Predictions of the d20/gaming Industry

[ColonelHardisson]

First - P&P=Pen (or Pencil) and Paper

Next - The RPG industry as a whole will survive relatively intact for at least a year. There will be a thinning out of the d20 companies, but certainly nothing like a collapse of the d20 movement.

I imagine that P&P RPGs will survive for the next few decades, but will gradually dwindle. Sort of like how the comics industry has done - booms and busts, with readerships never quite attaining previous numbers with each boom.

The d20 movement has, perhaps, given us a glimpse into the future, especially companies like Malhavoc - small boutique companies, distributed electronically, headed up (usually) by one person.

As it becomes easier for anyone with a computer to make professional-looking product, the boutique phenomenon will become even more prevalent. Maybe something relatively simple will be what makes the difference.

For example, many, if not most, people would rather read books offline. Vanilla text is relatively cheap and easy to print out, but full color pages can take forever, and drink up a lot of ink. Perhaps when a printer comes along that makes printing full color pages require a lot less ink, then electronic comics and RPGs will take off. Either that, or an electronic book reader that is as easy on the eyes, and as easy to carry, as a book will make the difference.

P&P RPGs will survive, but the pens, pencils, and paper may be obviated by computers and PDAs, especially as they all become smaller and more powerful. But the face-to-face interaction will remain. Of course, with webcams, "face-to-face" may include something like video conferencing, especially as the technology improves.

All my opinion. Who really knows what the future will bring?

 

[Turlogh]

For myself, I can see mergers and a thinning but don't see a collapse of d20 companies (unless of course they ignore quality and production standards). Companies that show a dedication to improvement and innovation could be around for quite a while (especially if they have other irons in the fire).

I really hope that PDFs aren't the way of the future, I much prefer Books to a bunch of loose papers.

Hopefully computer RPG's and future fantasy and Sci Fi movies help increase the fan base of Pencil and Paper role playing, even if it only a small gain every year.

 

[Henry]

As far as books and printing costs go, you can print and bind your own grayscale books from PDF's for under USD $1000.00 - maybe even as low as USD $500.00 investment. (Comb-binder kit & a Black and White Laser Printer = Pretty Snazzy-looking Gaming Book.)

As technology improves and PDA's become cheap enough for everyone to have a capably-powered one (The Ipaq is a pretty good vision of this, as is the newer Combo-PDA and Mobile phone-pager devices available now), then the need for books will dwindle too. Books of course will never die out, as paper backup's are still the most fool-proof archiving around, but everyone can clearly see the convenience of players not having to lug around tons of books whever they want to go to a friend's house to game.

The d20 companies will likely change their formats - some will do as AEG and White wolf are starting to do, and develop other game systems with d20 and the OGL. I hope that Ryan Dancey's vision is true-to-money, and a superior system does develop out of this. But the gaming industry still has a lot of monkeys and typewriters to go through - no offense meant to anyone by this analogy, of course.

Computing must allow true interaction in order for roleplaying to achieve a computerized form - otherwise, hack-and-slashing to a soundtrack while completing the pregenerated puzzles is all that Computer games will ever be.

 

[der_kluge]

I don't know the numbers, but I don't think a publisher has to sell *that* many books to break even on a product. I would imagine that a lot of writers are like me- I don't write for the money, I do it because I enjoy it. If TG could no longer afford to pay me, I'd continue to write for the hell of it. Unless the market got so glutted that I thought that my stuff would never get seen by any amount of people at all. Then it might not be worth it.

It's also a hard industry to break into. If you're a no-name company trying to write D20 products, it's hard to get your stuff on the shelf. We all read Enworld and know what's out there, but your average game store owner doesn't, and that makes it hard to market a new company.

I don't think many more companies will try to break into the market. It's already tapered off quite a bit. I would say that if you're not already producing D20 products, you're gonna have a hard time of it down the road at this point.

 

[Psion]

I expected to see a few phase-outs of companies. I've only seen a few fringe companies disappear. And to be honest, I am becoming less and less convinced many of them will go away.

I mean look at it this way: there is a small body of non-d20 publishers that seem to be thriving off of the independant segment of the market, yet most such existing companies that have stuck their finger in the d20 pie (Atlas, AEG, FFG, etc.) have expressed that their d20 products outsell their house products handily. That being the case, it seems like there is enough of a market for the existing publishers to survive despite the competition, and only other factors are likely to force most of the larger established publishers out of the business.

