Hobby Games: It Was a Very Good Year

The hobby market continues to spiral upward year-after-year. Can the industry keep this up?

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Image sourced from Pixabay.​

We have a few data points to indicate just how the hobby games market -- inclusive of tabletop role-playing games and miniatures -- is doing, and by all accounts it's doing very well indeed. But there were seismic shifts too, not the least of which being the turmoil surrounding the Toys 'R' Us toy stores. Toys 'R' Us' troubles set off a ripple effect in competitive markets that saw it as an opportunity, and one of those markets is the struggling book store chain Barnes & Noble.
[h=3]Barnes & Noble Isn't Great[/h]Barnes & Noble has been wracked by a variety of challenges, not the least of which is the decline of brick-and-mortar shopping for books. Various strategies have been enacted to combat this, and one of them is moving into hobby games. Non-books increased 1.9% for the retailer, including toys and games. When asked about their strategy, CFO Allen Lindstrom said:

I can tell you that we think it's a significant opportunity for holiday, toys comped at double digits in the second quarter and it's strong heading into the holiday season.​

Barnes & Noble seems to be banking on the holiday season to get it through its slump.
[h=3]Hasbro is Okay[/h]The effects of Toys 'R' Us' demise did not go unnoticed by Hasbro, parent company of Wizards of the Coast, who in turn produces Dungeons & Dragons. The company relies on the toy stores for its distribution and took enough of a hit to reduce its workforce by 10% by year-end. Despite those losses, D&D prospects are looking up.

Hasbro's CEO Brian Goldner hasn't been shy about touting the growth of D&D -- even if that enthusiasm led to some confusion as to whether or not D&D is destined for an esport. What's not confusing is that D&D is doing well. It got a rare shout-out on the latest earnings call:

The team also delivered another quarter of revenue growth for DUNGEONS and DRAGONS and late in the third quarter drove a strong release for an all new TRANSFORMERS trading card game.
​

That growth was explained in detail by Chris Cocks in an interview with Geekwire:

D&D Fifth Edition came out about four years ago and we’re on trajectory for our fourth year of good size, double-digit growth. In excess of 30 percent growth per year for D&D.
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30% growth per year is nothing to sneeze at, but it's a broad stroke that's hard to quantify in the context of other mega-brands, like Magic: The Gathering. Booknet Canada zoomed in on data in Canada back in June 2018. The results are compelling:

With D&D Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes (9780786966240) making it into the top 10 print books in the country last week, we turned our attention to the Games & Activities / Role Playing & Fantasy BISAC category and found that there have been huge increases in sales for these books over the past four years. Within this category, many of the top titles have been Wizards of the Coast D&D manuals, and overall, the category has seen a 77% growth in print unit sales between 2016 and 2017, according to BNC SalesData. Sales for the Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set (9780786965595) have been slowly increasing over the past few years, but of particular interest is the growth in sales over the Christmas period. We compared the five-week period over the Christmas season for 2015 and 2016 and found that sales for this single title increased by 38%. But that's not all. Between 2016 and 2017, there's an even more incredible increase of 95%. Sales of the Player’s Handbook (9780786965601) have also experienced notable growth. Comparing the first 22 weeks of sales in 2018 against sales from the same period in 2016, we found an increase of 49%.​

There's every reason to believe that this trend will continue into 2019.
[h=3]Fans Are Awesome[/h]For other data points on just how well D&D is doing, we can look to the products themselves. Matthew Lillard, an actor known for his role as Shaggy in the live-action Scooby Doo movies, launched Beadle and Grimm's Pandemonium Warehouse in June 2018. Its flagship product: a $499 all-inclusive Platinum Edition for Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. Lillard explained the logic behind the pricing:

There's an echelon of gamer that would love handwritten notes, that would love to produce metal coins, that would love trinkets or a handcrafted trap. But there're a lot of people out there that don't have the time to execute that...We're definitely experiencing some blowback on the price, but everything we have in the box - everything we're delivering and the way the game is played - we think we're going to exceed what people expect.
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Lillard's gamble is not one he's taking alone. Wizkids is releasing a fully-painted miniature-scale version of The Falling Star Sailing Ship for $250 in January 2019. That's nothing compared to the Black Dragon Trophy Plaque which will go on sale in 2019 for $450!

In retrospect, what's astonishing about the success of the hobby isn't that the tabletop hobby market is doing well in spite of the downturn in a major distributor; it's that consumers are now supporting a business capable of producing high-end luxury items in the hundreds of dollars. If these luxury products are any indication, the game industry does well when gamers do well. And that's something we can all be thankful for.

