I've used John Kim's handy-dandy big list of games to put together some statistics.

Specifically, I've recently become interested in the "lifespan" of RPGs. So, I went through the encyclopedia and noted down how many games had their "premier" in each year, and how many of those games have survived to the present day.

For a game to qualify for consideration, it must be the the first edition of an RPG. Editions of a game after the first do not count; nor do reprints or republication by a different company. If something is a boardgame or wargame with roleplaying elements, it doesn't qualify. So Chainmail doesn't count, and nor would games like Warhammer Quest.

For a game to be considered a "survivor", it must still be purchasable or downloadable from the official owners of the rights to the game. Whether they are still charging money for it isn't especially relevant to me; what's important is that the game was a commercial product in which there is still enough interest for the owners to make it available to the public in some form.

To be even more generous, I count games as having survived if the game's setting is in-print as a worldbook for a different system. So, Empire of the Petal Throne would count as a survivor thanks to the recent D20 Tekumel supplement, even if the original wasn't available as a reprint; likewise, Gamma World qualifies as a survivor (although may not do for much longer - when White Wolf runs out of copies of the main rulebook, it'll be dead again).

John hasn't put all the free electronically-published games that are out there in his encyclopedia, and I haven't tried to include them; freebies tell us little about the state of the industry, after all.

I've only covered up to 2005. It should be noted that there are games which were published as recently as last year which, as far as I can tell, have already sunk like a stone. Possibly I am being unfair to them, but if major game stores like Leisure Games have your game listed as "out of stock" and your company's website has vanished, what am I to assume?

PM me if you want the full year-by-year list of surviving games. I'll be cross-posting this to various other RPG forums I frequent so bear with me if I take a while to get back to you.

The absolute statistics, showing the number of games published in a year against the number of survivors.

The relative statistics, showing the percentage of games published in a particular year that survived.

Wow, mate. That is such a geeky effort.

Quote from: JimBobOzWow, mate. That is such a geeky effort.

Really, the majority of the work was done by John in compiling the encyclopedia in the first place; I'm just standing on the shoulders of giants.

Geeky giants.