Another RPG company with financial difficulties

[Talvisota]

Substitutes have hacked the traditional RPG market. Many have pointed out the size of the market and the reasons why it is not growing (lack of new players!) but IMHO the reason it is attracting far fewer new players than in the past is definitely due to substitute products - and here I mean computer/console games.

And as pointed out from our astute fellow boardmember from Mt. Vernon, IL (I am from Taylorville!) rural kids had nothing to do when growing up. (I took this to mean the 80's, when I was 8-18.) Well, look to Xbox, PS2, and the like and there is plenty to do, now.

I will pass on this hobby to my children to be sure, but I will have a lot of competition with the popularity of the online gaming alternatives. But who knows? Maybe my sons will enjoy both acting and accounting and the unavoidable and obvious synergies of the two. . . .

As for WOTC and profitability, although Hasbro is not inclined to share info, I can only imagine that the return on invested capital for WotC as a whole is at or above the hurdle rate. It is small compared to the rest of the company, and MTG et. al. sells very well all over the world. Minis were brought out to increase margins for the D&D line item, but I have yet to see any inverstor reports on that product line. And I am confident that WotC has plenty of strategic plans on the board for the next 5-10 years.

 

[Kanegrundar]

Well, they're not WotC or WW...I guess Palladium still hits the mark as well, but less so. GR is a larger company, but still aren't as big in my mind. I guess, once I really think about it, they are larger than most. My perception is based on their D20 derivative material. My mistake, but the original question still stands.

Kane

 

[Kanegrundar]

I can also agree that rural and smaller towns should be looked at as well. True, video games are more fully entrenched now than they were when I was growing up in the 80's and early 90's, but D&D still became the #1 way I spent my time. I just wished there were more people playing back then...

Kane

 

[Dr. NRG]

I don't think writers and publishers CAN do anymore. Writers are already paid so very little and many publishers aren't even paying them. The amount of money owed me by other publishers is ridiculous, but I also know that I will never see it now because the reality of the marketplace is that RPG sales are not improving. Oh, and to educate anyone who may feel like saying that writers are overpaid for what they do, many publishers are now only paying a flat sum or .01/word depending on the project and its size. Yeah, sad...

[brief hijack]
You aren't the first to run into this problem, Ghostwind...

"Writing science fiction for about a penny a word is no way to make a living. If you really want to make a million, the quickest way is to start your own religion." -- L. Ron Hubbard
[/brief hijack]

...and no, this isn't commentary on religion, it's commentary on writing. Really .

NRG

 

[Greatwyrm]

I doubt that anyone will bypass distributors in the next 20-30 years. Online sales are great, but online sales only benefit the well informed. Going to online sales only will dramatically decrease your overall audience and market share.

Looking into the future and seeing no changes has killed many businesses. Look at K-Mart. 15 - 20 years ago, they were certain Wal-Mart couldn't match or beat their business model and didn't take them seriously. K-Mart is only now beginning to recover. You can't just say nothing will change in the next few years.

Honestly, would you have believed me if I came to you in 1990 and said that in 10 years just about anything you want to buy will only be three mouse-clicks away from you, no matter where it is in the world?

Look at the steps that have been taken just in the last couple of years. A number of publishers already run their own online store. Some don't even charge shipping, since they're getting a bigger piece of the cover price. You've also got the beginnings of pdfs as a viable business model. That's something no one would have believed 10 years ago either.

Well before the next 10 years roll by, someone will find a way to maintain their customers and completely (or nearly so) cut out distributors. Whoever does is going to make a crapload of money and all of their competitors are going to be scrambling to catch up. I don't know who or how, but someone will find a way.

 

[John Morrow]

I think the single biggest barrier to new players joining the game is the complexity of character generation. If D&D was sold as a game where you take on one of, say, forty pre-defined characters, but then also gave you the tools to develop or tweak characters on your own, I think it would be a lot less intimidating to non-players.

Original D&D had random characteristics, rolled in order, and then two very easy to explain meaningful decisions -- race and class. All a GM had to explain were the basic races and the basic classes and the player had to pick one of each. There is no reason why there couldn't be a basic version of D&D that reduces 3E down to those choices.

In my experience, having your own unique character is a big part of the attraction. That's why I tend to think that having lists of pregenerated characters or fully worked out templates isn't the best idea.

 

[barsoomcore]

John, I would have agreed with you before my experiences of the last few years.

I DO agree that reducing the number of variables for players to select from is important, but frankly I think that even rolling stats is too much work for lots of people, because then they have to work out all their bonuses and so on.

In my experience, just presenting players with a set of values that they can then apply to action is MUCH more welcoming than asking them to calculate a bunch values before they've got any notion of how they apply. You'd be surprised at the degree to which people become possessive about characters they had nothing to do with developing.

Because, of course, the part of a character that REALLY binds them to us isn't represented on the character sheet, anyway. It's the actions they take and the successes and failures that they have in the course of the game.

 

[Darth K'Trava]

The thing that can kill publishers is lack of restocks, where the store sells out of an item, but never restocks it, whether because they fear they have saturated the market, or it took a while for the product to sell the first copies, or just don't think of it.

And of late a lot of game stores have been very poor about restocks. I remember a conversation with a local comics/games store a whiles back.
Me: Why don't you have any Space Marine Assault Troops?
Owner: Because we haven't sold any in months.
Me: You haven't had any in months!

It turned out that they had sold the first week he got them in, but because all the sales were in the first week he had decided that sales had tapered off... (This was a person who only did inventory once a year.) In honesty he was much better informed about the Comics end of his business, and could tell you pretty much what he had in stock at any time, but he really didn't care about the games, so they suffered.
The Auld Grump

Or you've had some like a local game store that, even when the owner had many preorders for the D&D PHB, only ordered ONE STORE COPY. That's it. ONE. They should've known that if there were 30 preorders, then there's probably half again that amount in walk-in sales from folks who didn't know the book was out or were waiting to see a copy before purchasing it.

 

[Estlor]

Look at the steps that have been taken just in the last couple of years. A number of publishers already run their own online store. Some don't even charge shipping, since they're getting a bigger piece of the cover price. You've also got the beginnings of pdfs as a viable business model. That's something no one would have believed 10 years ago either.

I'll second this.

Perhaps the online-only option isn't the best way to attract new players, but we're also approaching this problem from the mindset of people (1) that knew what life was like before the information age and (2) have our perceptions colored by old trends. Three years ago I would never have considered a PDF product a viable alternative, but now I'm finding myself more and more drawn to it. It has some considerable advantages over a printed book. It never wears out, you can carry dozens of them on a single CD that fits in your pocket, and if you need hard copy references, you can print out the pages you need, and multiple copies if necessary. If you've got a laptop handy, you can even keep multiple books loaded for quick reference.

I think the bottom line is this: the tabletop RPG market isn't going away, it's changing. Companies will adapt their business model to be more in line with the needs of the RPG market of the future and continue to be viable (even if it is at scale). It may not be the same companies we know (and love) right now, but there will always be someone producing games.

 

[Monte At Home]

Last i heard, "big" RPG publishers pay 4 cents/word, and if you're a big name, it *might* get as high as 6 cents/word. And you [the generic you, not Telfon Billy in particular] wonder why they keep leaving the industry. We gotta pay them more, especially established, well-liked (i.e., heavily-bought) authors.

This is an issue that is important to me. I think writers should get paid well. I certainly wouldn't call Malhavoc "big," but we pay more than what you're stating, and I certainly wouldn't work as a freelancer for the rates you suggest. But then, I don't do hardly any freelance anymore, either, except for my column in Dungeon.