Mike "Talien" Tresca is a freelance game columnist, author, communicator, and a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to http://amazon.com. You can follow him at Patreon.

 

[Parmandur]

Ah, so my anecdotal experience doesn't mean anything, but your 'objective' opinion without any actual facts to back it up (i.e. anecdotal experience) does. Gotcha.

The most "objective" measurea I can think of are reviews and sales. Both have been solid for the whole edition. A good case can be made that WotC is producing objectively good books, but I see little reason that an "objectively bad" case can stand. "Not to my tastes" sure.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

The most "objective" measurea I can think of are reviews and sales. Both have been solid for the whole edition. A good case can be made that WotC is producing objectively good books, but I see little reason that an "objectively bad" case can stand. "Not to my tastes" sure.

Yep, I can see how it wouldn’t be to everyone’s taste, but in no way does that make it objectively bad. We don’t know exact sales figures, but multiple books in the Amazon top 50, years after their initial release says that it is at least going reasonably well.

As for reviews, the first AP probably got the worst reviews, and even those were mixed, rather than completely bad. The rest of the APs seem to have been well received by most reviewers.

Part of the negatives from those reviews was to do with rules issues, which was a result of them writing the adventures at the same time as the 5E rules were being developed.

 

[Parmandur]

Yep, I can see how it wouldn’t be to everyone’s taste, but in no way does that make it objectively bad. We don’t know exact sales figures, but multiple books in the Amazon top 50, years after their initial release says that it is at least going reasonably well.

As for reviews, the first AP probably got the worst reviews, and even those were mixed, rather than completely bad. The rest of the APs seem to have been well received by most reviewers.

Part of the negatives from those reviews was to do with rules issues, which was a result of them writing the adventures at the same time as the 5E rules were being developed.

I enjoyed HotDQ, but it is quite a weak book. If it had been given a few more months polish, and been one book with RoT, it could have been massively improved. They didn't need it so early, with the masterpiece of Lost Mines already in place as an intro module.

But for being the biggest publishing misstep in five years, it's not too shabby.

 

[Staffan]

This article feels like its ignoring several things: Evil Hat and John Cook Presents having massive layoffs, White Wolf controversy, and others just to go the usual “D&D did good so that means nothing else really matters”

I get it, its the 10 ton gorilla but its not EVERYTHING in this industry

There's always churn in the game industry. Evil Hat and John Wick Presents lay off some people, but on the other hand things seem to be going swimmingly for e.g. Ulisses Spiele and Modiphius, and you have some new entrants like Matt Colville's MCDM Productions.

And a strong D&D is a plus for the whole hobby. If your game company sees D&D as a competitor, you're doing it wrong. Strong D&D sales lead to more stable game stores which can then expand into lesser (from a business POV) games. Also, having D&D attract a lot of new people to the hobby will lead to some of them becoming curious about other games in a few years and look for something different. Over at Geek & Sundry, which should by all rights get a lot of the credit for the D&D explosion on account of Critical Role, they make an effort to showcase other games as well, such as Doctor Who, Star Trek, Cypher System, Vampire, and Overlight, and I'm pretty sure those games got a significant boost in sales from the exposure.

 

[Staffan]

And, of course, only being able to legally get the books in print form, versus pdf, makes a huge difference in those sales. I wonder how much worse the physical sales would be if we were able to get a legal pdf of the PHB for $20 or $25?

You can already get the PHB in electronic form from D&D Beyond for $30 (I believe - I can't see the price right now since I already bought it). This is not a PDF, but it is in a far superior HTML-ish format which works a lot better on screens, and which also has hyperlinks to other relevant parts of the rules (e.g. when the book says the tiefling knows the thaumaturgy cantrip, that is hyperlinked to the actual spell, and when Pact of the Chain says your familiar can take the form of an imp, the book links to the imp monster description). As far as I know, the ability to get books on D&D Beyond have not made an appreciable dent in physical sales - although they likely will going forward for me personally.

 

[Henry]

...And a strong D&D is a plus for the whole hobby. If your game company sees D&D as a competitor, you're doing it wrong. Strong D&D sales lead to more stable game stores which can then expand into lesser (from a business POV) games. Also, having D&D attract a lot of new people to the hobby will lead to some of them becoming curious about other games in a few years and look for something different. Over at Geek & Sundry, which should by all rights get a lot of the credit for the D&D explosion on account of Critical Role, they make an effort to showcase other games as well, such as Doctor Who, Star Trek, Cypher System, Vampire, and Overlight, and I'm pretty sure those games got a significant boost in sales from the exposure.

