Anti-GMS: Computer Games on the Wane, RPG sales up.

[MerricB]

We've had a lot of discussion recently about the potentially poor state of the RPG market. However, here's another interesting statement from the ICV2 survey:

"This summer every hobby game category experienced at least some growth over the previous year according to the market report in Internal Correspondence #73. Meanwhile sales of video games were down 8% in the first seven months of 2010." - ICv2 source

Same survey... so are RPGs actually now having a recovery?

Cheers!

 

[Aus_Snow]

Does that take into account Steam, etc.?

Likewise, Amazon and the like, in either case?

If not. . . well, PC games have been said to be dying for quite some yaers now. But they're not. Not precisely the same thing, I know, but it just goes to show. Well, assuming they haven't included that stuff. . .

Also, regarding that last lot (the RPG top 5) - what the hell has happened with White Wolf?! :\

edit: Anyway, regardless, glad to hear that RPGs - apparently! - are doing well in sales, in general. That's always good news.

 

[MerricB]

Also on Q3, 2010:

"ales of comics and graphic novels were down a combined 12% for the quarter. Comic sales were down 14% and graphic novel sales down 6%. This is the largest year over year quarterly decline we’ve seen since we started tracking these numbers in 2004." - ICv2 source

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

Also, regarding that last lot (the RPG top 5) - what the hell has happened with White Wolf?! :

White Wolf merged with CCP (EVE Online) in 2006, and are now a legacy imprint for the most part. To quote Ryan Dancey, CCP Chief Marketing Manager:

"It's just an imprint... White Wolf used to have a fairly large staff. It doesn't anymore. It's focusing primarily on the World of Darkness RPG products. It's not doing some of the things it used to do; board games and other card games and things. The focus of the company [CCP] is on making MMOs and our legacy table top business is a legacy business."

Cheers!

 

[Aus_Snow]

Sure.

I was referring to their position (apparently) no longer being #2. In fact, not #3, #4 or even #5. Yikes!

But then, that might or might not be the case, and if it is, who knows for how long that's been so. Guess I haven't been keeping up with such stuff for a while. . .

 

[MerricB]

I do wonder how much White Wolf's success with Vampire was part of their time... unusually, although Vampire fiction is incredibly popular at present, it is (mostly) a long way from the books of Anne Rice, with far more optimistic takes such as Twilight.

True Blood and the Anita Blake books have vampires integrating into normal society (and the problems that arise from that)... Vampire Diaries is teenage romance.

Cheers!

 

[vagabundo]

Did you know that DND sales were up 400% for the year ending 1980? If these trends continues... AAY!!

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

With numbers like that, I expect the eventual downfall of the video-gaming industry in the next few years.

Mark my words, in 20 years, we will all be reading books and tell our kids story of that crazy world where people stared at glowing screens and pushed around a piece of plastic and considered that a "hobby".

 

[Mercurius]

These things fluctuate; a single year to year trend usually doesn't mean much, but rather trends over longer periods of time have more weight. D&D, at least, seems to go through an edition-based cycle of a big spike in sales and popularity, a decline to a lower plateau, and then a gradually declining plateau until the system is rebooted again.

As for White Wolf, I am not positive but I think their print books have dropped off rather precipitously and that they mainly do PDFs now. They're in a bit of a rut because it would be too soon to release a "Newer World of Darkness" (NWoD came out only six year ago) and the line as a whole might not have the umph anymore to reboot successfully anyhow. Maybe it is just "so 90s."

AFAIK, Exalted has been their bread-earner over the last decade, but its popularity has waned as well, at least if RPG.Net Open Forum posts are any indication . I don't play Exalted, but from what I understand the 2ed was a bit of a clunker and may not have been as successful as they hoped. I think Exalted still has some life in it, but it may need a system re-vamping.

 

[nedjer]

I'm not anti-GMS in that he's never given me any grief and he's entitled to post his views. If there's a marketing element to them, I don't have problem with the way he goes about that.

However, while I agree with some of the points he makes about moving to a wider range of media and different forms of monetisation, the death of RPGs seems fairly unlikely.

TRPGs have a whole lot to offer kids, families, people with relatively little money, gamers looking to develop micropayments, gamers who've played COD 7 and HADDOCK 9 headshot games until they're sick of them. Tap into a tiny portion of those groups and it'll be one healthy hobby.