Had a conversation with a friend the other day, sparked by my recent comments about the negativity of tabletop gamers, the shrinking market, etc. A few thoughts crystalized out of that conversation, and I thought that I’d take the time to put them down for others to comment upon.
There’s a lot of denial among gamers that their hobby is shrinking — a combination of anecdotal evidence (“There are plenty of gamers around here.”) and One-True-Way purity (“My hobby will NEVER die!”). Mixed into this is the always-charming assertion that the industry may be shrinking, but that “the hobby doesn’t need the industry.” (Never mind asking such geniuses to ponder where new players will come from without product on store shelves drawing their attention — or when was the last time they met a player-piano enthusiast, another form of entertainment that no longer has an industry producing material for it…)
It’s not a matter of debate though. Anyone who has paid attention over the past two decades has seen the undeniable shrinking. There are far fewer dedicated speciality stores any more (current estimates place total numbers in the US at somewhere in the low-to-mid 2000s, according to ICV2, Diamond/Alliance distributors, and others). Fewer stores means fewer orders, as well as fewer social centers for the tabletop gaming community. Sales numbers are massively down from the 90s, much less the numbers seen during the ‘d20 explosion’ of the early 2000s.
Take a look at this: ICV2’s report of the top 5 selling RPGs for Q3 2010. You’ll note that number 5 is the Dresden Files. An excellent game, and Fred Hicks & Co. over at Evil Hat deserve every bit of that success. The interesting thing about Fred, though, is that he’s a big fan of transparency. So much so, in fact, that He posts his actual sales numbers. Fred gives the total distribution sales for each of the two Dresden Files rulebooks as follows: DFRPG:Our World: 1285 copies. DFRPG:Your Story: 1776 copies.
Think about that for a minute. Sales of two rulebooks, totalling a little over 3,000 copies for the quarter…. is enough to make the Top 5 sales for the entire industry. 3000 copies used to be a solid initial order, not an entire quarter’s sales.
So yeah — the hobby is shrinking. We’re losing gamers to other formats, especially as console and online games offer more and more of what most gamers want out of their play experiences. More and more of these games offer character customization, compelling story, sandbox universes, and even user-created content. All of this with a more friendly learning curve, and fewer scheduling hassles and locational requirements. It’s not really a surprise that tabletop is bleeding out.
The problem, though, is that what we’re left with in the tabletop community are the hardest of the hardcore — which can be both a positive and a negative. They’re dedicated (obsessive), loyal (rigidly orthodox), and constant (inflexible). This is their preferred method of gaming — but for most, that’s led to an almost self-segregation from the rest of gaming: console, online, PC, board, cards, etc. A lot of these folks don’t even seen these other platforms as part of the same hobby. When they say “gamer”, they mean “tabletop gamer” — the rest of the wider gaming world is part of some other hobby.
I posited to my friend that I don’t think the overall level of negativity and vitriol found in the community online has changed much since the dawn of the internet. What has changed is the size of the community — the negativity is at the same level, but the community is far smaller. Part of that is probably because we’ve dwindled to the True Believers — the ones most strident in their identification with the hobby, and therefore possessed of the most passion in arguing about it. Who knows? The result is the problem: a shrinking base, often unpleasant in their dealings with eachother — hardly a recipe for maintaining a community, much less attracting new blood.
And it’s only going to get worse.
I honestly believe that we’ve hit a tipping point, and it simply stuns me that others don’t see the smoke on the horizon (or maybe that they’re purposefully ignoring it). One of our major publishers (White Wolf) has already announced that they’re switching over to support of tabletop as largely a legacy operation, with Print-On-Demand product aimed at a dedicated fan base, while they’re getting ready to roll out an MMORPG based on their best-known IP, Vampire: The Masquerade. It’s not hard to see the writing on the wall there — the relative income potential of POD sales vs. that of an online game, and what that will mean for corporate priorities.
Ask yourself this, though: What happens when WOTC withdraws from the hobby market? When the 800 lb. gorilla that floats the game sales of those 2000-odd retail accounts goes away? What do you think happens to what’s left of the tabletop industry and, as a result, the hobby?
Obviously, WOTC hasn’t made any such intention known. But consider this: We’re already seeing a major re-branding and re-packaging of D&D, with the Essentials launch. This roll-out seems to be concentrated fairly heavily in traditional retail: Wal-Mart, Target, the chain bookstores. Yes, it’s available through hobby distribution as well, but do you honestly think that’s the focus?
