Challenges and Solutions for the RPG Market

[Sean P. Fannon]

The discussion is going where you wanted, Sean, because you are not understanding what is being said. Based on what you've replied to me, I don't think you grasp anything I'm saying.

Hmm. I was warned about this. It would seem, Ron, that you are one of those folks who feel it is better to be blunt than sociable. That's fine. However, you tread dangerously close to making rather rude implications as to my comprehension and capacity to participate in this conversation, and I don't feel this will be at all productive. In that you hold the position of Moderator, I would hope for better treatment at your hands.

"Deep order," for instance, means lots of books, and it can refer to a line rather than a single title. If you think retailers are not pressured to deep-order lines, then you must not be paying attention. They are using comics-based (periodicals) strategy, and it's killing them.

I am well aware of what "Deep order" means, sir, and while I agree that it is problematic, I don't see it as the source of catastrophe that you do. I have plenty of friends and associates in the retail game. I do not come at this blindly. Your position, I feel, is an exaggeration.

Similarly, PDF can be part of a given publisher's strategy, but it does not "replace" books. That's a red herring.

An authoritative statement that does not, however, track with reality as I have seen it. I am here, in the trenches, Ron, and I can assure you that there are plenty of publishers who have replaced the print model with PDF approaches.

It might not be the best way to go, but that does not make the concept a "red herring."

Finally, do not try to use the kind of childish, flip statements that routinely score points on the WHEEZ-L. This is a different sort of place. "Distributors cannot affect customers because they do not meet them" is a moronic statement, inadmissible in the most basic economics class. When you type something like that, you make it more likely that any of your other points will be dismissed.

And here is where unnecessary rudeness collides with either ignorance or knee-jerk counter-posting to create an ugly melange of insulting misfires.

I have not been childish, flip, or moronic, and I will thank the Moderator if he will kindly ascend to his post and back away from the mudpit.

You have, of course, mis-attributed the comments, sir. They were not mine. Nonetheless, your response to being disagreed with is nothing short of pseudo-elitist flaming. Unworthy and uncalled for.

I come in peace. I will not, however, be casually doused in kerosene.

... as I see it, stores or fulfilment houses or distributors are middle-men, who can exist successfully only when the publisher-customer relationship is real and sustainable. To me, an industry exists when that relationship permits middlemen and other auxiliary professionals (artists, etc) to make money as well.

Here we agree. Nothing in the models I've purported alter this reality. Without real effort on the part of the publisher to communicate with the customer base and build it up, there is no point to the existence of the product.

If you would kindly allow us to remain in this vein of conversation, Ron, you and I will get along a lot better, I assure you.

It is my hope that the current technologies and other options available will enable publishers who had to bet the farm on up-front printing costs in the past to spend some of that money on marketing and advertising, instead.

In other words, all these years, it's been a mere "industry" as publishers and customers stumble about in confusion... GAMA persists as a vehicle to suppot that mutual-reassurance process.

I will not debate you in full on this matter, because I have reason to believe that history has sadly supported this viewpoint for many folks.

History, mind you.

I started in October of 2004. I have a great passion for this industry and for the wonderful products and people it has produced. I am here to do a great deal more than perpetuate a cycle of failure. I believe there are ways to expand, enhance, and diversify the marketplace so that new opportunities exist. I cannot subscribe to the Foundation of Failure you present. I can, however, agree that there is considerable need for renovation and innovation.

Which is why I stepped up here.

Will what I am talking about work for everyone? No, of course not. It may, however, be a way at least some good people can do some decent business. For others, there will be other necessary means to do business and service. For still others, it may remain sufficient that they got to see their name in print somewhere.

The current model followed by Adept Press, Burning Wheel, and others is different in every respect, because it is an industry - people buy our games and play them, then encourage others to do the same. Profits are sufficient to fund future projects and also to pay artists, etc, up-front and without constant fear of cheating (unlike the "industry").

I don't deny this at all. In fact, that's how things are currently working for me and the Talisman Studios folks. That doesn't mean we can't explore other options, to include renovations to the older models. Books on store shelves is still a worthy goal to some of us.

Now, it is certainly a cottage industry, which as I see it represents exactly what the product is, at present, in our society. As with most cottage industries, customer satisfaction has to be the first priority, or the publisher fails.

Once again, we very much agree here.

Aaron Acevedo, the guy who runs Talisman Studios, gave me a real wake-up call when he pointed me at this rather amazing web article. Frankly, it has dramatically altered my entire viewpoint on the gaming industry. Granted, it's oriented towards the computer game market, but I believe the modeling applies even more appropriately to our product and our fan base.

To date, apparently, customers get their books without whining or bitching about shipping costs.

My own experiences and research indicate a different reality. I know of quite a few cases where purchases were put off indefinitely because the would-be buyer wanted to see if they could get it at the store for less, or wanted to wait until they were ready to buy more books to spread out the shipping cost.

Those costs can also be cut by sharing them among publishers (here is where IPR and Key 20 help, again), or as I've done in the past, taking a certain percent of them upon myself because my copy-print cost was low, keeping margins nice and high. We also provide support and interaction beyond the imaginings of other companies. These are the same tactics used by many small businesses, and they work.

Good ideas, good practices, and certainly part of the solution to the problem. I am simply pointing out that retailers can also benefit by offering this solution to their customer base for books that have, until now, not readily been available for purchase in that venue.

Best,
Ron

And despite my consternation, I wish the same to you. Hopefully we can get on a better and more civil track with one another.

[Ron Edwards]

Well, I fucked up. I thought Sean was Lloyd and Lloyd was Sean in that series of posts.

