Quote from: RSDanceyI look at the RPG sales data.  I look at the player base sizes of MMORPGs.  I look at the collapse of RPGs in retail.  I look at the market research.

Ryan,

I have an MBA.  I know what these strange, alien terms you use mean.  ( )  (Business school also made me a Socialist, but never mind that for now.

I have been frustrated to the point of pissing myself at the task of trying to get actual, you know, DATA about RPG sales.

Right now, I have only 2 data points.

1)  Paul... er, something... the Marketing Director for Steve Jackson Games, recently said his ESTIMATE of the RPG market was $50 mil per year or so.

2)  During the 80s I worked with Dave Arneson.  I saw some of the info on royalties from the aftermath of the D&D lawsuit.  I can't disclose specifics... but I can say that, in 1977-1982, D&D BY ITSELF was almost $50 M per year.  Not all of TSR... D&D.

So, yeah... the market is shrinking.

What specifics can you tell us?  I watch with slack-jawed amazements at people, including those trying to SELL to this market, work entirely with guesswork and anecdote.

Any one of my profs would have either burned a paper like this or wiped his ass on it.

So, if you can, share some data.

Quote from: HalfjackObviously anecdotal, but what's endangering my gaming group isn't MMOs.  It's growing older.  Kids, mortgages, overtime, course prep, getting that paper out, and dinner parties are endangering my gaming group.

Right.

My old players MMO because we can't coordinate our blasted schedules to game together.  And only two of them MMO with any regularity.

If we were all living within 10 minutes of each other again, I'd rather play D&D than any MMO in the world any day.

Just to clarify...

Quote from: Old Geezer1)  Paul... er, something... the Marketing Director for Steve Jackson Games, recently said his ESTIMATE of the RPG market was $50 mil per year or so.

Paul Chapman.

Who has never, to my knowledge, tried to cry wolf in any direction (even the ones that would support me personally.  *snif* ), and who has never claimed to do more than make estimates.

Quote from: Kyle AaronThey talk a lot about getting into character, kicking arse and taking names, exploring different game worlds, escapism and so on. The closest most come to saying "story" is when they say, "oh and if it all has some kind of point to it, a beginning, middle and end, that's nice, too - but not really vital."

Huh.

My own players damn well expect a story - but only in exactly the sense of "it all has some kind of point to it, a beginning, middle and end".

But, at the same time, they don't want a rigid plot-structure, or railroading, or all-serves-the-theme-all-the-time.

Quote from: RSDanceyThe GM has 3 executive powers.

He can say "Stop being a dick.  That doesn't happen."

He can say "No, that doesn't happen because it breaks the premise of the story".

He can say "No, that doesn't happen because it contradicts a previously established fact about the game world." (And he can shift into GM Stance and say: "And I don't have to tell you what that is.")

OR

He can say, "OK, if you want that to happen, here's what you will risk to make it so, and here's how you'll determine if you get to make that change or not." (I.e. "roll dice").

Plus all the god-game stuff, which some people seem to like.  A lot.

Ryan

I see; so you are not actually supporting "Say yes or roll the dice", then?

RPGPundit

Quote from: RSDancey*SNIP*
So lets see what happens if we try to bring some of that technology out of the fringe, and hook it up with the biggest game in the business.  Worst case, in my opinion, is Ryan Dancey looks like a fucking idiot in public.  Again.  Best case, in my opinion, is that someone else picks up the ball and runs with it, and we get a whole new groundswell of games & players who make playing an RPG a central part of their lives.

What I don't see happening is an effect where the industry pulls out a .45 and shoots itself in the head again.

Ryan

I have to say that your analysis is pretty well spot-on, and goes along with what I'd been saying for years now about that whole era.

I even agree that in general, Ron Edwards' overall criticism of White Wolf (that they claimed to produce "story" and did not in fact have any meaningful divergence in terms of system from anything that came before it, ie. they were all hype) is also fundamentally correct.

Now, the fundamental thing that's MISSING from this analysis (yours and/or Edwards') is the fact that WW failed because they DID actually try to force story onto RPGs, in the one and only way you can do so and keep on being an RPG: ie. with the game designers creating the story via metaplot and imposing it on player groups.

