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Decline of RPG sales
- Thread starter Belen
- Start date
Mark CMG
Creative Mountain Games
eyebeams said:
As I said, a court is unlikely to make the distinction (according to a friend of mine in the legal profession who I asked about this) though you're certainly entitled to your opinion. If I get the chance, I'll ask for some case law to cite or something, though I doubt I'll have the time to get into it much further. Seriously, though. You've expressed your opinion and I've expressed mine. Without something along the lines of case law there's really no sense in arguing further except simply to be contrary, is there?
Lonely Tylenol
First Post
eyebeams said:
If either of these statements are made by the company, and are false, and it causes someone to invest more money than they otherwise would in this particular brand, and they lose money over it, they would have grounds in either case to sue. The statements might be qualitatively different, but they speak the same message to a potential investor. A lie spoken to boost investment is a lie spoken to boost investment, no matter the form it takes. You'll have to give a better reason than "there are no numbers involved" to make a case that they're different enough to be actionable on the one hand and not actionable on the other. Or at least quote some cases for precedent.
Dr. Awkward said:
Sure. Remember how I said that I don't think Charles Ryan is lying? At the same time, he is well able to say, "D&D is having its best year ever!" using data which you and I would probably not describe that way were we to have it in front of us (whether or not he *is* doing this is a different issue). An actual description of net profit/loss and sales by individual SKU are not so prone to massaging. In no way do these statements "speak the same message" to an investor.
SteveC
Doing the best imitation of myself
Alright, it’s Thanksgiving, so I thought I would make some comments before the turkey causes me to sink into the slumber of an afternoon of football. Who am I? No one of any consequence, just someone who’s been gaming for more years than many of you have been alive and has seen the gaming scene boom and bust many, many times. Take EVERYTHING in this post with a strong “your mileage may vary” and “it’s just my opinion.”
Are sales declining for RPGs? Yes and no. That is to say they are declining for some publishers, but not for others. Are they declining overall? No one really knows, but my best guess from what has been said here and elsewhere is yes they are. That’s just an overall feeling that I have, based on the sense that gaming is really shifting back to the “big guys” and “everybody else” mode that is very typical for it. Say what you want about D20, but it did give many publishers a seat at the big table for several years.
If we agree that sales are declining the question is WHY. Here are my thoughts on the matter:
Lots of crap
This is something that the industry has largely worked through. When D20 was first announced, everyone and his brother came out with support for it. There were many new publishers, and also older ones who go on the D20 train. By the way, I’m going to use D20 to refer to core products, D20 lines of products, and OGL products as well. There were some good books published, but most of the stuff that came out was crap. A friend of mine asked me if I still have and use any of the stuff that came out in the first D20 year. I had to think about it for a long time before coming up with anything.
This was a problem that affected both the newcomers and the existing publishers, but in different ways. New publishers didn’t know anything about publishing, so they would put out horribly edited books that had abysmal artwork and were oftentimes completely unbalanced. This problem has largely corrected itself in print, as these companies are long gone. It is still a problem in PDF publishing, and it also started the slide of the hobby (which I’m going to talk about more below).
Existing publishers were sometimes even worse, because they DID know how to put together a book, but many times were looking to get some quick cash from this new phenomenon rather than make a good book. I purchased a few books like this from companies that I really liked. Most of the time these were poorly thought out translations from their house system to D20 that were written by people who didn’t know, and many times didn’t even LIKE D20. This continues to be a problem to this day. D20 can learn a lot from different systems out there because it is not a be-all-end-all system. Still, if you’re going to port (say) your drama rules to D20, make sure you have someone design it who can translate your rules into the proper D20 mechanics. Don’t just slap something together that you think will work without ever playtesting it, okay?
Volume of Product
That brings us to problem #2: volume of product. This is another issue that has sorted itself out in many ways, but for a long time you couldn’t swing a cat about without hitting scores of D20 product, much of which was just about the same stuff with a different company’s take on it. How many elf books do we need? You could fill up a moderate sized library with all of the class/race books out there, and let’s face it, most of them were junk. That’s not to say all of them: the cream did rise to the top eventually, largely through some of the OGL material in those books gaining a larger audience and living on, as it were.
