Quote from: jeff37923;512044A lack in the market is directly tied-in to a lack of advertising dollars being spent I think.

And IMO, that really doesn't have to matter anymore. Spreading the word about an RPG, or the hobby in general with hundreds of millions of people is a few mouse clicks away.

The whole "The industry is dying because of those darn kids/WoW/4e/OMG PIRATES!" is bullshit.

Jeff Rients put it best eons ago, RPGs were a fad, and they aren't anymore. If we want to keep the industry or the hobby alive all we have to do is share it with people. Just don't expect some kind of renaissance where your game about wind-surfing, movie producer elves will sell millions of copies.

The reason 4e failed is because it's a steaming pile of horseshit.  In fact, given the choice between playing 4e and eating said pile, I would only haggle so far as asking you to throw in a spoon.

Quote from: noisms;512010This 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.

Did you actually read the post?

QuoteI 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.

There simply isn't enough money there for every product to be top-notch, especially as, previously, publishers could get away with releasing poorer material because the customers wouldn't find out about it until after they had bought it.

Saying "release better stuff and we'll buy it, not pirate it" is pointless, because the money generally isn't there any more to release better quality work.

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:
Every year, the vocabulary and reading level of Western civilization continues to drop.

First, that's not true. And it's even less true if you exclude recent immigrants from the demographics.

Second, even if it were true, the worst estimates I've seen for functional illiteracy in the United States is 14%. A little calculation shows that this means there are more literate people in the United States today than the total population of the U.S. in 1980. Which means that the potential market of literate people in the U.S. is larger today than when RPGs were at their most successful.

And so forth. The post is basically a bunch of made-up nonsense coupled with whining about the twinned boogeymen of "the youth of today" and "pirates!".

The reality is that:

(a) Roleplaying games have a lot of stuff to compete with these days, including new media (primarily CCGs and video games) that are better at doing some of the stuff that RPGs used to be the best at.

(b) There is more competition in the RPG marketplace than ever before. Not only are there more RPGs and supplements being released every year, but the online market has opened up the entire back-catalog of the industry (either directly or through Ebay).

(c) The game which has always been the market gateway -- D&D -- hasn't produced a proper introductory product since 1991. The most recent editions haven't even included the game structures that used to make the game accessible to newbies.

If there are other factors influencing the current struggles of the RPG industry, they are incredibly minor and being completely occluded by these three.

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.

It's amazing how often this idea is expressed. But marketing dollars can only come from current sales and are proportional to them. On a $20m turnover (e.g. current DnD seems to be in that ballpark) you don't just go out and do a $10m advertising campaign. The only exception is when out of love or insane optimism someone risks a large amount of the cash they have lying around doing nothing.  DnD at the peak of the fad could briefly afford TV commercials and the like, but those days are over.

Shrinking sales = no money for marketing. Simple as that. And even an angel investor wouldn't throw good money after bad in an attempt to jump-start a property. It doesn't work that way.

Quote from: Ladybird;512116Saying "release better stuff and we'll buy it, not pirate it" is pointless, because the money generally isn't there any more to release better quality work.

Precisely why all the famous fancy restaurants go under every time the economy dips.  

Oh, wait, that never happened.

I agree that the hobby isn't big enough anymore to sustain major marketing (all this pipe-dream talk of TV ads and such).  The fad has passed.  Now is the time for the rpg hobby to settle into a different size/mode after the craziness of the 80s and the mild bump of 3.x.

High price points and collector-mentality is one legit strategy for maintaining things.  (I don't think it's necessarily the best way to go, but I don't run the industry).  I think trying to follow the (imho failing) comic book model and tailor your product to hipster 30-somethings rather than "widest appeal" (aka the 'make sure some/all of your stuff can sell to twelve-year-olds' model) is a gigantic goddamn mistake, of course.  But some hobbyists-turned-designers have made a living publishing the rpg equivalent of artsy, decompressed, 'adult' comics, and good on 'em for the work and success.  I'm not interested in that, but apparently others are.

The development of rpgs-as-niche-thing is not the end of the world, it's absolutely fine.  (Dancey can take his "model train" argument and stuff it up his ass if he thinks that there isn't an industry there; apparently they don't have huge quarterly train shows wherever he's from these days).  The hobby is healthy given its post-fad state.

