Hobby Game Market Strong, RPGs Deeply Troubled

[Dannyalcatraz]

To be fair, D&D's always been popular grist for video games. I count 45 officially licensed games from 1981-1998 and 8 collections in the same time frame. Source: List of Dungeons & Dragons video games - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

That's part of my point. The computer gaming thing has always been big, and its only going to get bigger, especially since videogaming has a slightly longer and less controversial history (though some of the more violent games of the past decade or so- especially FPS types- have changed that a bit) than RPGs do.

Coupled with the rise of online subscription computer gaming which turns each gamer's 1 time $50 expenditure into a $50 sale plus a long term stream of revenue and you've got a serious cash cow. And they've hardly touched traditional D&D settings.

Now, to the hardcore gamer, that sounds a lot like the current situation for P&P games. You spend money on your core rulebooks and by supplements every month or so.

The differences are these:

1) With a P&P game, you may or may not make a gaming purchase in the next month. Heck, there may not even be something for you to purchase next month- supplements take time.

In contrast, an online gamer will pay that subscription like clockwork.

2) The online gaming market is many times the size of the P&P hobby. Even if you had every P&P gamer who liked your massively successful RPG buying every supplement for that game your company produced, its probable that a massively multiplayer online game with a moderate following would generate greater revenues...even more if it were based on that same RPG.

Erm... I don't really see what other properties this model would be viable for. There are a few subscription-based Magic websites out there run by third parties, but that's about it. Hasbro has few properties which can be meaningfully expanded by a PDF or other electronic document alone; pretty much everything requires physical artifacts of some variety.

There may not be something out there right now, but if the DDI proves to be a moneymaker, Hasbro will start to design products with that model integrated into them from step 1.

That doesn't mean they'll be successful.

But as we all know, unless/until a new business model proves to be a success in only one unique case, business will try to recapture that success time and time again.

Remember how many CCGs came out in the 5 years after M:tG swept through gamestores like a wildfire? How many are there now? How many successful CCGs are left over from the initial boom? M:tG proved to be a non-unique, successful business model, emulated many times over.

The same could be said of 900 numbers.

DDI may yet prove to be an emulatable business model as well.

 

[joela]

Thanks. For White Wolf I wonder if that is all WoD lines together or just the World of Darkness line. It is nice to see Song of Ice and Fire up there.

W00t! for SoIaF!

 

[Rykion]

I knew that Dark Heresy was #2. The big surprise for me was that Warmachine and Hordes sells better than Warhammer Fantasy. Holy crap. That's an impressive amount of sales by Privateer Press.

It is likely to only reflect US sales, and the numbers are based on interviews. Sales from GW stores and GW direct sales aren't likely to be covered, and they account for more than 50% of GW sales in the US.

 

[Asmor]

It did? I missed this, then. Did they print Magic cards with classic D&D villains or something?

I'm curious about this as well... I'm not the fanatic I used to be, but I still am pretty up to date on things (even more so than most of my friends who actively play the game, while I do not), and I can think of nothing whatsoever that could back that statement up.

In fact, I distinctly remember multiple occasions in which both Magic and D&D people have stated publicly that not only do they not have plans for any crossovers, but they specifically do not want to have crossovers for whatever reason.

Personally, I couldn't care less about a D&D-themed magic set, but I would love-love-love-LOVE a Magic Monster Manual, or to see some of the Magic settings get the 3-and-out treatment (looking at you, Mirrodin and Ravnica! I love Dominaria, too, but that's pretty standard fantasy and wouldn't be particularly interesting to someone not already interested in Magic lore).

 

[Woas]

@ francisca, and Asmor

I can't think of anything recent and official within Hasbro, but the only thing D&D related with Magic is back in the day when Magic was still young, a lot of the spells and creatures were basically Richard Garfield and friend's D&D characters (especially from the Legend's set) made into cards.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

And some of the mechanics that first popped up in M:tG got included into D&D- cross-pollenation works both ways- like the attempt to increase the efficacy of Counterspelling in 3Ed.

 

[Asmor]

@ francisca, and Asmor

I can't think of anything recent and official within Hasbro, but the only thing D&D related with Magic is back in the day when Magic was still young, a lot of the spells and creatures were basically Richard Garfield and friend's D&D characters (especially from the Legend's set) made into cards.

Huh, I did not know that. Definitely helps to explain why there are so many totally boring and underwhelming legends in Legends. But of course, that was long before WotC was even a force in the hobby arena, never mind before D&D and Magic were under the same company.

And some of the mechanics that first popped up in M:tG got included into D&D- cross-pollenation works both ways- like the attempt to increase the efficacy of Counterspelling in 3Ed.

Err... Do you have any reference to back that up? Because that seems like a real stretch.

All that said, one thing which may be worth noting is that, WotC started printing "human" as an explicit creature type (previously, you could have an "elf archer" or a "goblin rogue," but a human cleric would just be a "cleric."), and that seems to be something which has been adopted in 4th edition (i.e. humans get entries in the monster manuals). I don't recall that ever happening before...

 

[malraux]

All that said, one thing which may be worth noting is that, WotC started printing "human" as an explicit creature type (previously, you could have an "elf archer" or a "goblin rogue," but a human cleric would just be a "cleric."), and that seems to be something which has been adopted in 4th edition (i.e. humans get entries in the monster manuals). I don't recall that ever happening before...

3e is the aberrant one there. Humans are in the 1st and 2nd edition MMs.

 

[Cadfan]

Hmm. Impressive showing by Agricola and Le Havre. Its impressive that expensive, large box games are doing that well. Unless maybe the chart is weighted for profitability rather than sales by unit?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Err... Do you have any reference to back that up? Because that seems like a real stretch.

Prior to M:tG and 3Ed, the only way to counter a spell was Dispel Magic, barring the use of a magic item.

In 3Ed, you could still use Dispel Magic as a counterspell, but you could also use a Spellcraft check and casting the same spell in reaction to the original caster to counter a spell. Like in previous editions, Dispel Magic could only counterspell within its stated area of effect, but the expanded counterspelling rules of 3Ed meant that a targeted dispel was controlled by the parameters of the original spell.

This was further expanded in 3.5 with the Improved Counterspell Feat.

While it is not the same mechanic- M:tG uses actual counterspell spells- the frequency and power of counterspelling in that game was an obvious inspiration to broaden the counterspelling options within D&D.