Are Game Lines Smaller Today?

[Hex08]

The trend you are noticing is real, and is not specific to gaming. Kids books, for example, also saw a huge shift from pulp printing of multiple lines to a few major lines. Specifically: multiple high-book-count series like Goosebumps, Baby Sitters Club, Animorphs, etc, all went down, and the industry circled the wagons around huge brands like Harry Potter. It's a shift across lots of genres.

Broadly, it's a shift across multiple mediums as well. You can read about the same trend in movies; there are less "mid budget" movies now, with studios putting out either high budget blockbusters or indie and/or Oscar stuff on the lower budget side. The video game market also has less stratification; you have really big AAA games and lots and lots of small indie publishers, with less in between.

You can find research into this independently for each of the mediums I mentioned above. At a broad level, I blame technology and the internet. Generally speaking, a lower barrier to entry in these markets leads to centralization of product lines. The large industry leaders maximize profit on high quantity products by both dominating distribution and optimizing economy of scale. Meanwhile, a low cost of entry and high number of "hobbyists" lead to a larger number of independents left to scrape up what's left of the market. The end result is what you describe.

Not to derail the thread, but I think a big cause of what you are describing in media, RPGs aside, is the consolidation of media companies. Fewer book publishers, movie studios and other production houses means fewer points of entry for new talent and more reliance on products that sell well and an over reliance on existing IP.

 

[bloodtide]

Man, those were the days! A large portion of my collection comes from the '90s. It was a wonderful time for content.

And Cheep!

A lot of books were in the $9-$12 range, and that was the SMP. You could find them on sale easy enough. Bookstores either had sales or coupons where you could get like 20% off. And if you were a member of the book club, you could even get another 20% off. I remember stacking those percents up to 40% off from lots of bookstores that have gone out of business (humm....)

Not to derail the thread, but I think a big cause of what you are describing in media, RPGs aside, is the consolidation of media companies. Fewer book publishers, movie studios and other production houses means fewer points of entry for new talent and more reliance on products that sell well and an over reliance on existing IP.

Even in the 90's a lot of the higher up suit folks in companies did not really care about RPGs at all. So when someone said "hey can we make an RPG out of your IP?" the answer was "sure, whatever, we don't care".

Really, even the idea that anyone would like an "IP" was not even much of a thing in the 90s. The wacky idea was that people would be fans of something only for a couple years and then delete it from their memory. And no adult wanted any IP based on "toys".

 

[The Soloist]

The industry went from all you can eat buffet cornucopia, to 5 course meals with wait time between service, for each RPG.

 

[Scribe]

I was told it's a porn site. Not a huge fan of porn.

Lol it's not. At least not that I've seen. I just search for Shadowdark or cy_borg, and no issues.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Broadly I think that the difference between the current market and the 90s market is that while TTRPG is bigger now, there's more games too. DND is still the heavyweight, even though its taken hits lately, and they had some success with a slower production schedule (although personally, they over did it.) Outside of that company making it's specific decisions, I think the 'problem' is that people who play other games are more culturally inclined to play different games. I think for those users lifestyle games like WoD are less appealing, and there's a board-game collector mindset for some games-- and of course there's a movement who see's supplements as a red flag.

THAT SAID, there's exceptions, my Paizo shipments for the Setting-and-Character-Options and Rulebook releases come every few months, and that's without my buying adventures which are even more frequent, that's still an extensive lifestyle game and it's doing quite well.

The WoD ecosystem still kind of exists with your assorted WoD5 games and the Onyx Path ecosystem which has been gradually bifurcating from Paradox IP-- Curseborne met it's goal several times over and is promising supplements for each of the lineages in the core book.

The OSR ecosystem is a bit like this too, but in a decentralized way-- there's a lot of content that is essentially support for a bunch of very similar systems that are semi-interoperable, if I'm not mistaken.

