The End of the Gaming Renaissance

[SSquirrel]

You realize gamer that everything you said just supported the OP right? "only the most successful companies can do it. Its a matter of having successful enough product that the distribution channels will accept your product to get it into the game stores."

In the 90s it was far easier to have a small crew bang out a game and get it in stores. I believe there was a Line of Sight article Monte Cook did once talking about the pdf market and he described it as wide, but shallow. Yes, you do have the companies who have successful print business also selling things in pdf format, but when you look at the strictly pdf market things are a bit different. Tons of companies and individuals have maybe 1 or 2 products. Quality varies drastically and while there are some companies who are strictly pdf and have built a sizeable library, they are in the minority.

 

[Stalker0]

Especially with the current world economy, I definately agree that the small startups have it far rougher than 10 years ago.

I also do think that on boards like ENWORLD, we do about the foundations of game design almost as much as we think about the games themselves. I like that fact myself, but I can see the trend increasing.

 

[Erik Mona]

I haven't listened to the original podcast, but I can't really agree with Jim's hypothesis as you recount it.

First of all, the word renaissance means "re-birth," so tracking a "renaissance" all the way back to the beginning of the hobby doesn't make sense from a semantic point of view. I think the period he's describing as the renaissance is actually the early birth years, when everyone was trying to make the "next" D&D but no one had really succeeded.

Second, I think at least three factors that developed in the beginning of this decade more appropriately set the stage for a renaissance, at least in the business sense. Creative issues are somewhat more hoary and depend a lot more on anecdotes and personal preference, so I'm going to leave those aside for the moment.

Vampire the Masquerade certainly was a turning point in that it attracted a new audience and significantly expanded the demographics of the hobby. But a new game that managed to gain a lot of popularity was not unique at that time. FASA's Shadowrun had good market penetration, as did West End's Star Wars RPG. Vampire WAS unique in that it almost knocked AD&D off its pedestal as the #1 game, but that had a LOT to do with D&D being at the end of an edition cycle, and it didn't last all that long.

So, how did a talented amateur get his game into the industry in the years between, say, 1985 and 1999? Before that "talented amateurs" certainly could luck out, and indeed most of the early RPGs fall into this category. RPGs were brand new at the time, D&D was red hot, and games were being carried in hobby and toy stores. Around the middle of the 1980s, and especially after the initial boom of Second Edition AD&D core rulebook sales, it seems to me that most RPGs transitioned from toy and hobby stores to more or less exclusive availability at comic and game stores (where, of course, they had been all along). You might get into B. Dalton or Walden Books, if you were lucky, but those venues remained more or less reserved for the big boys.

I just don't see a lot of evidence of the "talented amateur" or "one-man show" companies prior to this decade, when a number of factors made it much easier for this type of product to exist. Here are a few of those factors, off the top of my head:

1) The advancement of desktop publishing software, print-on-demand technology, and overseas printing at rock-bottom prices finally made it possible for a one-man show to make a product that could look like a professional product without having to mortgage their house to do it.

2) The advent of the internet made it possible for one-man creators and micro-companies to market directly to the consumer. Later, the development and proliferation of PDFs made it possible for these types of producers to cut out both print and distribution costs, which again made the physical making and distribution of products a lot easier and WAY less expensive.

3) The development of the OGL and the d20 license, while in some senses stifling creativity by shackling everyone to the same system, none the less convinced many gamers to look beyond the D&D brand for the first time, and encouraged some non-D&D players to widen their own horizons. These events undoubtedly caused a "boom" that brought more "one-man shows" into the industry than at any time since the early 1980s. Game stores ordered deep on these products, a gambit that generally worked until WotC released 3.5 and essentially invalidated a lot of that inventory in the eyes of many gamers and consumers. THAT's when it all of a sudden became a lot more difficult for micro-companies to get distribution, because every channel in the distribution chain had been burned by the d20 Glut.

There are some challenges getting in the way of micro-companies getting their products into stores these days, but I do not think these challenges are unique to RPG companies. It's more difficult to get ANY books in bookstores these days. And thanks to online competition and increased overhead and the advent of products like collectible cards, board games, and miniatures that turn over MUCH faster than your average RPG product, the number of "full line" RPG specialty shops has decreased significantly since the days of Vampire the Masquerade. The stores just aren't stocking as many RPGs as they used to.