Now consider this second point: Hasbro, Inc. v. Infogrames Entertainment S.A. a/k/a Atari, S.A., case number CA09-610ML. In short, Atari has a license for online use of the D&D brand, set to expire in 2017. Whether it lasts that long is dependent upon the outcome of this lawsuit — Hasbro is looking to terminate Atari’s license. Once that happens, either through the courts, or just through the natural expiration of the term, the online rights to D&D will be back in-house.
Now, imagine you’re Hasbro. You have total control of the rights to one of the most recognizable fantasy brands in the world. Will you a) leverage that brand online, where games like World of Warcraft and even fucking Farmville are making hundreds of millions per year, or b) stick with the traditional model, aimed at a shrinking market where 3000 copies per quarter means you’re a top-seller?
There’s a reason why I’ve been spending the past year putting my ducks in a row to move Adamant into other entertainment markets, and it’s not just because of my varied interests. It’s simply because I cannot see any combination of events that does not lead to the utter systemic collapse of the tabletop games industry within the next 5 to 10 years at most.
I know that’s not a cheerful outlook, but I think it’s a realistic one. As always, comments are welcome.
“…systemic collapse of the tabletop games industry…”
Including boardgames? Or just tabletop RPGs?
I think the hobby market, specifically. That will impact boardgames, to be sure.
Food for thought, Gareth.
(The shrinking of the pool leading to more concentrated negativity made me grin tangentially, because I just finished rereading Kurlansky’s SALT. Well, the coincidence amused me.)
I do think that the TT game industry is still a pressure-cooker/gold-mine of IP development, but leveraging those IP out of our shadowy niche and into wider view is the big issue. (Mostly, I’d say because of capital.)
Excellent article and I think you’ve pretty much nailed it. Some companies have become their own worst enemies in Tabletop games. I think WOTC and Games Workshop treat their loyal customers like crack addicts, with a whirlwind of overpriced products, when they should have been concentrating all along on entertaining and bringing in new generations of gamers while at the same time refining and perfecting their keystone games. Instead, things have become saturated and overcomplicated, further driving away new players.
I’d say that’s an accurate assessment. There will always be tabletop gamers, but I suspect there will not always be a genuine tabletop gaming industry, and that it will disappear within the next ten to fifteen years. Game publishers will transition to fiction, video games, online games, etc., or simply pare down to maintaining their existing properties and nothing more. Sad but true.
Chad,
I’ve worked with gamers turned media executives who have the money, but not the tolerance for gamers. They’d rather just take it, file off the serial numbers and make it their own than deal with RPG fandom.
The other problem is that the big movements in gaming are raging hollers against the things that make cool IP. More generic, tunable, archetypal, toolsy stuff = nothing specific enough to be developed rather than be copied.
Here at Arc Dream, Dennis Detwiller, who moved from creating award-winning tabletop games to best-selling video games, has been saying the same sort of thing for years. Pretty much since we started the company in 2002.
We keep doing tabletop RPGs because we love to play them, and because nobody else is doing quite the kinds of games that we want to see. But our own sales and audience have not actually grown much over the past eight years. Not even in years where we’ve released book after book with soul-crushing, debt-building diligence. We get good reviews; we have a loyal fan base; we work hard to serve them well (aberrations like the last few months’ warehousing and shipping fiascos notwithstanding); but that doesn’t translate to growth. If you average out the money we’ve made with the amount of work we’ve done, Arc Dream has paid its owners significantly less than the U.S. minimum wage from the very beginning to today.
Granted, we don’t advertise much beyond a fairly lavish GenCon budget, but where would we run ads? And how could we justify the expense? We stay as engaged as possible in online communities and we try to encourage our fans to run games at stores and cons. It could be that our own frustrations are due to inadequate marketing, but I suspect that with more paid marketing we would wind up with slightly better sales and much less money.
I’m still in the shrinking tabletop trenches mainly because my skills are in writing and editing rather than media. I love the social process of sitting down with friends and playing out a game in person, but there’s very little money in creating those physical games. The less money comes in, the fewer creators will want to spend the time creating those games. Creators who need their work to help feed their families will continue to turn to fields that can bring in money. They’re doing it now, all the time.
