To be fair, SJGames made a good decision dropping GURPS production.  As a "mid-tier" company, they realize the only thing thay can do to profitably make RPGs is to make niche products, and as beautiful as GURPS 4th is, it's really just a niche product now.

I'm also not sure how many people would line up to buy gurps 4e books of things that they already have in 3e.  The core books, sure.  But why pump out supplements unless you're sure of the market for that particular item.

Quote from: jgantsI think people have a tendancy to forget how strong the mid-tier market was in the 80's.

That's true. But a point to consider is the state of desktop publishing then and now. And POD.

Seanchai

Quote from: NicephorusI'm also not sure how many people would line up to buy gurps 4e books of things that they already have in 3e.  The core books, sure.  But why pump out supplements unless you're sure of the market for that particular item.

True.  I don't know why they don't just concentrate on settings.  Banestorm is an awesome book, and for a complete two-book game, they are offering a whole lot of option books.

Quote from: GMSkarkaWow.  Someone seriously using the phrase "network externalities" in a sentence, who agrees with Dancey.

I'm shocked.    Shocked, I tell ya....

Actually, I only used the term because I was talking about Dancey.  The point is that it is consistent with his theory of the gaming market; I'm not saying that it is neccessarily as important of a factor as he says it is.

I do think Dancey has a biased POV, and I'm no fan of his.  But I am able to admit when part of his theories appear to correlate with what exists in the market.

Quote from: joewolzTo be fair, SJGames made a good decision dropping GURPS production.  As a "mid-tier" company, they realize the only thing thay can do to profitably make RPGs is to make niche products, and as beautiful as GURPS 4th is, it's really just a niche product now.

Oh, I agree.  That's sort of my point.  GURPS 4e is better quality than anything they've done before (GURPS isn't really my cup of tea, but I still appreciate the quality of the 4e books), it has sold huge in the past, and now they can't sell it enough to justify more than 2 books a year.

Thus, it's pretty clear to me that the market is much smaller and more highly fractured than it was years ago.

Quote from: SeanchaiThat's true. But a point to consider is the state of desktop publishing then and now. And POD.

Seanchai

A very good point.  A lot of the reason for the fracturing of the market is pure economics.  The lower the barrier to entry, the more competition you have.

The really interesting part is how D&D manages to maintain its market share while the mid-tiers did not.

Quote from: jgantsThe really interesting part is how D&D manages to maintain its market share while the mid-tiers did not.

not really, it has name recognition amongst non-gamers and exposure in big-box bookstores.  the success of the LotR films and WoW tie into the fantasy rpg vein as well.  if someone not exposed to such was considering gaming, that's the most likely place to start.

Quote from: beebernot really, it has name recognition amongst non-gamers and exposure in big-box bookstores.  the success of the LotR films and WoW tie into the fantasy rpg vein as well.  if someone not exposed to such was considering gaming, that's the most likely place to start.

This can't be all there is to it because it doesn't explain much.  The lotr rpg made little impression in the market even though it managed to be in bookstores when it first came out.  If it were just name recognition, WoW would never have grown so huge with an initially unknown name and moderately known company while Star Wars and D&D mmorpgs are barely played.

Some times, things do well because they are good and fill a niche for buyers.

Quote from: NicephorusThis can't be all there is to it because it doesn't explain much.  The lotr rpg made little impression in the market even though it managed to be in bookstores when it first came out.  If it were just name recognition, WoW would never have grown so huge with an initially unknown name and moderately known company while Star Wars and D&D mmorpgs are barely played.

Some times, things do well because they are good and fill a niche for buyers.

WoW was an "unknown name"?  O_o

The Warcraft series was already one the best selling strategy titles of all time, second only to Starcraft, itself another Blizzard product.  And Blizzard's policy of making games with significantly lower system requirements than their peers has only expanded their audience, by ensuring that jsut about anyone can pick up one of their games and guarantee it will run.

