bento
Explorer
Scribble said:That's the real question I guess I'm wondering. Why don't other companies sell in the market as well as D&D?
Access to the market through various distribution channels. The better your distribution channel, the better your exposure, the more likely your game will sell. Also having a product that's fairly open-ended and can appeal to a wide variety of people. You can play many different "stories" with D&D and still be playing D&D. Hence the large number of D&D books in the market.
Scribble said:IS it just because of all the publicity D&D has had (good or bad) over the years, that makes it recognizable, so people start playing it more often then others? ("Hey, I've heard of that game... lemme check it out...")
Buzz is always important for market acceptance. Enough buzz and you're bound to get people tangentally interested to try it. How many people own a gaming console (XBox/PS2/GC) and aren't really HC gamers? Quite a few. And as you mention, most people try D&D first and either stay with it, get hooked on another system, or leave gaming.
If D&D disappeared next year, you'd still have a strong core of players, and products coming out from other companies because of the OGL. The biggest problem would be that the hobby would have to run on "word-of-mouth" and grass-roots marketing. No more corporate dollars spent on advertising or getting movies made or books written. There would be a dip, no doubt, but it would be interesting to see what direction RPing would go into.
I really think the direction is the one that RPing has gone for the last six or so years with MMORPGs. Like it or not, MMORPGs are the RPs most people today cut their teeth on. Today I play with a generation (18 to early 20s) who know all the concepts of D&D (HP, AC, etc.) from the computer games they play.