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

[ggroy]

Semi-informative rambling from an insider.

Part I
Adventures in Gaming: The Doom of RPGs: The Rambling

(updates)
Part II
Adventures in Gaming: The Rambling II: Replies and Ripostes

Part III
Adventures in Gaming: The Rambling III: Finale

[Piratecat]

That's fascinating. Thanks you for the link.

[Hussar]

Good catch ggroy. Interesting read.

I'm not sure if I buy entirely into his doom and gloom predictions (for example, he totally blows off younger generations as being only interested in Britany Spears, despite the fact that teen readers are actually buying books and reading in record numbers in the US currently) but, his basic point is very solid.

Gaming is too cheap. He's not the first to say this. Everything he says about trying to make money on RPG's is, IMO, spot on.

[Jack99]

I almost stopped reading when I realised he was guessing on 4e's success based on amazon rankings. Makes me wonder how much of the rest is just pure guessworked pulled out of his rear.

But was a fun read.

[Mallus]

All I can say is the 4e core books cost me slightly more than the 1e core books did when I purchased them back in the mid 1980s, in currency unadjusted for inflation, or for the fact I, along with a big chuck of the graying RPG market, have a lot more disposable income now than we did as adolescents. That's not a sustainable pricing model.

Good read. Some dumb curmudgeonly remarks about the 'kids of today'... but still, a good read.

I think the future of RPG's is found right here; in Internet communities, fan creations, and cottage/vanity industries --with very different distribution models that aren't-- that, for the most part, people's primary source of income.

[Cadfan]

It was an interesting read.

1. He misses one potential solution (or mitigator). You can trick consumers into paying more by selling them multiple books instead of one really thick book. Consumers who would never, ever pay $100 for a big, thick hardcover book with high production values will in fact pay $100 for three medium sized hardcover books with high production values. This probably extends to other types of products as well.

2. While I agree that the pdf "race to zero" is going to have an effect on the overall market for RPG materials, he seems to be directly and specifically blaming Paizo. I'm not sure that's warranted. :-) Consumers were going to demand cheap pdfs relative to book costs whether or not Paizo led the way.

3. The "blame young people for being too lazy to game or even hang out with friends" thing is moronic. If I ever start doing that, I hope my wife has me put down.

4. I don't entirely agree with his assessment of the initial days of 3e- I think that reviving a flagging product line was as much or more of a factor than bringing back older former gamers.

5. He doesn't address the whole "competition with WotC" thing. WotC's ability (and the ability of other larger game companies) to sell in bulk and set prices based on bulk sales sets not only expectations, but also sets the cost of products with which a small publisher's products must compete. Willingness to pay a set MSRP isn't based solely on things like "entitlement" (whatever the heck that is), but also on what you could purchase instead for the same money. The rise of big game publishers is going to, by its nature, have an effect on smaller game publishers. Its no different than Borders pushing out your local privately owned book store.

6. I do not believe that edition wars are instigated by an unconscious desire to tear down other game companies so that your favorite one can survive.

[rogueattorney]

Originally Posted by Mallus

Role-playing gaming as an avocation will survive, as a vocation, not so much.

Yes. This right here. We, as fans, should worry about the survival of the hobby, which as far as I'm concerned isn't in any real doubt. The industry is only there to support the hobby. I think too often in discussions of these types, people get that reversed, and the tail wags the dog.

I sometimes see people saying we need to buy product to keep the hobby healthy. I think, a lot of the time, your money might be more efficiently used by supporting sites like this one, funding local gaming clubs, and other hobby-building activities.

[malraux]

Originally Posted by Hussar

Good catch ggroy. Interesting read.

I'm not sure if I buy entirely into his doom and gloom predictions (for example, he totally blows off younger generations as being only interested in Britany Spears, despite the fact that teen readers are actually buying books and reading in record numbers in the US currently) but, his basic point is very solid.

I would have liked to see actual numbers and market research to substantiate everything after the seemingly informed info on publishing costs. For example:

Third Edition did not succeed based on new acquisitions in the youth market; the bulk of their market was in gamers returning to the fold.

That's a big claim. Without significant market research, I don't know how you can claim it correct. His "4e is really WoW on the tabletop" trolling wasn't much better either.

