Interesting Ryan Dancey comment on "lite" RPGs

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

You have to keep in mind that how this information is gathered is sample polling rather than complete polling.

Egads - you mean they did it the same way every other poll in the history of statistics has every been done? Say it ain't so!!!!

 

[Turjan]

As far as I know, the only sources that claim that WotC has a marketshare of over 50% come from . . . WotC. The estimates I trust normally put them in the 45-50% range.

As I said, Charles Ryan himself added a caveat to this number and expected real numbers to be somewhat lower . The other accessible estimates come from - self-polled - game shop owners. The point is that D&D sells at least half of its game books outside of the traditional gaming outlets, and those don't contribute to any of the other statistics. Go to amazon and look at which books of which companies you find there (and their sales ranks) in order to get an idea what this means. Many smaller game companies have no access whatsoever to amazon or Borders sales systems. Even a company like Green Ronin got basically kicked out of that system by their recent distributor problems. That's why I assume D&D's market share to be considerably higher than estimated on basis of the game shop statistics.

 

[Steve Conan Trustrum]

Egads - you mean they did it the same way every other poll in the history of statistics has every been done? Say it ain't so!!!!

You'd have a good point if that was true. I've conducted full demographic polling before where EVERY person in the target group was not only surveyed but responded. Not with large demographics, to be certain, but such polls do indeed exist. And, you know, you also kinda glossed over the many other issues in my post to erroneously target this ...

But you did illustrate my point for me very nicely: what Average Joe thinks he knows about market research often has little to do with how things actually work.

 

[Steve Conan Trustrum]

As I said, Charles Ryan himself added a caveat to this number and expected real numbers to be somewhat lower . The other accessible estimates come from - self-polled - game shop owners. The point is that D&D sells at least half of its game books outside of the traditional gaming outlets, and those don't contribute to any of the other statistics. Go to amazon and look at which books of which companies you find there (and their sales ranks) in order to get an idea what this means. Many smaller game companies have no access whatsoever to amazon or Borders sales systems. Even a company like Green Ronin got basically kicked out of that system by their recent distributor problems. That's why I assume D&D's market share to be considerably higher than estimated on basis of the game shop statistics.

It's also important to keep in mind that "market share" does not necessarily equal "popularity" or "most played." The market share only represents first sales and doesn't account for resales, dumping unwanted product in the bargain bin at your FLGS, trading for a more desired product, or simply leaving the book on a shelf, never to be played. Far too many people look at sales figures and jump to the conclusion that this also means everyone LOVES the product. While a safe conclusion to make, generally, it isn't always true.

 

[The Shaman]

I'm well aware of the limitations on the sales and market data and of Dancey's study of 2e gamers - we covered this many pages ago, but it certainly bears repeating, especially when it's done as throughly and eloquently as it is here.

That said, the reason I wanted to know about market share is in reference to a quote from an article about five years ago that says a marketing study conducted on behalf of WotC at that time "shows that D&D commands 60 percent of the table-based RPG market."

Comparing the figures quoted in that article with the figures reported by Charles Ryan (with his caveat considered), it means that after five years D&D still makes up about two-thirds of the market. That's certainly market dominance, but it also casts sales figures reported elsewhere in this thread in an interesting light - WotC's moving lots of product to be sure, but the overall proportion of the market hasn't changed tremendously, which suggests that the market is growing (which is no surprise) but that D&D's niche is relatively fixed.

 

[WizarDru]

EDIT: It's also worth nothing that you cannot make ANY accurate, statistical conclusions from qualitative research, such as Ryan conducted with the stop wathes. Why? Because you can't draw statistics from non-standardized surveying.

It's also worth noting we have no idea what testing was and was not done, unless something's changed since this thread went dormant. Let's keep in mind, this was an off-hand comment on a discussion thread in someone's blog...not a press release or testimonial. Dancey was tossing out a personal observation. Charles Ryan tossed out the researched figure mentioned earlier, and while it's easy to discount that data, it's more than any other gaming company can lay claim to (for the handful of gaming companies that can even seriously consider spending the money FOR such a poll).

Since the default assumption seems to be that any research that WotC has done is both faulty and poorly done, I'm not sure I really see any reason for them to even bother revealing what data they do have.

Comparing the figures quoted in that article with the figures reported by Charles Ryan (with his caveat considered), it means that after five years D&D still makes up about two-thirds of the market. That's certainly market dominance, but it also casts sales figures reported elsewhere in this thread in an interesting light - WotC's moving lots of product to be sure, but the overall proportion of the market hasn't changed tremendously, which suggests that the market is growing (which is no surprise) but that D&D's niche is relatively fixed.

What if WotC is maintaining a consistent market share across a growing market? That is to say, during 2e they had 60% of the market of 2 million gamers, while today they hold 60% of 4 million gamers (Surgeon General's Warning: Numbers Pulled out of Nether Regions and have no basis in reality; attempting to use said numbers for anything other than a silly example have been shown to lead to....ummm.....bad stuff. yeah. Bad stuff.)...is that growth or not?