This is a point that many fans (but not a lot of the publishers) sometimes miss. The hobby gets tens of thousands of new RPG players now (Millions? I have no idea) between 2015 and 2018; those people are getting bored of D&D and looking for something different in 2019 or 2020. Not all stay, they never do; but a large percentage does, and they're not "D&D players", they're now "tabletop gamers." And they're looking for something with more moving parts (Pathfinder) or something even more story driven than current D&D (FATE), or systems without hit points but still a little bit of crunch (Savage Worlds) or into different genres like horror (Call of Cthulhu) or weird '80s due to Stranger Things (Tales from the Loop) or westerns (Deadlands??).

 

[iamarogue]

I think it's plateauing to a certain extent. I am a retailer and have been in business for 20 years. We saw marked growth over the past, say, 5 years and have tripled our staff as a result. But this year (2018) we only just barely surpassed the previous year's sales figures and in fact some areas - notably board games - we saw a decline. Sure lots of people are playing RPGs, but Paizo's in trouble, White Wolf is in trouble, John Wick's in trouble, Evil Hat's in trouble, Steve Jackson's in trouble. D&D 5e is having ever-increasing market share and that's not necessarily a good thing for the industry as a whole.

Wizards of the Coast recently is moving to more mainstream sales (Amazon, Target, Walmart) and that has the potential to be a big problem for FLGS and by extension, the industry. We also sell wargames (like Warhammer) and that's an industry that requires a community for the hobby to be sustained. Over the past several years, we saw a rise in discount online stores and then a subsequent decline in the number of people actively playing those games, followed by the manufacturers taking measures to shut down these online discount stores. There's a big fear that Wizards (let me remind you, they also do Magic: The Gathering) is going to go that way and start to kill the hobbies they created.

If you're not clear on what I'm talking about, it looks like this: selling in more channels sounds like a good idea (increase sales) and there's more competition on price, so customers go to the cheapest option (Amazon, perhaps) and initially there's a boost in sales because existing players can buy more books for cheaper. But then FLGSs can't compete on price and go out of business or stop carrying those lines (locally, one FLGS in my area has gradually been shifting to sell crafting supplies), and the hobby slowly becomes inaccessible to new players (there's nowhere for them to go to gain entry into the community), so yes they could buy an introductory set online, but that's daunting for many, and who would I play with anyways? We get so many customers that wander in and say something like "I think I might like this D&D thing, but I'm not sure" followed up by questions like "Do you know anyone who's looking for players?" or "How do I get started?" or "Do you run any games here?". Fewer new players means the industry starts to die off. So in the long term, selling outside of FLGSs is bad for the industry, but in the short term, it looks appealing to corporations.

 

[Doc_Klueless]

Paizo's in trouble?

 

[Morrus]

If you're not clear on what I'm talking about, it looks like this: selling in more channels sounds like a good idea (increase sales) and there's more competition on price, so customers go to the cheapest option (Amazon, perhaps) and initially there's a boost in sales because existing players can buy more books for cheaper. But then FLGSs can't compete on price and go out of business or stop carrying those lines (locally, one FLGS in my area has gradually been shifting to sell crafting supplies), and the hobby slowly becomes inaccessible to new players (there's nowhere for them to go to gain entry into the community), so yes they could buy an introductory set online, but that's daunting for many, and who would I play with anyways? We get so many customers that wander in and say something like "I think I might like this D&D thing, but I'm not sure" followed up by questions like "Do you know anyone who's looking for players?" or "How do I get started?" or "Do you run any games here?". Fewer new players means the industry starts to die off. So in the long term, selling outside of FLGSs is bad for the industry, but in the short term, it looks appealing to corporations.

Along with buying online goes playing online. VTTs are big these days, and getting bigger. A physically local group is no longer necessary.

 

[Smolders]

YEY!

Hope the trend continues

I agree, I have been a TTRPG-er since the early 80's (BLUSH*) and I dont recall TTRPG ever being so popular as it is now! Some of this I think is from the genisis of the WWW, but also the demise of the stereo type that TTRPG players are mum and dad basement dwelling nerds has alot to do with it as well. Celebrity players I thin is also a contributor as well.