Purple Pawn’s 2011 Game Industry Survey

[Morrus]

Purple Pawn checked over 8,500 companies who make money from analog, tabletop games from across the globe to see if they were still operating. They conducted their annual survey of over 6,900 operating companies and received 391 responses. You can download the 18 page report for free here [PDF].

"Over the course of a year, around 7.5% of the companies in our db closed. Single-game game companies, brick-and-mortar retailers, and miniature manufacturers closed at a higher frequency than other companies. Sometimes new retailers open in the same locations as ones that closed.

We received 391 responses from 35 countries and 39 US states. 2011 apparently was much like 2010. Of those companies that didn’t close, the overwhelming majority are doing fine or even better than last year – only 13% report doing worse than last year.
Among the responding retailers, the top performing game lines from last year – MtG, Catan, Dominion, and Warhammer – were the top again this year (and in the same order). Pathfinder products outperformed D&D products by 2 to 1 (last year they were about even).

To participate in future surveys, send your name, company name, website address, and email address to admin @Purple pawn.com."

[Alphastream]

Is 7.5% a high, low, or average number? Gaming companies seem to often be labors of love, perhaps suffering even worse than most small businesses (which have a high failure rate to begin with).

The 7.5% is based on the total database size (8k), and those for which the surveyor could not find a site that previously worked and could not locate contact info on social media sites. That seems a pretty measure, though could be off by a fair bit. It would be interesting to see if the list of closures was posted publicly/visibly whether any significant number would receive an "no, I'm operating" response.

Also interesting to note that the vast majority of non-closed companies are doing well. It mirrors the idea that once you find how to operate well you can find good growth potential. I see that often with gaming stores - there are a lot of bad labors of love that end up closing, but there are also gaming stores that really understand how to bring in customers, please demographics, and create loyalty.

The miniatures suppliers being hardest hit is interesting in light of the continued question about what is possible for companies in this area given higher costs.

The bestseller list is strange. Is this a good method? It seems that it was based on at least two of the 391 responders mentioning a particular game to the question:

9. If the question makes sense for your company and with respect to the game industry only, what were your best selling products (or product lines) in 2011? Indicate if your response is considering units sold or profits collected. Please also indicate if there is a wide difference in sales results by region or country.

You have 31 companies saying Magic was a bestseller. But you have a wide variety of responders (suppliers, publishers, distributors, etc.) and no idea how many bestsellers a particular responder gave (or even how many responded to this question at all). In theory, anyone selling many products should have named Magic. Does that mean this is based on 31 or so responses? If so, that's a really small sample size and makes the results pretty meaningless (Retailers alone are said to be 2,525 by this survey, with only 81 total responses).

Regardless, this is pretty interesting as a start. I hope it sees more attention, refinement, and responses over time so it can have greater value. The response numbers really need to climb for this to be real data we can use to assess the industry.

Comments

Good analysis

[kitsune9]

Interesting!

[Hussar]

Damn. Go Paizo.