However, that doesn't mean the hobby shouldn't be attempting to grow itself (with the understanding that we'll never get back to '81 or '83 or '87 or whatever you think the high point was).  Growing the market should be a concern for the industry-types.  Growing the hobby should be a concern for us hobby-types regardless.

Quote from: VectorSigma;512123Precisely why all the famous fancy restaurants go under every time the economy dips.  

Oh, wait, that never happened.

Which is relevant to RPG's how, exactly? Those restaurants target an entirely different market segment, which tends to be less affected by recessions.

But recessions aren't really the problem. Anybody with the skills needed to produce great RPG material could make better money in the video games industry; "we" (The RPG industry) simply can't afford the modern-day Greg Costikyan (As an example of someone whose work has stretched across all kinds of gaming).

On the rest of the points, I entirely agree. RPG's can coast along quite happily, just like model trains do. If you can work within your budgets, we're in a golden age of roleplaying; between the ease of producing POD material, kids playing forum games, and the common acceptance of game playing just being a thing that someone does (Thanks to ubiquitous video games and MMO's) rather than some weird obsessional thing, things haven't looked this good for years... there just isn't much money in it.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;512008I 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.

I agree with your observations, but ummm... stop helping him!!

Quote from: Ladybird;512150Which is relevant to RPG's how, exactly? Those restaurants target an entirely different market segment, which tends to be less affected by recessions.

I was attempting to address this:

Quote from: Ladybird;512150There simply isn't enough money there for every product to be top-notch

That's what I'm not buying.  Look, I get that there are different market segments.  But products can (and should) be trying to be top-notch within that market segment.  I don't buy the argument that "if the industry can't offer good money to creators, then the only creators available will be crap ones".  I just don't buy it.  There are plenty of people in the hobby creating good stuff every day for free.  So any argument that boils down to "companies don't have the cash to hire good writers and artists anymore" comes across as a load of crap to me.



I will freely admit we may be talking past each other on this, Ladybird.

Quote from: Silverlion;512027Add 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.

For that matter, one can also include other forms of entertainment which cost less than tabletop rpg games.

For the same price of a D&D splatbook, one can buy several movies or a tv show season on dvd/bluray.  (ie. $5 dvd bins at WalMart and other discount stores).

Quote from: VectorSigma;512159That's what I'm not buying.  Look, I get that there are different market segments.  But products can (and should) be trying to be top-notch within that market segment.  I don't buy the argument that "if the industry can't offer good money to creators, then the only creators available will be crap ones".  I just don't buy it.  There are plenty of people in the hobby creating good stuff every day for free.  So any argument that boils down to "companies don't have the cash to hire good writers and artists anymore" comes across as a load of crap to me.

On average, a color cover from a good artist will run you around $500-$600, and that's at generous rates from the artist. Quarter-page b/w illos, maybe $25-$30, full page b/w somewhere between $100-$200. Light editing maybe $2 per 8x11.5 page, and don't expect them to save a car wreck at those rates. Layout? Don't expect it to be much cheaper than editing. Writers are cheap, sure, because everybody and his brother is convinced he can write for an RPG, so toss 'em two cents a word and you're being generous.

Now, having marked out your expenses beforehand and resolving not to resort to the time-honored RPG publisher tradition of "Not paying people for their work", what market are you looking at? Well, if you've got a really hot indie publisher property, you might sell as many as five hundred copies of that game over the course of the next year. Odds are you might break 250 if you've just got a good product that people like. If you want to see what "Wildly successful" looks like to a small publisher, check out Evil Hat's numbers for the Dresden Files RPG. The more likely outcome is depicted by DTRPG/RPGNow's medal system. Sell some number of copies between 50-100, and you get a copper best seller medal. About 80% of their entire catalog was unable to hit even that level of sales.

"But Sine!" you say, "look at this lusciously-illustrated, beautifully-presented RPG book full of words dewed by the tears of the the joyous muses! And it's only $9.99 in PDF!"