For that matter, it's kind of hard to identify that sort of thing, if no one's been watching the trend. If Wotc was responsible for 90% of the RPG sales in 2001, due to the popularlity of the second printing of the PHB and continued return of players to 3.0...that certainly doesn't translate for 2002, when those books were no longer needed in such volumes. Especially after costs rose from $19.99 and when people started dropping back out of D&D in the ensuing years.

And really, I don't consider D&D to be the Niche....everybody else is the Niche.

 

[Turjan]

It's also important to keep in mind that "market share" does not necessarily equal "popularity" or "most played." The market share only represents first sales and doesn't account for resales, dumping unwanted product in the bargain bin at your FLGS, trading for a more desired product, or simply leaving the book on a shelf, never to be played. Far too many people look at sales figures and jump to the conclusion that this also means everyone LOVES the product. While a safe conclusion to make, generally, it isn't always true.

Though your points are correct, they only become relevant if these aspects differ for different RPGs. Are there any hints that this is the case?

Even if you think these points are relevant, the result would probably be in favour for D&D. As it's easier to find players for D&D than for any other game, it most probably sees more play per sold copy than others. At least I know that this is true for my gaming library. I have no problem in finding players for D&D, but 'Dying Earth'?

 

[The Shaman]

What if WotC is maintaining a consistent market share across a growing market?

That's what I think is happening, based on those figures.

That is to say, during 2e they had 60% of the market of 2 million gamers, while today they hold 60% of 4 million gamers (Surgeon General's Warning: Numbers Pulled out of Nether Regions and have no basis in reality...)

Not a bad guess, though - the article from 2000 said 1.5 million gamers in the U.S.

For that matter, it's kind of hard to identify that sort of thing, if no one's been watching the trend.

Often business plans are written with a five-year goal, so the fluctuations during the intervening years get smoothed out and it become easier to evaluate the oveall results of the effort.

A 10% or 15% gain in market share isn't negligible, by any means, but is that what was projected by WotC when 3.0 was introduced? To me it seems that the hype is disproportionate to the actual results.

 

[Steve Conan Trustrum]

It's also worth noting we have no idea what testing was and was not done, unless something's changed since this thread went dormant. Let's keep in mind, this was an off-hand comment on a discussion thread in someone's blog...not a press release or testimonial. Dancey was tossing out a personal observation.

He was tossing out a personal observation from the role of someone who was there in the first place in the capacity of someone who was meant to draw a conclusion about the research that would then influence the product line. By the facts of his former position with WotC and the fact that he was there at the research, it was not just his personal observation. It was his professional observation.

Since the default assumption seems to be that any research that WotC has done is both faulty and poorly done, I'm not sure I really see any reason for them to even bother revealing what data they do have.

I don't have to see the actual data. If we take Ryan at his word that this is how the study was conducted, any researcher worth his pay can see there are faults with the methodology. And yes, with WotC's previous press releases concerning their market research they did indeed reveal how the information was gathered and that methodology was also faulty for the conclusions they drew from it. I'm not saying ALL the research WotC has done is faulty, what I'm saying is that the instance Ryan discussed is about as worthwhile, from a researcher's perspective, as paying people to play rules heavy games and telling people who play rules lite games that you'll beat them and then claiming rules heavy is better because more people in the group wanted to play such games. The research, even just looking at what little Ryan revealed of it, isn't sufficient to the conclusions he made about what he saw. The same can also be said of their well-known survey results. Again, the data collected wasn't sufficient to make the conclusions they presented valid.

And taking this comment aside for a moment ...

Charles Ryan tossed out the researched figure mentioned earlier, and while it's easy to discount that data, it's more than any other gaming company can lay claim to (for the handful of gaming companies that can even seriously consider spending the money FOR such a poll).

The ability to spend money on research doesn't mean the results are accurate or the research was conducted properly. I've worked with some companies a lot larger than WotC (a few that are larger than Hasbro) and their "well planned" research projects were a joke. Everyone not involved in the process not working for the client knew it, but the client wouldn't hear anything else. So, saying WotC being able to spend money on research is "more than any other gaming company can lay claim to" doesn't say anything about their data, just their bottom line. In fact, in some instances I think people would be more than a little frightened if they learned how much some companies spend on researching the silliest of things only to not do the research properly in the first place because the client, who may know all there is to know about their product, won't listen to people who know more about market research than they.

 

[Steve Conan Trustrum]

Though your points are correct, they only become relevant if these aspects differ for different RPGs. Are there any hints that this is the case?

Even if you think these points are relevant, the result would probably be in favour for D&D. As it's easier to find players for D&D than for any other game, it most probably sees more play per sold copy than others. At least I know that this is true for my gaming library. I have no problem in finding players for D&D, but 'Dying Earth'?

DnD is such an extraordinary monster in the industry that what proves true for it very possibly doesn't prove true for many (or even most) other products.

DnD benefits from the fact that, aside from having the most money behind it, it is fun (in my opinion) and has the best brand recognition going. People that have never even seen a rpg product know what Dungeons and Dragons is. The same cannot be said for just about every other product there. Of course, when it comes to conducting market research and analysis based on anything other than hard sales data this can lead to problems because so many people say "Dungeons and Dragons" when referring to rpgs in general.