Gaming is too cheap. He's not the first to say this. Everything he says about trying to make money on RPG's is, IMO, spot on.

That I can agree with. I just got an old copy of Against the Giants off of ebay. Comparing that to what you get with a modern module, the modern modules have much better art direction, layout, quality of paper, etc, yet the inflation adjusted prices are almost the same.

[malraux]

Originally Posted by Cadfan

3. The "blame young people for being too lazy to game or even hang out with friends" thing is moronic. If I ever start doing that, I hope my wife has me put down.t believe that edition wars are instigated by an unconscious desire to tear down other game companies so that your favorite one can survive.

Oh dear god yes. If you want to make a "kids these days" argument, you have a very high bar to clear. It was wrong when Hesiod made it in almost 3000 years ago, it was wrong when everyone said that about Gen X, it'll probably be wrong in the future. The inability of older generations to specifically not learn from their elders says something about the older generations, not the current youth one.

[Hobo]

I almost stopped when he said comparable products have increased at a much higher rate than RPG books. I don't think that's true. I've been buying paperbacks as long as I've been buying RPGs, and they've paced each other fairly well, I think. Which makes sense, as in a sense, they have most of the same cost inputs.

Comic books, on the other hand, have increased in cost tremendously, but then again, so have the inputs. Full color (as opposed to 4-color) and shiny, quality paper as opposed to newsprint; my old comic books are really, really noticeably different than today's comic books.

Anyway, CPI hasn't increased by that amount either. I right away got the impression he was just pulling numbers out of thin air. The rest of the article didn't convince me otherwise.

[kitsune9]

Originally Posted by ggroy

Semi-informative rambling from an insider.

Adventures in Gaming: The Doom of RPGs: The Rambling

Thanks for the article. I think with the rpg industry, we'll always be reading that the barbarians are at the gates, but whether this is the year that they storm the city is always up in the air.

[Fifth Element]

Originally Posted by Cadfan

3. The "blame young people for being too lazy to game or even hang out with friends" thing is moronic. If I ever start doing that, I hope my wife has me put down.

Good lord, yes. For the most part the article is interesting and well-written, if not particularly innovative. But smack in the middle is an absolutely ridiculous "kids these days" screed. I only skimmed the remainder of the article after that part, because I couldn't take anything he said seriously after that.

[OchreJelly]

It was an interesting read but I had to disregard some of the ramblings on current youth culture, and recession-era spending.

I don't think his argument on recession-era spending has enough data to back it. He simply says people are saving and not negative spending and leaves it at that. There have been studies, for example, that while it's true that big-purchase sales are down, some smaller-ticket luxury markets are actually seeing a bit of a boom. The psychology goes that as you have to cut back more on big ticket items, like a new car or a vacation, there is a tendency to make up for it by investing in "smaller luxuries". Imported beer was one example.

Also it's a bit of a stretch to say that there will never be another golden age of sales. His example of 3E hitting right when young adults who grew up with DND were starting families suggest to me that maybe the children of those families may grow up to play the game their dad taught them. I can certainly buy that it's a cyclical market, but to say it could never happen again seems a little severe.

[darjr]

Comparable products? I wonder about rpgs vs boardgames and videogames. I know that it's almost an apples to oranges things when talking about videogames becuase they have changed so much in so many ways. But what about boardgames?

[stuart]

Interesting article!

It's worth contrasting with this piece from CNN Money:

Board games are back - Jul. 10, 2009

n 2008, board game sales climbed 23.5% to about $808 million, and they're expected to grow more this year.Of course, board games have lived in the shadow of video games for the past decade. Through 2007, video game sales had been growing steadily by more than 7% a year -- sales that year totaled $12.4 billion -- while board games had been experiencing a steady slide since their heyday in the '80s.
But with the onset of the recession, as video games have suffered from the dip in consumer spending, their older, less-costly cousins -- Clue, Candy Land, and the like -- have benefited.
The economic downturn has created what many experts call a "recession-resistant" industry -- one that, for families operating on tight budgets who have children to entertain, is attractive no matter the economic climate. And in the case of board games, they might even be most attractive in the worst times.

It was the worst of times... it was the best of times.

