I don't think gaming is dying and i don't think it ever will.

I think what we are seeing is a shift in how gamers are deliverd their games.

Lots of gamers buy online, PDF is becoming more common, Small Press Publishers add many more choices to the market, and MMORPG's & video games are pulling away kids who would have picked pen & paper 10 years ago.

Quote from: flyingmiceNo, I have never considered showing numbers and I never will consider it. Why is everyone so secretive? I can't answer for anyone else, but my business is a closely held company, not a publicly traded corporation. It's my business and the IRS's business, not J. Random Webdenizen's business. Words like "secretive" have nasty connotations which are not at work here. I think a better word is "private."

-clash

I would like to know, though, how many copies you consider a "success"?

In Harms Way was one you mentioned as an unexpected success... could you give us a ballpark figure of how many copies it sold?

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPunditI would like to know, though, how many copies you consider a "success"?

In Harms Way was one you mentioned as an unexpected success... could you give us a ballpark figure of how many copies it sold?

RPGPundit

Just from what I hear:

A small press print book that sells 400+ copies is considered to be a major success.

PDFs selling more than 100 in a year would be a pretty big success.

Sometimes what isn't accounting for is that we are on maybe our second, even THIRD generation of gamers.

I don't have hard numbers....but I believe its there. Specifically I'm referring to Grandfathers and Grandmothers getting their grandkids into RPGs. Hardly in danger of "dying" if it has become a family tradition and the "elders" encourage it .
Anecdotal examples from the past 3 years at the Game Store:

1) A grandfather comes into the store WITH 2 of his grandkids. He buys the 3.5 corebooks - all THREE of them. He tells the story that he played the original D&D back in the 1970s when he was a grad student in college. I explain that the rules have changed a bit, but the gist of it is the same. He says : "I'm flexible gaming is gaming. Besides only gave them permission to try it if their grandfather was their DM."

2) Ringing up a sale yesterday, we had a CD of Rocky Horror picture show playing. An older womasn and a girl in her late teens were at the counter. The older woman loves the music starts humming along. Turns out she went to "ROCKY" the first year or two it had its midnight showings. As to gaming she says "I sometimes still play - when her mother says they need another player and our schedules match up. "  YEP - she's a grandmother that plays D&D ...and with her kids and grandkids at times.

3) For awhile we would have this bunch showing up on every Sunday. Firefighters from the local Fire station. Turns out they would play D&D on Sundays at the Fire House ....with their kids. ( If there are no fire calls - its 7 straight hours of boredom)Their mothers figured what safer place than a Fire station to play ? They would stopp in, pick up miniatures, paintys, dice...only occassionally RPG books. BUT they were playing role playing games...just they bought the accessories more often than the books.  My schedule chanmged and I don't see them as much.

My point mainly is that I don't see the Gaming Industry as "dying". When it has permeated pop culture and family life that much - it ain't gonna die.

....There are more examples I could post - but I should really think about getting some breakfast.
Bagels sound good....

- Ed C.

The idea of being the last of a dying breed is a popular archetypal fantasy among many fandoms the world over.

It's nothing more than the need to feel special.

Quote from: One Horse TownThen again, i don't really consider you to be an 'indie-blob', just Flying Mice. :haw:

/me bows!



-clash

Quote from: RPGPunditI would like to know, though, how many copies you consider a "success"?

In Harms Way was one you mentioned as an unexpected success... could you give us a ballpark figure of how many copies it sold?

RPGPundit

By Mike's standard, it was a Pretty Big Success. I expected to sell probably a dozen or so copies, seriously. I honestly expected to lose a couple hundred bucks on it. It's the only game I ever published expecting it to fail.

-clash

I have to say, now that I've gone away and thought about this question for a while, and I have to say that my (more serious my previous) answer is "No, and it won't be so long as D&D is in print".

Really, the RPGPundit's model of the gaming market makes a lot of sense when you look at the actual figures. D&D is the Big Beast of the market, the most visible game with the greatest cultural penetration - only Vampire, at its height, has ever really competed with it here. All the other RPGs we play are, in the end, inspired by the play model invented by D&D - even high-concept indie Forge games which radically change the assumptions of the play model are using that model as a starting basis, and make an explicit point of deviating from it for experimental purposes. Most-to-all RPGs, aside from D&D itself, are purchased and played by people who either play D&D but fancy something different from time to time, or are dissatisfied with D&D and want something different for their "go-to" game. (Again, only Vampire at its height seems to have competed with it here.) I don't, for example, know of anybody who came to gaming by discovering Ars Magica, or Runequest, or Rolemaster, and isn't especially interested in exploring other games, but all of us know (or are at least aware of) plenty of people who play D&D, like D&D just fine, and aren't interested in other games.

Friends, let's face it: it's D&D that keeps the RPG industry afloat. The RPG industry isn't dying, because D&D is here and is showing every sign of doing just fine, and as long as that's the case there'll be a market for other games to come along and fill the niches that D&D doesn't fill, or provide an alternative for people who like the idea of gaming but aren't satisfied with D&D.

If D&D ever vanished from the map, it's possible that another Big Beast will come along to take its place, but practically speaking D&D isn't going anywhere. Look at what happened when TSR went bust: Wizards bought them out so fast if you blinked you'd miss it, and if Wizards hadn't bought them some other game company probably would have. There's simply too much interest in the D&D brand for it to die.