Okay. Now, I want you to take the number of hours of expert talent that went into writing, illustrating, preparing, and selling that book, and divide the net take by that number. Then I want you to go and show that number to expert freelancers who are not, in fact, in love with the idea being created and see them offer to do vile things to your mother for that hourly rate. Products like that are the result of an amateur's joyous enthusiasm and a remarkably fortunate conjunction of several highly talented people willing to give of their skills for trivial remuneration. Also, they take as long as they want to take with it, because hey- no rush.

In brief, these books must be gifted, because they are too expensive to sell.

If, on the other hand, you are a miserable ink-stained indie publisher who is stubbornly determined to put out a specific set of products on a specific set of topics on a limited schedule and cannot enlist the gratis assistance of highly-skilled and enthusiastic freelancers, you have to pay for this sort of thing. And assuming you actually want to pay your freelancers and not just serially lose their check in the mail, you must cut your coat to fit your cloth. You must learn to do as much of everything yourself as you possibly can, and where your own talents cannot stretch, you must clip things as narrowly as possible. A limited market such as this means that you either slash your overhead as deeply as possible to maintain profitability, or you enlist free labor, or you are born just so talented that you can make a silk purse out of a blank inDesign document. Most publishers can only choose to take the first option.

First off, the industry does not in anyway equal the hobby.

There have not been any comprehensive studies, AFAIK, about the number of people actually playing RPGs. Basing it on sales of currently in-print products is an obvious misnomer. Of the 50-so roleplayers that I regularly talk to offline, the vast majority of them mainly play games that haven't been in print for 15-25 years. Additionally, this does not account for any the thousands of RPGs available online for minimal to no cost, and pirated, shared, or second-hand purchased RPGs. Not to mention "house systems".

So until that information is actually available, these sorts of theories are always based on wild conjecture, and not really worth giving any credence.

The industry may or may not die. It's been "dying" since the early 80s.

The hobby will continue.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;512045There 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.

I have fond memories of reading comic books throughout the 80s where various RPGs had colourful full-page advertisements. The main competition for comic book advertisement at the time was cereal and candy bars, so RPGs were certainly offering something unique and interesting, but I still couldn't figure out what I was looking at.

Looking on them with child's eyes, in most cases my reaction was of wonder and awe, although I couldn't figure out what a Role Playing Game was. I remember staring for a long time at an advertisement for some robot-fighting futuristic RPG in a Superman comic, and thinking "Okay, I'll read all the text here and finally figure out what this is about." I read it, still didn't get it, but still felt a kind of elation every time I saw one of those advertisements.

I'm not talking about the D&D ads that looked like comics (http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PoEVx3F7dZo/TrIfIhJJePI/AAAAAAAAAl0/_PYh-z7fT4I/s1600/Top-1.jpg). Those always confused me into thinking it *was* a comic. I'm mostly talking about the ones where it was always some poor guy taking on an entire dragon on his own, like this one: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fGFJtMYakOM/Tnac8w7LyUI/AAAAAAAAAeE/QFYA-GxHf1E/s1600/Top.jpg

In essence, thinking back on advertisement for RPGs gives me a lovely nostalgic pang, but raises the very serious concern that advertisement seems like a very costly and usually unsuccessful way to introduce the uninitiated. To be fair, they really tried, with ads like this: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0TxNmB1M2T0/Tokxhk5Ml_I/AAAAAAAAAfo/WSsikPZT9E0/s1600/Top-5.jpg

All the interest and wonder I had should have translated into a sale. It didn't. I ended up getting into RPGs years later by word of mouth.

//Panjumanju

Social life has been atomizing in America for years. People just don't go out and socialize in the same way like they used to. I'm often stunned when I travel overseas to see all the people readily going outside to live life. Everyone wants to live in their mansions and bring all the comforts outside inside instead. Given modern technology, that desire has been relatively democratized to people who don't have the budgets you would've needed before.

Then, outside of the mall, where is the external social center for civic life nowadays? If you barely meet people face to face, but instead are now accustomed to meeting online, what will be the logical result? In the end you find it hard to find people for a face-to-face game of Monopoly (or maybe chess), let alone a quorum for many party-based RPGs. And then there's the whole discussion about attention span...

Quote from: Exploderwizard;512158I agree with your observations, but ummm... stop helping him!!

Lol. I can blame "cone" on my ipad, but "know" is all mine.