From a post in a thread that quickly become a hilarious car crash at the Chez Purple I've just read this, in particular this segment:

However, the world is changing. The size of the roleplaying market shrinks every year. People prefer the convenience of on-line games, which are a quick fix where one doesn't have to necessarily coordinate with other people to meet up. Every year, the vocabulary and reading level of Western civilization continues to drop. The average adult in American society has a fifth grade reading level and the average teenager or young adult won't read more than 700 words in a stretch (this post will be TL:DR). Let's face it – roleplaying is a reading intense hobby and people don't read anymore. At least not people who aren't dedicated gamers.

That doesn't even address the issue of piracy. I remember a day when a mediocre release of a game book sold 3000-5000 copies, with healthy restock orders. Now, a successful release might sell 1000, if you are lucky, selling through the rest of your 3000 unit print run in three years – many companies print far less. Not only is the industry shrinking, but people don't have to pay for their gaming books anymore if they don't want to. Unfortunately, unlike the music industry, we are not made of money. It costs a surprisingly large amount of money to develop a well-written and attractive gaming book and the return is not so hot. Without those extra sales, the traditional model of core plus regular supplementation isn't really viable.

Now this is 4 months old, this post, so whether anything has changed I know not. It's the only post from a game writer/publisher/industry type person I've ever come across that explicitly mentions piracy (and indeed literacy levels) as the reason for their lack of sales. Maybe it's also people's lack of interest in the game?

I'm not directly involved with the gaming industry, so obviously I can't speak to accuracy of any of the ideas presented in this posters theory-however at first glance it seems reasonable. I enjoy gaming, but I'm not made of money so unless I need a book for the game I'm playing I don't drop as much cash as I could conceivably could. I do buy some new stuff here and there-but most of that comes from word of mouth recommendations; or is something I can use with friends or family.

I do think at least some of how the market has changed is good-although I'd be hard pressed to draw a specific line. (A lack of knowledge of the industry combined with a desire to not know means I don't do a lot of worrying about the cats writing games.) I like the variety of stuff that's out there-but yeah it does sometimes seem like the book shelves are a little bare at some shops.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;512006From a post in a thread that quickly become a hilarious car crash at the Chez Purple I've just read this, in particular this segment:

However, the world is changing. The size of the roleplaying market shrinks every year. People prefer the convenience of on-line games, which are a quick fix where one doesn't have to necessarily coordinate with other people to meet up. Every year, the vocabulary and reading level of Western civilization continues to drop. The average adult in American society has a fifth grade reading level and the average teenager or young adult won't read more than 700 words in a stretch (this post will be TL:DR). Let's face it – roleplaying is a reading intense hobby and people don't read anymore. At least not people who aren't dedicated gamers.

That doesn't even address the issue of piracy. I remember a day when a mediocre release of a game book sold 3000-5000 copies, with healthy restock orders. Now, a successful release might sell 1000, if you are lucky, selling through the rest of your 3000 unit print run in three years – many companies print far less. Not only is the industry shrinking, but people don't have to pay for their gaming books anymore if they don't want to. Unfortunately, unlike the music industry, we are not made of money. It costs a surprisingly large amount of money to develop a well-written and attractive gaming book and the return is not so hot. Without those extra sales, the traditional model of core plus regular supplementation isn't really viable.

Now this is 4 months old, this post, so whether anything has changed I know not. It's the only post from a game writer/publisher/industry type person I've ever come across that explicitly mentions piracy (and indeed literacy levels) as the reason for their lack of sales. Maybe it's also people's lack of interest in the game?

I dont know who this designer is or what size company he runs, but my experience with Bedrock Games has been different. Keep in mind our books don't generally make the 1000 sales mark, and we rely on a seller to handle printing (so most of our costs are pre-production and marketing). We have cone to believe based on what we've seen that piracy has minimal impact on our print sales. I know many of our games have been pirated as i've seen them online. I figure they may knock out a few pdf sales here and there, but most people seem to buy the pdf alone or buy it before getting the print copy (to see if they like it).

I really think he is overplaying the literacy levels angle. Maybe that 5th grade average is true, but that is probably because people with know literay at all bring the average way down. My experience with everyday people is I rarely meet someone I would describe as having 5th grade level literacy. To me, it sounds like he is blaming everything he can think of for low sales.