Warthur: Good point! I agree.

i wonder if you could map the ebb and flow of new games based on d&d's sales?  meaning, if d&d (of whatever edition) was selling well at the time, did that lead to increased rpg awareness and higher sales of other games?  how were sales of other rpgs (or just "the market") in the period before 3.0 came out?  

i think you hit a major point there, warthur :raise:

The industry is always "dying". What we are seeing is adjustments in the market. Mid-tier companies are feeling the crunch because we have market fragmentation. This is brought about by several factors not the least of which is the lowering of the barrier to entry (it took thousands of dollars just ten years ago to publish an RPG), increased number of companies/books splitting the customer base and OGL/D20 third party publishing adding tot he fragmentation.

Contrast that with game stores that have an ever increasing startup cost. I started my first store with about 5k. There is next to no way you could do that today and expect to grow to second location and be successful. Today, stores are commonly started with about 60K depending on where you are. Also, back in the day, once established, having a game store fail was next to impossible. Now, you have "customers" buying online, coming to game in your store, and berating your real customers for being a chump and not getting a better deal. So, I would say the B&M stores are going through a very rough transition. What has the publishers worried is that there are stores that have been around for 20 years that are going belly up. This, as I said before, is unusual in the old model. The smart shops are embracing online sales. They have an online storefront. So far, though and I really don't understand this one, they do not sell PDFs. Still, the old adage, Adapt or die is true today as any other.

Now, for small press, it is a good time to be one. With a lot of the recoil from the D20 glut, small press in the print market can really make headway, get into stores and even sell fairly well. Unfortunately, the trend is opposite of this and many small press do not know how to take advantage of this channel. They tend to be learning pdf distribution, POD distribution and unfortunately, a lot of relying on third parties to sell their books. Many of them need to understand the B&M retailers and help them with new models. A majority of my business is now direct to Retailers or customer. I honestly believe that this is the future for small press (who are interested in this in terms of profit). Also, where small press goes, the bigger publishing houses usually follow. It was not that long ago that the mid tier scoffed at PDF and said it would damage their sales. Now, I get lectured on how I do not maximize my PDF sales. :rolleyes:

So, the not-so-distant future, IMHO, holds a landscape where your games are released via PDF. If they make grade there, they go to print. Fewer and fewer companies will do traditional print runs and rely on POD as the technology and providers improve. You will see more online promotions/ads. The print market will contract and PDFs will find their way into B&M stores. E-paper could help there. And people will still proclaim that the hobby is "dying".

Bill

RPGs aren't dying, if dying = 10 years from now there will be nothing left. It's more like wargames or punk rock. Those are still alive, too. Sorta.

Actually, that's the real question: Are RPGs going to stay alive in an interesting way or in a boring way? Frozen in past glory, or moving on?

Quote from: Pierce InverarityRPGs aren't dying, if dying = 10 years from now there will be nothing left. It's more like wargames or punk rock. Those are still alive, too. Sorta.

Actually, that's the real question: Are RPGs going to stay alive in an interesting way or in a boring way? Frozen in past glory, or moving on?

since self-publishing and online distribution seems to be relatively easy (compared to earlier print-only, IMO), i doubt "frozen" will happen.  lotsa little publishers can bring some interesting stuff, like some of the folks i see on this site

The trick to this question is that someone's RPG hobby is always dying, but it's never everyone's.

RPGs are always under an immense and continual churn. Games come and go. Companies rise, flounder, and fade. It's incredibly rare for any game to achieve long-term (10+ year) success.

The 90s were a weird time, because it looked like there were lots and lots of RPGs active and supported in the marketplace. However, that was also the time of lots of fad products. The TCG bubble rose and poured money into stores. The comic bubble grew and burst. Pokemon turned game stores into goldmines. All of these fads provided a lot of extra, liquid cash for stores to invest in RPGs.

The really interesting thing to me is that, whenever I see numbers for 2nd and 3rd tier company print runs from any era of gaming, they are invariably about the same: 2,000 to 5,000 books, with hits selling 10,000+. I've seen those numbers from late 70s Judges Guild stuff to d20 books from this decade.

I think that, after the rise of AD&D, we've seen steady growth in the hobby. There are peaks and valleys induced by the economy (both in general and for book and game retailers) and different game fads, but nothing that shows any sort of real decline in the number of people who play RPGs.

Against this backdrop, you have individual titles that rise and die. A big time Champions or GURPS fan might feel that gaming is dying, but in the aggregate the hobby continues to chug along.

Here's an interesting experiment: compare the state of D&D today to the state of every other version of D&D 7 years after its launch (assuming a version was still supported 7 years later; I think allof the flavors of BD&D had been replaced with new sets). Compare 3e in 2007 to 2e in 1996, 1e in 1985-6.

In 1996, TSR is dead in the water and waiting for the hammer to fall.
In 1985, TSR is in serious trouble as Gygax is forced out of the company and sales falter. The company needs an outside investory (Lorraine Williams) to step in and right the ship.

Worrying about what World of Warcraft or the Xbox 360 might or might no be doing to D&D pales in comparison.

what if you measure from the other editions respective ".5" versions?  

for 1e, it would be after the introduction of UA & the survival guides
dunno about 2e, as i got out of d&d after the above change

did that spike things?  and for how long did any half-version prolong the inevitable slump, in your opinion?