The market dying?
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Maggan
Writer for CY_BORG, Forbidden Lands and Dragonbane
Rasyr said:
Come to think of it, I didn't know what the levels were before D&D3, or what they were before that.
The numbers are down, but for all I know, the levels they are coming down from were very high.
More data! I need more data!
/M
Oh, another one of these.
Tell me: Do these threads have any ourpose ither than to let the community cover themselves in blanket denial and reassurances? Because every few months people here get told the score about the games industry and then promptly go into denial. Therefore, I wonder if there's a point when few people here evince honest interest in the state of the RPG industry.
The changes that we've seen aren't around because hobbyists have gotten smarter and they aren'r around because of arcane oddities in distribution or online versus store shopping. They exist -- just as they have over the past decade or so of steady decline (and concommitant denials that are common to threads such as these) -- because there are fewer people gaming, fewer people buying RPGs and that there are more appealing entry hobbies for many people, such as MMO games, cards and miniatures. Based on figures from C&GR, Ken Hite, conversations with other company folks, and my personal connection with an RPG printer (during which I was able to compare order size from companies throughout the marketshare spread of RPG publishers), I think annual shrinkage of around 20% -- *each year*, for the last 4 years -- is not out of the question, with some artificial buoyancy for the market leaders.
Again and again, this thread gets brought up as if the downturn is a new surprise, a shocker, or just and ugly rumor that needs to be confronted by god hearted hobby-folk. Really, isn't this getting a little tired after so many years?
Tell me: Do these threads have any ourpose ither than to let the community cover themselves in blanket denial and reassurances? Because every few months people here get told the score about the games industry and then promptly go into denial. Therefore, I wonder if there's a point when few people here evince honest interest in the state of the RPG industry.
The changes that we've seen aren't around because hobbyists have gotten smarter and they aren'r around because of arcane oddities in distribution or online versus store shopping. They exist -- just as they have over the past decade or so of steady decline (and concommitant denials that are common to threads such as these) -- because there are fewer people gaming, fewer people buying RPGs and that there are more appealing entry hobbies for many people, such as MMO games, cards and miniatures. Based on figures from C&GR, Ken Hite, conversations with other company folks, and my personal connection with an RPG printer (during which I was able to compare order size from companies throughout the marketshare spread of RPG publishers), I think annual shrinkage of around 20% -- *each year*, for the last 4 years -- is not out of the question, with some artificial buoyancy for the market leaders.
Again and again, this thread gets brought up as if the downturn is a new surprise, a shocker, or just and ugly rumor that needs to be confronted by god hearted hobby-folk. Really, isn't this getting a little tired after so many years?
Turjan
Explorer
You gave your own answer. Statements like yours will keep threads like this going. One year ago, WotC claimed to have RPG book sales (in that year) that exceeded every sales figure in the history of D&D ever. Someone must be telling rubbish here; it doesn't fit.eyebeams said:
And all those figures are tainted. If C&GR and Ken Hite don't see more than half of the sales and printing is done in China, all these numbers indicate the state of game shops and the US (Canadian?) print industry, but don't have much to do with RPG sales.
I don't think so. As long as evidence as the one you brought up is taken face value without putting it into perspective, these discussions will go on.
Maggan
Writer for CY_BORG, Forbidden Lands and Dragonbane
eyebeams said:
Well, after being told for so many years that the sky is falling, and that the rpg hobby will falter and die, and that no one buys rpg books any more, and just you wait until next year ...
... and when next year comes around, we're basically at the same place we were last year.
Except this year WoD 2.0 launched, WFRPv2 sold 30 000 copies or so (according to rumours at least), D&D has had a very successfull year, and pdf publishing is on the rise.
It is difficult for me to reconcile these "signs" with other "signs" saying the market is in the drains.
And really, does people want to hear "because there are fewer people gaming, fewer people buying RPGs and that there are more appealing entry hobbies for many people, such as MMO games, cards and miniatures" without discussing it, and offering explanations as to why several gamers don't see this downtrend. And really, how could we, we never see any figures, just speculation. And for each insider that says one thing, there's another saying the opposite.
As I said, more hard data would be interesting. Here in Sweden, rpg sales are up from early 90's, btw.
/M
wingsandsword
Legend
D&D is having the best sales ever, Gen Con has record attendance, White Wolf is doing swimmingly with the success of WoD 2.0.