 

[aramis erak]

Inspired by the threads What Does a "Successful" RPG Look Like and Jason Carl on White Wolf's Return, Mage: The Ascension Plans, @Ruin Explorer got me to thinking.



Just looking back and the sheer number of books published for various games in the 80s, 90s, and into the 2000s, my perception is that fewer books are published these days. My working theory has been many splatbooks published in the 1990s were designed more to be read as one might enjoy a novel rather than actually be used in a game. While I still think that's true to an extent, there were a lot of splatbooks for some game lines prior to the rise of the metaplot in the 1990s. It's also a bit surprising to look back and see how quickly a new edition of a game might come out. The 1st edition of Vampire was published in 1991, 2nd edition in 1992, and a revised edition in 1998. Legend of the Five Rings published its first edition in 1997 and it's second in 2000.

Is my perception off? Are fewer books being published for RPGs across the board? Fantasy Flight Games is no slouch, having published about 50 Star Wars books/adventures since 2016. That's the biggest number I can think of outside of D&D. I think D&D 5th edition only has like 48 books for it. If my perception is correct and there are overall fewer books published for any given game line, why?

There are more products industry-wide, but from more publishers and in more lines... fewer to go around.

D&D, it was an explicit choice of the designers to limit to two-to-three books a year, and let the minor content be 3rd party. So, for D&D, hell yeah, much less 1st party stuff.

Traveller seems to be running half to 1/3 the rate GDW did, but they're writing twice as many pages and those pages are twice the size with 50% larger type, so about 2 2/3 the content... and with more art. (I won't say better art; I prefer the MegaTraveller art to Mongoose across the board) So, in content count, it's not much slower, but it is in product count.

Star Trek Adventures has a lot of content, it feels about the same pace FASA had... but more than LUG got out the door. And way more than Decipher put out the door. D-Trek was 8 or 9 books... two of which were only in PDF.

 

[Umbran]

Is my perception off? Are fewer books being published for RPGs across the board?

So, there are two questions:
1) Are there fewer physical game books, overall?
2) Are game lines smaller?

As we have seen in the replies, these are not the same question.

I think that, in general, yes, game lines are smaller. I don't know if there are fewer overall books, though. As has been noted - there are many small lines these days, especially if you include kickstarters, which may not show up on your bookstore shelves.

Back in the day, D&D, WoD, Shadowrun, Gurps, even Classic Deadlands - are examples where there seemed a drive to "fully explore" what the game might represent. I think playstyles have changed, though, such that this is no longer necessary or a road to financial stability.

 

[Micah Sweet]

There are more products industry-wide, but from more publishers and in more lines... fewer to go around.

D&D, it was an explicit choice of the designers to limit to two-to-three books a year, and let the minor content be 3rd party. So, for D&D, hell yeah, much less 1st party stuff.

Traveller seems to be running half to 1/3 the rate GDW did, but they're writing twice as many pages and those pages are twice the size with 50% larger type, so about 2 2/3 the content... and with more art. (I won't say better art; I prefer the MegaTraveller art to Mongoose across the board) So, in content count, it's not much slower, but it is in product count.

Star Trek Adventures has a lot of content, it feels about the same pace FASA had... but more than LUG got out the door. And way more than Decipher put out the door. D-Trek was 8 or 9 books... two of which were only in PDF.

Gotta love STA for content. One of these days I swear I'm going to play that game.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So, there are two questions:
1) Are there fewer physical game books, overall?
2) Are game lines smaller?

As we have seen in the replies, these are not the same question.

I think that, in general, yes, game lines are smaller. I don't know if there are fewer overall books, though. As has been noted - there are many small lines these days, especially if you include kickstarters, which may not show up on your bookstore shelves.

Back in the day, D&D, WoD, Shadowrun, Gurps, even Classic Deadlands - are examples where there seemed a drive to "fully explore" what the game might represent. I think playstyles have changed, though, such that this is no longer necessary or a road to financial stability.

Maybe, but it was very cool, and I miss it.