Yes we live in a different world. But in terms of gaming it has become easier, not harder to put material out there in print. So I think there is a lot of internal competition between rpg companies, and the rpg market itself has dipped in recent years. The hard part is making a profit. But that is true of any niche market. Table top RPGs have never been publishing gold.

In my experience, most gamers are getting older. Not that many new kids are joining in. Considering the costs of a new gaming book, and the fact that a lot of people I know are either not working or now work part time, when almost all of them used to have full-time, decent jobs, I'd be surprised if even half of them are still buying rpg products.

I know I've cut way back, based on money and I'm kind of burned out on buying new stuff. I used to buy one or two gaming books every month. Now it's maybe two or three a year.

Blah blah, I can't make a profit so I'm going to whine about the youth of today, blah blah.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;512006That doesn’t even address the issue of piracy. I remember a day when a mediocre release of a game book sold 3000-5000 copies, with healthy restock orders. Now, a successful release might sell 1000, if you are lucky, selling through the rest of your 3000 unit print run in three years – many companies print far less. Not only is the industry shrinking, but people don’t have to pay for their gaming books anymore if they don’t want to.

This part in particular annoys me. "I remember a day when a mediocre release of a game book sold 3000-5000 copies".

There's your problem right there, fucko. Try not releasing mediocre game books. Then maybe people will pay good money for what you release, rather than pirate it.

Well, the industry is down to one company that produces games and books I'll even buy.  Now I'm not the only customer but I suspect the trend is linked to that problem.  I think the industry has often left customers behind as it chased the latest trend.

The old model didn't really work well for gaming anyhow.  It put us in a situation where the supplement mill was really the only way to keep on making money.  This lead to a decompressed data approach where you had to buy hundreds of dollars worth of books just to get a complete game.

I love a beautiful book too.  And I understand the need to keep up with the industry standard for production values.  But damnitall guys can we at least have enough actual material in one book to justify the cost?

Magic the Gathering has been beating the shit out of us on the point of entry price for almost two decades now and I don't see any shortage of young players in that market.

One observation I'd like to make is that right now we are writing/buying/playing the games that will become 'old school' in about 10 years time when the current crop of console gamers try to find out what RPGs really are all about.

Quote from: David Johansen;512016Well, the industry is down to one company that produces games and books I'll even buy.  Now I'm not the only customer but I suspect the trend is linked to that problem.  I think the industry has often left customers behind as it chased the latest trend.

The old model didn't really work well for gaming anyhow.  It put us in a situation where the supplement mill was really the only way to keep on making money.  This lead to a decompressed data approach where you had to buy hundreds of dollars worth of books just to get a complete game.

I love a beautiful book too.  And I understand the need to keep up with the industry standard for production values.  But damnitall guys can we at least have enough actual material in one book to justify the cost?

Magic the Gathering has been beating the shit out of us on the point of entry price for almost two decades now and I don't see any shortage of young players in that market.

MTG may have done, but almost every other ccg has fallen by the wayside.

I suspect the vast majority of pirated copies of CT were never played or even printed. Lots of people just seem to enjoy nursing a virtual collection that is no threat to the print market because they aren't ever going to get played. I brought CT when it came out and sold it on almost immediately because the tone was horrible. I still like the idea of a cyberpunk/SF cthulhu setting, but the game, even with it's presentation values, was just not that good.

I have no experience of Sandstorm or their products to the best of my knowledge.

Quote from: Lawbag;512018One observation I'd like to make is that right now we are writing/buying/playing the games that will become 'old school' in about 10 years time when the current crop of console gamers try to find out what RPGs really are all about.

console gaming will soon stop competing (if it ever did) with pen and paper gaming: already the xbox has become a coprorate shitfest more interested in selling lovefilm subscriptions and DLC while the average player is more content to sit and play Call of Duty as opposed to an rpg. These people are not rpg players and the console is really going to end up just selling those kinds of games. At least in the west.  Mass effect is marketed as an rpg, but it's not at all. The core gameplay is combat. The character interaction is just a timesink with a few superficial choice elements (good cop, bad cop) that ultimately lead to the same conclusion.

Long, random, personal and perhaps incorrect viewpoint of things:

Let's be honest. Most tabletop RPG's people know about, work like WOW. You kill things, you take stuff, and the overall reasons don't matter as much as getting cool new stuff with your button pushes.

