The 5 'Tiers' of TTRPG Publishing

Cannibal Halfling Gaming published an interesting article recently in which they divided tabletop roleplaying game publishers into five tiers, based on annual revenue. Here were their categories, but you should check out the article for a deeper dive.

~$500 million annual: D&D
~$50 million annual: Paizo
~$5 million annual: Steve Jackson Games
~$500K annual: Evil Hat Productions
~Everyone else (up to $100K)

They chose one example publisher per tier; they didn't list every TTRPG publisher. That's why your favourite publisher is not on that list of 4 companies. But feel free to add to the list!

Also, we talked about it in last week's episode of Morrus' Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk, for those who prefer to absorb their news in video format!

 

[Von Ether]

What do these tiers mean for the community? Sure, they matter to publishers in the business, but to gamers? Do I care? Is there a noticeable impact if I'm all in on a publisher that is tier 2 or tier 4?

The majority of publishers are also the community, so while this article may not speak directly to you, it matters to more folks than you know.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The majority of publishers are also the community, so while this article may not speak directly to you, it matters to more folks than you know.

To anyone in the industry as well as the community, yes. Plenty of folks, but not everyone.

 

[mamba]

What do these tiers mean for the community? Sure, they matter to publishers in the business, but to gamers? Do I care? Is there a noticeable impact if I'm all in on a publisher that is tier 2 or tier 4?

at a minimum it affects how many people out there already know the game and/or want to play it. If that is no hurdle, I don’t see why you would have to care

 

[LordEntrails]

at a minimum it affects how many people out there already know the game and/or want to play it. If that is no hurdle, I don’t see why you would have to care

Thanks for the pretty much only useful answer. I missed that when I thought about it.

Otherwise I stop and ask myself, does tier imply quality? Does it imply or provide better artwork? Layout? Editing for completeness? But yea, reach is probably about the only thing I can think of, since you pointed it out. Do "we" (players) feel the tier impacts those other quality metrics?

 

[mamba]

Otherwise I stop and ask myself, does tier imply quality? Does it imply or provide better artwork? Layout? Editing for completeness? But yea, reach is probably about the only thing I can think of, since you pointed it out. Do "we" (players) feel the tier impacts those other quality metrics?

quality, no, or only once you reach the 50,000 and below tiers. Better artwork I’d say generally yes, but again that has very little impact on the 500M to 500k tiers, below it might become more noticeable.

The other thing about art is that it can be technically good and you can still not like it vs an objectively technically inferior piece that you might like better regardless, so art budget does not equal art you like better even if it might equal more technically proficient art

The main thing is reach, but I do not think this discussion was about any of that, let alone the bigger budget = better game idea. To me it was just about providing some information about what the market looks like

 

[MGibster]

I find this discussion a bit more useful than the one time a fellow tried to pitch the industry only had two categories, "Professional" which was WotC and Piazo, and "Indie" which was everyone else. If found this bizarre on several different levels, never mind the "Professional' tier was based on two outlier companies or that indie companies lacked professionalism.

It really is. Even the smaller companies are publishing some impressive RPGs these days. My copies of Aliens and Vaesen by Free League are beautiful, Mongoose Games did a great job with the Traveller boxed set, Chaosium has been making quality games for decades now, and even less popular games like GURPS have glorious books. There are some games published by indy companies that aren't exactly the highest quality, but there are a lot of good ones being published these days.