Is the RPG Industry on Life Support? (Merged w/"Nothing Dies")

[Umbran]

I don't like alot of the stuff that gets thrown into the soup because WotC thinks it will appeal to a wider audience.

That tendency won't go away. It would probably become worse if the business shrank.

Remember - the basic motivation of any company is to make money. In general if more people buy your products, you make more money. Thus, there is a basic drive to have products appeal to more people. If sales drop, you'll see them struggle more and ore to recapture a large audience.

 

[eyebeams]

I don't think we'll ever have a clear picture of what's going on with RPGs at any given moment. All we can really do is take everything we learn from the current project and apply it to the next one.

I think the exact details are not very well known, but taking the long view, the idea that the RPG industry is shrinking is not particularly controversial. It's certainly not on its last legs, either. It's undergoing the slow winnowing of a hobby that can't bring in new fans fast enough to expand. There are precious few hard figures, but a while back I took the time to crunch the numbers for a bunch of estimates over a 3 years period, and comparing the figures, it looks like while everyone has success stories about individual years, folks just aren't spending as many dollars.

By contrast, I have also yet to see a single series of estimates that, over time, display growth for the RPG industry as a whole.

I think there's a tendency in RPG publishing to bury the facts behind wishful thinking and egotism.

Or, in some cases, to distort the truth to meet a deliberate strategic end. The fact that some can, for example, make claims about the industry to goad business decisions by posting on teh Intarnet is telling about the reduced scale of the hobby.

People want to believe that Vampire and Star Wars ushered in massive amounts of new gamers, because that means that D&D isn't as popular as everyone thinks and that a new game really could become a massive hit. People really want to believe that rules-light, story-centric games are just waiting to breakout and crush D&D.

There's a more complex position than that, Mike. The fewer hands in which the ultimate stewardship of RPGs as a business exist, the more volatile any problems with those stewards are going to be. It's my feeling that a broader set of influential actors is necessary to keep RPGs from suffering the same fate as comics or board wargaming.

As I've said before, the comics industry in the 90s is very instructive here. Companies were sure they'd found the things that made fans happy and provided them -- on steroids. It didn't matter to Marvel that nobody bought comics from newstands or variety stores any more and plenty of folks went on about how comics, in all their hologram-etched, foil wrapped glory, were as accessible as they ever were.

I'm sure somebody's 8 year old kid even started reading the X-Men in the 90s.

The monolithic idea of what somebody wants from a comic book trashed the comics industry.

But what's that you say? There are all these Marvel movies? What's up with that? That's because Marvel got smart and realized that the way to stay afloat in the comics biz was to get out of it. Marvel's revenue from comics books are trivial now, but even so, it's almost impossible for them to keep all of their promised titles afloat.

One sign that its comics division is small potatos is that they actually bothered to do an RPG themselves.

Anyway, what the comics biz is trying to do right now is find some way to dig themselves out of a demographic-economic pit they're in to justify themselves as being more than IP farms for ventures that actually make decent money.

(The converse is, by the way, why licensed games are what they are. RPGs are, by and large where entertainment licenses go to die. Hell, folks are excited about a game based on a book from the 50s, a movie from the 90s and a cancelled cartoon now.)

Gaming is in the same boat. WotC has given its core of consumers what they want and they've done a damn good job doing it. The genius of 3e is that it not only is a fine game, but it appeals to the (hobby-related) values of most gamers. WoTC is like an armada of X-Titles pencilled by Jim Lee -- and if you liked comics back then, you thought that was *cool.*

(That's not a backhanded quip about product WotC's product quality, either, because it is usually excellent. Lots of people really liked Lee, McFarlane and Liefield back then, and I don't think their feelings were at all illegitimate.)

But "most gamers" is also pretty small potatos, in the long run.

People really want to believe that their products are every bit as good as they think they are.

I wish that were true. I think 90% people who makes stuff want it to be evidence that they've Produced RPG Stuff about orcs, vampires and whatnot. Of the other 10%, 5% (and also, half of that 90%) don't consider making enough money to support yourself as a benchmark for the success of their business. In short, most creators have lacklustre aspirations or are not really relevant economic actors.

I'd also add one bit of personal, gaming wisdom: People want to buy fun games.

Well, that's the tricky bit. Definitions of fun come and go. I think it's a good idea to have different kinds of games with strong profiles instaed of putting everybody's eggs in one (or two or three) baskets.

 

[eyebeams]

Thank you very much for the information you have given us.!

Dude, it's the brand manager. It's his duty to tell you D&D's doing great.

Me, I'm curious whether this was the Best Ever year for D&D:

1) Measured against liabilities or not (given two waves of downsizing and cutting loose several ventures like Dragon and Dungeon).

2) In adjusted dollars or not.

3) For the entire history of the game or on WotC's watch.

4) Measured including secondary licensing or not.

Etc, etc.

I'm not calling Charles Ryan a liar at all. But his job mandates certain statements. (Wizards is indeed head and shoulders above everyone, for instance, but 60-70%? You could find a way to make that figure be true, for sure, and my certain measurements, it would be.) His comments about what kind of rules novices get and don't is really on the mark.

 

[Sholari]

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.