As interactive technology keeps advancing — as it allows the kinds of creativity that you can get in a tabletop game to be expressed even more easily in an online game, where the computer can do a great deal of the grunt work for players and GM alike — then that’s where we’ll wind up.
What we need to do is envision the ways in which that’ll be a gain for us rather than regarding it entirely as a loss of something we love.
Reluctantly, grudgingly, kicking and screaming, I agree. Not with everything – e.g. I don’t accept that we’re down the hardcore-only yet, just anecdotally I know a lot of random circles who play occasional games including whatever weird indie stuff they googled up that week. But the scene in NZ is different to other places, and even if it’s not and I’m right and you’re wrong, it’s only a disagreement about when we get there, not the direction in which we’re going.
I believe there’s a place for the tabletop industry to exist, but I can’t see where the hell it is. There’s all these promising bits and pieces (Chad’s point about RPGs as IP hothouse, WotC’s instore-gaming initiative + essentials outreach that is definitely reaching new people and lapsed people, Twitter geek celebs pushing D&D and other RPGs…) but they don’t add up to nearly enough to counteract the attrition. I mean, it’s great that our local D&D encounters thingy has successfully brought a good half-dozen/dozen new folks from zero to gamer – but the scene must be anaemic if 12 new faces is a real achievement.
Unsurprisingly, I’m part of the hardcore – I’m a total evangelist for the form, and am convinced that fundamentally, sitting around with your buddies doing shared creative play is never gonna die. But it can certainly disappear from relevance (whoops, that already happened) and eventually go so far underground that it won’t be accessible at all, even with the glorious connective power of the internets and no matter how many times Felicia Day tweets about her 4E character.
I guess I’m hoping there’s a new angle around the corner that will open a new support system for tabletop gaming. And when your hopes for an industry rest on Rumsfeldian unknown unknowns, you have no choice but to feel afraid.
When you say, “What happens when WOTC withdraws from the hobby market? When the 800 lb. gorilla that floats the game sales of those 2000-odd retail accounts goes away,” I think you’re passing over the influence of Magic: the Gathering, which has become big enough to be listed with NERF and Playskool as one of the “mega-brands” that made Hasbro perform well this quarter. I don’t think the connection between Wizards and the direct market is so easily severed.
Magic isn’t a mega-brand because of the direct market, Jason. It’s a mega-brand because of Walmart, Target, Toys R Us, etc. You’re kinda making my point for me.
Possibly. If that’s the case, let me get my point out there more distinctly — there won’t be a time when Wizards “withdraws from the hobby market,” because the hobby market will always have some Wizards product to sell that’s designed for them. Those big retailers are already selling the equivalent of Essentials products; the organized play and pro communities are definitely hobby-market centered. (In fact, just this week, there was a decision made that focuses OP back on hobby stores.)
Now, it’s possible you mean that print Dungeons & Dragons is the “800lb. gorilla” that keeps game stores standing. I don’t know of many stores where that’s the case to start with: board games and CCGs are more typical, with roleplaying games as a potential — but small — profit center.
(My unstudied opinion is that Hasbro’s big enough that it doesn’t have to decide between supporting the P&P and online versions of their games; they can probably do both, and that the backlash from canceling D&D-print would probably not be worth the gains from doing so. As you say, it’s got a heck of a brand identity, even if most of the people who know it couldn’t connect it to the game as practiced.)
Hmm. Ok, just from my perspective, hitting #5 was interesting, but I also viewed it like having the fifth strongest military in the world. After 3, it kind of drops off precipitously. Which is to say, I am not sure it’s indicative of anything more than the ways sales cluster, something that’ snot really news.
I honestly cannot say that the hobby’s shrinking, but I also think that misses the point. Even if the hobby is robust enough to be self sustaining (which I hope it is) it’s not like it’s going to burst out into the mainstream any time soon. Our aspirations are to exist on par with model railroad builders and geology enthusiasts.[1]
Now, if WOTC drops out of the market? Sure. That’s huge. But there are perfectly compelling arguments that D&D is a goose that’s laying golden eggs to be used in other arenas, and when viewed as an R&D and marketing expense is kind fo small change compared to aspirations of Warcraft.
All of which is to say, the hobby does not need to be declining or doomed for there to be compelling reasons to go elsewhere. It’s a small pond with very little money, and even when healthy, it’s still going to be a small pond with a little bit more money. That’s a hard thing to build a mortgae payment on, especially when there are much bluer oceans out there.
