Oh, sweet Crom's hairy nutsack.  My last (and probably final) IT gig was someplace going to Java because it was new and sexy and they were all about "agile" meaning "everybody dicking around."  We mainframe programmers got laughed at for being old fashioned for wondering things like why everybody built their own classes for database access, since "code reuse" was one of the big "selling points" of Java (we were told).

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;863445I was more taking a dig at the fact that one day my job title changed from "computer programmer" to "software developer" when I was, in point of fact, doing the same damn thing I'd been doing the day before.

I'm also old enough to have lived through the "Who Cut My Cheese" book era.

The difference between a programmer and a software developer is that I can bill the latter at an extra $60/hr USD.

Quote from: Tod13;863477Me too. I've been programming professionally for 27+ years. Don't forget the "7 habits" and "servant leader" and "patterns" and "UML". (I worked one place where upper management mindlessly worshiped patterns. It didn't matter what you did, as long as you could name the pattern. Same thing with UML. Didn't matter whether it was right, as long as you had a UML diagram.) The latest seems to be "agile", which isn't, as an excuse not to document requirements.

Agile is so 2014. It's all Adaptive and DevOps now...

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;863466Pundit is convinced that D&D4 was a concerted effort by the Forge or Forge-sympathetic designers to change D&D into a game more suited to their tastes. The best evidence anyone has come up with is the tight focus of the mechanics and a few designers referring to it as 'gamist', generally after the fact.

  On this point, as on so many, the Pundit makes me think of Matthew 17:21 (or Mark 9:29) and the Inferno, Canto III, verse 28.

Yeah, it seems like a stretch. There have been a ton of games with tight focus of mechanics, and many people use the term "gamist" without knowing anything in particular about story games. It's plausible that there was some small influence from story games, but I'd say Magic: The Gathering had a far bigger influence. Incidentally, I recently noticed that there are two story games credited in the 5th edition DMG: Once Upon a Time and Microscope.

As for Pundit's post in general, he seems really determined to declare himself the winner.

Story games are just a small niche within the niche of tabletop RPGs, which is strongly dominated by D&D and Pathfinder. However, as far as I can tell, Pundit's games are an even smaller subniche. If I look around at game conventions, I regularly see people running games by Jason Morningstar, for example (Fiasco, The Shab-al-Hiri Roach, etc.), but I have not yet seen anyone running games by Pundit (Forward to Adventure, GnomeMurdered, Lords of Olympus, or Arrows of Indra).

I've seen some sales figures from story games authors. For example, Vincent Baker posted sales figures here:  http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/824 - short form, 4197 direct online sales for Apocalypse World by 2014, while Dungeon World had about 19,000 total sales by 2015. Other sales figures:

http://www.evilhat.com/home/q3-sales-numbers-summer-wraps-up/

https://plus.google.com/+SageLaTorra/posts/eGzGwBu1tyo

http://www.bullypulpitgames.com/square-deal/2013/01/10/bpg-sales-numbers-q4-2012/

http://pelgranepress.com/index.php/tag/biz/

That's a small niche of the overall RPG market, and nothing compared to D&D. However, I suspect it's fair compared to small press RPGs. I'd be curious to see sales numbers for Pundit's games.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;863479Oh, sweet Crom's hairy nutsack.  My last (and probably final) IT gig was someplace going to Java because it was new and sexy and they were all about "agile" meaning "everybody dicking around."  We mainframe programmers got laughed at for being old fashioned for wondering things like why everybody built their own classes for database access, since "code reuse" was one of the big "selling points" of Java (we were told).

Ha, Java seems to me just a headache; I think code reuse is perhaps more practical within a project than across them, anyhow and OOP is often more overhead than it's worth. (I'd prefer Smalltalk if we must go all OO all the time)

I have an old-fashioned appreciation for requirement specifications (treated as the documentation for the program I'm writing), but find that actual programming tends to turn around and go bottom up. 'Agile' to me means a good environment for experimentation: preferably an interpreted language, though nowadays a combination of editor and fast compiler can come pretty close.

I like having a small set of simple tools for building more, even if fancy pre-built libraries are also available. There's a similar deal in game rules, where one way the 'code' speaks for itself, while the other way I need to pore through documentation just to get the necessary vocabulary.