I think the renaissance was near the beginning of this decade, with the triple punch of the OGL/d20 License, the "Indy Game Revolution," and the birth of new, profitable distribution channels on the internet. The first factor was dealt a significant blow with the GSL, with the expected vast reduction in publishers serving that particular market. I'm not enough of an expert in indy games to say whether that market is growing or shrinking at this point, but I suspect it's at least held steady, and it has undoubtedly been a source of much important creative and game design and theoretical work.

The internet is still growing by leaps and bounds, and many micro-companies and one-man shows of the type Jim discussed in his podcast have been profitably (if modestly) thriving for a few years now.

The barrier to entry and the accessibility to the customer base has never been easier than it is right now, and it is getting easier every single day.

--Erik

 

[gamerprinter]

Yeah, but no...

Point taken, but not quite.

The RPG market is dominated by and has always been and will always be a "vanity press" market.

Looks at WotC's success, and say they've sold a million books, (don't know it that's true or not, at least for 4e), but their millions in sales compared to say the fiction novel market - WotC is vanity press compared to the general fiction market. But comparing RPGs to the fiction market is "apples and oranges."

When I say the most successful, I'm talking a handful of companies.

Being "successful" versus the "successful enough" to get a publication in print, still means a huge risk and doesn't guarantee success in its own right. Look at Paizo, although Pathfinder has exceeded their expectations. Before Gencon, Paizo was asking buyers to go to their FLGS's to order the book, because, at the time, they weren't sure the distribution companies were going to pickup their product into their inventories. You wouldn't call Paizo a vanity press type publisher, would you?

While the larger publishers (the most successful ones) have the largest market share, they don't own the industry, there is plenty of room for smaller publishers to become a great success and never enter the print publication industry.

Being small and only selling a few thousand copies of a given product is and has always been the RPG industry.

If all I sold was a "few thousand copies" of my product, I consider myself a huge success. Besides, no publisher just comes out with one product, ongoing publications mean ongoing sales into perpetude (at least until the industry is dead.) Having a couple dozen products all making some level of sales means success.

You can't compare RPG sales to Bantam or Tor Books, again "apples and oranges".

Regarding B/W products, look at Mongoose Publishing, they are a pretty big concern, lots of products, yet beside full color hard and softback covers, all their interior work is B/W only. I've been commissioned for maps for Mongoose, I know, they only want B/W illustrations.

The market though aging, and getting tougher, but that has as much to do with the current economy, and the growth of online games vs. P&P. What constituted a successful RPG company in the 80's and 90's is past, and will most likely never return. Comparitively the newspaper industry compared to twenty, fifty or a hundred years ago is not the same market and will never be again. Times are different, industries change - you really can't compare the industry now to ten or 20 years ago, the world is a different place.

Honestly, I hope to always remain in the small RPG publisher arena. If I can continuously create various products and sell enough to keep moving forward, I would be a huge success, yet never compare to WotC, and never really want to be that big.

To look at the RPG market as only those companies that can get books to FLGS shelves is wearing big blinders. The FLGS is not the end all be all marketplace for RPGs, and they will go away as dinosaurs long before the RPG industry is gone. PDF market (or other online format) is the future for RPGs.

I don't see myself as proving the OP's point, nor yours obviously. I'm realistic the PDF market is becoming and will be the RPG industry. Print is a luxury and risk, that is tough for even the "big companies".

Let's just agree to disagree, I guess.

Edit: since I was writing this at the same time as Erik Mona was posting his response -- I agree with everything he just said.

GP

PS: the RPG Rennaissance is going on right now, and has only just begun.

 

[TerraDave]

Yes, Mr. Mona said it all.

I would just add, the irony of your post is that the mid to late 80s was marked by a rise in profesionalism (not all a good thing) and arguably was the peak of the game company. Many companies with profesional staffs churning out all sorts of books and boxed sets.

That stopped in the mid 90's at some point. While that era is over, a rebirth did start with 3E. You could argue it is still continuing.

 

[SSquirrel]

One company that I haven't seen listed yet when discussing the virtual 1 man shop is Palladium Books. Say what you will about Kevin, and I often do, but he has certainly done a crapton of the work at Palladium himself. Yes other people have written books and he has used other art, but the lionshare of the books credits over the years has been him. All thru the 80s and into today. RIFTS has been pretty popular since it came out in the early 90s too.

 

[kenmarable]

While I can see jim's point and can generally agree (although I have problems with labels, but they are just labels), I really think he's missing the point in that the "Post-Modern" age of RPGs is already on it's way out.

