rounser said:
It would be interesting to see Ryan Dancey comment, as to whether d20's impact is going pretty much as he planned, or with a twist or two.
I think that it is very important to differentiate between "d20 products" and "d20 publishers".
Let's imagine that there were 5 publishers selling 10 products each in August of 2001. And lets imagine that there were 20 publishers selling 5 products each in August of 2002.
An individual publisher might say "sales for d20 products are down compared to last year" or "the d20 glut is hurting sales". But from the perspective of the d20 market, you would have to say "d20 sales are up by 100% over last year!"
There are publishers who are making a lot more money on d20 products than most publishers of non-d20 products generated for years prior to the release of the OGL and the d20STL. Some of those publishers are "new", while some have businesses that straddle or significantly predate the OGL. And some of the products produced by the new guys are incredible, and some of the products produced by the preexisting guys are horrible. (And vice-versa). There are big companies who are doing extraordinarily well with d20, and small companies who are doing extraordinarily well with d20. (And vice versa).
On the other hand, with a couple of exceptions, most non-d20 publishers are finding it hard to avoid doing d20 products, and many publishers who are doing both d20 and non-d20 products are struggling with finding a balance that makes them comfortable.
The current market is the market that I believed we would grow into in 3-5 years from the release of the OGL, with odds on the 5 year window. That we have reached this point earlier than I expected I attribute to two things: 1 - a cadre of experienced publishers who took big chances very early on, and were extremely well rewarded for doing so, and 2 - the ability of the internet to educate consumers faster than I dreamed possible about the fact that they should be setting the development agenda, not the publishers.
I'm often asked how to make a successful d20 product. My answer is "add as much value to the player's experience as possible". There are a lot of publishers out there who think that consumers still evaluate their products based on how cool their worlds are, or how interesting their art is, or how "fringe" their subject matter is. None of that is true (or has ever been true). Customers value products based on how likely they are to use those products in a game, and when used in a game, how much entertainment value they add to the pre-existing material the customer already has. The difference in success between the publishers who follow a customer-centric focus and those who follow an alternate path is increasingly obvious in terms of unit volumes and topline revenue.
I think that in the next year or so, we will see a clear break between publishers (d20 or not) who bring products to market that maximize player value and those who do not. And I expect that many of those who do not will blame a "glut", or "a bad system", or other forces in the marketplace for their failures vs. the competition.
There are more active RPG players than there have been in more than a decade. The size of the RPG market in terms of raw dollars has doubled since 1999. There are more companies who are able to self-sustain RPG publishing businesses including paying living wage salaries and earning profits for ownership than at any time in my experience. Retailers are spending more money on RPG products and are treating RPG products as more central to their success or failure than at any time since the mid '90s. This is a fantastic time to be an RPG publisher, but the bar in terms of design quality, customer focus, and utility has been raised higher than it has ever been, meaning that the successful products usually represent a level of effort and attention to detail which dwarfs the levels exerted in much of the work done in previous years. The companies who adpat to these changes will be successful and those who don't won't.
I don't think that any structural force (WizKids, Yu-Gi-Oh, the recession, etc.) is having any positive or negative effect on the RPG market segment. The ups and downs in the RPG segment caused by publisher choices and customer reaction to those choices far outweighs any impact those external forces might have had. And I see nothing likely to change that for the foreseeable future.
Ryan
