The market dying?

[MummyKitty]

As someone just getting back interested in the hobby after a long time off, I am amazed by the variety and quality of things that are out there. I haven't really seen anything that I thought was radically overpriced. I play board wargames that also require investments of $50+, but for the hours of enjoyment you get I think it's a good deal. WIth used books available, and inexpensive downloads, it seems there is a huge variety of things to buy. Also, interest seems pretty high in both paper RPGs and board wargames (well, within the niche these occupy). I think people are getting a little bored with PC RPGs and strategy games. The paper version are just more playable, and more fun than most. I still play the computerized versions but not as much as I used to. Well, I'm just rambling about my opinion, but I find myself getting more excited about this hobby than I have in a long time. I especially love all the "old school" type modules that are out there (like the World's Largest Dungeon). Granted the market may be a bit saturated but that's to the consumer's advantage....

 

[Hussar]

Just out of curiousity.

If the market were saturated, would that not result in a tail off of the number of new titles being released? I'm most certainly not all that knowledgeable about marketting, but it would seem to me that companies would be less willing to pump out new material into a market that no one is buying.

But, I don't see a drop off in the number of titles being released every month.

Or, am I just way off base here?

One thought about the high end of the market. I think this is a niche that has never really seen much action at all prior to the last couple of years. RPG books have never been priced over fourty or fifty dollars and a hundred dollar book? It's the first that I've seen. I think the industry is starting to worm its way into some new markets with the high end stuff. I have to admit, the idea of buying one book for a hundred bucks and not having to buy ten supplements afterwards is certainly appealing to me.

I know a lot of people's eyes widen when you say you bought the WLD or Ptolus for the price, but, then again, a new computer game is pretty close to a hundred bucks usually. What's the difference? Heck, the Warhammer gamers that I see shell out loads of cash for all those minis.

Maybe it's time that PnP RPG's start to market a little more uptown.

Sorry, rambling.

 

[D_Sinclair]

Origins the numbers were higher this then last according to what I heard.

However, while ticket sales were up for origins, vendor participation was significantly down. Just days before the convention, they were calling manufacturers and trying to sell their empty booths... at the marked up rate including all possible late fees. They even called my boss looking to sell a booth, and ARP is a PDF vendor currently. You'd think that with 1/3 of their booths still available a week before the convention, they would have slashed rates as an enticement, rather than go for the jugular.

 

[cthulhuhatesyou]

hmm, guess i might as well stop lurking and throw my two cents in...

IMHO i feel as if the market is leveling off, certainly not dying. we're seeing a number of good companies rising to the top to compete for the second or third tiers after WotC. others will either succumb, struggle on or get out of d20 publishing altogether. i think we can all rattle off a few examples here and there. i think we as players and DMs are becoming more discriminating with our dollars. i for one am pleased to see books like Ptolus coming out because it fills a long-neglected area of ready-to-play modules/campaigns (although Goodman games has been really great about this for quite some time). at the very least it gives people something to mine ideas from for their own campaigns.

store owners might be following similiar buying habits. i know of one store owner that chooses his purchases very carefully because of shelf space. if the book doesn't move then it takes up a valuable spot for something else that does move. you'd never know RPG sales were down if you were in his store since he sells quite a few books. that's why when i see numbers about the market being down, i take it with a grain of salt. not all stores report their figures to the trade papers so it's a hard number to nail down. still, some markets might be more vigorous than others.

i'm generally happy with the way things are at the moment since products of low quality aren't making it onto my overloaded bookshelves like some poor choices i've made in the past have. i'm more careful about what i buy and i support companies that, in my opinion, do good work. as far as whether or not a slumping market might mean a 4th edition is around the corner, that's something i won't begin to speculate about because it makes my head hurt

great topic to discuss. i look forward to reading more!

resuming lurker mode now ...

 

[scourger]

What I'd really like to see is an adventure campaign book done for something other than D&D and see how successful that particlar game becomes.

Great White Games (f/k/a Pinnacle Entertainment Group) has published several for their Savage Worlds game. I can't say how successful they are, but I sure am enjoying tour of Darkness and am looking forward to Deadlands Reloaded. It is a nice shift in the way I game in general--much less time-intensive. The ease of running Savage Worlds has further cooled my desire to run d20 D&D, but I recently bought Unearthed Arcana for some rules variants to save d20 for me. I don't think it will work the way I would like it to...

