Quote from: BalbinusI'm not clear how that translates to rpgs for gamers.  My risk of getting a sucky game, or having a sucky evening trying to play a sucky game, is pretty much independent of the market.

So what is causing the flight to quality?

My time is valuable, and so is yours.  So is everyones.  Since most people get fun from playing TRPGs, not just thinking about playing TRPGs, in a time when networks are getting smaller (which means its harder to get a group together and play), people tend to be less willing to "risk" having an unfun experience by trying a game on the margins.  Instead, they tend to stick with "old faithful" games; games they may be a little bit bored with, but they know they'll have some fun (or a lot of fun; not everyone is bored, that's for sure), vs. the RISK that they'll waste an afternoon/evening/whatever playing a game that doesn't pan out.

Or worse, that SOMEONE spends a lot of time preparing to play, but then in the end the game doesn't even happen, because the lack of enthusiasm on the part of other people causes the game session to fall apart.

There's a real risk vs. reward balance in trying new TRPGs, and the track record, to be very charitable, is less than stellar with most new games.  As the network contracts, we see more play of the most popular games and less play of new games as a result.

Ryan

Quote from: obrynSeriously, this is the only place where I've ever seen someone say Action Points or similar mechanics suddenly transform an RPG into a Happy Story Circle.  (And be taken seriously, that is.)

Assuming you weren't just picking out a "for example" imaginary (which is fair enough to do) - I've never seen that claim about Action Points specifically, since the game I'm playtesting has them, I'd be interested in a link to such a claim, I'll probably rubbish it

Quote from: RSDanceySpecifically, I identify two kinds of people that provide the structure to the player network.  These kinds of people are drawn from the information presented in The Tipping Point.
...

It is hard to support a 1:1 relationship between Connectors & Mavens with play types.  The traditional "DM" is often seen as a hybrid; having to have massive rules knowledge, and be the person hosting the game and inducing others to show up and play regularly.  I believe this may be an inherent problem with the way the classic TRPG game concept was structured:  there just are not very many Maven/Connectors in the world.  Finding ways to separate those two tasks into things done by two different people may help shore up the overall TRPG player network for the future.

Ryan

Nice conceptual framework.  I don't see how it follows that having knowledge and having a social network are exclusive nor that "massive" rules knowledge is really required to play an TRPG to place a DM into a Maven category.  Maybe the solution is just easier to use games not a paradigm shift?  

This traditional GM you speak may also be like the "average reasonable person" a great conceptual idea but in reality rules knowledge exists in both the titular GM of an evening and the players as well.  Players helping with the rules and knowing the rules that govern their characters, I don't see that as rare.  

Regarding Connector abilities, in my experience the organizer can be anybody but usually the GM in traditional games as without them there is no game, unless there is a co-GM, or you have two people that GM then you take it in turns when one can't make it to play in the others campaign, or it is just a game night and if the GM can't arrive another game is played, etc.  

The common factor, however, has always been in my experience that the organizer is the host of the game (regardless of GM status) due to typical social convention.  I would think the Connector part would have really nothing to do with the rules of the game actually being played or the social activity.  The Connector ability that needs to be possessed is also fairly low, it is not the same level say needed to acquire private equity and the like, simply say hey are we on for x night, or lets check our calendars to see when we are all free.  

Bottom line, I don't see how the traditional GM even as a Maven/Connector is necessarily rare given the low level of Maveness, and the low level of Connectorness needed.  

I'd look more to the inherent nature of a table-top game, coordinating schedules and the general availability of free time to play a game that can take hours.  These are pretty hard demands on any demographic.

Finally, how can you say these Maven/Connectors=traditional GM are rare when on another thread I thought you said by 2010 there will be mostly GMs and few or no players?:confused:

I think he's read too many marketing books and played in too few game groups. It's muddled his head.

Quote from: XantherFinally, how can you say these Maven/Connectors=traditional GM are rare when on another thread I thought you said by 2010 there will be mostly GMs and few or no players?

He's saying that they're rare in the population over all, which is why roleplaying is dying, he says. It's sort of like saying that seven foot tall black guys are rare, but by 2010 they'll be the only ones playing basketball; therefore basketball is dying.

