The market dying?

[GVDammerung]

Please target your frustration at those on your side making excessive statments, rather than those who point them out.

But that aside, this is all a temptest in a teapot. Slumps happen. The data presented isn't even that big a deal. Get over it.

Fair enough. I can readily agree to agree that there is enough hyperbole to go around, on all sides.

I would like to offer that my appreciation of the size or "biggness" of the deal is relative to the appraisal of the situation by those d20 D&D publishers who have come along to note that they have some measure of concern at present. Unscientific. Personal, with my liking of the products these d20 D&D publishers produce. But there you have it. The sky may not be falling but if some of my more favorite d20 D&D publishers will publically express concern, I will by turns think there is something to be concerned about. That Wotc has everything as rosy is all well and good but I buy far more product from non-Wotc publishers than Wotc. Should the number of d20 publishers suffer for a "contraction" or whatgaveyou, I would be distressed as I like regularly seeing their products readily available to me without incident or interruption. On a grander stage, "canary in the coalmine?"

 

[Turjan]

I think we, non-insiders, must make do as best we can with what data is available. Everything is then relevant but the degree of relevance will vary. Which lets us keep talking.

If we constrained our discussions to effects that are specifically bound to game shops, I'd agree. This means things like whether game shops can survive on RPG sales (quite obviously not) or whether they have any future at all. As soon as we come to the question how RPGs sell in general, these numbers are not very helpful though.

The "increasingly unimportant sector of the RPG market" comment, I think, represents a ENWorld on online bias. First, I do not know of any quantitative numbers that are available that demonstrate that brick and mortar sales are not still dominate and by a more than fair margin. Second, assuming that online sales are more significant, that says nothing about the "incubator" effect brick and mortar stores have on the hobby, particularly as relates to cross-game migration, say from cards to rpgs or from miniatures to rpgs. It is an online conceit, I think, that online is the big show.

I agree with your "online" comment. Although amazon has a big importance for people here on EN World, it's not that important for many people outside from online communities. But those numbers don't contain any data from the likes of Barnes & Nobles etc., either. There are many people who just take their monthly 30% coupon and buy their stuff at a normal chain book store. Someone from WotC said that they sell 50% of their RPG books outside of game stores, tendency increasing. This means that the C&GR numbers are severely lopsided, because they don't really give an adequate image of the RPG market. This also explains the consistently lower numbers for the WotC market share that C&GR reports. This is simply because WotC leaves those game shops behind for good.

 

[Yair]

Hi guys,

I acknowledge in advance that I may regret stepping into this one

I'll try to give some figures where I can [snip]

Thank's a lot for that. That was very interesting.

As a big company of print RPGs that also sells pdfs, I was wondering if you could comment on how large is the pdf RPG buisness from your prespective anyway? I realize it's probably much smaller, but I'm wondering just how much of your revenue comes from online pdf versus print products. Are the pdf sales 1% of your RPG revenues? 5%? 10%? What's the scale of their impact?

Of course, you're free to ignore the question. I'll just keep on living in ignorance.

 

[Storm Raven]

I agree entirely that 2005 data is incomplete and drawing conclusions is then speculative. Comparing year over year data for the same months and between months, however, 2005 is shaping up/trending to be noticeably worse than prior years, particularly 2004 but maybe not as bad as 2003.

Only in the second quarter. In the first quarter, the month-by-month numbers look virtually identical to those of previous years. The numbers from 2002-2004 look remarkably stable for the first quarter months, and virtually the same in 2005. We have a couple spikes here and there (the most noticable ones being in late 2001 and late 2004), but other than that and the 2nd quarter 2005 slump, all the other numbers look very close over the given period.

Now, GMS may have some data he's not shared with us from, say 1990-2000, but since we can't see it, we can't evaluate it. Given that he stated that the 2001-2005 data showed a clear declining trend, which doesn't seem to be true (it shows spikes, and a recent, relatively short slump, which may or may not continue), I don't know if we can trust his recollections about data that is 5-15 years old.

