan and being able to take advantage of this to further develop his name.

The whole deal is about building and keeping momentum. D&D has lots of it and with the OGL opportunities were opened to take advantage of it.

If Wotc did not have a big name due to its huge success of MtG but was an unknown entity instead I am not sure, even if it produced the same 3e as it did in 1999 that D&D and OGL would have had the boom effect they did.

To check out the overall health of the hobby you have to check the health of the overall momentum wave of game consumer population. In this set, RPGs are in theory the most versatile subset due to their toolbox -make your own- nature. Publishers do not want to realize this but instead struggle with all their efforts to capitalize on the current trends, always having in mind the ones that rocketed rpgs to the top positions in the market.

In the end, D&D as a name has nothing to do with it. If D&D fails to pump the necessary waves it will die. If someone manages to create a new wave source, he creates the potential to prevail, even if D&D is not the label name. As we stand, in the current business model, D&D definately has its own brand value but it definately is not the whole deal regarding the dynamics of the hobby market. And in the not so long run the current priority balance of the marketable rpg products will die. Even if people may now want to dismiss this notion due to general impredictability, common sense does not let me buy into this.

Today, in this brutal age, as some people put it, the industry has to start re-realizing the balance of its principles and itself right now if it wants to create a perspective of marketable tabletop rpgs in the long run. But sadly, the current industry gives me the impression that it does not care. It makes me believe that it does not have any power to care and look towards the future.

[seskis281]

Originally Posted by xechnao

In the end, D&D as a name has nothing to do with it.

Oh, I think having the brand "Dungeons & Dragons" to put on a product might help just a teensy bit....