[Erik Mona]

Might as well crosspost my blog comment here...

----

There's a lot of good stuff here, but also a lot of bold assertions and back of the envelope nonsense, in my opinion.

Part of the problem, here, is that you're assuming that anyone can make any kind of money at all selling 1000 units of just about anything. I'm not sure that's ever been true at any time in the history of the tabletop gaming industry, and it's certainly not true now.

You've got to find a way to develop and audience for your product that is larger than 1000 potential sales. Every product Paizo produces, for example, must endure a rigorous cost/profit analysis before it gets the green light. Everything we do has realistic break-evens in the sub-2000 units category, and only extremely rarely does a product in our lineup not sell significantly more copies than that.

If your potential audience is fewer than 1000, you probably are better off either throwing in the towel and finding more lucrative business opportunities, or going for some sort of "deluxe" high-end approach that more reasonably charges gamers for the time, effort, and resources put into your product.

Ptolus is a good example of this. Yes, it was outrageously expensive both to produce and to buy, but Monte Cook (who, despite the drawing power of his name, is really just a guy working with his wife to create cool games) found a way to build the book affordably (mostly by writing it himself and offloading production costs on a better-capitalized print partner with strong distribution). As you say, there are only a limited number of gamers willing to fork out $100+ for a book like Ptolus, but Monte had them lining up at its release, and the book is now completely sold out and almost impossible to find. Oh, and I'm confident Monte made a ton of money on it.

No one in this business, from the smallest one-man publishing operation to the biggest wholly owned subsidiary of a multinational corporation, is entitled to a successful career in gaming.

People producing niche products for a niche market (which is what producing material for Judge's Guild is) are never going to make much money at it, and success is going to come (if it comes at all) from spending more time building the audience than writing the products. Or from realizing that the older market you serve is probably willing to pay more for a product (PDF or otherwise) that caters directly to their interests. The good news is that fans who are familiar with Judge's Guild and want to see it continue probably have a lot more disposable income than fans interested in, say, an anime game or something, so the potential for a supporting cadre of essentially patrons is much more likely in your case than in most.

And as far as the "Pathfinder Effect," I find your statement on PDF pricing regressive and myopic. If Paizo is not worried about the effect our subsidized Core Rules PDF pricing will have on even our other non-deep-discounted PDFs, why is it that other publishers are so convinced it will affect their business?

Lastly, if you're in the business of selling core rules, getting those rules as widely distributed as possible and then making money off of the support products sold to that audience is, I think (and hope!) a very viable business strategy.

You've got to have an audience if you want to make any money, in this business or anywhere.

--Erik Mona
Publisher
Paizo Publishing

[SteveC]

There is a fair bit of insight in this article, but it's mixed in with a "here's what's wrong with kids these days," screed that dilutes the good stuff.

I'm an old fart, but I still volunteer and work with college students and even high school students. From that I can tell you that the kids are doing just fine. There are a lot of them who are into gaming, or could be marketed to by gaming companies. Really.

I don't believe the sky is falling yet...things are just changing, as they always do. The companies that adapt will be still around, the ones that don't will be gone. It's as simple as that, and it has been as simple as that since gaming first gained any real acceptance in the marketplace.

--Steve

[Jack99]

Thanks Eric, that was some interesting information about Paizo and the economy (ie sales) of Pathfinder products.

[ggroy]

The "get off my lawn" stuff about Britney Spears and recession/depression economics, seemed kind of naive and silly.

Though with that being said and digging deeper into the article, I wonder how exactly he got that "Rule of 5" figure of pricing an rpg product's MSRP = 5 times the unit print costs (ie. cost to print + ship the books back to your own warehouse or garage).

This is in contrast to the older alleged "Rule of 10" figure from back in the day.

If these two "rules" have any validity, they assert that something like a Pathfinder AP or Chronicles book would have a unit print cost of $2 to $4. For the 4E D&D core books, these two rules assert that they have a unit print cost of $3.50 to $7.

[Scott_Rouse]

From the article [Note: I maintain that we are entering an economic dislocation the likes of which has not been seen since the Roman Crisis of the Third Century.]

If this is true we all get to play D&D (or Gamma World) for real wielding swords made from old car parts and in a world where treasure = food/water.