Which in both cases is obviously bollocks, but there you go.

He still hasn't answered the very good point: his own market study he says is giving him this info told us that people don't play MMORPGs instead of roleplaying in person with their buddies, they do it as well as that. Yet now he's saying that MMORPGs are taking people away from roleplaying. So his conclusions are directly contradicted by his own data which he's so fond of quoting.

Maybe just as Uncle Ronny tells us that nobody's having fun roleplaying, and so if you think you're having fun you're brain-damaged because you couldn't be, really, Dancey is telling us that the people who say they play computer games and roleplaying games are just imagining it.

Fucked if I know.

Quote from: VBWyrdeWell, I recall that Ryan did a massive (truly massive) survey of Role-Playing Gamers in 2000 (iirc it was they surveyed some 65,000 RPGers) and I'm thinking... isn't it time WotC or Hasbro or *someone* in the game industry run the Survey again to see where things stand?

I was re-reading the  WotC Survey and noticed a couple of things I didn't before.

It wasn't 65,000 RPGers.  It was 65,000 initial respondents from 20,000 households.  From that group 1,000 people were selected to complete the actual survey.  I'm not very good with stats... but I think the actual number of RPGers was less than that total 1,000.

There were also some things about the way the numbers were interpretted and the conclusions drawn that didn't really make sense to me.  This one in particular:

Quote from: WotC Survey3. Adventure Gaming is an adult hobby
More than half the market for hobby games is older than 19. There is a
substantial dip in incidence of play from 16-18. This lends credence to
the theory that most people are introduced to hobby gaming before
high-school and play quite a bit, then leave the hobby until they reach
college, and during college they return to the hobby in significant numbers.

It may also indicate that the existing group of players is aging and not
being refreshed by younger players at the same rate as in previous years.

I don't see how the numbers back that up. :confused:

The conclusion just said it's "an adult hobby" rather than "we need to focus more on appealing to kids" --  was there a decision to focus more on adults based on these results?

Quote from: RSDanceyYou have to be really careful when using C&GR data to do analysis on the trends in the industry.  Specifically, you have to understand what it is reporting....

Forget unit volume or units per store.   Overall sales by all channels sounds like a more reasonable measure of the overall growth (or not) of the market.

QuoteFourth, the TRPG market has been experiencing a "flight to quality".  This is a stock investing term that means that when the markets get rough, people tend to invest their dollars in stocks that are "safe" and show less volatility.  What we are seeing across the TRPG market is a similar flight to quality; people are buying fewer "risky" small or new TRPGs, and investing dollars in "safe", traditional TRPGs (D20, RIFTS, Storyteller, etc.)  This means that while sales of D&D may be "rallying", that may be an indication of an overall weakening trend in TRPGs as a whole.  (In other words, strengthening D&D sales may be a trailing indicator of a problem, not a leading indicator of a broad based recovery).

I think your stretching the analogy between capital markets and a product such as a game.  The trailing indicator is more an indicator of the overall health of the investment environment and opportunities for capital.  There are strong economic reasons why "flight to quality" can be a trailing indicator of a problems in a capital markets that simply don't apply by analogy to a product.  

For example, if I was making an investment decision in TRPG stocks I could care less about the diversity and innovation in the market (two things I would care about for the long term health of an economy).  I'd certainly care about it if I was going to start a new TRPG company, or build a store model on selling a diversity of games.  On those latter two I think yes, those business models are in crisis, and have been for some time.

Further, a consolidation of suppliers for a product is not an indicator that the market for that product is weak.  The term "flight to quality" may be apt in that D&D may just be a better product to most consumers; including ease of purchase do to wider and better distribution and ease of use in using concepts and a gameplay style they are familiar with and comfortable with from other games.  That is, of the people that still want to play TRPGs the one they want to play is something like D&D.

What I wonder is, isn't the phenomenon which is now being called a "flight to quality" the same thing that RSD previously predicted as the success of his marketing plan for D&D 3.x?

Flight to quality? Marketing plan? Trying to become the market leader by having the most well-made and attractive product?

