Decline of RPG sales

[SBMC]

I completely agree. It's like when you watch the evening news and instead of getting a fair, balanced report you instead get an angle that demonstrates the station's political affiliation.

Of course, this may just be because I'm in Texas.

It ain't! I am in Massachusetts; same thing holds true (though most likely on the other side of the political fence I would think).

It's no wonder Yahoo News and the AP website get so much traffic...

 

[Vocenoctum]

I completely agree. It's like when you watch the evening news and instead of getting a fair, balanced report you instead get an angle that demonstrates the station's political affiliation.

Of course, this may just be because I'm in Texas.

I'm in Florida, so we get equal parts bias, making the news often unfathomable and usually useless. The news has long since gone to creating stories, rather than reporting details.

I always wonder why publishers don't give more details, at least the mid sized ones. I can see not wanting to get into how much money someone makes (thus leaving information on single man operations out of the mix), but it seems odd to me that we don't get more percentages of sales here and there and... that stuff.

But, you know what? These threads really are meaningless. Whether a publisher says the hobby is doing good or bad, all we need to know is how it affects the products and the quality. It'd be handy to know more, and I think more explanations on how/why shifts occur would help people reconcile the missed product, but it's not really important as long as the books are good.

 

[buzz]

It is then fair to ask the same of Mr. Ryan, who because of his position, does have the ability to "prove" his statement. That he does not offer to backup "best year ever" with hard data is neither crime nor fault but it does render his statement unproven, unless by his mere position one must believe anything and everything he says, which would make for very short and much fewer threads.

Ryan has offered what data he can (here or possibly another thread on this same subject I was reading; we were jsut hashing thsi all out on RPG.net a couple of weeks ago). The isssue is that apparently we're not supposed to believe anything he has to say.

 

[BryonD]

Ryan has offered what data he can (here or possibly another thread on this same subject I was reading; we were jsut hashing thsi all out on RPG.net a couple of weeks ago). The isssue is that apparently we're not supposed to believe anything he has to say.

We are supposed to remember that it is PR spin. Which is then instantly inferred by some to imply that it is flatly false. That is where it gets out of whack.

It is easy to understand that WotC will put a best face on their data.
But a reasonable observer who pays attention to what they have said would fairly conclude that they are NOT suffering.
I can easily assume that "best ever" comments are PR and still conclude that this is far closer to the truth than the doom and gloomers insist we must believe.

If a publisher tells me that THEY are having a hard time, then I'll believe them. But I won't confuse their internal issues with the industry, regardless of how much they may wish there was no such distinction.

On top of that, the distribution issue has been mentioned several times now. Well, if that really is such a big deal (clearly it is) then that further implies that the hard times felt by some publishers are not fully related to market demand. If a WotC or Mongoose can avoid this issue (perhaps they are even benefiting) then they have a leg up.

It really is easy to find a middle ground.
It is less easy to convince some to let go of the all or nothing POV (or perhaps I should call it a nothing or nothing POV).

 

[Henry]

GVDammerung, Merric: I appreciate Merric opening the fence-mending dialogue; but I heavily suggest that if it gets any more heated you might be better taking it to e-mail instead of this thread.

The posts have gotten out of hand in the civility department, and I've seen some rather nasty insults on character. I'd like it to stop.

This thread seems to be going back and forth between "Charles Ryan is a spinmeister; don't believe him" and "He's trustworthy" and everywhere in between. If it doesn't have anywhere but down to go, I'm going to close it tomorrow morning.

 

[SteveC]

Originally posted by me:
Fourth, consider what you’re releasing and whether or not you actually can afford to do it. Will it sell? I mean REALLY will it sell. Your brand new book on poisons and herbs isn’t going to sell, no matter how cool it’s going to look or who the art is by. Consider what the market is asking for and give it to them. As an example, there is no D20 Exalted. Get someone who knows D20 and also knows crazy kung-fu movies (these don’t have to be the same person) and file the serial numbers off of WW’s product and you have something that will sell. A LOT. Make a game of tactical combat along the lines of a first person shooter or team “recon” game. If you make it with high production values: maps! Counters! Minis!...and have something with decent rules, it will sell! A lot.

