The market dying?

[Mark CMG]

I just wanted to chime in and thank the industry people who have some facts sharing them in this thread. It's interesting to hear some of the inside information and it's appreciated.

 

[wingsandsword]

D&D-based computer games have done quite well, but have not necessarily brought people into D&D.

Amusingly enough, it at least partially brought me into D&D many years ago. In Junior High, when my dad wouldn't let me play D&D because he'd heard rumors it was Satanic, I was still interested, and the NES version of Pool of Radiance was something I could get and just keep stored with the rest of my nintendo games (and he was very unlikely to ever notice exactly what it was). I played that game many, many times, learning character classes, spells, THAC0 and AC, magic items, and even some basics of the Forgotten Realms from that game. Years later, when I picked up gaming (through Star Wars), my memories of Pool of Radiance were something that got me to check out this D&D game that other gamers played, and what I learned there greatly eased the learning curve of picking up the sometimes arbitrary rules of AD&D.

I also predict that I'll be taking doom and gloom for the industry with a heaping of salt 10 years from now.

Same here. In 10 years, I'll predict the following topic heads on ENWorld (or whatever site replaces it).
1. Fears that 5e will come out sometime soon.
2. Claims that the market is imminently dying, recent events are a terrible harbinger of things to come, and the sky is now officially falling.
3. The <insert class here> is broken & overpowered.

In the late 90's, it was clear that D&D was dying, and RPG's as a whole weren't very healthy. FASA and West End, two significant companies had both folded, and TSR looked like it was on the ropes when WotC bailed it out at the last moment. It all works in cycles, ups and downs, all consumer industries work like that. Some people like to call the early 80's the peak, but we really can't do that reliably. We have no reliable sales numbers for D&D from then, and a zillion spinoff products does not a successful game make.

That dirty little secret is true, gamers don't strictly need the companies to keep operating (but they're nice to have around). People still play 1e AD&D and d6 Star Wars (among many other OOP RPG's), and if it all crumbled today there would be people playing 3e and WoD (New or Old) for decades. Thanks to the SRD's, OGL and the net, a free and publically distributable version of D&D (sans the actual name) is out there, and if D&D crumbled and WotC folded, fans would doubtless produce annotated versions with all the little rules like character creation & XP left out of the SRD that would get passed around. However, gamers like to homebrew, and many dream of making a living from their games somehow. Even if every company crumbled tomorrow, it wouldn't be long before small-time outfits emerged as a cottage industry selling to other die-hard gamers.

However, as long as WotC (and other companies) keep turning out innovative, helpful and fun games and gaming suppliments (preferably at prices that don't make my wallet shriek in pain), I'll keep buying, and I know that there will enough people will to keep the market alive. If they produce derivative, useless, or unimaginative works, or works that are percived as overpriced for what they offer, then it's economic darwinism as another company comes along to fill the gap. They make niche products for tiny things, RPG's won't go away, I can't imagine a Worst Case Scenario anytime in the forseeable future where tabletop RPG's are effectively extinct.

 

[Ketjak]

Let me preface this by saying that while CMG, Malhavoc and Ronin Arts decorate my desktop, Green Ronin decorates my bookshelf (more GR products than any other non-WotC manu). That said, I disagree with you, Chris.

Sorry, but that's a bunch of bull. What we've seen over the past decade, in fact, is the shifting of more and more of the risk to the manufacturer. The pre-order system is completely broken, so every print run done is just a guess. Distributors, who used to buy up a six month supply of a good title, don't want more than a couple of week's worth on hand. They'd rather do it "just in time", which can often lead to lost sales. Neither retailers nor distributors want to take much risk, and yet every year we hear the usual complaints from retailers about manufacturers selling direct at cons and online.

I'm not saying game retailers are blameless. I am saying that they bear the majority of the risk, and it's not fair when they aren't responsible for the quality of the product they try to sell. I do agree, though, that distributors are a large part of the problem. They drive the number the publisher/developer has to print. They pay based on cash flow, sticking it to the publisher if they didn't sell enough to pay the full order. If the publisher complains, the distributor stops carrying their product... and in most cases, that hurts the publisher more than the distributor.

That said, and to sort of turn the tables a bit - the publisher who prints a great deal more of his product than the market will bear doesn't really know his market... and that's not the retailer's or even the distributor's fault, is it?

I doubt that even one retailer went out of business because of Fast Forward. It's big ticket fad products like collectible games that can really burn a retailer. Many stores went out in the mid 90s after speculating wildly on TCGs.

I posted that and on my way to work realized I was not clear. My apologies.

In the time it took for Fast Forward to go out of business, I am sure that several retailers went out. My point is that retailers pay the price faster than bad developers/publishers. And FF is just one example of a D20 developer/publisher that had, shall we say, lower standards - there are many others like them who aspire to be a Malhavoc, Necromancer, or Green Ronin that can't or won't produce good product. Even if retailers buy the first product and realize it sucks, they're stuck with 1-2 copies of product that won't sell unless they sell it at a loss (which is less costly than keeping it for a year, admittedly). I've even known retailers to offer products that don't sell as a free giveaway, and the customer won't take it.

Sure, the retailer is responsible for what he buys. Should he buy only what he knows sells, or should he take a chance a small publisher might release something that might sell? And if a product line is inconsistent, like anything from Mongoose, what does he do then?

And why aren't bad retailers also to blame for continuing to order crappy product? Surely they are responsible for what they bring into their store. When you see a store with an entire shelf of unsold books from the same crap-peddler, you have to wonder why the buyer keeps ordering more. A store has complete control over what it brings in and what it doesn't. I find it hard to see how this means they take more risk.