Role-playing games have focused a long time on aspects of gaming that video games can do essentially "better," now. As much as I prefer the experience with friends, playing The Old Republic and my brief experience with WOW, LOTRO, and D&D Online, all point to the fact that kill things get reward gaming is a hallmark of modern computing. The same goes not just for MMO's but FPS and many CRPG's. While I enjoy these games, I also play table top RPG's.

I enjoy them for what all those video games cannot do. Get me face to face with people I like, and enjoy the creation of a story. Don't get me wrong I'm not so much a storygames swine, I'm still kinda just me, doing my thing.

Story games seem to me are  about "telling" a story, and I'm more interested in "creating a story." The differences is may even be something storygamers see and utilize now,  but for me the difference is--the game evolves from play. You play a game, you interact with NPC's and the world they exist in and create a story you can tell others by playing the game. Its not the same as trying to tell one another a story at the table.

Many old school games are about creating a story, not telling one. Even hex crawl games, being about exploration of the wilderness/whatever of a setting, are helping to create a story the players can tell to others. That is a wonderful and specific thing.

Video games cannot create a story. They can only tell a story, and blessed few do that well, but for most people its enough.

Yet too many of them focus on game play trying to either tell a story, or not even bothering with either. The former are good CRPG's, the latter are many MMO's and FPS, TOR for example is a good CRPG that tells a story but lets you create elements of it. It still follows the WOW model, but it does it well.)

The other problems stem from too few gamers bringing in new blood into the hobby.We aren't creating more fans, too much of the negative stories cling to us from geek circles.

Add to that the expense? When a pretty game book costs the same as a video game, you're forcing people to choose between something they can do anytime they've free time, and do only when they can get friends/gamers together--and the former is often more attractive than the latter. When I was young a video game was 25.00 dollars, and tabletop RPG was 12-15, with a few boxed sets pushing a bit higher. Sure money values have changed, but now video games are more competitively priced to table top gaming. RPG's also have an expensive buy int for ONE game system (Three books for D&D for example.) While video games have a higher start up cost ($200 dollar plus systems) they make that cost pay for itself in being able to play numerous games and for years. Funnily enough, it still doesn't explain he weakness of generic rules systems like GURPS, since its buy in and flexibility allow much the same expanse as video games.

Reading is was down for a while, the power of Text Messaging is bringing that back up, but we're suffering the older generation of non-readers. I've got a brother in law who doesn't "read" (Two I think.) Of course one of them does listen to books on tape, and games, he still doesn't tend to read rule book/rule books--he is part of that "generation" where engaging people in reading failed.

Economy: The economy is bad, far worse than its been in most peoples life times. Sure some areas it isn't so bad, but many people already have video game systems (if they haven't hocked them for food.)  People use those to get away from things, and expensive book buy ins and time spent not making money if they can are issues that are plaguing many people in many countries.

Community Splitting. Let's be honest, part of what hurts gaming companies, is that there is so much competition. That is rather good for the hobby, but it wrecks any semblance of ongoing business for a lot of companies, especially corporations. There was an age where it was D&D (or other TSR works), CoC/BRP, or Traveller, and for the most part that was it.

Even then Traveller wasn't well know in many of the places I gamed because it wasn't available at a chain, and there weren't any game stores that only did games, at least not "yet." Typically that meant that lots of purchases were made from Chaosium or TSR, and that seemed to make the gaming economy strong because it focused buyer's abilities. Very few other games were readily available. Sure they were being made, but they required a larger start up, and they weren't widely distributed.

OF course, it "was all a lie," over the years TSR sold to many many chains, and there were books in the circuit at the chains that couldn't be returned. Much of this was crappy tie in novels, and books sold to book stores made the company seem strong, because they counted those that couldn't be returned as actual sales. It falsely buoyed them in the late 80's and the 90's.

CCG's took their toll. Video Games have now become good enough to take their toll, since the vast bulk of people who MIGHT possibly play a RPG has a computer. (Plus, many who wouldn't, they;'re getting damn ubiquitous.)

Shrinking market size due to these factors, and the mis-focus of a lot of game writers are wrecking the business of RPG's.

Yet not the hobby. There is more to play than ever before, more authors than ever before, and lots of fun to be had.