I think the problem is that with so much unknown, it’s easy to interpret almost anything as a bellweather for the health of the hobby, and when one reaches a point of sufficient disillusionment, it’s a lot easier to see the arrows pointing down. And that’s fine – we’re all entitled to a guess.
However, while I agree with a lot of the sentiments you express here, I think you’re conflating problems that are endemic to the hobby/industry with ones that are signs of decline. That doesn’t fault your conclusions, but I think it’s an important distinction.
-Rob D.
1 – The one qualifier that is far more troubling than numbers is the fact that other hobbies at this level know they’re expensive. Hell, even magic enthusiasts are willing to shell out cash in volumes that are utterly egregious in RPG circles.
Let’s just say that I disagree. 2000 retail accounts of the direct market are an afterthought for Hasbro. I’m not talking about D&D — I’m talking about the whole shmear. I think it’s quaint that you think that there will always be Wizards product designed for it. What I’m saying is that product *barely* exists NOW, let alone 5 to 10 years down the road.
That last comment of mine was a response to Jason, just in case that wasn’t clear.
Rob — excellent point about the more troubling aspect. I didn’t even touch on that.
I suppose my “point of sufficient disillusionment” is a result of absolutely, quantitatively, lower sales figures across the industry than even 10 years ago. It’s not just fuzzy feelings of dissatisfaction. We’re down to 2000-odd retail accounts, and dropping.
I think Rob’s explored the main thrust of things. I do agree that it’s surprising we hit #5 on that list with our numbers, but it’s important to recognize that ICV2’s reporting on this stuff seems to be a combination of interviewing people for anecdotal reports of what’s selling well, along with a few sources of actual numbers, so I would expect a big chunk of that list to be guesswork. A game can SEEM bigger than it is, for sure (not that I’m convinced that’s the case here). I’m comfortable suspecting that Paizo and Wizards are doing one or more orders of magnitude more business up in positions 1-3 than we are in position 5.
Also, though this is a sidebar and not really germane to the main topic here, the numbers I reported for last quarter were for the sales to distributors that we experienced. Those are not the same as sales to retailers. So I think ICV2 is reporting more on sales by distributors (who’ve already bought our product, some during the quarter BEFORE last quarter) rather than sales TO distributors.
(Q2’s distro sales were 2600-2700 copies of each book, while Q3’s were as you note. During Q3, I switched over to using Alliance for my flooring and direct fulfillment as well, which changed the nature of the sales pattern with them. With flooring, they don’t actually have to buy any of my stock until they sell it to a retailer, and I have a reckoning each month with them to get paid for what they’ve sold. As a result, my figures for Q3 do not reflect the several hundred additional copies that Alliance sold during the month of September, because I didn’t invoice for those until October; they’re going to count as Q4 sales, thus.)
All the same, the difference between those numbers is likely not be significant enough to alter the point you were making with them, so I’m clarifying the numbers over here on the side, while generally nodding in the main. :)
I do think we’re going to (continue to) see a shift away from retail and on to direct sales from publisher to customer as we lose hobby stores from the market. This may allow, at least for a time, for publishers to keep revenues steady despite reaching a smaller customer base. But, yeah; I have no idea what Evil Hat will be doing in 5 years, if it will in fact be doing anything. I like publishing small games as much as I like publishing things like the Dresden Files, but it definitely ain’t the path of paying many bills.
If only Hollywood could show some genuine love for gaming the the way it does for comics, which have become a lot more accepted and mainstream, I think it’d be easier to get folks interested in the hobby.
A friend of mine who used to be a broker was very keen to refer to his gaming night to his work buddies as “poker night” because he didn’t want to explain to his colleagues that he was actually playing D&D. I expect that stigma will always be with us to one degree or another.
This was a fascinating read — thank you for sharing it.
Hmm. So, here’s the thing: I am totally willing to expect that we’re looking at fewer distribution outlets (Though having seen the new Red Box at Target, that may be changing again) but I am still a little bit waffly on what it means. A lot can be potentially explained by the idea that the pie is getting sliced thinner. There are a lot more games on the market – a given small title may not make much of a difference, but in aggregate there’s a lot of them – and that’s without even taking into account the impact of pdfs on the market as a whole.
