The market dying?

[Akrasia]

Hah!

Akrasia's officially old.

You kids! Get off my lawn!!!

 

[Akrasia]

... Maybe the 'young gamer' demographic is just younger than College Age and simply stops playing when they head off to a University and lose their groups?

When I was in high-school (1984-88), D&D was huge. (And geeky.) There were clubs, etc. A television crew even showed up at my high-school one day to report on our game.

As for my (highly nonscientific) report, two of the university clubs were in Canada, one in the U.K, and the rest in the U.S. (NY, Michigan, and California).

 

[Turjan]

The fact that people 'leave the hobby', or choose not to 'upgrade', is an impact on the market. Other hobbies do not see this same phenomenon. Some can retain existing players more successfully than RPGs, or, more importantly, are more successful in convincing existing players to buy new products. This problem is likely something intrinsic to the nature of RPGs (for the reasons I mentioned in my earlier post), and is an 'impact' on the market.

Thank you for this remarkably fuzzy explanation. Which are those hobbies that successfully keep their players across the hurdles that the time necessary for a successful career and a family pose? It's simply a fact that most people stop playing at that age, no matter what kind of game. The same is true for buying pop records and other activities typical for younger people, who keep up with the newest fad. As I said, it's mostly circumstantial. That's nothing specific for RPGs. That's why I think this aspect is unimportant.

As for your claim that 'the important point is the other side, winning people over ...', well, no kidding. Thanks for the revelation. However, my point was not about 'market strategy'. It had to do with a possible problem intrinsic to the RPG market.

Well, to put it bluntly: You yourself spoke of a greying player base. For me that expression illustrates the whole problem intrinsic to the RPG market .

 

[Hussar]

Well, I mentioned this before, but it seems to have gotten a tad lost in the wash. I game over OpenRPG, which, I admit, is hardly completely representative of the gaming community, but, there's no reason it doesn't at least give a bit of an idea.

In all of my games, and the games of the DM's I speak to, about 1/4 of their and my players are under 18. I've gone through 25 players and had about 6 high school students in my games over the years. Others have anecdotally mentioned similar numbers. Again, take from it what you will. But, I would be curious about something like GhostOrb. On their site, they apparently have about 500 members. I would be very interested in how many are teens. I know at the forum which hosts my game and about a dozen other games, d20 and not, the numbers are all around 25% for the under 18 crowd. Hardly a small number of new gamers coming up through the ranks.

 

[Akrasia]

Thank you for this remarkably fuzzy explanation....

Sorry.

...
Which are those hobbies that successfully keep their players across the hurdles that the time necessary for a successful career and a family pose? It's simply a fact that most people stop playing at that age, no matter what kind of game....

Actually, different hobbies do retain players at highly different rates. I would be surprised if you dispute this. Playing something like poker, chess, or a computer game, requires far less investment -- both in terms of preparation and scheduling -- than RPGs. Thus there are hobbies that people find themselves able to to continue, despite family and careers, unlike RPGs (which are very time-intensive, and require careful scheduling, etc.).

Different hobbies face different attrition rates in the face of competing time demands on players.

Well, to put it bluntly: You yourself spoke of a greying player base. For me that expression illustrates the whole problem intrinsic to the RPG market .

Fair enough. I agree that recruiting new players is very important, and didn't mean to suggest otherwise.

 

[Rasyr]

How's this one:

Yes...if you cook the numbers of a single-issue report, without knowledge of the previous decade's sales figures, and average them, and put them in a nifty graph, then yes: it's just a recent slump. Kudos. Everything's fine. You have Saved The Hobby. Laurels and rose petals all around.

Apparently its not just a slump and the hobby is in need of being "saved".
Not that I agree.

There has certainly been some more reasonable data presented from both sides. But I think you are being overly forgiving of one side here.
There has been a lot of comments that are talkign about decade long trends and implying (if not outright stating) that it is all coming to a head right now. I think that is well over the top. It is a slump. It happens.

How about going back to his original post in this thread, rather than a smart-alecky response that he made to somebody outside the industry (who has no idea what they are talking about) telling him that he has no idea what he is talking about.

If you go back to his original post, he basically said that he agreed that the industry was shrinking, not dying. End of story.

 

[Turjan]

Actually, different hobbies do retain players at highly different rates. I would be surprised if you dispute this. Playing something like poker, chess, or a computer game, requires far less investment -- both in terms of preparation and scheduling -- than RPGs. Thus there are hobbies that people find themselves able to to continue, despite family and careers, unlike RPGs (which are very time-intensive, and require careful scheduling, etc.).

Sure, some people always keep playing something. That's not the rule, though. But to shorten this to the main point: if the player base is greying, this means that RPGs do a remarkably good job in keeping the players in the hobby .

 

[Turjan]

How about going back to his original post in this thread, rather than a smart-alecky response that he made to somebody outside the industry (who has no idea what they are talking about) telling him that he has no idea what he is talking about.

If you go back to his original post, he basically said that he agreed that the industry was shrinking, not dying. End of story.

Sorry, this original remark was directed at me. Sure, I'm not in the industry. Nevertheless, I can see when someone is making up stuff from some data points. At least, I expect his conclusions to fit the data points. As even this condition was not met, I pointed this out. As the addressed was running out of arguments, I got this wonderfully snarky response. Tell me who's being smart-alecky here .

And perhaps it doesn't hurt if you read up on the whole exchange yourself .

 

[Rasyr]

I wonder if, based on these numbers, what we're seeing isn't as much a general decline of the industry as much as the beginning of the end of the FLGS.

Well, I know from sources on one industry list that there is normally a cycle of stores closing and new stores opening. The speculation there is basically that there used to be more opening than were closing, but right now there are more closing than opening (hence some shrinkage in the market). The retailers on this list really tend to dislike online stores, especially the deep discounters, and tend to lay a lot of blame on them. Of course they also dislike the PDF market as well, but that is another story.

If this is what's happening, I guess what we'll see in fairly short order (12-24 months) is that companies which can't sell through major booksellers will either have to make a transition to direct sales or pdf or go under.

Or both... And some companies have already done this.

This isn't to say the FLGS will vanish entirely, but rather that there won't be enough of them to be primary source of sales for a given product. (Which actually as I look at decisions made by publishers like Hero Games and Guardians of Order, may well be what's happening already.)

Yup, exactly.

 

[Waylander the Slayer]

Interesting discussion with some very varied and valid perspectives- I think that the topic is important and relevant to all of us as such, we should discuss this in a positive manner and try and remember to be polite, considerate and good to one another lest the thread be closed.

Is the hobby shrinking? Quite possibly, the only fact i have is that everyone i game with is in their late 20s- early thirties- i dont see any new people or kids playing. Note that this is only an opinion based on my very limited, immediate environment.