The "solution" offered by Edwards is to fundamentally alter everything that RPGs do that makes them definable as RPGs (ie. the playing of a single character, the GM, division of powers between GMs and players), and yet still try to claim that his games are RPGs. If WW created rpgs that didn't really work at telling story (only told stories via setting and metaplot, not system), then Forge games make story-games that fail at being RPGs.
On top of that, they mostly fail at being able to tell consistent coherent stories, as well. At least, in the sense of being able to do it any better than a group of people telling tales around a bonfire or something.

Of course, a big part of where I diverge from your analysis is that I do not believe that the majority of gamers WANT to create the kind of stories that Ron Edwards is talking about: some of them were enchanted by the promise of what WW was claiming (until the saw its results), and most people's response to the Forges' idea of story-games is that they are NOT willing to sacrifice playing an actual RPG for the sake of being able to "tell story" especially the sort of quasi-story-concoction that seems to be the closest that even Forge games can get.

What's more, the Forge Swine KNOW this, which is why they keep trying to use the label of "RPGs", rather than have the guts to try to make it on their own as a seperate hobby; the only way they survive is by leeching parasitically off the good name of games people actually DO want to play.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RSDanceyJazz is improv, but it is not unstructured.  Jazz is collaborative, but it has rules for sharing authority.  Jazz uses classic music notation when transcripted, but it required a host of new additions to the written language of music to allow it to be transcribed.  Jazz worked.

I want to try to jazz-up RPGs.

I wish I had a term as great as "jazz" for what I want to try to do to D20.  I hate the fact that the word "story" has this negative equity that gets in the way of communication, and sidetracks us into debates about terminology that are pedantic, not constructive.  I'm looking & listening.  If I hear or see one, I'm on it like white on rice.  Until then, I'm stuck using the best available term, even though the term itself is causing problems.

Ryan

I'm sorry, but the way I see it with regards to your metaphor with the context of "story", regular RPGs ARE Jazz. They are improv; they are not orchestrated. They produce a finished piece only as a byproduct.

What you're trying to do is take a five-piece Jazz band and try to make them work the way a single classical composer would write music.

The "story" in RPGs as they are now is something that is produced in a wild and uncontrolled way, where the actual playing of the song is important, and not the composition of a finished piece. You seem to be saying that what matters is that the finished sheet music at the end be up to "classical" story-standards.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Levi KornelsenMy own players damn well expect a story - but only in exactly the sense of "it all has some kind of point to it, a beginning, middle and end".

But, at the same time, they don't want a rigid plot-structure, or railroading, or all-serves-the-theme-all-the-time.

So "story" isn't the main thing for them. Other stuff comes first.

If "story" were the main thing, people wouldn't mind a rigid plot structure and/or railroading, and they'd still be publishing adventure module series like old Dragonlance was.

Most players would rather be active participants in something with no plot than passive observers in something with a strong plot. In practice, most decent game groups manage having most of the players be active participants in a fairly loose plot.

And so we see that in both theory and practice, players value the "active participation" more than the "plot." They're pretty forgiving if it turns out lame or silly, they're not very forgiving if they have no control over things (railroading or plotless), or if nothing happens outside what their characters do ("PCs are heroes, everyone else are zeroes without initiative or brains").

One of my current players quit two other groups to play in mine. This person said that one was railroading to the max, and the other was utterly without plot. They wanted something in the middle. I think that's pretty common.

I think game designers also overestimate their own importance in people having a fun game session. I mean, I know people who stayed in absolutely shite game groups because there was good food and it was a chance to catch up with the other players and swap pirated DVDs. We've a social creative hobby, and for many people if the social's good enough they'll do without the creativity; I rarely hear of people being happy with the creativity but unhappy with the socialness and staying. In the case of the player I mentioned above, that was a factor, too. It was said, "those guys are from a different world to me."

Of course game designers can't affect the social stuff much, so in a way it's natural for them to forget it. But in forgetting it, they overestimate the importance of their game system. Then they start talking about how this or that system will "revolutionise the hobby." But if you remember that it's mainly a social hobby for most gamers, then you'll realise that no system will ever revolutionise the hobby. because in the end it's half a dozen geeks sitting around rolling dice and eating cheetos, and their own social skills, how they get along, and their imaginations really most affect how much fun they have.

