The market dying?

[TwistedBishop]

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.

Your sales are fine, you're not even in the print rpg market now, but you're insisting there's a "steady decline" that's apparently been going on for 9 years? We're all looking at the numbers you posted and seeing a three month slump. I assumed you had some private business figures that pointed to a larger issue, but now you're saying that's not the case.

 

[Numion]

Funny thing is, the change in methodology occured about the same time as the appearant decline.

...aaaand we have a winner.

 

[Turjan]

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.

Thank you very much. This sheds some very interesting light on those C&GR numbers, which makes their significance even more questionable.

But I think that all this quibbling about details doesn't really help with finding good answers to a few long term developments.

• The RPG sales are slowly declining over time, even if it's not that dramatic as some want us to believe, and although it's always interrupted by periods of growth or relative stability.
• The brick and mortar game stores will mostly vanish over the next decade or even years, and the RPG industry has to think about how to replace these shops as recruitment grounds for new tabletop players.
• Online games and other hobbies are always a competition to tabletop games, and there must be new strategies how to tap this large pool of gamers for tabletop RPGs. This worked with me, so it should work with others .

I think these are the points worth talking about. And somehow I have the feeling that most posters in this thread agree on this, despite the arguments we see .

 

[Warbringer]

The data and G&GR indicates a definite slum (R(2)= .17). Interesting the the trend was flat, only (r(2)=.05) with data to March, and the second order polymonimal indicated the market had rebounded from lows through Q4 2002/Q1 2003.

Data is partial and self-selected, so of course issues there.

But, it does support a general slump in the market; Wotc reported CCG down significantly, GW reported 10% contraction in Sales/Turnover (LoTR contraction), WizKids seeing significant reduction in CMG. ALL markets seem to have a glut, RP, CCG, CMG...

Compared to 1999 this is still good.

One comment, the Q2 05 is significant... Why? Channel switch? Real drop in demand at the FLGS....

2c

 

[Turjan]

One comment, the Q2 05 is significant... Why? Channel switch? Real drop in demand at the FLGS....

Switch in the method how data were obtained, as stated above.

 

[GMSkarka]

I assumed you had some private business figures that pointed to a larger issue, but now you're saying that's not the case.

You know, the attitude that somehow you're owed this information is really feckin' annoying.

Yes, I have figures, private and public, going back for about a decade.

Yes, it indicates a downward trend.

But there's no convincing you or those like you, so I'll stop bothering, as it's not ever going to change your mind, and will only serve to aggravate me further.

 

[GMSkarka]

This sheds some very interesting light on those C&GR numbers, which makes their significance even more questionable.

You'll note (or maybe you won't) that before I posted the figures from C&GR, I said they were flawed, but that they were the only publicly-available figures this industry has.

 

[Turjan]

You'll note (or maybe you won't) that before I posted the figures from C&GR, I said they were flawed, but that they were the only publicly-available figures this industry has.

Yes, I noted as much. My comment just regarded the methodological change in data acquisition which might explain the observed slump all by itself. That's something more severe than just the general point that the data are flawed because they only regard a subset of the market and are self-selected, because this specific point basically kills the whole statistics.

 

[Rasyr]

The last three months on the table are really, really harsh. Thanks to GMskarka for sharing the numbers.

Hence, Chris stating that rpgs are going through a rough patch.

And Rasyr, that thing about Nisarg ... I hope I'm not shaping up to take his place!

Well, not unless/until you start rabidly attacking anything that isn't d20 and start quoting a former WotC exec like he was some sort of messiah....

 

[Rasyr]

Well, I'll also join in pointing back to the title of the thread..

Why keep pointing back to the thread title? That was the question originally asked. However, I would like to point out that, as far as I recall, NOBODY has replied to the question in the thread title with an affirmative. Everybody has said, "no, the market is not dying". Several have said. "no, the market is not dying, but it is getting smaller", to which a number of folks reacted AS IF they were told that the market was dying. Nobody has said that it was.

Switch in the method how data were obtained, as stated above.

But what did that switch in the way data was collected do? Some possibilities:

1) Retailers could not just estimate sales anymore, they had to go back and dig through actual data. - Conclusion: data prior to the switch is inaccurate, and on the high side.

2) Less retailers answered the request for data - Conclusion: less variance in the information collected, less artificial puffing of units sold, better number result, indicating that perhaps previous numbers were higher than actual...

Simply put, by being more rigorous in the information collected, the data ia actually more accurate than that collected previously, and if the data is more accurate (and shows lower sales than previously). This would seem to indicate that sales reported before the data collection method changed was possibly inflated slightly.

Just something to think about...