So we have a huge amount of product, much of it VERY similar, from established companies AND new players, and it starts off SELLING! Companies are producing tons of product, and it is moving! The problem is that there are a finite number of artists, writers and editors in the industry, not to mention a finite number of printers who can do this kind of work. Quality suffers. Books are physically defective, badly edited, not properly playtested, and many of the smaller new companies simply have no idea what they’re doing. So let’s take the next step:
Throwaway Product
We have huge amounts of product that is becoming more and more “throwaway” in nature. Make a spells book! Make a race book! FEATS! Does any of this stuff get properly produced? Well yes, some of it does, but that’s the exception (an exception that has, by and large, allowed those companies who made it to still be around today). Distributors are stocking product, but so much is coming out that we start to see the infamous “three month stocking” procedure, that product is expected to have a life span of about three months. Stop and think about that for a moment: you’re a game designer, and the lifespan of your product is becoming three months. What does that make you do? Crank out more product and spend less time on it. Does it really make any sense to playtest and edit your new race book for a year when it will be in stores for one quarter of a year? I would argue that, yes, it does, but only in the long term.
This is the point where we start to see gamers chiming in with “what gives?” This book is junk! Now some of the companies have very good net-reps who patiently look at what is being said. Errata is released. Whole lines or product are reprinted in some cases. What also happens is that some companies say: “Tough! No one cares about editing or quality bindings or playtesting anymore! Deal!” It’s funny, but most of those companies are either not around any more or are shadows of their former selves…
So now we bring things home: sales start to slump because of the quality and turnaround issues. This immediately kills some of the startup companies who had no plan for anything but continued growth. It makes some of the other companies drastically cut print-runs and also raise prices. That has two effects: one, it means that if you don’t buy a book right away, you’re likely going to have to go through a hassle to get it, since your FLGS won’t be able to restock it after the first two or three months. It also means that a lot of games that haven’t had pre-release hype generated for them become impulse buys. As prices go up, they become expensive impulse buys. Fewer products are sold.
Eventually we come to the now, where the mid-tier companies are having serious problems and are having to drastically cut staff to keep afloat.
So where do we go from here? I have a few suggestions to companies out there, which you may freely decide to ignore as you like:
First, strongly reconsider if you want to be publishing in the D20 arena. Remember that I’m using D20 to mean core books designed with WotC/D20 and OGL all in one term. Do you even like the system? If not, use your house system and leave all of this behind. Don’t stop reading this post quite yet, however just go down to the third point.
Second, if you do want to stay in the game, make sure you actually understand the rules. D20 has a lot of rules behind it, but there are also some very basic design elements that Monte, Sean and Jonathan used behind the scenes. Take a look at where Andy Collins and the new blood at WotC is going with the line, and see where your place is within it. You really need to understand the “whys” behind D20 if you’re going to write for it. Remember: it’s not YOUR system. You can make it yours with a good OGL product, but people come to D20 with a set of expectations. You can break them (see M&M) but you have to understand what they are first. It’s like my old writing coach used to tell me: you are free to break any rules of spelling and grammar, but you first must understand what they are. You think that E.E. Cummings never wrote anything in caps?
Third, you need to control the spread of throwaway product. If you’re going to charge $40 for a book, it is NOT throwaway product, whatever you might want to think. Fewer QUALITY releases are what is needed, because people aren’t buying as much crap any more.
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.
Fifth, get ACTIVE. Promote your games like it’s your company’s life, because it is. Get a demo team together and get games running around the country or the world. Those hundreds of copies of your core rules sitting around in a warehouse? Give 100 of them away to people who will run events for you and create a buzz for your game! Can’t find 100 people willing to do that? Strongly reconsider your answer to point four above.
Finally, if you’re a good gamer, realize you’re not necessarily a good business manager. Find someone who is and use some of the same strategies that EVERY OTHER business uses to grow your product. I know that last one will come off as snarky, and if it does it probably wasn’t meant for you!
WHEW!
Are sales declining for RPGs? Yes and no. That is to say they are declining for some publishers, but not for others. Are they declining overall? No one really knows, but my best guess from what has been said here and elsewhere is yes they are. That’s just an overall feeling that I have, based on the sense that gaming is really shifting back to the “big guys” and “everybody else” mode that is very typical for it. Say what you want about D20, but it did give many publishers a seat at the big table for several years.
If we agree that sales are declining the question is WHY. Here are my thoughts on the matter:
Lots of crap
This is something that the industry has largely worked through. When D20 was first announced, everyone and his brother came out with support for it. There were many new publishers, and also older ones who go on the D20 train. By the way, I’m going to use D20 to refer to core products, D20 lines of products, and OGL products as well. There were some good books published, but most of the stuff that came out was crap. A friend of mine asked me if I still have and use any of the stuff that came out in the first D20 year. I had to think about it for a long time before coming up with anything.