So, in answer to the original post, I don't think the market is dying; it's shifting.

Now, if I could just stop reading & posting on the Internet, I could really cut my gaming time (but what fun is that?).

 

[Glyfair]

In another thread, GMSkarka made the following observation:Take from that what you will...

One thing I've seen noted about reports of RPG sales is that WotC and White Wolf were bucking the trend and increasing RPG sales, while the rest of the industry was in trouble. Admittedly, that was after this year's first quarter results.

Also note that miniatures games are tracked separately from RPG sales, so the D&D minis line doesn't figure into this.

 

[Turjan]

If the market were saturated, would that not result in a tail off of the number of new titles being released? I'm most certainly not all that knowledgeable about marketting, but it would seem to me that companies would be less willing to pump out new material into a market that no one is buying.

But, I don't see a drop off in the number of titles being released every month.

Not necessarily. It might even be the opposite. Lower sales figures per book (i.e., smaller print runs) can be countered by increasing prices, lowering page count and increasing the number of products in order to achieve the same profit margin. Of course, this only works as long as there's still a decent number of buyers.

 

[TheGM]

Overall, I think the market will shrink in terms of providers simply because they're all fishing for dollarfish in the same pond, and the number of fishermen is increasing faster than the pond is being stocked.

My overall spending hasn't changed a ton, but I'm more cautious about all game systems that I sink money into.

I spend about the same on D20 stuff, but only from a few trusted publishers. It is not my primary game, so I don't even say "or stuff with good reviews here at ENWorld". just those few companies.

I did just order Wilderlands from my FLGS. Now if only it would come...

My spending on Kenzer and Company stuff has gone through the floor. It could be categorized as "nearly non-existant" at this point.

I've picked up the C&C habit, and am spending a chunk on that.

I've picked up some completely non-D20 stuff recently, offsetting my reduction in Kenzer purchases.

Dice and Minis are about the same - my wife buys the minis though.

 

[Tav_Behemoth]

The market may not be dying as such, but if these kinds of price points become the norm, the market will not expand.

The "Future of the Gaming Industry" panel at Gen Con Indy last year suggested that the opposite was true; price points rise because the market shrinks. The argument that the overall RPG market is shrinking, as the average age of gamers increases and new ones aren't coming in to replace the old, remains controversial; see my summary & discussion of the panel here.

Kenneth Hite said that one of the ways that publishers in other niches survive in shrinking markets is to sell luxury-priced items to fewer people, since there's no longer enough of a mass market to make it profitable to sell things at a price everyone can afford. One could argue that the publishers of the products JoeGKushner mentioned took this idea to heart!

What Behemoth3 is doing with Otherworld Excursions is, at one level, the same thing: trying to stay afloat by offering an expensive thing to a very small number of people. The important difference is that what we're selling is an experience -- and the continuing growth of Gen Con argues that the number of people willing to pay for a sit-down-and-play RPG session is increasing even as the number of people buying do-it-yourself-at-home RPG materials may be shrinking.

Another thing that might be poised to kill the market is unauthorized sharing of RPG materials. I'm the next-to-last person in the world to indulge in piracy hysteria; I was glad to see that people cared enough about Maze of the Minotaur to put it up on file-sharing services (especially since almost half of the people who got a free download of it, or any of our books, through the server drive didn't bother; nothing's worse than feeling like you can't even give your creations away!)

But in the music industry, artists can survive not getting paid for some downloads of their work by using this as free advertising for their concerts; in many cases, live performance has always been the mainstay of their income, with the revenue from publishing being relatively small potatoes.

It might be that as long as the RPG industry is dependent on publishing, and there aren't ways for artists to get paid for live performance, piracy is a much more serious problem than it is for musicians. The Otherworld Excursions tours are an attempt to create the RPG equivalent of a concert: a chance to see the masters of our art form doing their thing live, and to take part in an experience that can't be shared or traded; you have to be there.

 

[Wormwood]

In other words, what was once an hobby has become a boutique.