The Coming Doom...

[Michael Morris]

"Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them."

The time: March - 1983. The young video game industry is flourishing, and Christmas sales of catridges surpass movie sales for the first time. Hundreds of manufacturers are churning out dozens of titles for Atari's 2600 VCS. Everything looks good. Yet, 1 year later - everything would be gone. All but a handful of the companies would crash and burn.

I seriously think d20 is on the verge of this problem. The parallel's are too numerous to ignore - and I'm not sure anyone can do anything about it. Like Atari before it - WotC excersizes no controls on who can and cannot make a game under the d20 label. Unlike Atari and to their credit WotC is at least producing a core product of passable to outright stellar quality with few to no outright bombs. And some of the bigger names of d20 are doing the same - Malhavoc, Green Ronin, and even Mongoose has finally upped their QC. Beyond them though the rest of the market is saturated to or beyond capacity.

There is a crash coming in my opinion folks. I think - or hope - that it won't be as far reaching or catastrophic as the video game crash of 1983. I do believe that we won't see half as many d20 publishers on the floor of Gencon 2005 as we did 2004 though - these things can happen that fast.

Just a late night observation. I hope I'm wrong, for the sake of a lot of folks and their dreams.

 

[coyote6]

Alright, the doom & gloom threads are now officially Thematic.

ENWorld's December Theme: It's the End of the Icosahedral World! Now On Sale, For $5.

 

[2WS-Steve]

You must have missed it -- the crash already happened.

 

[Gez]

On a related note, the coming Doom movie is going to be an even worse licensed movie than the D&D movie was.

 

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

Shall I break out my Y2K scare supplies?

 

[Breakstone]

You must have missed it -- the crash already happened.

Oh yeah, and it was a big one- parts flying all over the place!

It was so big that they even released a video game based off of it:

 

[Gez]

Cool photoshop, Stup!

 

[MerricB]

Indeed - the crash has already happened... and it had almost no effect on D&D or the RPG market in general!

Why? Because the d20 System publishers are such a very, very small slice of the market. Wizards by itself makes up about two-thirds of the market (according to Charles Ryan), and surely Steve Jackson Games, White Wolf and other non-d20 companies also share a portion of what remains.

What is left are the d20 publishers and small "other RPG" publishers.

The d20 System "crash" has been occuring this year, with several publishers getting out of it or re-aligning their models. This is also the second d20 System crash! Ask Clark Peterson what sales he got of his original NG modules - and what the modules a year later were selling. (I think we're talking about the tens of thousands for his first few modules, and down to the a thousand or two for the later ones).

Conversely, D&D has just had the best year it has ever had (Charles Ryan, again). The D&D playing population has doubled since 1999.

More players of D&D mean more good things for d20 System publishers as well.

Cheers!

 

[Eremite]

The king is dead; long live the king.

The RPG industry has never been much more than a glorified hobby. I am sure that the majority of those in this "industry" have never made that much money from it.

Even the "big names", I dare say, have never made much more than a middle manager in other better known industries and I'm sure the privately-held companies will never be able to be sold for anything resembling a decent multiple.

However, the main players seem to be stable so perhaps we've just seen a shaking out of some of the smaller players.

 

[Berandor]

We need a "Doom" posticon.