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Worlds of Design: Eight Awful Truths About RPG Marketing
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<blockquote data-quote="Rygar" data-source="post: 7765558" data-attributes="member: 6756765"><p>Some counterpoints...</p><p></p><p>"<strong><span style="color: #3e3e3e">Book industry overall sales are stagnant</span></strong><p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: #3e3e3e"><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'"> despite the explosion of titles published, and despite the growth of e-book sales."</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: #3e3e3e"><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'"></span></span></p> <p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: #3e3e3e"><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'">Um, e-book sales haven't been growing for a long time...</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: #3e3e3e"><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'"><a href="https://goodereader.com/blog/digital-publishing/ebook-sales-fall-4-8-in-the-first-six-months-of-2018" target="_blank">https://goodereader.com/blog/digital-publishing/ebook-sales-fall-4-8-in-the-first-six-months-of-2018</a></span></span></p> <p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: #3e3e3e"><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'"><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamrowe1/2018/04/29/traditional-publishing-ebook-sales-dropped-10-in-2017/#1ed4801f7943" target="_blank">https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamrowe1/2018/04/29/traditional-publishing-ebook-sales-dropped-10-in-2017/#1ed4801f7943</a></span></span></p> <p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: #3e3e3e"><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'"></span></span></p> <p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: #3e3e3e"><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'">That's why I keep asserting that WOTC's business strategy is foolish at best. Basing Dungeon and Dragon, the two things best positioned to keep customers engaged and grow the consumer base by catering to the (very large) portion of the market that doesn't have time to homebrew on a platform that's stagnant at best is a terrible business strategy.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: #3e3e3e"><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'"></span></span></p><p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: #3e3e3e"><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'"><span style="color: #3e3e3e"><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'">"<strong>Average individual book (RPG) sales are shockingly small and falling fast</strong>"</span></span></p></p> <p style="text-align: left"></span></span></p><p>Most of them are on a stagnant distribution platform (Ebooks) so of course that's going to happen. Most of the market isn't interested in Ebooks, so when you're producing something only perhaps 20% of the overall potential customer base is interested in, you only sell to 20% of the customer base. This is especially bad for RPGs since they're a critical mass product, if my 5 friends won't touch ebooks, but I will, I can buy a novel and their preference doesn't matter. With an RPG, it does matter, if they won't touch it then there's no point for me to buy it. The fewer people that buy it, the fewer people that will buy it since they know there'll be no content post-release. It's a brutal circle.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: #3e3e3e"><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'">"<strong> A book (RPG) has far less than a 1% chance of being stocked in average bookstore</strong></span></span>"</p> <p style="text-align: left"></p><p>What bookstores? The U.S. has only one left, Barnes and Noble. Everyone else is gone.</p><p></p><p>"<strong><span style="color: #3e3e3e">It is getting harder and harder every year to sell books</span></strong>"</p><p>This section needs *a lot* more detail. It needs to discuss the reported downturns in Magic the Gathering attendance, the skyrocketing price of participation in Mtg, the politicization of the Mtg environment (And LGS environment), WOTC's recent shift from supporting game stores to supporting Amazon and the extremely odd rationale being given for it, and do some investigation into whether or not WOTC is hiding customer attrition by increasing the per customer spend rate to make it look like they're flat or growing.