Hell, that also doesn’t even account for the fact that our hobby has no expiration date. It’s entirely possible to be an active participant tin the hobby even if you haven’t bought anything but dice since 1988.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that this is not much of anything to base a business on – these are actually really good reasons for any one publisher to worry about the bottom line – but it speaks to a disconnect between the hobby and the industry which is not entirely flip.
(And yes, that doesn’t address the issue of growing the hobby, and the necessity of bringing in new blood to offset losses with time, but I’m ok with that for two reasons. First: that change is actually fairly slow – people fade in and out of the hobby, but the rate of change is not measured by monthly subscriptions. Second: If someone comes up with real numbers about that, I will suspect witchcraft.)
Now, I’ll reiterate that none of this offsets the legitimate business concerns. Nor does it argue with that common sense itch we all face that computer games have cannibalized a segment of the hobby who want that part of the experience. But what I want to underscore is that there’s a reasonable case that the things that make the hobby such a rough business also allow it to stay fairly robust (or at least resilient) in the face of business problems[1]. I don’t pretend it’s a certainty, but at the same time, I question the certainty of any predictions based on the shifting sands of data we have available to us.
None of which even faintly disagrees that there’s more money to be made elsewhere. Just saying that’s its own bag.
-Rob D.
1 – More problematic is the question of what the hobby is. I note that MUSHes, play by post and so on are probably not going anywhere. But those are also the parts of the hobby that offer the least purchase (har har) for the commercially minded.
Fred — thanks for the additional insight. I really appreciate it!
Rob — Good points (especially the pie-slice bit).
“If only Hollywood could show some genuine love for gaming the the way it does for comics, which have become a lot more accepted and mainstream, I think it’d be easier to get folks interested in the hobby.”
It’s a lot easier to show people what is awesome about superheroes on a screen than it is to show them what is awesome about tabletop gaming. Not fantasy or sf as genres, but gaming as an activity. You could make a genuinely great fantasy flick and call it Dungeons & Dragons, you could even make a great Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms flick, but I have my doubts that such a thing would drive people towards the Red Box in the necessary droves, because movies are stories by other people about other people, and D&D is stories by you and your buddies about you and your buddies.
Cracked.com has an interesting article ( http://www.cracked.com/article_18817_5-reasons-future-will-be-ruled-by-b.s._p2.html ) that actually echoes what I’ve been saying for years (in its usual acerbic way): technology is a snake eating its tail, making it easier to obtain quality content and harder to make any money off said content, limiting the amount of quality content out there.
In fact, I’m so convinced that making money off of any IP is going to be so difficult in the future that I’m taking the easy way out. No not suicide, but going for a Masters in Arts & Technology not only to get back in front of the technology curve but to get myself firmly entrenched in academia so I have job security for the future.
When the value of your creative output dwindles exponentially and no job will retain it’s employees for more than a few years, much less till retirement, academic tenure starts to look schweeeeet…
I work or hang out with register duty at my FLGS and I’ve seen this and talked about it for the last several years now. Almost everything has been slowing down. New Products? Maybe 40% of what we used to see and now it’s more board games than RPGs. We used to get 15-20 new books a week and I’m not just talking OGL, but across all the systems. Now we get that a month, if that.
On the other hand, we’re running out of shelf space as we buy in new products but nothing sells because no one hears about it except the die hard gamers who sometimes pre-order from us but more and more get their games through online sources (not that I really have a problem with that, I spend plenty at e23 and some of the others for things we simply can’t get).
The only constants have been Magic to a lesser extent and our major cash flow item: Games Workshop. That is what has kept our store open. It and other miniatures games are the only bright things we have going for our future from what our sales tell us. It’s not a couple of books here and there, but books, models, paints, cases, etc. It’s an entire hobby unto itself.. And I used to *hate* wargaming!
Now it’s the only game I’m guaranteed to find people playing at our store except for boardgames.
The owner and I have had long talks about the future of the industry for years, and we just don’t see a sunrise. But we’re holding on to the dream as long as we can. Making our saves.
I can’t disagree with most of your points, Gareth. They are well reasoned, to say the least. I would, however, like to make a few random points.
