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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fearsomepirate" data-source="post: 8233408" data-attributes="member: 7021420">The problem with overanalyzing Paizo's decline on Roll20 & FG is it's a decline in share on, once again, an exploding market, both the RPG industry itself and the VTTs! Positing that there could be some giant share on Foundry that would significantly alter our estimation of the overall market picture is pure speculation (and highly unlikely, as so far, we're zero-for-everything when it comes to seeking out information and finding evidence of anything but declining share).Now, here's what we know, factually, by looking at both FG and Roll20.<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Paizo's share has declined precipitously on both since 5e launched.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">At least on FG, this decline has been driven largely by 5e growth; total PF gaming was steady for a long time before growing in absolute, if not relative terms.</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Industry-wide numbers cannot be backed out of VTT numbers.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">This is pretty important. Since we have FG and Roll20 numbers, we can see that the shares for smaller games vary significantly across the two platforms. Paizo's total share on FG is 13%. Its share on Roll20 is 5.5%. PF2 has a 6% share on FG and a 1.5% share on Roll20. It is clear that there are significant factors unique to each VTT affecting Paizo's share; it would not be surprising for PF2's share on Foundry to be larger on than on Roll20, though it would be surprising for Paizo's overall share to be, say, 30%.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Roll20 grew by 60% in 2020 alone. Thus, PF2's share growth from 1.2% to 1.83% means more than twice as many people are playing PF2 on Roll20 now than a year ago.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">FG has also had crazy growth, so Paizo's share holding steady at around 12% or so also means many, many more people are playing Pathfinder games online.</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">...and the numbers don't really move the same way.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Paizo's share on FG has held steady at about 11-13% since late 2015. It's continued to fall on Roll20.</li> </ul></li> </ol>So, my general point is, when you look at numbers, understand what they tell you, and just as importantly, what they don't tell you. It could be that Paizo is in trouble, but it could also very well be that in 2021, there is just as much, maybe even more money to be made as a fantasy heartbreaker with a single-digit market share than there was as top dog with 35% share in 2012.</blockquote>

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