 

[NewLifeForm]

Opinions of a Would-Be Game Designer

While my opinions and views on this subject may have less weight then the "big guns", this is a subject I've been keeping a very close eye on. I've worked in the industry as an artist, a writer and a retailer, but never as someone who owns a company. Bare this in mind as I try to rant as intelligently as possible...

To say that the development and wide spread popularity of computer RPGs, especially MMORPGs, hasn't hurt table-top gaming is to be blind to not only a fault in our market, but also an oppurtunity.

I am obessed with table-top RPGs, I love them with a passion, but I haven't been able to assemble my group for several months. We're a group of 5 to 7 individuals, 30-40 years of age, with an average of 15 years of experience playing RPGs (some of us as little as 5 or 6 years, some of us as many as 28). We live in three different states. Getting together to game is not an easy task. As an insomniac with a high-speed internet connection, I have been able to get together with them online, and have clocked far to many hours on World of Warcraft.

At the risk of sounding extremely cynical (heck, I'm a New Yorker, I'm allowed ), humans are essentially lazy. Getting someone to look at the pretty pictures on their computer screen is much easier then getting them to read a book. In addition, getting them to fork over 30 to 40 bucks for a book compared to automatically draining 12-15 dollars from their account is an impressive task. So what are we in the table top industry to do to compete?

First, we need to up the graphics on our books a notch or two (or ten). Our pictures need to just be as pretty or prettier. Little black and white illustrations in the corner of the page are not going to impress the polygon, frames-per-second crowd. We need to modernize the appearence of our books and try some different style approaches. Ptolus looks the most promising in this regard, more inspired b travel books then text books. Don't just be better, be different.

Second, I think our inactive online community needs to be stronger. More and better online content and extras will give RPG products that MMORPG and DVD Director's Cut appeal (WotC already do a fine job of this-but I would still love to see it expanded).

Thirdly, I agree to some extent that the nature of the current distribution and retail system could use some work, but as someone who has worked in retail for over 16 years, the current economic crunch is hitting the small business person very hard. My store simply can not have product sit on the shelves. If I think I can sell 100 pieces of an item, I'm almost better off getting 75 and selling out guaranteed. There is simply too much product coming out too quickly. Dead product is money lost and money lost at this point is doom. As for myself, I used to spend anywhere from 20 to 100 dollars a month easy on game products, where as I now spend 30 or 40 dollars once every few months. Once again, too much mediocre stuff, less time to make use of it and as was stated earlier, after 28 years of gaming, I don't really need anything. I buy what inspires me.

I don't think the market is dying, but I do think it is going to reach an extremely endangered point within the next 5 years if it doesn't start evolving. More advertisting, better overall marketing, positive media coverage, better graphics and better magazine coverage are definitely needed. I stopped purchasing Dragon and Dungeon a few months ago and I'm eagerly searching for (or awaiting the creation of ) a gaming magazine the covers all RPGs (if you can, check out a copy of the Japanese magazines Roll & Role or RPGamer - GURPS, Classic Traveller material, Castle Falkenstein and a slew of other titles in the same freakin' issue! Banzai!). Have you noticed there are about 10 or 15 major computer game magazines on the newstands? Not in the video game stores but on the newstands! We only have Dragon, Dungeon and Inquest in NYC. Come on marketing and PR - get the word out there!

Finally...

I would like thank all the pros for treating this thread, and those who've posted on it, with patience and respect. I would also like to thank them for their opinions and for being genuinely informative. This, I must say, is an area where our industry has virtually every other beat, hands down. I raise my GenCon mug to a better next quarter and another 100 years of the greatest hobby on Earth.

NewLifeForm

 

[rpghost]

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.

I try to open my books when I can to give some general feedback to publishers and retailers. I have done so in the past, here you are again...

Our total gross sales represent roughly 1.5 million a year. Not a large segment of the market, but a sizeable snapshot not to be ignored. Bellow are some long term charts (each bar representing one month) of gross sales from 3 major segments of this market we participate in:

1) Game Universe - Our brick and mortar store in the Midwest (which uses a POS):

2) RPGShop - our online book/dice/minis store:

3) RPGNow - our ebook sales site:

Granted much of the early growth on these charts is do to obtaining marketshare (Online sales, New B&M store has been open only 2.5 years) or establishing the industry (ebook sales pioneer).

