I am gald to hear you are enjoying our debate, and I feel both points of view are valid. The reason I originally expressed my point of view, is because of your initial statement:
Over on the Hero Games boards, I've been in a discussion about whether FLGS's are necesary to the continued healthy of gaming as a hobby, and if puchasing from online retailers is somehow "harmful", i.e., putting these supposed gathering places out of business, and, ergo, "killing the hobby."
I tend not to agree with this sentiment (big time), and, in my perosnal experience, have never seen a FLGS have much of any community-building or introductory impact on me or the other gamers I know. Honestly, save for the supremely wonderful Games Plus (home of ENWorld Chicago Game Day, at which I make sure to spend as much money as I can), my experience with FLGS's has geenrally been fairly netural to negative. If anything has given me a sense of gaming as a "community," it's been Web sites like ENWorld.
Even though you stated your poll's only purpose is to determine how people started playing, I was given the impression from your post that you feel FLGS as a whole (aside from the Games Plus event) are a poor experience and offer little to the hobby. This is the basis of my debate with you, because I disagree.
I understand that there is overlap, but I don't see how promoting wargames and CCGs is, by extension, direct support of the RPG hobby. Sure, you're getting warm bodies into the store, but there are lots of different ways you can do that, some of which probably don't involve selling people on products that are *not* RPGs.
The reason a hobby gamer of any type is predisposed to other hobby games is all hobby games follow the general concept of a game with simulation rules and stratgic gameplay that involves an imagined setting (ironically D&D grew out of historic wargaming). Even someone who plays an MMORPG is disposed towards rpgs because the concept of playing a character isn't new to them. All of these potential customers are more likely to try role playing over say, anime, comic book, or Star Trek fans.
Actually, from everything I have heard from industry officials, more people are playing both D&D and other role playing games then ever before.
FYI, the CCG boom ended a while back. If anything, I would venture a guess that the recent resurgence has a lot to do with the release of 3e and the decline of CCGs. I have only anecdotal evidence, but I've seen a ton of posts on various fora by people who said that 3e "brought them back to the hobby." I'm one of them.
Of course, I was into Magic for a little while. It didn't make me want to role-play (other than realizing that I found RPGs a lot more fun than CCGs), and it was all money that didn't get spent on RPGs.
I never said the CCG boom hasn't ended, although for Magic this isn't the case. Though the crazed fad period passed long ago, Magic's sales are high, stable and show steady growth every year.
I just want to remind you that I never put forth the idea that the FLGS was wholly unnecessary or provided absolutely nothing to the RPG community. I was trying to see whether people felt they were "essential," particularly in the area of bringing in new players, i.e., is that how they were introduced to the hobby. The assumption that buying online is going to kill off FLGSs entirely is another assumption that's being made by everyone but me.
Now, whether what you describe does the "most to help the hobby as a whole" is something I think may be debatable.
I actually said "The stores that are fun, professional, and carry most of the major products as well as having game play space and organized events are doing the most to help the hobby as a whole." Meaning, these are the best stores not the most helpful thing overall to the hobby of rpgs. I do believe that these hobby stores when ran well and are well stocked are the best option for supporting and purchasing hobby products, but not necessarily the most important thing a game needs to succeed. An online retail equalivent would be second in my opinion, only because you lose the face to face game play for the games that thrive on it.
You claimed that if we rid the world of FLGSs (something I never advocated), there would be no printed RPGs. I'm telling you that there's no logic to this. A change in the *means* people purchase a product doesn't necessitate a change in the fundamental nature of the product.
I never said that without FLGS there would be no printed RPGS. I said the quality of the hobby games market (printed materials especially) would deteriorate. The reason why is this:
A small publisher does not have the revenue or man power to easily warehouse and distribute their products a single book at a time. Instead of dealing with hundreds or thousands of individual orders, they only deal with a handful of game and book distributors, shipping in palettes or case lots, and often shipping directly from the printer. The distributor then allows their regional accounts access to a single copy of that product, shipped along with the rest of the retailer's order. This process makes marketing, selling and distribution easy for the small publisher and keeps their operation cost WAY down.
Without the FLGS and distributors, all small publishers have for selling their products is either a) large chain book stores b) large internet book stores c) direct mail order d) online retailers. Unfortunately, most online operations handle their inventory differently then a brick and mortar store. They order when a book sells and then fill the order and ship to the customer, saving on warehousing costs. This in turn means that the first source of revenue is lost to the publisher, which is the intital preorder through distributors from brick and mortar retailers. The publisher also risks becoming lost within search engines of the web and online stores. In a FLGS a product is displayed before its patrons, and can be picked up and read by them. Online, it is all about a browser spending time searching, or stumbling across it, or finding a link from a similar product if the book isn't a top seller. Not to mention, if you don;t catch the buyer's interests immediatelty they move on. So, the small publisher likely loses a large number of additional sales.
This is where the PDF becomes a more viable business model, but as market research is showing, PDFs are a much smaller percentage of the total RPG market. The resulting marketing imformation means a company has to plan for low sales, and this directly impacts art budget, quality of writing, playtesting, graphic design, ...you name it.
