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Message: <blockquote data-quote="innerdude" data-source="post: 5458183" data-attributes="member: 85870">DannyAlcatraz said something very interesting over in the <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/300674-reason-why-d-d-4th-edition-not-popular-could-have-been-26.html" target="_blank">"Why 4e isn't as popular as it could have been"</a> thread, when he stated, And it really got me thinking about what we mean by "casual gamer," and how important they are to our hobby. If ever there was an industry where the old "80/20 Rule" applies, it's in the hobby gaming industry. It's somewhat simplistic, and I'm sure some MBA out there will dispute its validity, but in essence the 80/20 Rule states that "80 percent of any business's total profitability is derived from 20 percent of its customer base." In other words, the top 20% of the RPG hobby's customers make 80% of the purchases. So why does this matter? Because I'm wondering just how much the RPG industry--not us as individuals or as play groups, but the actual industry--really wants to connect with this type of "casual" player. First, I think most of us would agree that your typical Enworld poster isn't a "casual" gamer. Anyone who cares enough/takes the time to create a login and actually POST content to an RPG site is more than a "casual" gamer. They may not be fully "hardcore"--I myself don't consider myself "ultra-hardcore," but I do consider myself to be a "dedicated" gamer--but they're at least something more than casual. So what is casual? Let's assume interest in RPGs can be represented as a spectrum ranging from "extreme casual" to "extreme hardcore." On the far end of the "casual" spectrum I use my wife's sister as the ultimate prototype. I introduced her to the RPG "scene" around four years ago, when she played in a short 3.5 campaign with my wife and a friend. When that campaign died, she sort of stopped playing for a while, but last year she actually started playing with a new group completely of her own accord, without me even knowing about it. And I was stoked when I heard about it, because I thought, "Good, another player for the hobby." She is now currently playing in two different groups, my Pathfinder campaign on Thursdays, and a Mutants and Masterminds campaign on Saturdays. So from a "gameplay" standpoint, she's fairly active, averaging 4-8 hours a week of play time. However--from an "RPG consumer" standpoint, she's utterly casual. She's never bought a single RPG book herself, not even a player's guide for any of the systems she plays. She's never bought a mini for her character. She's bought exactly one set of dice to play with. She has zero, zilch, no desire to ever GM a campaign. If we ever switched to 4e, she'd never even consider subscribing to DDI.In economic terms, she's the worst kind of RPG player for companies like Paizo, WotC, etc--active in the hobby, but almost zero economic benefit to them (though I may actually convince her to buy a Savage Worlds Explorer's Edition handbook, since it's only $10). She's totally "system agnostic"--whatever the GM wants to run, if  there's cool people to play with, and she thinks it sounds like fun, she  plays. Without other, more "hardcore," dedicated gamers around she probably wouldn't play at all, and she  certainly wouldn't be running her own game. Now most "casual" players I'd put maybe a step or two above my wife's sister. They play semi-regularly, they've probably bought a player's guide or two, depending on which system they play. They may have bought a few minis to represent their characters in gameplay. They probably have a couple of sets of dice, and may have even bought a module or two thinking that "Someday, maybe I'll have the guts to try GM-ing." But for the most part, they're supremely content to show up with their character sheet, dice, and player's handbook, and simply play.But if this is the case, what actual strategies do the product makers use to try and bring more gamers in, and then keep them? How do you get a "casual" gamer to move up the spectrum to "interested," or even "dedicated?"To be honest, I don't think this is really anything the industry itself can control. Getting new, dedicated players into the hobby is largely our responsibility--not Wizards, not Paizo, not Games Workshop, not anyone else.</blockquote>

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