It is my feeling that we're in a cyclical down tread in this industry (much to do with the burnout of d20) along with some major new factors pulling at our customers purse strings:

- Gas Prices
- World of Warcraft
- Disasters and Charity

James Mathe
Minion Development Corp.

P.S. If any publishers wants to know their SPECIFIC numbers, email me at webmaster@rpgshop.com

 

[TwistedBishop]

That's because I'm not about to go back to dig out 9 years of back issues, just so I can provide data to satisfy a few insistent posters on an internet forum. Sorry. At some point, you'll just have to take my word for the fact that the earlier numbers were higher, and when added to the figures I provided above, a definite downward trend is visible.

Why would I make this up?

Normally I wouldn't be this blunt, but since you asked: I suppose your sales aren't doing particularly well at the moment, and you want to make it look like it's the entire industry, not just yourself and some others.

And really, 9 years of back issues? Are you honestly trying to say that the market is selling less product right now than in the dark days of the late 90s?

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Thanks for providing some more numbers to look at, James!

So...the question now becomes, how does this fit together with everything else? I can't help but find it interesting that its very easy to get completely contradictory statements from many different people on the 'inside'...with some swearing we're in a slump, and showing at least some numbers that prove it, while at the same time others are saying just the opposite, and even have numbers to show that, and then even some that are just in the middle and don't really show anything one way or another.

So, is it really just a matter of taking one's own success/failure and projecting it over the entire industry?

 

[Paradigm]

In fact, each issue provides a graph with the tracking going back quite some time. The current issue shows the trends back to July of 2001....and, because obviously I'm going to continue to get nay-sayers unless I provide the info:

<SNIP NUMBERS>

If you want the numbers Gareth quoted, scroll down.

The indication of decline is 2Q this year. Funny thing about CG&R, a little while ago they went from voluntary reports where we could just tell them what we did as retailers, to a more in depth data-mining effort where they wanted actual sales records. Many stores don't have a POS and inventory system to track each and every sale precisely. As a result, far fewer stores report their sales (I know I don't any longer) and the most likely to be able to meet their requirements are comic book shops, which should sell fewer titles than your dedicated FLGS. Funny thing is, the change in methodology occured about the same time as the appearant decline.

I happen to know that there is a decline, because much of my competition has gone away, but I haven't seen it in RPGs on the retail level. What I have seen from a publishing level is that even though Living Arcanis is larger than ever, the distributors are ordering less and less. So much so, that they have to reorder our titles immediately (and I do mean same day) upon their arrival in their warehouse. Not only do distributors make no effort to have a month's supply, they often fail to maintain even a single day's supply. This doesn't apply to all distributors, some are plugged in enough to know the demand for Arcanis titles.

Now, as a result I get a great many direct sales requests from consumers, which is nice because I stand to make much, much, more on a sale. Problem is, that doesn't grow my consumer base. As a result, I contact those consumers that order from me, find out who their FLGS is, call that store, and if the store is willing to put forth the 5 minutes of effort (I am astounded by the number that aren't) I walk the order back to their primary distributor and back to me. Just so that my distributor can make a buck and maybe order more next time. I never want to circumvent the other 2 tiers if it can be helped, but sometimes it can't.

 

[GMSkarka]

Normally I wouldn't be this blunt, but since you asked: I suppose your sales aren't doing particularly well at the moment, and you want to make it look like it's the entire industry, not just yourself and some others.

Which would make sense, if I mentioned anything about my sales anywhere in this thread.

Which I haven't.

For what it's worth, Adamant Entertainment is PDF-only right now, and is one of the top 20 in that portion of the market. I make enough to live on it full-time, which is more than can be said for the majority of companies in this business. So, I'm doing just fine....but that's largely because I'm concentrating on PDF. If you look at the graphs that James provided, you'll see that PDF is experiencing steady growth.