Infernal Teddy
Explorer
Gold Roger said:
You forget Shadowrun, even though that HAS dropped, mein Freund
Roleplaying outside the U.S.
- Thread starter Glyfair
- Start date
You forget Shadowrun, even though that HAS dropped, mein Freund
shilsen
Adventurer
This is a really fascinating thread. I can't really contribute much, unfortunately, since I don't think RPGs have ever been marketed successfully, if at all, in India. Nowadays there's a fairly thriving market in computer RPGs, but I've never seen even a single tabletop or wargaming book in all the time I was there (born and lived there till I left in 1998 at 24) or during my annual visits.
Pity, since with the importance of mythology in the culture, the rapidly expanding economy, and the importance of English as a lingua franca in the nation, it could be a very good market if handled right. If 0.0001% of the population could be sold a gaming book, that's over 1 million sales
Pity, since with the importance of mythology in the culture, the rapidly expanding economy, and the importance of English as a lingua franca in the nation, it could be a very good market if handled right. If 0.0001% of the population could be sold a gaming book, that's over 1 million sales
Steel_Wind
Legend
eyebeams said:
Canada is treated the same as the domestic market in the USA for all purposes by manufacturers and distributors of hobby games. The trends here match those in the United States exactly. There is no difference in English Canada at all (Quebec is a bit of a special case in the parts where English is not spoken - itself a fairly small segment of urbanized part of the province.)
If there is any difference in the market, it is that online sales of product are not as preferential in Canada as in the USA due to there being no tax advantage for online sales here and significantly higher shipping costs - which has meant the FLGS in Canada does not experience quite the same competitive pressure here as it does in the USA.
That would be the only difference in the way the market operates. In games played? No difference at all.
True - there's no Gencon in Toronto. Then again - there isn't one in New York City either.
Steel_Wind said:
This speaks more to the poor level of effort made to understand the Canadian market than anything else. While it is convenient to treat is as a common North American market in some respects, it is highly misleading in others. By and large, the information only looks "exactly the same" because it is segmented as "North America" and lazily divided post-hoc.
WotC lists the North American market as a single segment and Statscan does not in fact collect information for individual RPGs at all, making any statement that the markets are *exactly* the same (though they are substantially similar) to have dubious provenance, at best.
In fact, Canada has slight but critical differences in many ways. For instance (and apropos of what I observed) Canada's video game market in 2004 was 1/6 the US' despite the US having about 9 times Canada's population. It also has the third highest household broadband penetration among OECD nations.
True - there's no Gencon in Toronto. Then again - there isn't one in New York City either.
No, there's FanExpo, which has over twice the attendance of Gencon. Privateer Press was the main gaming exhibitor last year; Troll Lord was the year before. But again, lazy generalizations keep companies from doing as well as they might have otherwise, by not being informed of the opportunities.
GrimGent
First Post
In the eyes of the general public, perhaps, due to the wealth of publicity which LARP has received during the last ten years or so and which still leads the average man on the street to think about teenagers dressed up as elves scampering in the woods whenever the topic comes up. Gamers themselves know better than that, though.mhacdebhandia said:
Steel_Wind
Legend
eyebeams said:
[threadjack mode on]
FanExpo? Twice the attendance of Gencon? Bwaaahahah.
Not a chance. I was at them both last year.
Fan expo claims 42,500 attendees - but that's got to be counting the gate from all days as single admissions. No way was that unique turnstile attendance. Gencon does boast those attendance figures as unique. You only have to be at Gencon to know it's hella bigger than the other.
Moreover, FanExpo is a comic/anime convention that tries to shoehorn every other genre aspect it can into its genre flea market. It is not a gaming convention. It added games two years ago. There were hardly any tournaments or seminars of an kind and about 10 retailers selling games in the whole Metro Convention Centre. If you want to go buy anime and comics and stand in line to get autographs from some Sci-Fi actors, sure, Hobbystar's rip-off con may float your boat.
But the people attending for gaming at FanExpo is a few thousand, at best.
They aren't in the same league, let alone the same ballpark, as Gencon.
[/threadjack]
Jemal said:
Oh sure. I have no doubt they're substantially similar -- just not the same. And game companies typically have a less-than-stellar track record when it comes to supporting the Canadian segment of the hobby, including everything from inaccurate Canadian MSRPs to foisting off convention appearances to volunteer demo teams.
In Argentina I believe the most popular game is D&D since like.. forever. Although WoD is coming in a close second.
When I was younger everyone was playing INS/MV (as well as D&D and WoD), I don't know why but it was very popular here and I loved it as well.
Most RPG stores I know are well into the D&D day and RPGA so it's no mystery it became so big here.
When I was younger everyone was playing INS/MV (as well as D&D and WoD), I don't know why but it was very popular here and I loved it as well.
Most RPG stores I know are well into the D&D day and RPGA so it's no mystery it became so big here.
Steel_Wind said:
I stand corrected. They'd be about the same size, or Fan Expo would be a bit bigger of we compare it to Dragoncon's unique vs. gate estimates across 4 days compared to Fan Expo's 3.
That would be the problem I'm talking about.
I can see you entered this discussion with unvarnished objectivity. Or you've never bought anything collectible at Gencon to determine what a ripoff actually looks like.
It certainly isn't. That's the problem. The opportunities are there for those that would make use of them, but they don't. Possibly because they analyze the market by taking North American figures and dividing them per capita. You won't get the same number of gamers as Gencon, but the potential is comparable to many other large North American conventions.