Amazing. Why didn't anyone else think of having well-made and attractive products?

Quote from: Kyle AaronAssuming you weren't just picking out a "for example" imaginary (which is fair enough to do) - I've never seen that claim about Action Points specifically, since the game I'm playtesting has them, I'd be interested in a link to such a claim, I'll probably rubbish it

I'm positive I remember exactly this a while back... but I really don't want to wade through reams of stuff to find it.

Ask Sett - he might have a link since IIRC he was a proponent of that same view.

-O

Might have been me, Kyle.  But, to be honest, I didn't exactly make the leap he claims.  I qualified it with a lot of "depends how it's implemented" and so forth.  And I qualified it with a lot of "for me"s and YYMV's and such...

Then again, it might not be me...

Quote from: Kyle AaronHe still hasn't answered the very good point: his own market study he says is giving him this info told us that people don't play MMORPGs instead of roleplaying in person with their buddies, they do it as well as that. Yet now he's saying that MMORPGs are taking people away from roleplaying. So his conclusions are directly contradicted by his own data which he's so fond of quoting.

We studied EQ and UO intensively trying to determine if they were having or were likely to have an effect on D&D.  We decided after doing a whole lot of investigation that neither game had had any measurable impact on people's desire to play D&D.  So that is the condition reflected in the market research data you have seen.

We found that in the time period studied (1998), ~1.5 million people played D&D monthly, and ~2.5 million played it at lest once a year.  All other TRPGs combined added another ~2 million annual players for a total player universe (in the US) of about ~5 million.

UO at its biggest had 250K subscribers.  EQ, at its biggest, had less than 550K subscribers.  You can see this data here (note: currently only through 6/06):

//www.mmorpgchart.com  (click the link for 70K-700K subscribers.)

World of Warcraft has twelve million subscribers.  More than seven million are in the US.  In addition, there are 3 other MMOs which have RPG elements which have north of 4 million subscribers each in the US market:  Habbo Hotel, Club Penguin, and WebKinz; those 3 games appeal to kids under 14, whereas WoW appeals to players older than 14.

It has been determined by studies done of WoW servers that it conforms to the generally applicable principle that 10% of a subscriber base use a system at any given time (we see this same ratio in the ISP I own; about 10% of the customers are using the internet at any given moment).  In other words, at any time there are 700,000 people playing World of Warcraft (in the US).

This is a whole new class of development, and therefore the assumptions we reached after examining the data for EQ and UO have to be revisited.  We cannot possibly believe today that these games are not directly predating on the TRPG player network.  In fact, they are, and they are having noticeable effects on the TRPG player network.

You can read oodles of studies at this site:

http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/

Nick Yee has done awesome work, over a long period of time, of illuminating the MMORPG player network.  His work is well worth reading, there are lots of TRPG insights in there as well.

Spend time doing research on MMORPGs on the web and you find yourself coming up against many different sets of data, from many different sources which all basically lead to the same conclusions:  people who play MMORPGs report (in statistically significant large numbers) that they are former TRPG players.  This is new behavior, and thus does not correlate with the conclusions reached in 1999 based on 1998 data.

Ryan

Quote from: StuartI'm not very good with stats... but I think the actual number of RPGers was less than that total 1,000.

This methodology produces margins of error <+/- 5%.

QuoteI don't see how the numbers back that up. :confused:

The Conventional Wisdom was that kids played TRPGs and then quit.  The industry assumed that it was marketing to an audience of 12 to 18 year olds, and that the people older than 18 were outliers and represented a small portion of the total market.  Thus products were often "dumbed down" to appeal to kids.  (see:  AD&D 2E).

Once we realized that half of the market was over 19, we realized that we not only had to make a product for a much wider age bracket, but that if we "dumbed down" the game, we'd risk alienating more than half our customers (which is just what 2E did, and why sales of 2E were so much lower than sales of both 1E and 3E).

This fact has become so widely accepted in the industry now that it seems curious that we had to defend the conclusion against fairly vocal arguments from people who were convinced TRPGs were a childhood hobby.