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: left">"<span style="color: #3e3e3e"><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'">No other industry than books has so many new product introductions</span></span>"</p> <p style="text-align: left"></p><p>This paragraph needs much better research. Video games have an order of magnitude more releases, only a very small percentage are free to play, and those are almost exclusively limited to mobile platforms which a fair portion of the Industry and Hobby don't count as video gaming. Look at the backlash to Diablo Immortal, pretty much the whole hobby looked at it and declared it wasn't a game.</p><p></p><p>"<strong><span style="color: #3e3e3e">A never-ending state of turmoil</span></strong>"</p><p>This is true, but we need to put the blame where it belongs. The root cause of all of this is WOTC and the behaviors I've listed above, the secondary cause is the politicization of the Hobby and the LGS. You cannot turn many of the product lines, the gathering places, the online forums, the conventions, and most other facets of the Hobby into political war zones and then wonder why the Industry is toppling. That's the kind of dividing the customer base that killed 4th edition D&D and it's ramping up quickly now throughout tabletop gaming.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Rygar, post: 7765558, member: 6756765"] Some counterpoints... "[B][COLOR=#3e3e3e]Book industry overall sales are stagnant[/COLOR][/B][LEFT][COLOR=#3e3e3e][FONT=Tahoma] despite the explosion of titles published, and despite the growth of e-book sales." Um, e-book sales haven't been growing for a long time... [URL]https://goodereader.com/blog/digital-publishing/ebook-sales-fall-4-8-in-the-first-six-months-of-2018[/URL] [URL]https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamrowe1/2018/04/29/traditional-publishing-ebook-sales-dropped-10-in-2017/#1ed4801f7943[/URL] That's why I keep asserting that WOTC's business strategy is foolish at best. Basing Dungeon and Dragon, the two things best positioned to keep customers engaged and grow the consumer base by catering to the (very large) portion of the market that doesn't have time to homebrew on a platform that's stagnant at best is a terrible business strategy. [LEFT][COLOR=#3e3e3e][FONT=Tahoma]"[B]Average individual book (RPG) sales are shockingly small and falling fast[/B]"[/FONT][/COLOR][/LEFT] [/FONT][/COLOR][/LEFT] Most of them are on a stagnant distribution platform (Ebooks) so of course that's going to happen. Most of the market isn't interested in Ebooks, so when you're producing something only perhaps 20% of the overall potential customer base is interested in, you only sell to 20% of the customer base. This is especially bad for RPGs since they're a critical mass product, if my 5 friends won't touch ebooks, but I will, I can buy a novel and their preference doesn't matter. With an RPG, it does matter, if they won't touch it then there's no point for me to buy it. The fewer people that buy it, the fewer people that will buy it since they know there'll be no content post-release. It's a brutal circle. [LEFT][COLOR=#3e3e3e][FONT=Tahoma]"[B] A book (RPG) has far less than a 1% chance of being stocked in average bookstore[/B][/FONT][/COLOR]" [/LEFT] What bookstores? The U.S. has only one left, Barnes and Noble. Everyone else is gone. "[B][COLOR=#3e3e3e]It is getting harder and harder every year to sell books[/COLOR][/B]" This section needs *a lot* more detail. It needs to discuss the reported downturns in Magic the Gathering attendance, the skyrocketing price of participation in Mtg, the politicization of the Mtg environment (And LGS environment), WOTC's recent shift from supporting game stores to supporting Amazon and the extremely odd rationale being given for it, and do some investigation into whether or not WOTC is hiding customer attrition by increasing the per customer spend rate to make it look like they're flat or growing. [LEFT]"[COLOR=#3e3e3e][FONT=Tahoma]No other industry than books has so many new product introductions[/FONT][/COLOR]" [/LEFT] This paragraph needs much better research. Video games have an order of magnitude more releases, only a very small percentage are free to play, and those are almost exclusively limited to mobile platforms which a fair portion of the Industry and Hobby don't count as video gaming. Look at the backlash to Diablo Immortal, pretty much the whole hobby looked at it and declared it wasn't a game. "[B][COLOR=#3e3e3e]A never-ending state of turmoil[/COLOR][/B]" This is true, but we need to put the blame where it belongs. The root cause of all of this is WOTC and the behaviors I've listed above, the secondary cause is the politicization of the Hobby and the LGS. You cannot turn many of the product lines, the gathering places, the online forums, the conventions, and most other facets of the Hobby into political war zones and then wonder why the Industry is toppling. That's the kind of dividing the customer base that killed 4th edition D&D and it's ramping up quickly now throughout tabletop gaming. [/QUOTE]
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