 

[TheDayKnight]

die_kluge,

Do you really think that the average game store owner doesn't know what is due out in the market? As a game store owner myself, I think that would be highly irresponsible of them and be terrible for business.

I make sure that I know what is out and what is due out. That way I can talk to the customers and get them excited about new product. I would guess that most owners would also keep an eye out on products.

 

[mattcolville]

d20 allows a lot of people who wouldn't otherwise be able to, to profitably run their own company.

I think the number of d20 publishers will *always* be large from here on in. Furthermore, with 3k-10k print runs, it *should* be large. There's something like 3 million people out there with copies of the new PHB. All the d20 company's put together aren't, I think, able to satisfy that demand.

The problem is making a clear channel between the product and the consumer. This doesn't mean selling direct, that's a *direct* channel, it's not a clear one. A clear channel would allow the user to visit one place (a store, a website) and quickly identify where the product he wants is.

I don't think this is currently possible. Game stores haven't yet changed to deal with d20 and, considering how slow game stores are to change, I don't think it's likely to happen soon. The game stores I go to have almost no solution to this problem. There's no way, without throwing out large chunks of the inventory currently taking up floor space, current retailers can enable my purchasing desires.

In fact, I'll make a prediction. Soon we'll see d20 only stores. Or at least, RPG-only stores with much larger sections devoted to d20. That way they can service the (growing) number of d20 players in ways current game stores can't. I can't walk into any local game store and say "I need a good 8th level module" and get a decent answer. Because the sheer volume of d20 products they all stock makes it impossible for them to keep track of it unless they *stop* keeping track of the rest of the industry.

So, if that happens, I think we could easily see the number of company's able to profitably produce d20 material increase.

I'll make another prediction. The amount of time people have to get ready for GMing is shrinking. I think there are a couple of reasons for this. 1) the demographic is aging. 2) the demographic is growing. When it was small, it was mostly people who were *really* into it and willing to devote hours to preparing for a game. As it grows, I think it could eventually be dominated by people who aren't fanatics. Who enjoy it, but not to the exclusion of other recreation. 3) there are more things competing with it. When I was 17, it was literally impossible for my friends and I to play Stacraft over a LAN at our apartment. This is no longer the case. I don't think CRPGs will ever replace P&P RPGS, but I think they compete for the finite time everyone has.

Based on this prediction I think companies that can provide adventures that can be picked up and run an hour or two later with little or no perceived difference in the result from the players will succeed over those that take longer to prepare for. I don't think this means shorter adventures, I think this means rethinking how much we—the writers—presume the end user is willing to do before he runs something.

Supplements as well. Writing needs to be punched up, made tighter *and* more accessible, which is difficult. Usually 'more accessible' means 'longer.' If I can pick up a 96 supplement and read through in a couple of hours, that company will sell more books to me. Time is not what it was, the customer base is expanding, and the end user's willingness to spend a week reading something before he uses it (and often end up doing a lot of work after that to *use* the stuff) is shrinking. I think.

 

[Henry@home]

die_kluge,

Do you really think that the average game store owner doesn't know what is due out in the market? As a game store owner myself, I think that would be highly irresponsible of them and be terrible for business.

I make sure that I know what is out and what is due out. That way I can talk to the customers and get them excited about new product. I would guess that most owners would also keep an eye out on products.

Hi, DayKnight! I am certainly glad to see another game store owner who enjoys his work frequent these boards!

No offense, but I am wearing a big smile right now over your statement. You would be counted among the handful of store owners who actually DOES give a darn over what new products are out, other that what is someone's pet game systems.

We recently had a thread that many of us contributed to, over bad gaming store experiences, and why it is so hard to support our local game stores when so many cannot be bothered to even CHECK their distributors for a new product due out iminently. Frankly, I have NO gaming store within 90 miles that would even know nor care when a non-WotC or White Wolf product is coming out. For this reason, I will most likely wind up ordering any Fiery Dragon or AEG stuff online, rather than locally - or drive to the nearest "BIG CITY" to even get a look at spanking-new products. Morrus' site (and formerly Eric's) has kept me more knoledgeable about new game releases than I have ever been in 20 years of gaming.

If Horacio is around, he has a VERY interesting story about gaming store soverseas you would find interesting.

Anyway, It's good to see you post! Take care.