The C&GR/Ken Hite numbers are widely known to be dubious. The methodology leaves out many sales venues, foriegn printing is hard to track, and even how it tracks what sales it does cover is not exactly stellar.
If the gaming industry was shrinking by 20% each year for the last 4 years, it would be at 41% of the size it was at in 2001 (do the math), and there is no way on Earth that the gaming industry is that much smaller now. In classic gaming parlance: "I disbelieve."
At most, things may be rough for small gaming companies, without the d20 bubble, higher production costs and less disposable income, but the overall health of the industry appears to be stellar.
Oh, and Games Workshop is reporting problems in their annual report, but they make a point of not being a part of the normal gaming industry, wanting their customers to only play their games, not wanting people playing other games with their miniatures, ect. They also terminated sales relationships with many retailers over their internet policy, so they don't have a lot of room to complain when they lose sales after intentionally reducing the amount of sales outlets they have.
The C&GR/Ken Hite numbers are widely known to be dubious. The methodology leaves out many sales venues, foriegn printing is hard to track, and even how it tracks what sales it does cover is not exactly stellar.
If the gaming industry was shrinking by 20% each year for the last 4 years, it would be at 41% of the size it was at in 2001 (do the math), and there is no way on Earth that the gaming industry is that much smaller now. In classic gaming parlance: "I disbelieve."
At most, things may be rough for small gaming companies, without the d20 bubble, higher production costs and less disposable income, but the overall health of the industry appears to be stellar.
Oh, and Games Workshop is reporting problems in their annual report, but they make a point of not being a part of the normal gaming industry, wanting their customers to only play their games, not wanting people playing other games with their miniatures, ect. They also terminated sales relationships with many retailers over their internet policy, so they don't have a lot of room to complain when they lose sales after intentionally reducing the amount of sales outlets they have.
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Glyfair
Explorer
wingsandsword said:
Part of my question is what is this attendance. Back in the late 80's, Origins used to have a RPGS as its focus, with wargames and related games as secondary. Now, roleplaying games seem to be taking a back seat to miniature games. In the last year he RPG market has been declining in the U.S., the miniatures games have been holding steady and the CCG market has just started to decline.
Personally, while I play CCGs and miniature's games, my primary interest is in roleplaying games. I wouldn't have touched them without the connection to RPGS.
Honestly, I think the reason they are playing CCGs and miniature games more than RPGs is because the gaming stores tend to focus on them. Except for children and relatives of roleplayers, most kids see the games at gaming stores. In my area, seeing roleplaying games at stores is the exception. It used to be the rule during the early 80's.
Sure, a few may migrate to RPGs. However, the ones I've dealt with have spent most of their time jumping between RPGs and miniatures games, because there are so many of them (the D&D minis line might have gotten some feeding into the RPG, but it never really took off here for competitive play).
Roleplayers have become more insular. They don't play in public, they play at home. Some play on the computer, but most kids are more attractive to computer gaming online rather than tabletop style roleplaying, because it's more exciting. I think almost all players of tabletop style gaming online played at home and enjoyed it there, and took it to cyberspace when then could or needed to. It just doesn't seem to be that attractive a style, compared to the other options.
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Imo
When we talk about the RPG industry, we're really talking about three industries (D&D, d20, non-d20) that exist under the umbrella of a larger marketplace that includes TCGs, CMGs, metal miniatures, boardgames, and geek culture items (stuffed Cthulhu dolls, t-shirts, etc.)
Part of the problem in getting any broad picture or one sentence summaries of how things are going is that all of these industries can shoot off in different directions at the same time.
D&D is doing fine. I can't even begin to get into details here, since I hear stuff around the office that is confidential. Basically, if we pay a firm to do market research we can't just go around reporting their results. That's money we've invested in acquiring data that we use to form D&D's strategy. But what I can say is that D&D is trucking along fine.
I think the big problems lie in the d20 and non-d20 segments. The current distribution and retail system is poorly suited for RPGs. Since 1993, the hobby game distributors and stores have enjoyed a steady stream of high sales, fad products: Magic, the TCG explosion, Pokemon, Heroclix, D&D 3e and d20, Yu-Gi-Oh. All of these games were cash cows. The distributors simply shifted fad products from publishers to retailers and soaked up the profits. The retailers put the latest fad on the shelf, and gamers bought it in droves.
