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Message: <blockquote data-quote="BSF" data-source="post: 2758428" data-attributes="member: 13098">However the actual finacial state of many companies does not necessarily reflect the full "popularity" of RPG's.  Mongoose Publishing and Green Ronin are just two companies that have come along.  Bastion Press, Necromancer Games, Malhavoc, Ronin Arts and others exist as well.  Yes, most of these companies primarily support D20.  Yes, many of them have also seen a decline in sales.  But that does not necessarily correlate to a loss of popularity of RPGs.  Bad business decisions can kill a company.  Fluctuations with the market can adversely affect a company.  Loss of interest can kill a company.  Players can go years without buying new product while still introducing new players to the game.  In the '80s I ran a game with 7 people and only 2 of us had a PHB.  I have a father-son team at my table that shares resources.  My wife uses my books.  One of my friends wants to introduce a new player to gaming and she doesn't have any intention of buying a book at this time.  I can refer to people I know that think quite highly of certain companies, but are not in a position to support those companies with buying new product.  Or they might love older products, but newer products don't fill a need for the person at the time.  Or they might love a new product from both company X & Y, but can afford to only buy one of the two products.  There are any number of factors that contribute to the sales for product that don't necessarily reflect on the popularity of the games that are still being played.  Are we discussing the fiscal health of the gaming industry or are we discussing the fluctuations in popularity of gaming?  You don't want to lend any credibility to "Dancyist propoganda" and we understand that anecdotal evidence is sketchy, at best.  How are we then to quantify how popular gaming really is?  I believe the two questions are related.  Obviously if the popularity of gaming wanes too much, it will affect the industry.  But the industry can fail for other reasons as well.</blockquote>

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