The last comment means:  Since more than half the market is 19 or older, and we see a dip from 16 to 18 (which I will explain in more detail if anyone cares), and we assume that starting from a large player base, some number of people quit every year, the fact that we didn't see a big mass of players under 19 was scary; it meant that natural attrition was running faster than natural acquisition.

In a perfect world, you'd see a gigantic number of 12 year olds, then a narrowing cone going forward in age, which would show a healthy market acquiring new players and then slowly losing them over time.  When you see an hour-glass shaped market, you have to ask some very tough questions about the long-term viability of your product.  (One of those questions was: do most people actually enter the hobby between 12-16, or do they enter later in life....)

Ryan

Quote from: Elliot WilenWhat I wonder is, isn't the phenomenon which is now being called a "flight to quality" the same thing that RSD previously predicted as the success of his marketing plan for D&D 3.x?

The difference is that after 3.5E, sales in the TRPG category declined by more than 50%, and since 3.5E, there has been no major change in the products in the category.  With 3E, sales quintupled from the prior year, and that change was directly attributable to people being sold a product they liked more than the previously available options.

The current market (which is essentially stable from a product perspective) is showing an overall contraction in size, but a growth (or at least a stablility) in the sales of the top-end games.  The prior market showed overall growth, attributable primary to growth in the top end game.  

I would argue that the OGL/D20 project directed what may have been a "rising tide lifts all boats" scenario into a "rising tide lifts one boat" scenario by diverting publisher & designer & consumer interest in the category that was revived by 3E into purchases of 3E variants rather than sales of pre-existing games, which is why those games (Storyteller, RIFTS, etc.) did not show the kind of growth that D&D demonstrated on the release of 3E.

The catastrophic effect of 3.5E in popping the D20 bubble did nobody any favors, including WotC itself.  While sales of D&D have been reportedly stable or even to have shown growth, sales of WotC's own D20 games suffered tremendously (D20 Star Wars & D20 Modern being the two most obvious examples, but 3.5E also wiped out evergreen sales of D20 CoC and D20 Wheel of Time as well.)

It is very likely that the 3.5E impact coincided with the rise of WoW, so that in the immediate aftermath the industry just assumed the issue was "D20 bubble deflating", but in reality it was "WoW is kicking our asses".  The former was potentially solvable, the latter was not.  There was a lot of head-in-sand during that period.

Ryan

Oh well, Jimmy boy, come and comment on this thread, then.

Thanks for trying to help me understand the numbers Ryan.

Here's the bit that I still don't get:

QuoteThe age breakdown of players within the marketplace is:

Age   TRPG
12-15 -- 23%
16-18 -- 18%
19-24 -- 25%
25-35 -- 34%

Which shows that drop from 16-18 like you said.  But these aren't the same size groups.  12-15 is 4 years.  16-18 is 3 years.  19-24 is 6 years. 25-35 is 11 years.  Wouldn't there obviously be a smaller % within an age bracket spanning a smaller number of years?

For example, let's say there are 6 players for each year between 12 and 35.  This doesn't change, so you're not actually seeing any age where the number goes up and down.  But by having different sizes of age ranges you get something like this:
12-15 -- 24 players
16-18 -- 18 players
19-24 -- 36 players
25-35 -- 66 players
Which looks like it's showing some kind of trend where you have people losing interest and returning... but it isn't.

That's the part I don't get.

The other part is this:

QuoteOf the people who reported playing a TRPG, we further screened for people who played D&D and asked those individuals some more detailed questions. This data comes from people who have played D&D, not necessarily those who play monthly.

Age Learned D&D
<12  -- 23%
12-15 -- 41%
16-18 -- 15%
19-24 -- 12%
25-35 -- 9%

Again the age ranges are non-standard, but 64% of people learned D&D before they were 15 and 79% before they were 18.  However this doesn't really get mentioned much in the conclusions.

If we're seeing declining sales in the RPG industry, couldn't it be in part the same issue the Comicbook companies have been grappling with -- an aging demographic because they're not bringing in the kids anymore?

That seems just as (or more) likely than the MMORPG thing.  Like someone else said -- Board Game sales are doing quite nicely, despite all the videogames.