Those days are over. Yu-Gi-Oh is no longer a fad, and nothing has arisen to take its place. I think this is why RPGs are feeling the pinch: the distributors simply don't want to deal with them anymore. RPGs have lots of different titles, making them hard to track, and they don't move as many raw numbers as a CCG or TCG. Even boardgames have a leg up on RPGs, as most games cost around $50. With money tight, RPGs are the first ones to go.
To really sell RPGs, you have to have some level of expertise in them. If you don't understand the RPG market and keep track of what's hot, it's a mindfield. How many times have you seen a game store with an entire shelf of dead Fast Forward d20 products? A game store owner would have to be a reasonably sophistacted D&D player to understand that FF product was terrible. He'd also have to do a fair amount of work to track his inventory to the level that he can see that FF titles didn't sell.
The typical well-stocked RPG section has maybe a dozen game lines, if not more, with dozens of titles for each. Compared that to the TCG section. A store might carry 6 or 7 different games, each with the current base set, and maybe three or four expansion sets currently in stock. Same thing from CMGs; you have far fewer lines, and each line consists of far fewer products.
(To put it another way, the D&D minis line has generated 7 products over the past three years: Harbinger, Dragoneye, Archfiends, Giants of Legend, Aberrations, Deathknell, and Angelfire. Compare that the number of D&D books released since then - there's about 30 titles. For collectable minis games, there's HeroClix and D&D. For RPGs, a store might carry D&D, WoD, GURPS, Hero, Warhammer FRP, d20 stuff, Conan, AU, IH, BR, TW, BC, and tons of others. For both distributors and retailers, RPGs are *much* harder to track and handle than other types of games.)
RPGs also suffer in that they're much harder to demo than a minis or card game, they lack the cool, compelling "toy" factor you get with minis and boardgames, and they don't lend themselves to tournaments as easily as other games.
We also have seen a big die off in game retailers, probably attributable to the evaporation of an easy money maker a la Pokemon. That puts a huge dent into the number of stores ordering RPGs, and thus cuts down sales.
The hobby game market as a whole has also seen a downturn. Again, I think this is attributable to the shrinking pool of retailers.
I think we're seeing more and more D&D sales pushed into bookstores such as Barnes & Noble and Borders. In the past few years, D&D has made its way on to a lot more B&N shelves. I've also seen several stores with rotating, stand up displays filled with D&D books. If you think about it, D&D makes huge sense for these places. A single D&D book goes for about $30, and you can fit the entire line in one, maybe two shelves. On a shelf inch/dollar basis, that's a lot of cash value stuck in a relatively small area. Best of all for a bookstore, if you establish a good presence, you can generate a lot of return sales as gamers start shopping at a bookstore rather than a game store.
In terms of infrastructure, the book trade is designed to handle RPGs - look at how many new books come out each week. Tracking all those titles is a lot easier for a national chain than for a single, small business.
GenCon sales were also strong this year, and the show's attendance went up. I think this is evidence that we're looking at problems with distributors and retailers, rather than a drop in demand for games.
For RPGs, and D&D in particular, I think a lot of that demand is now being met by chain bookstores. This is why I never paid any attention to Ken Hite's analysis. The data was terrible, and it did nothing to account for book stores. I think access to the book trade is the key line between success and failure in today's RPG market.
When we talk about the RPG industry, we're really talking about three industries (D&D, d20, non-d20) that exist under the umbrella of a larger marketplace that includes TCGs, CMGs, metal miniatures, boardgames, and geek culture items (stuffed Cthulhu dolls, t-shirts, etc.)
Part of the problem in getting any broad picture or one sentence summaries of how things are going is that all of these industries can shoot off in different directions at the same time.
D&D is doing fine. I can't even begin to get into details here, since I hear stuff around the office that is confidential. Basically, if we pay a firm to do market research we can't just go around reporting their results. That's money we've invested in acquiring data that we use to form D&D's strategy. But what I can say is that D&D is trucking along fine.
I think the big problems lie in the d20 and non-d20 segments. The current distribution and retail system is poorly suited for RPGs. Since 1993, the hobby game distributors and stores have enjoyed a steady stream of high sales, fad products: Magic, the TCG explosion, Pokemon, Heroclix, D&D 3e and d20, Yu-Gi-Oh. All of these games were cash cows. The distributors simply shifted fad products from publishers to retailers and soaked up the profits. The retailers put the latest fad on the shelf, and gamers bought it in droves.