This ties back in to the issue of market research: We do tons of focus group playtesting for any new game that’s intended to reach a nonhobby audience; it’s critical to understand the learning path that leads players successfully into an understanding of the game.

Though I think there is always room to improve in anything, this allays a lot of my concerns. I appreciate you stopping by and giving us a better sense of how the market is looking

 

[Akrasia]

To quote Wittgenstein

You know, this is almost always a bad idea.

But if you feel it is necessary, quote the later Wittgenstein -- the inappropriateness of the quote will be far less manifest.

 

[Akrasia]

... [/b] 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.

...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.)...

Thanks for this info. This is obviously good news for the hobby as a whole, given WotC's position in it. (And allowing for some element of 'spin' here, given that Mr. Ryan is the brand manager for WotC D&D, I trust that the 'trend' he describes does indeed exist.)

However, my concern all along in this thread has been the ability of D&D (and RPGs more generally) to retain players, once they face more demands on their time and energy. While it is great that players in their teens and early twenties are getting into RPGs, this says nothing about whether the kinds of people with whom I hang out and game -- professional folk in their late 20s and 30s -- are picking up, or sticking with, the hobby. (And yes, I understand that my selfish concerns as a 30+ prof with limited spare time are probably not significant enough to affect the market decisions of companies like WotC.)

Complexity: The right balance of game complexity is a tricky issue. (And Sholari is on the mark in his observation on market segmentation and the need to meet the specific needs of each segment.) As posters here have pointed out, complexity is sometimes more desirable to teen and tween players than simplicity--but not always. ...

Again, it is interesting that there is no mention of the segment of the market that I care about -- the late 20s and 30+ crowd, who might not have the time or energy to invest in DM'ing 3E, but would be willing to run a less 'crunchy' game a couple of times a month.

I can understand if, for straightforward business reasons, WotC does not care about this group. Maybe they are small potatoes, from an economic point of view (though I cannot help but think that a 3E-compatible 'rules lite' version of D&D would do quite well). Hopefully smaller RPG companies might try to meet this demand (a few appear to be moving in this direction).

 

[Celtavian]

re

That tendency won't go away. It would probably become worse if the business shrank.

Remember - the basic motivation of any company is to make money. In general if more people buy your products, you make more money. Thus, there is a basic drive to have products appeal to more people. If sales drop, you'll see them struggle more and ore to recapture a large audience.

I understand business. The bigger something gets, the more the designers have to reach for new material. Thus the influx of books that contain a great many useless feats, Prcs, magic items, etc., etc. The RPG industry driven in the same way as say Intel or Microsoft just leads to bloat and poor design. Sure if you produce enough, you are bound to get some nice products. Overall, many products are a waste of time and money.

When the hobby is small, usually less books of a higher quality are put out. GURPS is a great example of a small gaming company with a smaller player base than D&D putting out higher quality books often because of personal interest rather than pure profit motive.

WotC is an example of a bloated RPG company putting out bloated books to keep dollars rolling in. I can't even begin to use a quarter of the material they put out for reasons ranging from imbalanced rules design to useless material to not enough time to even read yet another book.

I also at times get the feeling that Hasbro doesn't look at the PnP RPG industry like an RPG enthusiast does. I would rather know my favorite RPG is in the hands of an RPG enthusiast rather than worry that one day it won't be profitable enough to make Hasbro happy.

 

[MerricB]

I can't even begin to use a quarter of the material they put out for reasons ranging from .... not enough time to even read yet another book.

If that is your problem, why is what Wizards doing relevant to you at all?

You have adventures available to you through Paizo and other companies; the core rules work very well - what more do you need?

One of the great strengths of D&D is that the core material is enough for most people - but supplements are available to those who want them.

Cheers!

 

[Umbran]

The bigger something gets, the more the designers have to reach for new material. Thus the influx of books that contain a great many useless feats, Prcs, magic items, etc., etc.

Don't confuse "I don't have a use for" with "useless".

GURPS is a great example of a small gaming company with a smaller player base than D&D putting out higher quality books often because of personal interest rather than pure profit motive.

Don't confuse, "This company puts out books I like, so they are of a particular objective quality".

In general, don't confuse your particular tastes with objectively good and bad books. In the original sense - there is no accounting for taste. You don't like WotC's offerings, that's fine. But many people do. ANd the WotC books seem to be selling, while the smaller companies, which you say are supposed to put out good work, often enough put out crud.

 

[Umbran]

I'm not calling Charles Ryan a liar at all.

Depends - what counts as "growth of the RPG business as a whole" to you? Does not Mr. Ryan's stated growth of the number of players count?

(Wizards is indeed head and shoulders above everyone, for instance, but 60-70%? You could find a way to make that figure be true, for sure, and my certain measurements, it would be.)

Seems to me that what Ryan has said is right in line with what I believe Mr. Cook and others have said. IIRC, in the 1999 data, D&D of some flavor accounted for about 60% of the play going on. Since that time, there have really been only two major game releases - D&D 3.x, and White Wolf's new WoD 2.0.

Now, if you've nearly doubled the number of gamers, and only one new game has been around to sell to those gamers, who do you think really has the market?