1) Yes, MMOs have taken a big, big bite out of the tabletop audience and for all the reasons you mentioned. However, I don’t believe that MMOs can offer roleplayers the involved experience that tabletop RPGs do. For one thing, there are a lot of gamers who are more interested in collectively telling stories and engaging in characterization, both of which are hard to pull off when you’re surrounded (in game) by a bunch of 13-year olds who just go out to “pwn monsters” and have no intention of portraying a character. MMOs handle the kill-things-and-take-their-stuff aspect probably better than tabletop RPGs, however, so I think that the gamers looking for that will gravitate (or have already gravitated) to that format of game. My point is that there will always be that core — which you mentioned — that will not find solace in the MMO games. Will they be able to support the industry by themselves? Time will tell, but my gut says “no”.
2) Brick and mortar retailers suffering such losses isn’t exclusive to gaming stores. The internet has seriously put a damper on them across the board in terms of specialty shops. Hell, even music stores have been in a bad way as a result.
3) I’ve been hearing that sales have been down for the industry and I’m inclined to believe it since it has come from so many sources. However, I also thought that GenCon produced a record number of sales this year. This seems to conflict with the “sales being down” theory. Also, although Spectrum Games isn’t even a blip on the radar of the industry, sales have been higher for us the last two years than in any year before them. Just food for thought; not really a disagreement with your assessment of the industry.
My opinion is that if the tabletop gaming industry is to survive, things are going to have to change in a dramatic way. I don’t claim to be a guru or anything, so I can’t truly say what changes need to be made. But I do foresee the lavish full-color books falling out of fashion in the next 10 years, replaced by something more bare-bones that won’t cost as much to produce. I also think that POD will play an important role in the industry’s survival (if survival is even possible).
When Hasbro gets control of the D&D license from Atari (Turbine), I am not convinced that making a go of it will be profitable UNLESS they go Free-to-Play. MMO’s have their 800 lbs. Gorilla in the form of World of Warcraft and most subscription based MMO’s die within the first year of run.
Hello Gareth!
I have to disagree with you since I believe that your analysis is flawed.
I agree that there are less fantasy stores than during the 90s and that those which still exist are not doing well. Unfortunately you left out the fact that the internet gained more importance in the last 20 years. Gamers meet online on discussion boards and instead of local fantasy stores there are more online stores like amazon which can offer the same product for a lesser price.
One aspect I regulary miss in discussion like this is the growing amount of RPGs. I think that it is no secret that there are by far more different RPGs available today than 20 years ago and that every day more and more systems and settings become available.
If you compare the market to a cake and those who want a share of it are the various RPGs then you will get to the conclusion that the more people want a piece of the same cake the less they will get. The market for RPGs is characterized by competition.
This means that it is not a big a surprise that only 3000 copies of a rulebook is enough to gain a place among the Top 5 (but I’d be interested in what book is on no. 1 and how many books were sold.).
All in all I believe that the market has indeed grown but not as much as the competition grew.
But I agree in the conclusion you drew all in all: If you want the company to survive you have to move on and find new markets and get new customers.
“Obviously, WOTC hasn’t made any such intention known. But consider this: We’re already seeing a major re-branding and re-packaging of D&D, with the Essentials launch. This roll-out seems to be concentrated fairly heavily in traditional retail: Wal-Mart, Target, the chain bookstores. Yes, it’s available through hobby distribution as well, but do you honestly think that’s the focus?”
Given that every single copy of every Essentials box includes a one-sheet pushing people towards the store-only Encounters program — yes, I do. The retail stores are important to WotC. Whether or not they’re important to Hasbro is another question, but the people calling the shots vis a vis D&D and Magic right now consider the retail stores to be the backbone of the hobby.
And they’re right in both cases. Magic is a mega-brand that people spend a ton of money on because it’s a competitive game, and people have to spend money on it and practice to do well. The accepted environment for regular tournament play is the retail channel.
Encounters is tied to Wednesday nights and it’s tied to stores — both big changes for WotC’s RPG Organized Play — because WotC wants to replicate the success of Friday Night Magic. Convention prize support is now tied to a store — con organizers must order it through stores — because WotC wants to prop up that direct channel. And yes, that’s both D&D and Magic prize support.
Again, I’m not saying I think Hasbro cares and I’m not saying WotC will always support the retail store, but their actual actions vis a vis Organized Play tell a story of strong retail support right now.
“It’s not a matter of debate though. Anyone who has paid attention over the past two decades has seen the undeniable shrinking. “
Board Game Geek strongly suggests otherwise.
“ICV2’s report of the top 5 selling RPGs for Q3 2010.”
These are just stats for people buying games. There are lots of reasons people may not be buying games but still playing them.