The game system is the least important thing in how much fun people have in a game session. I know a guy who disagrees with that, yet his group played Hackmaster for 150 sessions, and is now playing Burning Wheel, and had just as much fun in both cases. Two more different game systems it's hard to imagine, yet somehow they both matched the style of the group. Why? Because people matter much more than a game system.  

Easy for game designers to forget this, though. Especially game designers who haven't been gaming much lately.

Quote from: Kyle AaronSo "story" isn't the main thing for them. Other stuff comes first.

That's a damn tricky one.

See, my players want that whole "rising action" thing, with a climactic bit and the capacity to "feel resolved".  They want one event to follow another in a sensible fashion, so that it all makes sense - but they want that more in a world-is-believable than plot-is-solid way, if you follow.  To them, according to their feedback (and signals of enjoyment in game, and so on), the basic absolutely bare components of something "storylike", in the loosest possible sense, are vitally important.

Now, the thing is, all of that stuff is pretty much automatic if the fictional situation for play is any damn good at all.  It doesn't need mechanically reinforced themes, or a strong pre-plotted story arc.  Just good set-up; and Dr.Rotwang's Funnel Method is just as keen for getting this as drawing out a map of relationships.

"Good" story, in any literary sense, is so far down the list of priorities that it might as well not make the list at all.

As to the rest?  I agree, with a few quibbles on phrasing, as usual.

Quote from: Old GeezerWhat specifics can you tell us?  I watch with slack-jawed amazements at people, including those trying to SELL to this market, work entirely with guesswork and anecdote.

Luke Crane just announced that Burning Wheel just printed its 6,000th book.  I assume that means 12,000 books, because BW is a 2-book product.  $25 * 6,000 "units" == $150,000 in gross sales. I would guess that is the best selling "Indie" RPG.  Ron Edwards did a podcast with Paul Tevis where he specified that his games sell about 1,000 copies, with Sorcerer about twice that.  I suspect that Ron is the largest of the Forge-specific publishers.  I have no visibility on sales of Spirit of the Century, but based on ancedotal evidence, I put it between Burning Wheel and Sorcerer.  Let's say there's 10 designers do Ron Edwards' average level of business, with an average of 2 games each.  2 * 10 * 1000 = 20,000 units of sales per year * $25 = $500K/year in retail sales.  So the whole "Indie Games" movement is about the volume of a small but successful 3-T publisher.

Steve Jackson's 2006 Letter to Stakeholders says the company made $2.4 million; 45% from RPGs, I assume that means GURPS.  That's $1.08 million, or about $2.5 million at retail.  

Steve Jackson Games RPGs are about 4% of the market according to Comics & Games Retailer.  So that would make the market $62 million at retail.  GURPS is sold in bookstores, so we don't have to apply a multiplier factor for alternate channels.

Except for Wizards and White Wolf, the average 3-tier publisher is within a percent or two of marketshare of SJG (+ or -), call it +/- $1 million for every other publisher in the top 10.  I'll claim a special pleading for Mongoose, as noted their business is shifting to Europe and I have low visibility.  I'll also claim a special pleading for Games Workshop and White Wolf, and invoke GM Stance and refuse to tell you why.  

I put WotC at 50% of the market, and let's assume White Wolf and the other 10 top companies split the rest; the average publisher makes $3.1 million/year (retail) or $1.3 million/year (publisher revenue).

If Wizards of the Coast is 50% of the market, then WotC's RPG games generated $31 million at retail, and at a standard discount of 57% off SRP, that's $13.33 million of revenue.  Based on my knowledge of the business, I accept that as a valid figure, but I won't give you specifics to back up either the 50% number, or why I think the figure is valid. (Not can't: won't.  Sorry.  Wish I could.)

Wizards execs have said that the 3E PHB generated 1 million unit sales.  I do not know if that means 3E and 3.5E, but I do know that we sold 300K units in 30 days on launch, so a 1 million unit sales figure for 3E alone does not seem unreasonable.  So that one book generated $25-30 million in revenue (depending on when the price increase hit), but did that over 4 years, or over 7 years if its both 3E and 3.5E.  Worst case, PHB sales over 7 years would be $4.2 million/year (retail) or $1.8 million/year (publisher revenue).  