 

[Erik Mona]

>>>
Personally, I think most of the d20 companies out right now won't be around by this time next year.
>>>

This is nuts. People were saying it two years ago, and it wasn't any more true then than it is now. I think we'll see fewer than three print publishing companies vanish in the next year. All of the companies with which I am in regular contact for Polyhedron are doing well. A couple of them are doing _very_ well, despite what everyone seems to agree is a terrible glut in the industry.

Even with a glut, I'm guessing most d20 products sell better than non-d20 RPG products. That means it's unlikely that those companies that publish other products (Atlas, AEG, and Fantasy Flight spring immediately to mind) will close up shop even if the market collapses completely.

I do think we'll see far fewer "new" companies entering the d20 fray.

I think we'll see more online "try out" products that will be picked up by canny print publishers.

I think we'll see more "names" from Wizards of the Coast break out into d20 work.

I think people will be sick to death of class books by this time next year.

I think that smaller companies will emulate Fantasy Flight's "all hardcover" plans and lose a crapload of money gambling on obviously shoddy products that just happen to have a hard cover on them. Fantasy Flight products sell well because they are better designed than most of the competition, have good distribution, have good art, and contain cool ideas. Slapping a hard cover on a book riddled with inaccurate CRs, lame ideas, horrible art recycled from online "collectible" card games, and a bunch of hubristic back cover copy isn't going to work as well in 2002 as it did in 2001.

I think people will reach a saturation point on splat books that tightly focus on one subject, such as, say, amazons or gnolls.

I think we'll finally see some publishers take chances outside of traditional fantasy. Dragonstar was a great example of this, but it deserves a lot more company.

I think Neverwinter Nights will have a negligible impact upon the paper and pencil roleplaying business, but will outsell the Player's Handbook by orders of magnitude.

I think people will soon begin to chafe at overpriced pdf products.

With soooooo many products to choose from, I believe that fans will start to follow freelancers as much as they follow companies. Monte Cook is probably the first real d20 "celebrity" designer, and he's doing his best to increase visibility for his buddies Sean Reynolds and Bruce Cordell. Mike Mearls is rapidly becoming a name to watch, and several folks follow Chris Pramas, as well. EN World, probably the most powerful marketing "force" in the entire d20 industry, has built in "names" like Kevin Kulp and Claudio Pozas. More people will care about these things next year than they do now, especially after getting burned by crap products (of which there are plenty).

Hopefully, this will lead to more prominent recognition of authors on book covers (a few companies still shamefully hide the names of their designers on the back cover or inside credits). This will, hopefully, lead to an increase in word rates for freelancers. I'm not holding my breath for this one, but the poor guys deserve it.

Books will get more expensive. And rightly so.

I think we'll see fewer products with nine-hundred designers attached to them. That was an artifact of the mad rush to get product out before the competition, and when things cool down a little bit I think most companies will prefer to focus on quality rather than quantity. Scattershot multiple-author products are almost uniformly more error-riddled than products by one or two designers, and I think fans will notice this and shy away from the blatant money grabs.

Two years from now, I think someone will make a huge impact using the OGL, rather than the d20 license. I don't think it'll happen this year, and I'd frankly be surprised if it was the recently announced Everquest game that did it. It's going to happen, eventually, but I don't think it'll happen in the next year.

Last prediction: Publishers are going to start picking very public fights with each other over intentionally stealing product concepts and "adjusting" release dates specifically to screw previously announced projects. This will get very loud, and very ugly. It'll probably also be fairly entertaining.

That's all for now.

--Erik Mona

 

[rounser]

I think Neverwinter Nights will have a negligible impact upon the paper and pencil roleplaying business, but will outsell the Player's Handbook by orders of magnitude.

I'd be interested to hear your reasoning. If the game is good enough, don't you see people dropping P&P altogether to run their campaigns on NWN instead? Or for that matter, picking up NWN and being introduced P&P gaming through that?

The reason why I don't think NWN falls under the umbrella of MMORPGs and existing CRPGs is that it maps far more directly onto the P&P basis for "running your own game" than existing CRPGs do, such that an online DM may want to try out offline DMing, or an offline DM may wish to transfer to online DMing. When each DM does that, odds are good that a small group of players follows.

Existing CRPGs, (with few notable exceptions, for instance the outdated Unlimited Adventures), are all about "being a player". With gamemastering entering CRPGs the overlap between them and P&P gaming will never have been more strong, such that CRPGs and P&P gaming are covering the same ground (small group of players and a game master). This is why I predict that a non-negligible impact on P&P gaming will be felt one way or another, where MMORPGs and CRPGs perhaps haven't.