Yes, distributors aren't picking up the small publishers like they used to (although I think the height of that was in the 3.0 era earlier this decade), but the talented amateurs and even talented professionals are on their way to bypassing the distributors. I don't know what trendy term to call that age, but unless they can key into the digital arena, eventually the distributors will be long gone. Between Paizo's direct subscriptions and WotC's DDI, already many "talented professionals" are finding bypassing distributors to be profitable. Of course, they can't get rid of the distributors yet, but the writing is on the wall and distribution has to change or die in the near future. Direct internet sales and digital products can benefit RPG publishers greatly.

And it's not just in RPGs. Newspapers are going under because blogs, Twitter, and other social media are becoming more popular sources of news. Newspapers need to either provide something the others can't, or die. (For one thing, I hope that pushes TV news away from chasing the latest breaking story and back into slow, more in-depth, thoughtful news and ceding the breaking news to social media. Hey, I can hope.) In the music arena, record labels are doing terrible but independent musicians are thriving - because they are going direct to consumers. It's a painful transition and many old business won't survive it.

Plus, when I talk about digital RPG products, I'm not necessarily referring to PDFs. Personally, I think that years down the road, PDFs will be the 8-tracks/audio casettes of RPG publishing. Very popular for a while, but soon replaced by better media.

 

[ggroy]

Plus, when I talk about digital RPG products, I'm not necessarily referring to PDFs. Personally, I think that years down the road, PDFs will be the 8-tracks/audio casettes of RPG publishing. Very popular for a while, but soon replaced by better media.

When will we see a holodeck version of D&D or Forgotten Realms?

 

[Ariosto]

I have not been directly involved in the business since the early '90s, but here are some impressions I have picked up from the periphery.

One is that the distributor situation really has people over a barrel now. Is there any competition left? The distributor's interests are not always in line with those of hobbyists, retailers or publishers -- which is bad to the extent that it becomes the tail wagging the dog.

The comic-book shops (unlike book stores) are not allowed returns. They have a very targeted market, which happens to be considerably smaller than what more general retailers reach.

Heck, comic books themselves are a feeble shadow of the business they used to be in the "golden age", or even more recently.

Back to distributors (assuming plural is still accurate): They don't want to keep stock in the warehouse. They do want to ship in big lots. So, they don't want something that sells at a slow but steady rate; they want a flash in the pan -- a BIG flash. Then on to the next, boom boom boom. Out with the old, in with the new, keep that pipeline lubricated.

And that has nothing necessarily to do with sales at the retail end; it's not based on gamers getting what they want. Once the product is in Comic Shop Guy's hands, it's his business whether he sells it or not; he still owes the distributor in any case.

So, it's a slightly screwed-up feedback loop. It's also hard to get into because you not only need to be able to deliver a big batch of product to the distributor all at once, the distributor needs to see (or expect to see) a lot of demand from retailers.

That might be hard to generate when neither the retailers nor their customers have seen the product yet. Wizards, White Wolf and some others are more or less "familiar faces", at least as long as they're churning out familiar stuff. The "d20 System" explosion of publishers left a lot of unsold stuff gathering dust on shelves.

Comic Shop Guy often doesn't know much about what's available. He often doesn't get much of a chance. If people wait to place big orders until they've seen the product and customers' responses to it, then it might be too late; the line may have been killed for "lack of interest".

 

[Erik Mona]

Heck, comic books themselves are a feeble shadow of the business they used to be in the "golden age", or even more recently.

I am certainly no expert on the comic side of the business (I basically stopped buying them altogether about 6 years ago), but my impression is that the business has actually improved considerably in the last few years.

Also, the rise in popularity of trade paperback collections--and especially the ability to sell these books through the book chain--has been a real boon to publishers and retailers alike (though I know the specialty shops are not thrilled with competing with the likes of B&N and Amazon).

A lot of what you say about the distribution side is true, if a bit generalized (there's Alliance, then ACD, then about a dozen smaller regional guys). There is indeed FAR less competition on the distributor side of things, which among other things centralizes the buy/don't buy decisions in the hands of basically one or two dudes.

In the olden days, if one distributor passed on a product or ordered light on it you at least had a chance to prove that you had a hit if you could get another distributor to bite on it.

Nowadays, if Alliance and ACD don't take your product, you're basically dead in the water.

But again, I think it's important to keep in mind how online distribution models can often do an end-run around the distribution chain entirely, so we're faced with the irony of it being more difficult to get a product in stores than ever before while at the same time being easier to manufacture and/or distribute your product to _gamers_ than at any time in history.

--Erik