We just need to make new gamers, get them into GMiing (not just playing,) and be happy.

Video games do narrow the market, they've been doing it for years, we can fix that by continuing to do things they can't do well. Get friends in the same room, creating stories to tell others.

We've done a lot of threads like this,and they don't usually generate useful conclusions. However--I will throw in that there's a shifting expectation in the market, and it's not just driven by the kids. The desire for convenience is a real thing, and it is absolutely strangling our kind of gaming. I don't necessarily think it's the end, because sometimes these sorts of changes turn out to be cyclic. But the hobby will never be convenient. It takes time ands energy and awkward social skills and all the rest.

It may turn out that it proves over time to be worth it. The space age technology that has made life so convenient in the last couple decades is losing its novelty. I see kids enjoying tabletop play all the time. But what I still see that bugs me is adults that get together online via Google+ or whatever--when they all live in the same town. What aspect of that convenience outweighs face to face contact? Does no one want to vacuum the place or clean the bathrooms so much that they can't nominate a host?

The fact that the technology is there to facilitate long-distance gaming is awesome. If we'd had that when I graduated high school, I'd have a continuous 30 Arduin campaign to talk about. But to use it when the players are 10-12 miles apart? When they're basically healthy and have no mobility issues? There's something there--mostly among adults--I can't call "wierd" because it seems increasingly common--which I can't completely wrap my mind around. And whatever that is is the thing which threatens the market.

Quote from: stu2000;512028We've done a lot of threads like this,and they don't usually generate useful conclusions. However--I will throw in that there's a shifting expectation in the market, and it's not just driven by the kids. The desire for convenience is a real thing, and it is absolutely strangling our kind of gaming. I don't necessarily think it's the end, because sometimes these sorts of changes turn out to be cyclic. But the hobby will never be convenient. It takes time ands energy and awkward social skills and all the rest.

It may turn out that it proves over time to be worth it. The space age technology that has made life so convenient in the last couple decades is losing its novelty. I see kids enjoying tabletop play all the time. But what I still see that bugs me is adults that get together online via Google+ or whatever--when they all live in the same town. What aspect of that convenience outweighs face to face contact? Does no one want to vacuum the place or clean the bathrooms so much that they can't nominate a host?

The fact that the technology is there to facilitate long-distance gaming is awesome. If we'd had that when I graduated high school, I'd have a continuous 30 Arduin campaign to talk about. But to use it when the players are 10-12 miles apart? When they're basically healthy and have no mobility issues? There's something there--mostly among adults--I can't call "wierd" because it seems increasingly common--which I can't completely wrap my mind around. And whatever that is is the thing which threatens the market.

Yeah the online gaming with people in your own town is a bit odd. This is the first I've heard of it. In the past I've driven the hour plus down to Denver and rocked the dice, and I'd prefer to do so now (I'm going down there in a couple of hours to rock the bong). However, one of my players who lives in LA cannot (or will not) break away from his wife on Saturday nights. this fucks everything up, and so instead of gaming with one guy on skype and everyone else in the same room, we all end up using skype on Monday nights. My chief complaint is that I'm no good for more than about 2.5 hours on skype, whereas in an ftf situation, given the time, I can go on for 4-6-8 hours.

Here is something I have always wondered. Where in the Hell is the advertising for RPGs? Where are the product tie-ins in movies and TV which do not show gamers in a negative light?

A lack in the market is directly tied-in to a lack of advertising dollars being spent I think.

Quote from: jeff37923;512044Here is something I have always wondered. Where in the Hell is the advertising for RPGs? Where are the product tie-ins in movies and TV which do not show gamers in a negative light?

A lack in the market is directly tied-in to a lack of advertising dollars being spent I think.

There used to be tv ads and you used to see gaming in movies (famously in ET). I think it just ended up being too expensive to do for even the largest rpg companies. They just probably get better returns advertising in a more focused way to peope likely to game.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;512026Mass effect is marketed as an rpg, but it's not at all. The core gameplay is combat.

Oh hey, that perfectly describes Ultima 1, which I'm playing right now.

Seriously, though, CRPGs of all stripes are never going to remotely resemble TTRPGs.  It's not about direct competition.  What it's about is how different forms of media compete for people's time and how they dominate pop-culture.  And video-games are serious competition, even for movies.