Chris, it's not just the same "crap-peddler's" product that sits on a shelf. There are many different crap-peddlers out there, and the retailer has to buy a variety since his clientele will eventually buy everything that sells (since he's selling to the same audience, in many cases). Thus, he gets stuck - despite best intentions to buy only good product - or he misses a sale. And the cost of ownership is high, even if he doesn't go out of business.

Believe me, I'm not saying there are no clueless retailers. One visit to Fantastic Games & Toys in Lynnwood will dispel that, though Scott turned a corner last year after he got spiritual. I'm also not saying that developers never pay a penalty - they certainly do. Less frequently than retailers pay for it, though.

Should the retailer get stuck with it, or should the crap-peddlers (I like that term) learn - no, not learn, make the effort to peddle something else? If Malhavoc, CMG, Ronin Arts, Necromancer, Green Ronin, and others can do it, why can't Fast Forward, Mongoose, and the rest of the clowns in the Beetle do it? Concentration of talent helps, but it's not the only reason they sell.

I don't believe the retailers should pay the price, and that's the model we have now. Your mileage may vary.

- Ket

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

If Malhavoc, CMG, Ronin Arts, Necromancer, Green Ronin, and others can do it, why can't Fast Forward, Mongoose, and the rest of the clowns in the Beetle do it?

Anyone find it funny that Mongoose gets mentioned like this after the long post by Matt not a page earlier?

 

[Numion]

In my experience the computer games have helped people switch to D&D RPG. Totally anecdotal, I know, but one of my friends never wanted to play when we asked him to join our warhammer FRP campaign in the late 90's. He had never played role playing games, but he was a very big fan of BG, and then BG2. When 3E was launched, I bought it, and started to put together a FR campaign. Now this novice player suddenly is very eager to play, "Is it like BG?"

The funny thing is .. he never was the best roleplayer, and had trouble remembering some basic stuff (like adding modifiers to his damage roll) even after 4 years of playing, but he never missed a session.

 

[Turjan]

D&D-based computer games have done quite well, but have not necessarily brought people into D&D.

Amusingly enough, it at least partially brought me into D&D many years ago. My memories of Pool of Radiance were something that got me to check out this D&D game that other gamers played, and what I learned there greatly eased the learning curve of picking up the sometimes arbitrary rules of AD&D.

Same here. I also got to play D&D, the tabletop game, via a CRPG. That's how I learned to explain THAC0 and AC to others . And that's why I still have a soft spot for the Forgotten Realms .

Edit: No, I never played in Numion's game .

 

[Thorin Stoutfoot]

In my experience the computer games have helped people switch to D&D RPG. .

One of my best friends got into D&D after playing Baldur's Gate. She was totally into it, and we almost decided to do a combined D&D sailing vacation together before we realized that we never liked each other when we had to spend that much time together.

 

[Hussar]

A semi-coherent thought about computers taking over the rpg industry.

Take a look at a different segment which has had unbelievable success in computers - RTS games like Warcraft or Ages of Empire. Compare that to the tabletop minis games. Now, apparently, WOTC's minis game is doing very well, ticking along pretty good. But, shouldn't RTS games have buried them? Think about it, an RTS game operates much smoother, faster, with much better visuals and sound than any tabletop minis game. Add to that the fact that you can find any number of people to play with you at any time of the day or night and you'd think games like WOTC's minis or Warhammer would have gone the way of the dodo.

And, really, it isn't the artistic end of things that's keeping the minis games afloat. Unlike Warhammer, you don't paint WOTC minis, nor do you cut them apart and create entirely new minis. There's little or no modling going on with WOTC's minis, so why are they doing well despite directly competing with games like Warcraft 3, Empire Earth 2 or any of the other umpteen RTS or even turn based games out there?

I think people who think that computers will replace tabletop games greatly underestimate the social aspect of gaming. Whether you game with longtime friends or people you just met at your FLGS, its still the face to face interaction that drives gaming.

RTS gaming hasn't seemed to have spelled the end of tabletop mini wargaming, so why should it bury PnP gaming either?

 

[Paradigm]

Just to give non-industry folks a glimpse at the reports that we see:

The September 2005 issue of COMICS & GAMES RETAILER contains sales reports as of June 2005. Now, admittedly, these numbers are flawed, since they are a self-selecting survey. However, they are the only numbers we have, and are useful for extrapolating larger trends.

C&GR averages reported figures across all stores in the sample to show a raw per-store average number of units sold of each RPG product line.

In June of 2005, the average store reporting sold at least 32 units for the month (i.e. 32 individual RPG products, for the entire month), for an average gross revenue of $850.

For the month.

Average unit sales for the entirety of 2004 hovered around the mid-70 mark. In October of 2004, they rose to a nearly-respectable 119 units. Since then however:

October 2004: 119 units
November 2004: 90 units
December 2004: 102 units
January 2005: 82 units
February 2005: 70 units
March 2005: 69 units
April 2005: 40 units
May 2005: 35 units
June 2005: 32 units

That's a massive drop. Yes, it's coming from stores that are volunteering the info...but then again, the participating stores represent some of those that are most serious about the business, and so can reasonably be assumed to represent AT LEAST the average, if not an example of a superior store.

Things are hurtin', kids. No lie.

I'm a retailer also. There is nothing in this that suprises me at all, there is also nothing in there that indicates a decline. If I were to line up my best months in order, they would show up pretty much like that, though June is typically better than April and May. Though we probably have never had a month where we've sold less than 60 RPG units, and that includes months with multiple named storms, all visiting on weekends.

 

[Paradigm]

Anyone find it funny that Mongoose gets mentioned like this after the long post by Matt not a page earlier?

I find "clowns in the Beetle" to be completely uncalled for and needlessly insulting.... and also a very funny analogy.