This was a problem that affected both the newcomers and the existing publishers, but in different ways. New publishers didn’t know anything about publishing, so they would put out horribly edited books that had abysmal artwork and were oftentimes completely unbalanced. This problem has largely corrected itself in print, as these companies are long gone. It is still a problem in PDF publishing, and it also started the slide of the hobby (which I’m going to talk about more below).
Existing publishers were sometimes even worse, because they DID know how to put together a book, but many times were looking to get some quick cash from this new phenomenon rather than make a good book. I purchased a few books like this from companies that I really liked. Most of the time these were poorly thought out translations from their house system to D20 that were written by people who didn’t know, and many times didn’t even LIKE D20. This continues to be a problem to this day. D20 can learn a lot from different systems out there because it is not a be-all-end-all system. Still, if you’re going to port (say) your drama rules to D20, make sure you have someone design it who can translate your rules into the proper D20 mechanics. Don’t just slap something together that you think will work without ever playtesting it, okay?
Volume of Product
That brings us to problem #2: volume of product. This is another issue that has sorted itself out in many ways, but for a long time you couldn’t swing a cat about without hitting scores of D20 product, much of which was just about the same stuff with a different company’s take on it. How many elf books do we need? You could fill up a moderate sized library with all of the class/race books out there, and let’s face it, most of them were junk. That’s not to say all of them: the cream did rise to the top eventually, largely through some of the OGL material in those books gaining a larger audience and living on, as it were.
So we have a huge amount of product, much of it VERY similar, from established companies AND new players, and it starts off SELLING! Companies are producing tons of product, and it is moving! The problem is that there are a finite number of artists, writers and editors in the industry, not to mention a finite number of printers who can do this kind of work. Quality suffers. Books are physically defective, badly edited, not properly playtested, and many of the smaller new companies simply have no idea what they’re doing. So let’s take the next step:
Throwaway Product
We have huge amounts of product that is becoming more and more “throwaway” in nature. Make a spells book! Make a race book! FEATS! Does any of this stuff get properly produced? Well yes, some of it does, but that’s the exception (an exception that has, by and large, allowed those companies who made it to still be around today). Distributors are stocking product, but so much is coming out that we start to see the infamous “three month stocking” procedure, that product is expected to have a life span of about three months. Stop and think about that for a moment: you’re a game designer, and the lifespan of your product is becoming three months. What does that make you do? Crank out more product and spend less time on it. Does it really make any sense to playtest and edit your new race book for a year when it will be in stores for one quarter of a year? I would argue that, yes, it does, but only in the long term.
This is the point where we start to see gamers chiming in with “what gives?” This book is junk! Now some of the companies have very good net-reps who patiently look at what is being said. Errata is released. Whole lines or product are reprinted in some cases. What also happens is that some companies say: “Tough! No one cares about editing or quality bindings or playtesting anymore! Deal!” It’s funny, but most of those companies are either not around any more or are shadows of their former selves…
So now we bring things home: sales start to slump because of the quality and turnaround issues. This immediately kills some of the startup companies who had no plan for anything but continued growth. It makes some of the other companies drastically cut print-runs and also raise prices. That has two effects: one, it means that if you don’t buy a book right away, you’re likely going to have to go through a hassle to get it, since your FLGS won’t be able to restock it after the first two or three months. It also means that a lot of games that haven’t had pre-release hype generated for them become impulse buys. As prices go up, they become expensive impulse buys. Fewer products are sold.
Eventually we come to the now, where the mid-tier companies are having serious problems and are having to drastically cut staff to keep afloat.
So where do we go from here? I have a few suggestions to companies out there, which you may freely decide to ignore as you like:
First, strongly reconsider if you want to be publishing in the D20 arena. Remember that I’m using D20 to mean core books designed with WotC/D20 and OGL all in one term. Do you even like the system? If not, use your house system and leave all of this behind. Don’t stop reading this post quite yet, however just go down to the third point.
Second, if you do want to stay in the game, make sure you actually understand the rules. D20 has a lot of rules behind it, but there are also some very basic design elements that Monte, Sean and Jonathan used behind the scenes. Take a look at where Andy Collins and the new blood at WotC is going with the line, and see where your place is within it. You really need to understand the “whys” behind D20 if you’re going to write for it. Remember: it’s not YOUR system. You can make it yours with a good OGL product, but people come to D20 with a set of expectations. You can break them (see M&M) but you have to understand what they are first. It’s like my old writing coach used to tell me: you are free to break any rules of spelling and grammar, but you first must understand what they are. You think that E.E. Cummings never wrote anything in caps?
