The market dying?

[D_Sinclair]

Heh, FFN has this to say about the state of gaming.

Gah! The poked fun at my horribly overpriced and too nifty looking to dare be played with 3-d anniversary edition of Settlers of Catan...

If people have trouble swallowing the $120 price tag for Ptolus, try shelling out $380 for Settlers of Catan's 3-D 10th anniversary edition...

 

[I'm A Banana]

Dare I feed the troll? Oh, why not...

* Incompetent brand management. TSR and WotC have both at various times allowed the D&D brand to get associated with poorly socialized nerds.

Except by all accounts, the hobby is growing beyond the basement. As these nerds grow up and get jobs and teach their friends, family, and kids, you get a huge diversity of people interested in the hobby. Add that to the fact that nerdishness is growing more acceptable in society and in life (Most of the world isn't stuck permenantly in high school), and that does'nt really impact D&D sales negatively. In fact, the "cultural cliquishness" of D&D is an asset, since it breeds fierce loyalty and a kind of shadowy intrigue. And then you have the "cultural items" as Mearls termed them being powerful market forces beyond D&D. The LotR movies, fer'instance.

D&D isn't associated with poorly socialized nerds in any greater capacity than professional wrestling is associated with poorly educated hillbilies. Which is to say that there is much broader appeal.

* Incompetent industry representation. A trade organization that peppers its awards show with rappin' hobbits, careened to an alleged felony at the center of its elections and is shunned by market leaders is not in a position to put a good foot forward for the media or for collective marketing of RPGs. Then there's . . .

The fact that I have no idea what you're babbling about, as a fairly casual gamer, indicates to me that you're making a mountain out of a molehill. Obviously this event is hardly a destructive force in the market...

* Collective squabbling. Nobody wants to work together to provide a sound direction for the industry because everyone is slavering for a top 5 slot or will be damned before they let anybody else up. One manifestation of this is, in my opinion, a general decline in the craft (not novelty which is easy to get) of design. The two largest streams of RPG design ("indie" games and D20) both have vocal minorities who heap scorn upon design outside their rubric. The 90s were choked with wierd crap. The 00s are choked with boring crap.

With this cliquishness, you have a point. If 3 or 4 mid-sized-to-large publishers could join forces on a valuable product, they'd be able to rival WotC with the forces they could leverage. It is the nature of the marketplace that the big fish swallows the smaller, but there is a swarm of tadpoles out there right now.

* High concept is choking the market with more and more games that only appeal to initiated gamers. Does anybody outside of the hobby really give a damn about, say Etherscope? This works better for .pdfs (which usually only sell to the hard core anyway), but nobody seems to have found a new accessible millieu since the mid-90s or so.

Nobody outside the hobby gives a damn about anything in the hobby, yos. It's kind of the nature of a hobby...I don't care about the newest model train releases, either. I don't pay attention.

* Demographics. Gamers are aging. Many of us come from any explosion of interest in the 80s or remember it. D&D has ahd a pervasive influence on games that are far more popular than it, but the sad flipside is that nothing exists to take people back to that point of origin.

Evidence has been cited that indicates D&D's market is growing, and is now larger than it has ever been before. This *is* the point of origin for many, many people -- more people than have ever played the game before. Take people back to the "good old days," and you'll be guilty of that "high concept that only appeals to gamers" problem. A huge part of the audience isn't interested in the good old days. Just in getting fun out of their dice today.

 

[wingsandsword]

That's mostly true. Although it's sometimes a two-way street. I got interested in tabletop gaming by CRPGs. I succeeded, despite TSR's or early WotC's best efforts to prevent this (cease and desist orders against messageboards and crap like that) .

Good point, Gaming survived the Dark Times when TSR was on it's inquisition to eliminate gaming fandom, it can survive a market twitch.

The actual supply of fans and interested people look pretty healthy (again, record Gen Con attendance), any problems in the industry appear to be distribution/organizational problems that make companies perform far less efficiently than they could otherwise.

However, the mainstream bookstore market is killer for small press companies, since effectively everything sold through major bookstores is on consignment. If it doesn't sell, it's sent back and the company that produced it has to eat the cost. Compare that to the FLGS, where local stores end up with shelves of unsellable low-grade materials that periodically are cleaned out with a huge sale.

The foundation of the industry, the fans and gamers themselves, appears healthy. As long as that is healthy, the industry will survive, because as any company collapses, a new one will arise.

 

[Vigilance]

The trouble, though, is that these are the best public numbers out there, they all agree and have done so for several years. If they were being pulled out of thin air they would not be nearly so consistent.

What I think you're not realizing eyebeams is that those numbers ignore about 70%+ of the total market. All the numbers Ken Hite talk about tell you is the state of hobby gaming stores. More RPGs are sold through chain bookstores like Borders, B&N, Waldens and even mass chains like Target and Walmart than are being sold at hobby gaming stores.

The other thing to consider is that these large chain bookstores and retail outlets only deal with the TOP of the industry, WOTC and a few others.

In other words, if *all* hobby game stores went under companies like RPGObjects would have lost their only retail outlet for print books. WOTC would simply work to improve visibility in chain bookstores and move on.

 

[eyebeams]

What I think you're not realizing eyebeams is that those numbers ignore about 70%+ of the total market. All the numbers Ken Hite talk about tell you is the state of hobby gaming stores. More RPGs are sold through chain bookstores like Borders, B&N, Waldens and even mass chains like Target and Walmart than are being sold at hobby gaming stores.