Blizzard has shit tons of fans, a solid reputation for making good games.  Before WoW's release it was one of the most anticipated titles in development.  All Blizzard has to do anymroe is say "We're making a new game", and gamers drool with anticipation before even knowing anything about it.  

Something tells me you don't play many computer games.

I was typing quickly.  Back it up a few years.  Blizzard and Warcraft were small at one point - they grew because of quality and the quality increased their name/sales much more than name drove sales.  They were also not the first on the mmorpg scene, so it's not just a case of being biggest by being first.

Quote from: NicephorusI was typing quickly.  Back it up a few years.  Blizzard and Warcraft were small at one point - they grew because of quality and the quality increased their name/sales much more than name drove sales.  They were also not the first on the mmorpg scene, so it's not just a case of being biggest by being first.

Ah, I was confused by your specific terminology, when you what you were meaning was blizzard itself in a historical sense.

All told I (of all people) don't think d20 killed many of those companies.  Bad management and lack of foresight in just about every case.

The market was there for Traveller 3e and GDW had the funds to pull it off but they made TNE and that killed it dead instead.

GURPS needed a new edition 17 years ago and their failure to see that destroyed their market share.  They also dropped a perfectly good house organ magazine.  Magazines don't sell well and don't sell games it's true.  But they do build customer loyalty and publishing articles by fans is a way to make them completely fanatical.

West End died because of bad management of a shoe company that owned part of the company.

FASA closed up shop because a majority share holder wanted to go in a new direction and chose to create a new company for that purpose.

ICE was burried by a nasty creditor that owned the rights to their best selling product line.  If they'd held out for six months more they'd have been caught up and ahead by $2million.  Just on the revenue from Dark Age of Camelot which was originally going to be a Rolemaster Mmorpg.  Which would have been followed with a MERP Mmorpg which is why the creditor was so nasty.

Palladium's done everything they could think of to drive off their fan base for years.  But at least they have Rifter which is more than SJG can say (no an on-line magazine of as low usefulness like Pyramid doesn't count)

White Wolf scuttled their main line and were shocked when fans with thousands of dollars of books didn't pony up for another ride.

Hollistic tried to go d20, did a slap-dash job of it and discovered that it didn't make their fans or d20's fans happy.

Pinnacle tried to go d20, more or less went bankrupt and reconstituted as Great White games.  I couldn't tell you if d20 was the cause, but like many other companies, the conversion books were pretty poorly done.

Guardians of Order split themselves between the d20 and their own game system and in the end it killed them.  When the ground around you is littered with dead bodies it's time to wonder about the path you're following.

Yes, I do equate going d20 from an established line as a bad management decision.  If it was a good generic game I might not, but there's a whole lot of styles of game it does poorly if at all.  But even then I look at TNE as something of a sign post that reads "DON'T TOTALLY SCRAP THE ORIGINAL SYSTEM CONCEPTS AND PISS ON THE SETTING IF YOU WANT TO SELL BOOKS TO YOUR FANS"

For which reason, I'm convinced that d20 conversion wouldn't be a good idea even if it wasn't a particularly offensively bad game system in general.

Quote from: David JohansenBut even then I look at TNE as something of a sign post that reads "DON'T TOTALLY SCRAP THE ORIGINAL SYSTEM CONCEPTS AND PISS ON THE SETTING IF YOU WANT TO SELL BOOKS TO YOUR FANS"

Just wait till you hear me make ominous chuckling noises on the forum from time to time once I've joined the dreaded T5 playtest. I'm about to do this only because, while underqualified, short of time and scared shitless of what the playtest files might contain, I simply can't help myself.

Quote from: Pierce InverarityThe "other media do it better" argument is ultimately unpersuasive. If combat-oriented computer games drain away RPGers, then why do Fading-Suns-ish games suffer and not D&D, seeing as D&D comes so much closer to the experience offered by these games than Fading Suns?