Third, you need to control the spread of throwaway product. If you’re going to charge $40 for a book, it is NOT throwaway product, whatever you might want to think. Fewer QUALITY releases are what is needed, because people aren’t buying as much crap any more.
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.
Fifth, get ACTIVE. Promote your games like it’s your company’s life, because it is. Get a demo team together and get games running around the country or the world. Those hundreds of copies of your core rules sitting around in a warehouse? Give 100 of them away to people who will run events for you and create a buzz for your game! Can’t find 100 people willing to do that? Strongly reconsider your answer to point four above.
Finally, if you’re a good gamer, realize you’re not necessarily a good business manager. Find someone who is and use some of the same strategies that EVERY OTHER business uses to grow your product. I know that last one will come off as snarky, and if it does it probably wasn’t meant for you!
WHEW!
Mark CMG said:
Please describe to me what the objective, universally accepted definition of "best year ever," is. Describe to me what value this represents, whether it is net or gross, whether it is over the brand's entire history or history with a current owner and what products it does and does not relate to. Describe to me whether this does or does not include efficiency measures and speculative, projected information, such as estimates of externalities that are considered to add value.
The idea that someone would have legal recourse because they heard "D&D is having its best year ever!" and bought Hasbro stock because of it is, in itself, kind of wacky.
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SteveC
Doing the best imitation of myself
Please remember that in America anyone can sue anyone for any reason. Also remember that the statements of execs at large companies who are currently on trial for fraud are VERY MUCH front and center. EnWorld and RPG.NET are two of the largest and most visable places in the gaming world. An executive from a publicly traded company who came on and made statements that were demonstrably false (and "best year ever" would fall into that category) would place themselves in a bad spot.eyebeams said:
When things go bad for large amounts of money, people come looking for someone to blame. That is the entire job of a large group of lawyers, actually. If things turn out very bad for Hasbro (and I have ABSOLUTELY no reason to believe that they will) you may rely on statements made by key players in the organization to be DIRECTLY referenced in court. Having worked as a peon for one of the largest companies in the world, I can tell you that I was told in no uncertain terms that making any statement about the health of the company when it wasn't my job would be immediate grounds for dismissal, because it could exactly be used in a court case.
So I guess that no one really needs to demonstrate what any of it means to you, just to a relevant lawyer.
--Steve
Other things I've heard Charles say... alright, seen him post... back up my impression of Wizards doing well:
* The number of people claiming to play D&D has increased by 15% over the past year. (wow!) The estimated total is now 4.6 million people in the USA.
* 2004 at the time had the biggest advertising budget they've had for D&D (to celebrate the 30th anniversary). 2005 increased the budget even more!
* "As I mentioned above, the overall trends are very strong: that 2 million or so regular players from 1999 has grown to over 4 million in 2004. (Monte mentioned that the market research number is probably larger than reality, and I tend to agree--but the trend has been consistent.)"
* "All of our data and experience tells us that, thankfully, new players are entering the marketplace. Indeed, the increase in players clearly tells us that new players are entering the hobby faster than old ones are leaving."
* "We’re doing great! 2004 was probably the best year ever for D&D (that's right: ever), as measured by a wide variety of standards. All of our key trends are up and continuing to accelerate upward. We expect 2005 to be the next best year ever for D&D." (and yes, 2005 was the new best year ever)
Cheers!
* The number of people claiming to play D&D has increased by 15% over the past year. (wow!) The estimated total is now 4.6 million people in the USA.
* 2004 at the time had the biggest advertising budget they've had for D&D (to celebrate the 30th anniversary). 2005 increased the budget even more!
* "As I mentioned above, the overall trends are very strong: that 2 million or so regular players from 1999 has grown to over 4 million in 2004. (Monte mentioned that the market research number is probably larger than reality, and I tend to agree--but the trend has been consistent.)"
* "All of our data and experience tells us that, thankfully, new players are entering the marketplace. Indeed, the increase in players clearly tells us that new players are entering the hobby faster than old ones are leaving."
* "We’re doing great! 2004 was probably the best year ever for D&D (that's right: ever), as measured by a wide variety of standards. All of our key trends are up and continuing to accelerate upward. We expect 2005 to be the next best year ever for D&D." (and yes, 2005 was the new best year ever)
Cheers!
SteveC said:
True enough, but it is certainly possible to weigh how likely it is for a statement to be actionable.
On thing that seems to have been forgotten here is that I *don't* think Charles Ryan is lying. I have no explanation for the assumption that I said he was, given that I do not make that statement.
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