The other thing to consider is that these large chain bookstores and retail outlets only deal with the TOP of the industry, WOTC and a few others.

In other words, if *all* hobby game stores went under companies like RPGObjects would have lost their only retail outlet for print books. WOTC would simply work to improve visibility in chain bookstores and move on.

Your information about hobby book sales is mistaken and again, the result of taking off the uff comments at face value instead of actually investigating them broadly. You're fixating on one set of information (G&GR abd Hite's interpretation), when there are several, which I listed in my previous post. But then again, my point is that I suspect that actual facts are irrelevant to the majority of posts here, which mostly exist to make hobbyists feel nice about the commercial end of their hobby.

Yes, folks here like to talk about WotC having majority marketshare (which they bootstrap into your comment) -- but nobody thinks where that data actually comes from, do they? It comes from comments on threads like this. It comes from Charles Ryan, actually, when he complained that you should all ignore everybody who isn't him when it comes to talking about the hobby. So one guy pushing his product told you something once and you cleaved to it, probably because it makes y'all feel happy. This would be funny if it wasn't the rationale used by so-called businesses in this hobby.

When it comes down to it, many people are more interested in the pretense of a thriving hobby, because the facts are a bother, eh?

 

[Crothian]

Yes, folks here like to talk about WotC having majority marketshare (which they bootstrap into your comment) -- but nobody thinks where that data actually comes from, do they?

So, is it your arguement that Wizards doesn't have a majority of the market share?

 

[Turjan]

Your information about hobby book sales is mistaken and again, the result of taking off the uff comments at face value instead of actually investigating them broadly. You're fixating on one set of information (G&GR abd Hite's interpretation), when there are several, which I listed in my previous post. But then again, my point is that I suspect that actual facts are irrelevant to the majority of posts here, which mostly exist to make hobbyists feel nice about the commercial end of their hobby.

So, here the direct question: Do any of your data contain the sales figures of RPG books from amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Walmart and Target? Yes or no?

 

[eyebeams]

Dare I feed the troll? Oh, why not...

I'll remember that your view any form of disagreement is trolling and rate the sincerity of your replies accordingly.

Except by all accounts, the hobby is growing beyond the basement. As these nerds grow up and get jobs and teach their friends, family, and kids, you get a huge diversity of people interested in the hobby. Add that to the fact that nerdishness is growing more acceptable in society and in life (Most of the world isn't stuck permenantly in high school), and that does'nt really impact D&D sales negatively. In fact, the "cultural cliquishness" of D&D is an asset, since it breeds fierce loyalty and a kind of shadowy intrigue. And then you have the "cultural items" as Mearls termed them being powerful market forces beyond D&D. The LotR movies, fer'instance.

Please to be citing the origins of "all accounts." Back in the real world, "all these nerds" are just getting old and giving up the hobby. This was even true when WotC studied it. This explosive growth must be some strange phenomenon where we get more gamers while the industry loses almost 80% of its sales volume over 10 years -- because in the real world, that's what's actually happened. The size of RPG print runs have declined by a factor of 5-10.

D&D isn't associated with poorly socialized nerds in any greater capacity than professional wrestling is associated with poorly educated hillbilies. Which is to say that there is much broader appeal.

Really? The concepts behind RPGs do have plenty of appeal, as video games have shown -- just as they've shown that RPGs themselves are utterly unnecessary to express them.

The fact that I have no idea what you're babbling about, as a fairly casual gamer, indicates to me that you're making a mountain out of a molehill. Obviously this event is hardly a destructive force in the market...

That fact that you have no idea what I'm talking about is rather my point.

With this cliquishness, you have a point. If 3 or 4 mid-sized-to-large publishers could join forces on a valuable product, they'd be able to rival WotC with the forces they could leverage. It is the nature of the marketplace that the big fish swallows the smaller, but there is a swarm of tadpoles out there right now.

I'm not talking about "rivalling," anyone. I'm talking about a clear collective definition of segments of the RPG industry and promoting a collective public face.

Nobody outside the hobby gives a damn about anything in the hobby, yos. It's kind of the nature of a hobby...I don't care about the newest model train releases, either. I don't pay attention.

Actually, not, it's not inherent to the nature of the hobby. It's a part of the mismanagement and decline of the hobby.

Evidence has been cited that indicates D&D's market is growing, and is now larger than it has ever been before. This *is* the point of origin for many, many people -- more people than have ever played the game before. Take people back to the "good old days," and you'll be guilty of that "high concept that only appeals to gamers" problem. A huge part of the audience isn't interested in the good old days. Just in getting fun out of their dice today.

No evidence hasn't been cited. One guy from WotC has been cited. Though it magically becomes "evidence" when people want to believe it, while a decade of observation and analysis from many sources magically becomes "hearsay" because people don't want to hear it.

 

[eyebeams]

So, is it your argument that Wizards doesn't have a majority of the market share?

WotC has floated around 45% according to numbers I trust -- not the 70% or 90% bandied about here.

 

[Crothian]

WotC has floated around 45% according to numbers I trust -- not the 70% or 90% bandied about here.

The problem is you can't trust any numbers, as no one has the full picture. There are just too many gabs in the infoamriton. People make their best guesses, but I see no reason to trust the facts you do over the facts other people use.