In other words - follow the market, don't try to lead the market? See what else is selling and do your version of it? This is my pet peeve - derivative or predictable products that duplicate rather than innovate. A company is far more likely to get my gaming dollar if they show me something I have never or only rarely seen before. Another book on, e.g., the sea, new/variant races, old products updated to the latest rules, the Forgotten Realms (again!) etc. will not find space on my bookshelf. I know others live for this stuff and I know this "conservatism" is not wholly responsible for any market doldrums but, at least for me, it is big.

I think you entirely missing my point. "another book on e.g., the sea, new/variant races, old products updated to the latest rules, the Forgotten Realms (again!)" is exactly what I'm suggesting a publisher not do. Determining what the market wants and doesn't currently have is what I'm suggesting. Sometimes that will mean taking something very successful and adapting it to your own world (as in my Exalted example) and other times it means doing something that no one has done yet (the example of taking a FPS/tactical combat game and turning it into a roleplaying game with top-notch components). You have to be very careful when you do something truly innovative that no one has ever seen before, because if there isn't a market for the product, you have to create it. You and I might enjoy some very innovative and creative stuff, but that doesn't mean that product will sell on any real level. If you're a name people have heard of before gamers will try something new because of the association with your name. 99% of all game companies aren't run by those kind of people.

So what I am suggesting here is that a game company should read what the market is looking for, doesn't have in abundance at the moment, and give it to them...that's just basic sound business practices. The really good writers in the industry do just that.

Big players in the industry can create the buzz that will sell a product, but they aren't the companies that are saying the market is shrinking. That product that you've never/seldom seen before better have a built in market, or it will likely fail. Without real advertising, relying on RPG net and ENWorld won't likely create a buzz that sells a product on any real scale. And that's what's ultimately being discussed in this thread: if you can't sell your product on a mid to large scale, you're going to be hurting, and the hurt will keep getting worse.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

One factor that hasn't really been discussed is the "First Entrant/First Mover" factor.

That is, the single most accurate predictor of success of a given product or service is whether it is first in the market. Its not universally true- first movers can make mistakes just like anyone else- but it is a common factor with more successful companies than any other.

Part of this is because the first mover gets a head start over any potential competition. They are first in the consumers' minds (name brand recognition). They are the benchmark by which all others are measured in terms of quality. They get the first stab at grabbing market share.

Here, as much as any other product, as much as any other RPG, D&D is the first mover. Sure, its flavor has changed somwhat over the years, but its name is the most recognizable one in the business. Outside of participants in the hobby of playing RPGs and related games, D&D is virtually synonymous with the hobby..."Roleplaying games? Oh- you mean D&D!" is a fairly common sentence.

As such, WOTC owns a product (the Dungeons & Dragon game, in whatever incarnation) that is going to be more resistant to downturns in the popularity of the hobby as a whole, and is likely going to be the among the first games a newbie will try out.

Thus...it is quite possible that WOTC's sales numbers will trend in directions different, possibly FAR different, from its competitors'- even its strongest ones.

 

[MerricB]

See also the "Skaff Effect".

Cheers!

 

[JohnNephew]

I think this because the bottom line is the bottom line. “Best Year Ever” will always be translated into things such as “Highest Sales”, “Highest Profit”, “Highest Margin”, etc. A for profit company cannot have a “Best Year Ever” based upon anything other than financial data – their function is to make money.

Sure they can. If you look not too far back in time, you'll find a lot of dotcoms that claimed one "best year" after the next, right up until their liquidation in bankruptcy court. They found all kinds of ways to measure performance (number of free user accounts, number of ad click-throughs, total dollar value of products sold at a loss as a "temporary" effort to build market share, number of underpants stolen by the gnomes, etc.) that, in truth, had little bearing on the ultimate success of their business model. In some cases, the "better" they did, the more money they were losing.