This is why I said losing the FLGS would impact the printed rpg industry. Mind you, I clearly stated small publishers. I think companys with names for themsleves like WOTC and even WW would hardly be affected in these circumstances and could still do printed books. But you would lose most startup and small publishers making printed books (of any worthwhile quality) almost entirely.
Do the statistics you quote mention exposure to RPG products, or is that an extrapolation on your part? As I said above, I understand that anything that gets warm bodies into stores is a good thing, as it creates the *potential* that one of those bodies will buy an RPG product. However, I would imagine that promoting Warhammer does way more good for Warhammer than it does for RPGs.
Well, basic sales and marketing theory would support what I am saying, but I've seen it first hand over the years and have confirmed this with other retailers and manufacturers. Of course promoting Warhammer sells more Warhammer then RPGs, but a GW store gets more warm bodies in the FLGS and in turn exposed to other games, RPGS included.
Regardless... Would I be sad if Games Plus went away? Definitely. Would I stop buying printed RPGs if it did? Of course not. Do they add something to the local community? Sure. Would the local community wither and die without them? I don't know, that's part of what I'm trying to find out.
See, again, this is where your poll is more than just ..'where did you learn to play rpgs'. You say yourself, your trying to find out if the rpg hobby would die without FLGS. You then said you feel it wouldn't, and I disagree. This market would have damage done to it that couldn't be undone. You would lock out most small publishers (and the opportunity for small start ups - like WW and TSR even once was
) almost entirely. What many gamers don't realize, this has already been happening ever since first GW and then WOTC went direct with retailers. It severely affected the distributors, causing us to go from have a few dozen dristributors and about four large ones, to only a single large distributor and a dozen small ones. Many products had to adjust how they were reaching the hobby stores, and right now if it weren't for Alliance Games then many of the small publishers would likely shutdown. Without the esposure to products that FLGS provide, these niche games get lost on the web.
I can't really argue with you on this point, as I'm not a retailer and I don't have access to the data you apparently do. All I know is that, regardless of where I buy my games, the game companies still get my money, and that would seem to be the most important thing.
It does matter where you buy a product. The internet has had two effects on our economy. 1) is the centralization of power - because physical location is not as much as a barrier to sales, eventually most sales end up at the seller with the best price, easiest interface, and good service. (i.e. Amazon)2) removing middle men - more and more we are seeing direct sales occur at discounted prices. The money being discounted is what was paying the overhead of brick and mortar locations that online operations don't have.
Both of these effects result in less gross profits being generated, which then directly takes away jobs from a community and then drives people into lower paying jobs or unemployment, resulting in the need for discounted prices. Basically the Walmart effect, and its a vicious circle.
Well, you might be asking, how does this affect rpgs...it removes people working in the industry on all levels, downsizing it. The result being a smaller industry with less creativity, less employees commiting to working on or with the products, less money being generated turning into less product being ordered or taken a risk on, and in turn less innovation. Really think about this one, all the way through and you can already see its affects in other markets. So it does matter how and where you spend your money. Who and what you support is what survives. You buy online, it means that online retailers are the future business model, with less job opportunities and growth, like Walmart.
Still, I find it interesting that the results have been virutally identical on both polls, i.e., the respondents generally did not learn about RPGs from their FLGS. The posts people have made, however, seem to show that, *once they became gamers*, the FLGS (if they had one, and it was truly F) was certainly helpful.
Which again, you specifically stated in your first post that you felt FLGS were a neutral or negative experience at best. My point all along is that most rpgers got into playing through friends and then were supported by FLGS, which here in your statement your basically agreeing with me.
FWIW, I met all three of my current groups via the Web. In the case of two, some were friends and they invited me, a total stranger, to come join the group, as well as two guys who were mostly MageKnight and Battletech players. In the last, almost none of the players had ever met before.
It's been over a year since this happened, and all groups are still going strong.
That may be, but they are all established gamers. Most non-gamers do not gather to game like this. All of these players learned to game with friends and now that they are veteran gamers they are comfortable meeting new people to game with. The net result is still just shuffling of rpgers around to different groups, with some gain in the form of 2 players who were collectible miniature gamers. Once more this is supporting my point. Your 3 groups haven't created any new gamers, and the new rpgers they made they recruited from other non-rpg hobby gamers.
Okay, "leaving in droves" may have been inaccurate. However, it seems widely aknowledged that the ascendance of WW was one of the few positive things that happened with RPGs in that era, and that most gamer dollars were going to other types of games (namely CCGs). As I stated above, anecdotally, I know a lot of people who, despite being "lifers", didn't spend squat on RPGs during that time. In the wake of 3e, however, I probably sepnd about $100 a month.
There is another factor your not considering here. RPGs naturally lose return sales as their life span goes on. Take D&D for example, when a new player starts playing, they buy a Player's Handbook and the DM buys a few more items. Most products during the TSR times were almost all DM's material, and this is the main thing hurting rpg sales then because players rarely purchase these products. What WOTC has recently changed, is they are aiming their products at players as well as DMs. This is the reason most players are spending more on rpgs now.