I played WoW for about a month precisely because of this question. IME, the gamers I personally knew who went over to WoW and stopped tabletop gaming weren't D&D players. They were the guys who were interested in everything but D&D. Obviously, that's not enough data to make a definitive conclusion, but it was enough to start me thinking about the relationship between MMOs and RPGs.

I'm not sure that WoW's strengths are such that they undermine what D&D does. If you take the two games, they share what looks like the same basic stuff - wander around, kill monsters, collect treasure. I think WoW appeals to D&D players because of the combat and character building, but I also think that the immersive world it offers appeals to gamers who are interested in story and character development. There is a definite immersive quality to WoW, and I think that extends its reach across a much broader spectrum of gamers than you would expect.

In other words, the kind of gamer who bought Fading Suns or L5R for the setting might find WoW a better experience because an MMO is a more immersive gateway into a game world.

If this is true, then it has an interesting effect on gaming. If WoW competes for time with RPGs, then that's one more barrier between a gamer and an active campaign. In essence, every RPG felt the same effect on its player base. Smaller games already had the disadvantage that simply finding people to play them is harder than finding people to play D&D. Adding WoW as an attractive alternative to doing the work of building a group might be the straw that broke the camel's back.

D&D faced the same thing, but since more people play D&D, D&D has a recognizable name, and you can buy D&D books in lots and lots of places, it was in a better position to weather the storm. Sure, it's a little harder to find the time to play D&D or get a group together, but there's enough people out there playing that the extra difficulty didn't push the game past its tipping point.

A game like Fading Suns, which had a smaller fan base, couldn't weather that blow.

EDIT: It's late and I'm not sure I'm expressing myself clearly, so here's an example that I hope makes sense of this. Let's assume that every RPG group has 5 members, and WoW caused 50% of all gamers to stop playing RPGs. In the city of Theory, where everything imaginary happens, there are 8 D&D groups, 1 Palladium group, 1 Fading Suns group, and 4 Exalted groups. Half of all gamers leave the hobby to play WoW. The D&D groups and Exalted groups can shuffle themselves and become 4 and 2 functioning groups respectively. Meanwhile, the Palladium and Fading Suns guys are stuck. Their groups are too small to keep going. If these guys want to game, they can start playing D&D or Exalted.

The really damaging thing for FS and Palladium in this example is that it's really, really hard for them to recover. D&D and Exalted still have groups recruiting and teaching new gamers. Their books are on sale in the major chain bookstores. If the WoW RPGers cut back on MMOs and come back to tabletop, they find only D&D and Exalted groups. They have to go back through the process of building groups from scratch for mid-tier games. In the end, the guys who come back and new gamers who enter the hobby might simply play D&D and Exalted.

Obviously, this example is ridiculously simple and distorted, but I think it outlines a general theory that could explain what we've seen.

Pinning the loss of game readers on manga might be a poor match, but something is going on there. Story heavy books are a hard sell - WotC does them only rarely because they simply don't sell well compared to books with lots of new rules. Another possibility rattling around in my head is that while RPGs are very good at building fictional settings, other games and properties have caught up. Today, everything from TV shows to videogames have novels, comics, and guide books that fans can study and digest. Maybe it used to be that, in 1995 if you wanted to explore a fictional world in depth you bought and read an RPG line. Today, any well managed property offers that to you. Those fans are simply spread out.

Or you could go with the simpler answer, the one I've actually heard stated on countless occasions, which is that WoW pulls from the non-D&D player base, simply because there's fewer people playing non-D&D games, so they give up and move to the MMO world.  

I generally find MMOs to be a poor replacement for tabletop, especially when it comes to story or character focused styles of play.  Roleplaying doesn't exist in MMOs.

But that doesn't mattter.  Because what the players are really looking for more than anything is the social experience, and that just plain doesn't happen if you can't actually get a group together.  

Let's face it, when there's 8 million people playing one game and all are equally accessable, and only a few hundred thousand at best all scattered across the world playing another, the 8 million wins out pretty easy on the "ease of finding players" metric.

See what I did there?  Metric.  I can speak silly corporate lingo too.