A quick guess would be that of the $13 million (publisher revenue) about 1/3rd comes from the 3 core books and maybe the FRCS.  1/3rd likely comes from the generic core book related products.  The remaining 1/3rd comes from everything else (campaign setting supplements, adventures, map books, etc.)

I have insider information from several companies that publish well known RPGs.  Since 2003 a 10K unit RPG core book is a "success".  A 5K RPG is "normal".  A 2K RPG is "increasingly common".  And that's core books - the supplements are de facto running even smaller print runs.

Here's the really frightening thing.  If you assume there are 500 core hobby stores that take 1 copy of anything the top 10 publishers produce, and 2,000 book stores that do the same, then any time you're selling 2,500 copies of a book, you're essentially stocking the shelves.  And if you sell 5,000 copies of a book, that means one person per store bought a copy, with one on the shelf.  There is no such thing as a viable 1 player network.  That means a whole lot of product is being purchased as literature, not as game product, which means the work put into those products is not being realized a maximum value by the purchasers, which means those sales are extremely fragile.  Right now, 2-5K hard core reader/collectors may be the whole RPG market outside of D&D and White Wolf sales, and direct sales by publishers not using the 3-T model.

Ryan

Quote from: RSDanceyI have no visibility on sales of Spirit of the Century,

http://drivingblind.livejournal.com/303210.html

Merry Christmas.

When were rpg sales anything other than:

1st D&D
2nd White Wolf
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3rd Palladium/SJGames
4th SJGames/Palladium
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5th Everyone else

Hasn't it always been like this? Was there ever a time when some "indie" guy could pop up from nowhere and get sales in the millions?

I´ll promise to not touch the touchy issues of story, but this is sales-talk, I must participate in.

QuoteRight now, 2-5K hard core reader/collectors may be the whole RPG market outside of D&D and White Wolf sales, and direct sales by publishers not using the 3-T model.

I´d challenge that assumption pretty strongly. Why? Because I believe there are multiple 2-5k hard core market segments, without serious overlap.

Example: Palladium. They sold ~1500 of those Megaversal Helper Cards as of last December. So I´d assume, as they keep selling them, that there´s at least a thousand ultra hard-core Palladds and Palladies who´d buy EVERYTHING, along with some n-thousand hard- core people who ONLY buy Palladium stuff. Rifts-books still sell in the strong thousands, reaching the tens once a blue moon.
I´d really think there could be networks and mini-markets of that kind for other games.
Think GURPS, or the GDW-Diadoch-market. I don´t see a big overlap there.
Or Battletech, Shadowrun and L5R. Cthulhu in Germany is also of that kind: Many people buy Cthulhu and nothing else.
I know tons of people who only follow one or two systems.

So my point remains:

There could well be a dozen 2-5k groups of people, that only ever buy their stuff, instead of a bunch of buy-it-all-collectors.

And that would mean the number of unique customers who purchase RPG products might be an order of magnitude greater!

Quote from: RSDanceySo long as you can hold your game group together in the face of withering network competition from MMORPGs, you bet.  More power to you.

I look at the RPG sales data.  I look at the player base sizes of MMORPGs.  I look at the collapse of RPGs in retail.  I look at the market research.  I look at the evidence of my own eyes in the game groups I'm aware of.  And I conclude that the MMORPGs are already well on their way to destroying the player balance.  In my opinion, this is no a potential future.  This is now.

This is the part that bugs me.  I think it's awesome you want to make your own game!  Seriously.

But it's all these claims about MMORPGs and what gamers really want (Story Building Games) that you keep reiterating.  You've got nothing to back this up.  In fact the market research you did yourself says exactly the opposite.  But you still make claims about the market research backing up your position.

Quote from: Mark TwainThere are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

:pundit:

Quote from: Levi KornelsenMy gamer friends that went away into to MMOs were mostly people that spent a lot of time bitching about RPGs, significant money collecting them, and almost no time actually playing.

They're happier.  I'm happier.  New people who want to talk with me about RPGs don't need to listen to them whining, and that means the new people are happier, too.

Sure. But you can understand why the folks selling games would want them to continue to buy their products.

Seanchai