The other factor is that once you have a rpg rule set, if you don't want to change over to a new system or game, you don't have to. So everytime a new game or edition comes out, a role playing product is likely to lose customers and have less return sales. The whole 3.0 vs. 3.5 debate is a perfect example of this. Even more so, their are over supposedly 4 million D&D players in the US and UK alone, but WOTC has only sold approx. 500,000 copies of the 3.0 PHB and my educated guess would be about 200,000 copies of the 3.5 PHB. This shows that roleplayers naturally don't have an expensive hobby. Especially when compared to CCGs, Wargames, Video games, skiing, cars, or music. All a roleplaying group really needs is a single book (and the really creative ones don't even NEED that if the whim takes them) and some dice. All of the rest of their purchases are extra and based on their own personal whims.
Earlier you stated that "most other hobby gamers don't role-play." If these are people who hang out at the FLGS every week to play tournaments, and they're around RPG products all the time, and yet they haven't shown any interest in buying any of them, why is this suddenly going to change just becasue some RPG'ers start hassling them when they're trying to play Warhammer?
Role playing games are best learned by new players hoping in and trying them with veteran players. Most players do not sit down, read the rules and then try to play on their own. Role playing is taught by being throwing in and just playing with an already established group. The reason that other gamers are not pulled into these games is because by first impressions, rpgs don't make sense till you just do it, and most RPG groups are difficult for new players to enter into. With Warhammer or Magic, a gamer can see it and go 'hey! whats that?" There is something tangible to put their head around. For D&D, its not, unless the group plays with miniatures and then it looks a bit like Warhammer or Mageknight to those not in the know. At this point a prospective player might even be given the wrong idea about what role playing is.
The main thing in the way for non roleplayers is the whole game played in your imagination. It is hard for most people to imagine a game with no boundries. I believe this is part of what caused the scare during the early days with conservative groups thinking the game was evil. Human psychology fills blank space with what it fears or assumes, and role playing is like an art pad waiting to be drawn on by the players and DM's imaginations. In fact, most roleplayers I know are typically open minded and creative in some fashion.
And isn't limiting recruitemnt efforts (boy that sounds weird) solely to the pool of people most often exposed to RPGs yet still apparently uninterested kind of self-defeating? Isn't it more useful to try and reach out to people who may not even know about these products, yet could possibly be interested? Wouldn't the hobby be better served by hosting RPG events that might attract people who are potentially interested in RPGs, but maybe not interested in more "juvenile" hobbies like clicky-toy games and trading cards?
Look, not really. Hobby gamers are ideal targets for becoming new roleplayers. I am willing to bet, if you went to a game store and asked the die hard non-rpg gamers if they ever tried roleplaying, most would say no and those who said yes had a bad first time experience (though they may not realize it).
These players are much easier to offer a good experience to and then build off their friends, instead of trying to get someone who doesn't even like the idea of sitting down, pretending to be someone else and then playing a game as that person for 6 hours (minimum) every week.
But these only matteron how you are defining useful. Useful to me equals increasing the player base as effectively as possible to generate more sales and keep the creative people who make this cool stuff in their jobs. You sound more like your trying to win over nongamers into rpging, which is likely to be counter productive and a waste of time. If they wanted to game, they would be in some form. So look at the similar markets first. Your never going to make hobby games mainstream, the closest it gets to that is video games. This is because of the very nature of hobby gaming (due to its depth of play and commitment these games require of its particpants).
This has all gotten way off-topic. I'm not advocating the elimination of FLGSs, print RPGs, or face-to-face contact. It seems obvious that a *good* FLGS is a wholly positive thing *for people who are already gamers*. It also seems obvious to me that online retailers that let me buy RPGs at big discounts and helpful online communities like ENWorld are also wholly positive things. I don't necessarily think that they preclude or interfere with each other's existince. If anything, I think that they're complimentary.
Hobby gaming is a small enough market, that it does matter. Their are really no volume sales (like groceries) where you can make a ton of money off of selling high volumes with little profit margin. The closest thing would be magic boxes, and still there are limits to how many boxes you can sell. Likewise, you can only sell so many of a new D&D book. On top of that, gaming products aren't the type of thing if you place cheap enough you will get a new player. This is because this industry is small, and it has many barriers of entry for new customers to join. Non-gamers that corss over are rareand diffcult to find. Covert established gamers into rpging first and then let them recruit the one or two nongamers who are their friends.
Ironically, Warhammer (and GWs other games) have the fewest barriers of entry (compared to rpgs and CCGs) and GW has the healthiest annual growth (almost 30%), and the highest mainstream (non-fad) acceptability - FYI. GW is the most profitable, long standing model for hobby game manufacturers in the world with consistantly, steady sales and most of their products are succesfully marketed, launched, and sold compared to all other game companies, including WOTC. Even their iconic image, the Space Marine from WH40k, is probably the most recognized character exclusively created within the hobby game industry. Almost every gamer can indentify it, and knows who Games Workshop is.
Just thought you might find that interesting.
Nate