Someone quotes Charles as saying there are now (according to their polling studies) 4.6 million active D&D players, the highest in all the time they've done their polling. On that basis alone, he would be justified in calling it the best year ever for D&D. In the odd chance that someone called him on it in a lawsuit (very unlikely, given the lack of any specific numbers and the round-off-error level of significance that D&D sales have in the big picture of Hasbro finances -- they don't even get broken out, as far as I've seen, in the 10Qs and 10Ks on file with the SEC), he's covered. After all, his audience for these remarks is not an investor conference, but a congregation of fans -- and to the fan the important assurance is that there are people to play the game with, so this measure of "best" is entirely appropriate, regardless of whatever stats and figures may lurk behind the corporate curtain.

Investing in Hasbro because D&D has had its "best year ever" would be like investing in my company because I got a bargain price on my plane flight to Gen Con this summer. Nice and all, but not really material to the bottom line.

Having said that, I know no specifics about worldwide sales of D&D, so I don't know how broadly Charles' claims should be interpreted...it just seems that they could be interpreted in multiple ways, without accusing him of being deceptive or dishonest.

---

As an aside: Some stores that send data to C&GR are bookstores, and some are online retailers. This doesn't prove that the sample is representative of the industry at large or any segment thereof. C&GR gets cited simply because it's numerical data that is available in public to be seen and discussed.

There are other sources of data, but anything that comes from the private realm couldn't be independently verified even if someone felt comfortable in sharing it.

 

[mattcolville]

I talked to Charles about this at GenCon and he was pretty up front about it. As others have said to me, TSR kept no data. They have no way of tracking real numbers and they know it. But they can make some educated guesses.

They don't know, but they can guess. And when he says 4.6m, that includes ALL D&D players of every edition. "We have not sold 4.6 million PHBs!" he said.

Sure they can. If you look not too far back in time, you'll find a lot of dotcoms that claimed one "best year" after the next, right up until their liquidation in bankruptcy court. They found all kinds of ways to measure performance (number of free user accounts, number of ad click-throughs, total dollar value of products sold at a loss as a "temporary" effort to build market share, number of underpants stolen by the gnomes, etc.) that, in truth, had little bearing on the ultimate success of their business model. In some cases, the "better" they did, the more money they were losing.

Someone quotes Charles as saying there are now (according to their polling studies) 4.6 million active D&D players, the highest in all the time they've done their polling. On that basis alone, he would be justified in calling it the best year ever for D&D. In the odd chance that someone called him on it in a lawsuit (very unlikely, given the lack of any specific numbers and the round-off-error level of significance that D&D sales have in the big picture of Hasbro finances -- they don't even get broken out, as far as I've seen, in the 10Qs and 10Ks on file with the SEC), he's covered. After all, his audience for these remarks is not an investor conference, but a congregation of fans -- and to the fan the important assurance is that there are people to play the game with, so this measure of "best" is entirely appropriate, regardless of whatever stats and figures may lurk behind the corporate curtain.

Investing in Hasbro because D&D has had its "best year ever" would be like investing in my company because I got a bargain price on my plane flight to Gen Con this summer. Nice and all, but not really material to the bottom line.

Having said that, I know no specifics about worldwide sales of D&D, so I don't know how broadly Charles' claims should be interpreted...it just seems that they could be interpreted in multiple ways, without accusing him of being deceptive or dishonest.

---

As an aside: Some stores that send data to C&GR are bookstores, and some are online retailers. This doesn't prove that the sample is representative of the industry at large or any segment thereof. C&GR gets cited simply because it's numerical data that is available in public to be seen and discussed.

There are other sources of data, but anything that comes from the private realm couldn't be independently verified even if someone felt comfortable in sharing it.