Quote from: jhkim;863560Yeah, it seems like a stretch. There have been a ton of games with tight focus of mechanics, and many people use the term "gamist" without knowing anything in particular about story games. It's plausible that there was some small influence from story games, but I'd say Magic: The Gathering had a far bigger influence. Incidentally, I recently noticed that there are two story games credited in the 5th edition DMG: Once Upon a Time and Microscope.

As for Pundit's post in general, he seems really determined to declare himself the winner.

Story games are just a small niche within the niche of tabletop RPGs, which is strongly dominated by D&D and Pathfinder. However, as far as I can tell, Pundit's games are an even smaller subniche. If I look around at game conventions, I regularly see people running games by Jason Morningstar, for example (Fiasco, The Shab-al-Hiri Roach, etc.), but I have not yet seen anyone running games by Pundit (Forward to Adventure, GnomeMurdered, Lords of Olympus, or Arrows of Indra).

I've seen some sales figures from story games authors. For example, Vincent Baker posted sales figures here:  http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/824 - short form, 4197 direct online sales for Apocalypse World by 2014, while Dungeon World had about 19,000 total sales by 2015. Other sales figures:

http://www.evilhat.com/home/q3-sales-numbers-summer-wraps-up/

https://plus.google.com/+SageLaTorra/posts/eGzGwBu1tyo

http://www.bullypulpitgames.com/square-deal/2013/01/10/bpg-sales-numbers-q4-2012/

http://pelgranepress.com/index.php/tag/biz/

That's a small niche of the overall RPG market, and nothing compared to D&D. However, I suspect it's fair compared to small press RPGs. I'd be curious to see sales numbers for Pundit's games.

It may be worse than you think. I'm someone that no-one ever heard of, right? As a game designer if not a forum poster. I made a game called Other Worlds. I don't have my own forum. I don't maintain a daily blog. I put zero effort into self promotion and the small web presence my game does have is woefully basic and only occasionally updated.

Yet my game is an electrum best seller on DTRPG, putting it in the top 3.43% of products. And my sales figures are low, in the hundreds but not the thousands. Numbers like Vincent Baker's would be a pipe dream for me. I'm in profit and I'm happy enough, but man the bar I have set is low.

Arrows of Indra is a copper best seller, two orders of magnitude below electrum, putting it in the top 12.34%. Lords of Olympus and Dark Albion are silver best sellers, one order of magnitude below electrum, putting them in the top 10.1%.  

Does my game really outsell all of Pundit's? I dunno, maybe. Maybe Pundit sells more games through some other channel I don't know about. But on the face of it the man's book sales do not match his self-proclaimed importance.

Quote from: soviet;863568But on the face of it the man's book sales do not match his self-proclaimed importance.

Just the fact that Pundit writes RPGs and proclaims some manner of importance from that is really all that needs to be said. I guess in his long battles with The Swine, the inevitable has happened, and he's become one of them.

I do not know if this would alter its copper seller status or not, but I do want to clarify something about Arrows of Indra. It was originally sold under the Avalon Games page, on which it reached copper selling status. Last year we decided to put all our PDFs up on a new Bedrock Games page. This reset the sales figures for all our products (everything effectively went back to zero). Since then, it has reached copper again.

I can say it has been a consistent seller for us and we've never been disappointed with its sales figures.

That said a lot of the numbers Jhkim put up are very impressive and way beyond what most RPG publishers achieve. I would kill for those kinds of numbers myself. I just wanted to clarify the Indra status because Bedrock's decision to open a new PDF page (which was the right call long term) affected its accumulated sales numbers (in terms of One Book ranks things). I can't say for sure but I suspect it would be at least one category higher had we not done that.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;863575That said a lot of the numbers Jhkim put up are very impressive and way beyond what most RPG publishers achieve. I would kill for those kinds of numbers myself. I just wanted to clarify the Indra status because Bedrock's decision to open a new PDF page (which was the right call long term) affected its accumulated sales numbers (in terms of One Book ranks things). I can't say for sure but I suspect it would be at least one category higher had we not done that.

Of course, there are a ton of story games whose numbers are tiny compared to these, and they don't generally publish their numbers. But yeah, if we declare story games to be extinct, then by those standards I think the whole of small-press RPGs has been extinct for quite a while.

Story games are small compared to D&D, like they always were, but they're doing fine on the standards of small-press RPGs. They're neither going extinct nor taking over the hobby.