Those days are over. Yu-Gi-Oh is no longer a fad, and nothing has arisen to take its place. I think this is why RPGs are feeling the pinch: the distributors simply don't want to deal with them anymore. RPGs have lots of different titles, making them hard to track, and they don't move as many raw numbers as a CCG or TCG. Even boardgames have a leg up on RPGs, as most games cost around $50. With money tight, RPGs are the first ones to go.
To really sell RPGs, you have to have some level of expertise in them. If you don't understand the RPG market and keep track of what's hot, it's a mindfield. How many times have you seen a game store with an entire shelf of dead Fast Forward d20 products? A game store owner would have to be a reasonably sophistacted D&D player to understand that FF product was terrible. He'd also have to do a fair amount of work to track his inventory to the level that he can see that FF titles didn't sell.
The typical well-stocked RPG section has maybe a dozen game lines, if not more, with dozens of titles for each. Compared that to the TCG section. A store might carry 6 or 7 different games, each with the current base set, and maybe three or four expansion sets currently in stock. Same thing from CMGs; you have far fewer lines, and each line consists of far fewer products.
(To put it another way, the D&D minis line has generated 7 products over the past three years: Harbinger, Dragoneye, Archfiends, Giants of Legend, Aberrations, Deathknell, and Angelfire. Compare that the number of D&D books released since then - there's about 30 titles. For collectable minis games, there's HeroClix and D&D. For RPGs, a store might carry D&D, WoD, GURPS, Hero, Warhammer FRP, d20 stuff, Conan, AU, IH, BR, TW, BC, and tons of others. For both distributors and retailers, RPGs are *much* harder to track and handle than other types of games.)
RPGs also suffer in that they're much harder to demo than a minis or card game, they lack the cool, compelling "toy" factor you get with minis and boardgames, and they don't lend themselves to tournaments as easily as other games.
We also have seen a big die off in game retailers, probably attributable to the evaporation of an easy money maker a la Pokemon. That puts a huge dent into the number of stores ordering RPGs, and thus cuts down sales.
The hobby game market as a whole has also seen a downturn. Again, I think this is attributable to the shrinking pool of retailers.
I think we're seeing more and more D&D sales pushed into bookstores such as Barnes & Noble and Borders. In the past few years, D&D has made its way on to a lot more B&N shelves. I've also seen several stores with rotating, stand up displays filled with D&D books. If you think about it, D&D makes huge sense for these places. A single D&D book goes for about $30, and you can fit the entire line in one, maybe two shelves. On a shelf inch/dollar basis, that's a lot of cash value stuck in a relatively small area. Best of all for a bookstore, if you establish a good presence, you can generate a lot of return sales as gamers start shopping at a bookstore rather than a game store.
In terms of infrastructure, the book trade is designed to handle RPGs - look at how many new books come out each week. Tracking all those titles is a lot easier for a national chain than for a single, small business.
GenCon sales were also strong this year, and the show's attendance went up. I think this is evidence that we're looking at problems with distributors and retailers, rather than a drop in demand for games.
For RPGs, and D&D in particular, I think a lot of that demand is now being met by chain bookstores. This is why I never paid any attention to Ken Hite's analysis. The data was terrible, and it did nothing to account for book stores. I think access to the book trade is the key line between success and failure in today's RPG market.
MonsterMash
First Post
GW have mentioned the effect of reduced sales because of the LotR tie-ins fading and are also hit by the exchange rate of the pound against the dollar.wingsandsword said:
pogre
Legend
At a recent history teachers convention in the midwest I was on a panel with several other teachers. Following our presentation we were discussing many things and someone in the group mentioned the D&D nerds - normal stereotype stuff.
I took the opportunity to ask if there were still D&D nerds in their schools. The sentiment was universal amongst the 30+ highschool teachers present that D&D has faded from the high schools noticably in the last few years. The "D&D nerds" are still there, they are just playing different stuff (mostly computers).
Not very scientific at all, but matches my observations over the last decade+.
I took the opportunity to ask if there were still D&D nerds in their schools. The sentiment was universal amongst the 30+ highschool teachers present that D&D has faded from the high schools noticably in the last few years. The "D&D nerds" are still there, they are just playing different stuff (mostly computers).
Not very scientific at all, but matches my observations over the last decade+.
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