As someone who rides the “avid fanboy” line between the hobby and the industry, I’m going to avoid making foolish comments about most of your arguments. However, I do want to make a couple observations.
First, I find it fascinating that less than five years ago, a common refrain in the “the hobby is dying” speeches was that we had to get the game back into mainstream distribution. D&D only ever exploded in the ’80’s because it was in Toys R Us and K-Mart. We have to have that kind of easy entry into the hobby if we are going to have any hope of new blood. And, yet, here you point to seeing WotC putting Essentials in Target as a sign of the end times.
Second, I’m going to support the “the hobby does not need the industry” argument. Specifically, browsing DriveThru proves that it is trivial for any hack to slap together a PDF and put it up for sale. And, that there is an endless parade of hacks chomping at the bit to do so. At a level just above the hacks, you have a growing tide of quality “indie” publishers, capable of turning out some really neat work. The barrier of entry to being an RPG publisher at this point is nothing but time (and, if you don’t want to be a hack, some layout software).
Moreover, RPG players are able to connect with one another in phenomenal ways. Meetup.com makes putting together groups easy. Various forums, blogs, twitters, etc. make it easy to engage in discussions. And, intelligently leveraged, to get advertising to the masses pretty cheaply (for certain values of “the masses”). Virtual tabletop software is advancing rapidly, removing the geographical limitations. You may see the end of the hobby within 5 years, but I see PAX hosting a completely online gaming con within 5 years.
If the industry fails, we will all lose out. You will have far fewer game developers who are able to write full time. We will lose hobby stores (though if CCGs hadn’t come along, we probably would have lost them ten years ago), and therefore lose convenient common places to gather. We will lose a certain stratum of product, specifically that with high production values but niche audiences. And, we will almost certainly lose access to officially licensed RPGs (e.g., Serenity, Star Trek).
We won’t lose our ability to play, though. Or to create. We will just transform into a cottage industry, in which we are self-supporting. After all, producing and distributing RPGs is much easier than producing and distributing player pianos…
A less controversial (I hope) way of putting the same message out there that I would use is this:
The hobby games industry is changing at ludicrous speed. You either see the warp wave heading and move to adjust to the new oncoming reality (whatever that adjustment may be – e.g. White Wolf’s new publishing scheme), or get shattered/tossed to the emptiness of space and suffer the consequences.
I know it sounds like a threat, but it isn’t; it’s a simple reality that has been showing signs of approach for years now. Maybe Gareth’s words/tone make it sound more confrontational; maybe people just react to even a Hello from him as an invitation to war, but that’s an irrelevant detail. The message is a good one. And mind you, I’m not entirely 100% behind his predictions, but sometimes it isn’t about arguing about the tree, but about the forest, and in general terms, there is sound logic here.
The hobby games *hobby*, however, is an entirely separate entity, and I think that’s one thing we need to start putting in its place and looking at separately as we move on. Cause yeah, the hobby may be able to continue without much of an issue, but it will undoubtedly suffer by the decline/demise of the industry. To what extent? That’s a separate line of argument for another day.
It seems the primary focus here is hobby games = roleplaying games. I’ll be the first to agree that roleplaying is suffering, but I can state quite happily that at SJGames our business is in excellent condition. Munchkin sales continue to grow and we continue to improve efficiency and profitability.
Good to hear, Phil — but I’m curious (and feel free to tell me to stuff it, if the info is proprietary): How much of that success is tied to the existing hobby market, and how much in the explosion of Munchkin into wider retail? From an outside observer, it seems more the latter than the former. I see Munchkin in Borders far more often than I see it in Local Game Stores.
Hi Gareth,
I think anyone looking at the situation from an objective POV would have to come to the same conclusions as you.
However, I wonder if what the market is loosing in terms of big sellers is in fact moving down the “long tail” instead of disappearing completely. Could it be that the “long tail” of the RPG market is getting fatter/thicker (i.e. incrementally greater sales of more and more products in the tail) even while the spike at the head of the sales curve is dropping?
Just a thought.
Take Care,
Lou
I’m making a last stab at uniting TTRPGS with the post-digital age mindset (and I’m actually using it as an independent study subject for my masters ‘bringing pre-digital entertainments into a post-digital age’). Hopefully, if the format works, it will provide a way for the hobby to modernize to the point where it will beomce semi-profitable for at least a another decade.