Quote from: jhkim;863578Story games are small compared to D&D, like they always were, but they're doing fine on the standards of small-press RPGs. They're neither going extinct nor taking over the hobby.

My experience locally is that D&D and pathfinder are king. There is just no comparing other games to how much those are played. But I'd say OSR and story games I see about equally. Lamentations of the Flame Princess is a bit of an exception in that I see more of that around. I imagine this varies a lot though from place to place (for instance there is one game store here where I've seen a lot of traveller games, but haven't seen it played much else beyond that one location or in specific groups of players I know).

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;863579My experience locally is that D&D and pathfinder are king. There is just no comparing other games to how much those are played. But I'd say OSR and story games I see about equally. Lamentations of the Flame Princess is a bit of an exception in that I see more of that around. I imagine this varies a lot though from place to place (for instance there is one game store here where I've seen a lot of traveller games, but haven't seen it played much else beyond that one location or in specific groups of players I know).

So, pretty much the same as it's always been since, oh, 1974?

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;863595So, pretty much the same as it's always been since, oh, 1974?

More things change, more things stay the same.

Yep.  There were indie games in the 70s, there'll likely be indie games in the 2070s.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;863595So, pretty much the same as it's always been since, oh, 1974?

I wasn't around then, but compared to when I started gaming in the 80s and 90s, I think D&D, or some version of it, is now more ubiquitous. In the 90s especially I recall there being some serious alternatives to D&D and most of the people in my area seemed a lot more open to playing them. Locally, I'd say it is actually harder now to get people to try a system that isn't D&D based. That was just the reality we saw anyways when we would go to public gaming events or game stores (also matches what I've seen for people looking for groups here online). There is definitely still space for indie games, and even a few mid-sized competitors, I just don't see that there is anyone seriously challenging then dominance of D&D right now the way White Wolf did in the 90s, nor does there seem to be as substantial a market for the smaller games (though maybe that is because D&D has fragmented into d20 and there are now simply more D&D-based options---I definitely would say it felt like there was a big shift back when 3E game out and you had this avalanche of d20 games released).

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;863595So, pretty much the same as it's always been since, oh, 1974?

(I'm sure you know all this, but I'm using your post as a jumping off point...)

Actually, one important thing which has changed is the size of the market.  A second-tier game like Call of Cthulhu or Villains & Vigilantes sold tons of games back in the late '70s and early '80s, to the extent that I would doubt any game company today could approach it, outside of Wizards or Paize.  As far as I can tell from conversations with people who were there at the height of the RPG craze, the market was so much bigger that the number of sales to be had, even from an also-ran, was much more impressive.  

I mean, bear in mind that purportedly, TSR was able to pay 300 employees in 1984.  At some point, non-D&D products were capable of moving 50,000 units. Independent, non-D&D publishers in that kind of market were looking at completely different forces at work and opportunities.

Quote from: Future Villain Band;863643(I'm sure you know all this, but I'm using your post as a jumping off point...)

Actually, one important thing which has changed is the size of the market.  A second-tier game like Call of Cthulhu or Villains & Vigilantes sold tons of games back in the late '70s and early '80s, to the extent that I would doubt any game company today could approach it, outside of Wizards or Paize.  As far as I can tell from conversations with people who were there at the height of the RPG craze, the market was so much bigger that the number of sales to be had, even from an also-ran, was much more impressive.  

I mean, bear in mind that purportedly, TSR was able to pay 300 employees in 1984.  At some point, non-D&D products were capable of moving 50,000 units. Independent, non-D&D publishers in that kind of market were looking at completely different forces at work and opportunities.

* applause * Bravo.  Seriously, no snark.

Around 2005 or 2006 on TBP Paul Chapman, the Marketing Director of Steve Jackson Games (who should know a bit!) estimated the RPG industry at about $50M per year.

TSR's 1982 revenue was $20M to $22M.  Rounding to the integer, that's $46 M in 2006 dollars.

In other words, TSR in 1982 had by itself 92% of the 2006 market value.  In 1985 when FASA hired me to write "Imbalance of Power," a module for their Star Trek RPG, their estimated first print run was 5000 or 6000 because they wanted a small first run.  Nowadays that's considered a major size print run for one of the major players in the RPG game.