The market dying?

[Paradigm]

If there were reliable figures, people would post them, but one of the long term problems of the game industry is that such figures don't exist. Most companies are privately held and they don't share their sales information. Many retailers don't have POS systems and the ones that do have no mechanism to share their numbers. So we are left with the sales numbers we do know (our own), imperfect info like the Comics and Games Retailer numbers, and what evidence can be gathered from the other tiers (retailers and distributors). It doesn't create a slick report full of citations that can be posted and analyzed, but it is possible to discover and understand certain trends in the industry. And when you are hearing the same thing from 99% of your sources, it doesn't take a genius to draw the correct conclusion. Again, let me stress that I would not say the industry is dying. That's just hyperbole.

Add on that much of the information is confidential or needed for legal proceedings and you end up with no idea of what is going on. All I know for certain is that RPGs have been declared dead or dying repeatedly in my lifetime. As a manufacturer, a retailer, and a person that has had a long and hard look inside the operations of a distributor, the industry is not dying, it is evolving. When I was a kid, there was D&D, some other TSR crap (and boy was it crap) and companied that TSR bought up and closed or sued into the dirt. Nowadays if you want a game about kung-fu robots in love with Japanese school girls, you can find it.

Look at the RPGs from small companies compared to something from a big company in 1985. The production values of a modern small-press product are FAR in excess of an old D&D book.

 

[Paradigm]

By "everyone" I think eyebeams is talking about on any boards except the Palladium ones.

I like Palladium. The books are large, informative and affordable.

 

[mearls]

Then why not come straight out and explain where Chris Pramas is wrong and you're right? :\

I don't think it's that simple. Honestly, trying to pitch this as an us v. them situation is wrong. As I mentioned before, the "RPG market" is really a few different markets that exist under the same umbrella. It's completely possible for observers in different parts to have different views on how things are playing out.

My one sentence overview would be, "Things seem tough for hobby gaming in general, but D&D seems to be riding out the storm just fine."

Take a game near and dear to you as an example: Castles & Crusades. It's completely possible that while other d20 companies are seeing a drop in sales, Troll Lord is holding steady or even growing because of C&C. So, Chris might say "I see a big drop in RPGs," but the Troll Lords might see their sales holding steady or even growing. Market trends are just that; general tendencies that apply to most, but not all, companies.

 

[mearls]

Net or gross? You can't effectively link sales to returns in such a short period of time.

I believe that we don't actually receive payment on anticipated returns. Book stores project out some percentage of stock they don't think will move, and they simply don't pay us for it up front. I imagine it works out to something similar to a flooring deal with a distributor.

 

[tetsujin28]

But why should he have to prove Pramas wrong? Gods, why does anyone have to be proving anyone else wrong?

Because that's the point of argument.

 

[tetsujin28]

I like Palladium. The books are large, informative and affordable.

You would be the exception, then.

 

[A'koss]

I don't know about that. Like you say, poker and chess lose a lot over the internet. I would say that DnD does as well. Without a live DM, your choices and freedoms are incredibly limited to whatever is coded into the game. Even with a fantasticly responsive program, there will be limitations on what you as a player can do.

I think that, as a player, the only meaningful thing you lose out on is the intelligent interaction between the DM (and therefore the story) and the players. The DM can change the "scene" and the story on a whim which obviously isn't easily done on a computer. PC capability I don't see as a big issue, games can give you all sorts of cool interactive capability.

That said, the rate at which game graphics, interactivity and AI is evolving you're going to find that players will be willing to give up a lot for the sheer immersion factor. It's also more convenient, you can talk to your buddies in real time, and so on. I expect you'll still find CRPGs designed liked Neverwinter Nights where you can have a "DM" to interact with.

Unless, of course, you're talking about some sort of sensorium VR set up with smell and touch and whatnot. But, then again, we're several decades from that sort of thing, so, it's a tad early to talk about computers replacing DnD.

