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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Monte At Home" data-source="post: 1893992" data-attributes="member: 1335">Over the years, WotC business people like Ryan Dancey and Keith Strohm have been fairly forthcoming right here on ENWorld with various results of the in-depth market research done circa 1998. It showed (if I remember correctly) that the number of people playing a p&p rpg of some kind at least once a month was about 1.5 million. And they show a fairly steady and constant growth. Even if you think that number is a little inflated, like I personally suspect, it shows that the number is higher than most people think and that an awful lot of gamers out there do not buy rpg products of any kind--not even a PH. I'm not sure this three-wave hypothesis has any legs to stand on, at least as presented. Is the implication here that more people were brought in by WEG Star Wars during its run than were brought in by D&D at the same time, or that the D&D wave was and still is the biggest (and continues)? If the former, I'd need that to be proven.The conclusion is also disputed by the WotC market research.While I believe this to still be true, and absolutely was once true, with all due respect to Stan! and the others who worked on Pokemon Jr (a cool product), I look at this like a "trick" answer to a trivia question rather than real industry data. How many of these products actually ended up in the hands of a consumer who actually played the game?This is, and probably always will be, an ongoing argument among game designers. On the one hand, you have those who say that writing the products that you would like to have is good because writing about something that is personally interesting and appealing almost certainly leads to a good product. Writing about something you're not interested in, or attempting to guess what an audience you are not a part of wants, leads to disaster. The other side of the argument says that game designers are old, jaded fuddy-duddies whose tastes so completely diverge from the mainstream audience (or who don't even play the game anymore) that the real goal of the job should be to find out what gamers want and give it to them. Both arguments have their points and their holes, but it's an interesting topic.</blockquote>

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