Basically I’m taking the openness and flexibility of TTRPGS to tell any story while sitting around with other living beings in a real life social environment, something computers still can’t match, and mating them with all the technology available to make it as digitized as possible, eliminating the need for any materials outside of the iPad or other compact digital device.
Check out the design in progress at http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?p=12950402# , I’m open to suggestions on other ways to keep the hobby alive in a commercial sense, but for now, this is the best I’ve come up with…
@GMS – A combination of increase in mass market sales and sales through hobby distribution. GURPS is also offered through mass market but we don’t see the same level of increase, so it’s not just wider distribution.
I really think a lot of the RPG problem is connected to a style of gaming that just isn’t attractive to a lot of people.
@Nathanial – You Rock. I somehow missed this project. But this is what I really wanted to see out of this discussion, some more examples that someone is attempting to adapt to the trends. (see also the new Diaspora Clusters app for iPhone/Pad)
As someone in the retail side of things, I’m not really seeing that much shrinkage. All the lines we carry seem to be doing well, and our usual slow times are pretty much right on schedule, even in this less than stellar economy. I know this is part of the “my anecdote” bit you mention in the first paragraph, but sales figures are a bit better than looking at a gaming group.
I don’t have the figures at the moment, and won’t be 100% sure until the end of the fiscal year, but at the moment, it looks to be about the same as last year. That would mean no growth, but still maintaining.
I think a lot of the shrinkage happens to be coming from the fact that there is a big shift in the industry as a whole, moving away from products into services. This will naturally show the kind of shrinkage is such reports, while the hobby itself continues to grow.
A lot of this comes from the fact that unlike computer games, you do not neccessarily need products to enjoy your hobby – anyone can simply create their own ideas and share them online or through other media, where they can be picked up and implemented. The more this is understood, the better the industry will become, able to adapt to the new service-based approach.
Are there reports on how many people have signed up to services like D&D Insider, or have Obsidian Portal accounts? These need to be compared alongside product slaes to get a true idea of the state of the industry as a whole.
Didn’t Gary Gygax once say, back in AD&D 1st Edition days, that the dirty secret of RPG publishing was that if you make a good game, the gamers don’t really need the publishers?
Um… totally agree with most of what you say, but in a “welcome to 1987” sort of way.
“Never mind asking such geniuses to ponder where new players will come from without product on store shelves drawing their attention”
Firstly, the new store shelf is an online one, and with PDF and POD, shelf space is both free and unlimited. I can’t count the number of great books, films, games, and television shows that I’ve discovered from my desk. Buying such things at physical stores is like buying anything at all with cash, reading a paper newspaper, or writing more than a post-it note’s worth of text at a time by hand; Lots of us can barely remember the last time it happened. Welcome to 2010.
Regarding finding players, this one always makes me sad, as it would be a truly terrible thing to have to have to depend on the Hasbro corporation for.
Luckily, finding (or making) players is something that we GMs can do perfectly fine on our own. I know this from experience, but J. Raggi already explained it better than I have the time and patience to now:
http://lotfp.blogspot.com/2008/05/i-cant-find-any-players.html
@Geezer “but in a “welcome to 1987″ sort of way.”
Then I respectfully submit that you perhaps misunderstood what I was saying.
@Will Mistretta “Firstly, the new store shelf is an online one, and with PDF and POD, shelf space is both free and unlimited. […] Welcome to 2010.”
It’s just precious that you’re instructing ME on ePublishing. Seriously — absolutely darling.
Hey, this was going well up to this point. Can we have some more data and discussion rather than posturing and snarkery please? I’d like not to have to cancel my subscription to the comments.
Yeah, I’m afraid that the kids over on RPGnet are getting antsy because I haven’t engaged on the thread, so they’ve decided to come over here.
Speaking of subscriptions, I’d love to be able to read your Twitter feed….
Yeah, best to make things adult swim only. It’s your pool over here after all.
Twitter: fixed.
I disagree. I think the industry already collapsed. We have passed the crisis point of a Bubble Gum balloon. It has popped and all that we are doing is continuing to blow more air into it. It’s only temporary as it continues to deflate. The harder we blow the bigger the tear get’s. This is just the trailing spiral and refuge.
I don’t believe that the practice or Role Playing will cease. There will continue to be Role Players for generations to come. As an industry however it’s going t be very small.