I'm not talking sensoriums here (as cool an idea as it is) and I think VR glasses with stereo headsets are not that far away (seeing as you can buy them already).

Right now, there are lots of people who do both. It's not an either/or choice.

For quite a while you still had the choice of buying cassette tapes over CDs, eventually the market chose one and the other faded away. Again, MMORPGs are in their infancy right now and their influence is only just being felt. I think the market is going to naturally gravitate towards them as they continue to get better and better.

Who knows? Maybe people will reject the idea of immersive VR and go for the face to face contact because they are so jaded by online life. I'm quite sure there are some grognards out there who will do exactly that.

Oh I can see that, no question, but not enough to the PnP companies alive in any meaningful way.

 

[mearls]

I think a bigger and more interesting question is, "Will technology ever kill off tabletop gaming?"

I don't think it will. If it was going to, it would've done so already. We've had computer RPGs since 1981. We've had MMORPGs since 1997. I think we're already at the point where a computer interface makes it easier to manage the game and prettier to look at. Short of some radical, singularity-level change in technology, I think RPGs are too social in nature for a computer interface to replace them. As long as people like to interact face to face, I don't see RPGs as a form going anywhere.

But here's the catch.

The big "secret" of RPG publishing is that gamers don't need us. At all. RPGs are designed for the participants to act as game designers. IMO, RPG books are a real tough sell to gamers. Unless a publisher does a bang up job on a book, gamers just won't bother. They'll stick to their homebrew material, thank-you-very-much.

The challenge to an RPG publisher is to make products that grab gamer's attention and follow up with great rules, good writing, excellent layout, and cool art. If I've learned anything since I started on this crazy career path, it's that gamers are merciless when it comes to quality. There might be plenty of puff piece reviews for a book, and tons of "buzz", but when it comes down to sales, bad products are road kill.

At GenCon, I described my job like this: picture two 10 ton blocks of stone. On one side, you have every single DM in the world pulling on a block. On the other side, you have the 22 full-time RPG staff members at WotC. We, the WotC staff, are in a race to pull that block faster and farther than our entire customer base. If we slip behind, we're irrelevant. We're screwed. We're TSR circa 1996.

I think it's completely possible for game publishers to slide into oblivion, even while more gamers than ever play RPGs. I think that's part of why I love my job. We can't half-ass it if we want to stay relevant. As soon as an RPG designer stops looking at what gamers want, how gamers play, and how he can make his designs more fun, he's irrelevant.

The good side of this situation is that, once you decode what gamers want, they'll stampede book and gaming stores to buy it. Look at how low D&D dropped when TSR was dying. Dragon and Dungeon stopped publishing. There weren't any new books for months. GenCon was almost canceled. And yet, within 3 years a new edition of D&D hit the scene, blew out sales records, and ushered in a new golden age.

I think D&D is a hell of a lot tougher to kill than anyone can imagine.

 

[tetsujin28]

The big "secret" of RPG publishing is that gamers don't need us. At all.

I've been saying this very thing for years. If every game company were to suddently cease printing tomorrow, it wouldn't matter: there's more rpg material out there than anyone can use. People would keep gaming.

 

[Fate Lawson]

I believe that we don't actually receive payment on anticipated returns. Book stores project out some percentage of stock they don't think will move, and they simply don't pay us for it up front. I imagine it works out to something similar to a flooring deal with a distributor.

Gods, if that were only true. But that isn't how the standard book retail end works. If I order 100 units the invoice for ALL 100 units comes due in 30 days (on average). I may however have "returns privelages" for 180 to 365 days (again -- on average). Then I can wait for anywhere from 30 to 120 days to get my refund back (that is if I can even get a cash refund -- I might only get "credit" to future purchases).

However, those sales figures may in week 1 have Sales of Books A,B,C - Returns of books A,B (C having been just released and returns not yet coming back) and then week 2 may be Sales of A,B,C,D - Returns of A,B,C etc.,etc.