So!

Sean, it does look as though we're on the same track, or at least using similar terms for the same stuff. Let's see if we agree or disagree on the next point. My call is that the existing "industry" doesn't need saving or not-saving, and that the success we're talking about can either take or leave that "industry's" existence. For instance, my books that move through the three-tier are basically advertisement which makes me a bit of money rather than costing me. If every game store in the U.S. vanished tomorrow, my own business success wouldn't be altered very much.

That said, I do want to promote the success of stores who use a working model of their own which also provides success for me. A few of them exist using a variety of approaches. Some of them have an "indie shelf," for instance, and take pains to re-order titles that sell rather than treating small-press titles like a random slush-pile order. Another example would be the overseas "stores" such as Eero Tuovinen's in Finland, which is more like an order-cooperative promotion center than what we call a store in the U.S. In the U.S. cases, it's pretty clear that whatever RPGs they carry, they aren't going to be the primary item of sale anyway.

So I'm not an enemy of stores per se, but when it comes to (say) Alliance and the stores who rely on it, I'm rather a dismissive, uninterested minor participant.

Regarding GAMA, I do understand that in the last year there's been a real, concerted effort to turn things around. However, although I respect the motives, I see it as perhaps based more on clubbish nostalgia than on any business-oriented need. There's not a whole lot there to "save." If the folks involved would like to contribute to publishing and sales success in the hobby, then good luck to them if they want to do it through restoring order/sense among stores and distributors. They'll probably have to start from the ground up.

Lloyd, it seems like a straightforward situation. Either a given set of titles works for you, or it doesn't. The last thing I'd ever request (or worse, feel entitled to) is for a retailer to order my titles when they don't reliably sell at the store. Again, Adept Press doesn't need store presence or sales in order to prosper.

Now - this is the rough part. For most retailers, their perceived cycle of "making money" (ordering + selling) operates on a fast time scale. A lot faster than anyone actually learns and plays the games. So advertising and subcultural buzz, like we see on RPG.net just prior to a game's release, is what makes "sales" to these retailers. Often that's generated by the retailer himself, acting as kind of sales-mentor to the customers. Again, a lot like comics.

Retailers who monitor longer-term sales often give me interesting, different feedback - "Hey," they say. "That Sorcerer keeps selling. It never sells a lot, but it never stops either." I don't guarantee this effect, and I suspect it only happens in certain demographic areas like college neighborhoods. But I get this feedback consistently. So do Luke Crane and Paul Czege, among others.

Am I claiming that our games will "save stores?" No. All I'm claiming is that in some stores, they will consistently repay re-ordering, apparently indefinitely, not on a one-spike or occasional-customer basis. That's all I can offer the stores, and I don't see any special need for that to change.

Best,
Ron

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

I hasten to point out that I am not seeing this as a miracle cure for what ails us. I see it as a means to open up additional revenue streams while both assuaging accusations in the retail sector about being "cut out" of sales opportunities and making it possible for customers to go into an FLGS and get the print version of a product previously only available as a PDF.

That really accounts for a very small number of the high-grade work done on the Forge.

For instance, I'm in the middle of producing a game right now. I've had 400 downloads of the first draft in the last month. I have done no publicity aside from mentioning it on the Net. That's 400 downloads of a game that's still broken. In the two weeks or so, I'll post the next version, which will be less broken.

At the point where it is no longer broken and can fly on its own, the PDFs will vanish, replaced by a print version (published through Lulu) and a PDF for sale. These will be on sale from my website.

This is the normal avenue of creation for most Forge games I know. They wind up in print. It's more practical as a role-playing tool that way (it's silent, can be crammed in your backpack, can have stuff scribbled in the margins, can be passed around the table easily, and isn't destroyed by dorito crumbs).

This is the way it's done around these parts. Most stuff doesn't stay PDF-only.

One possibility I see is this: Once the distributors are more fully vested in the process of adding POD products, as needed, to the list of products they can ship as requested from retailers, all of the publishers will be on a more even playing field.

At that point, it goes back to the old standards of competition - create a quality product, and spend the time and money needed to promote and sell that product. It won't matter if you've printed 10,000 and they are sitting in a warehouse, or if you have a file stored on a machine at RapidPOD or on RPGNow. The customers will demand what they want (from what they know about), and the retailers will be able to order them just as easily.

I'm interested to see how this pans out in reality. Luke's blazed the trail for us to some degree, but the trail's a pretty rocky, scorpion-infested one.

In principle, I don't have any problem with distributors selling my work. In practice, they'd better sell a whole crapload of it so they're not just taking away my sales.

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

I hasten to point out that I am not seeing this as a miracle cure for what ails us. I see it as a means to open up additional revenue streams while both assuaging accusations in the retail sector about being "cut out" of sales opportunities ...

Our FLGSs have been under the impression that they're doing us a favor by stocking our games. They don't feel like they're being cut out. In fact, they have no idea what's going on at all. They don't realize that there's something happening that they're not looking at.

[Valamir]

Hey Sean, just wanted to note that I'm happy you took the time to initiate this discussion.  I'm sure your experience will provide some valuable insight.  I believe it was C.S. Lewis who said something to the effect of it being more important to have friends willing to passionately discuss issues most people don't care about than it is to have those people agree with you.  So I look forward to some fresh perspectives to our discussions.

In your one pager you opened with a comment that struck me:

The RPG industry has been in a steady decline, with virtually every publisher facing great difficulties in bringing products to market.

What do you actually mean by "steady decline"?
Number of copies publishers sell to distributors?
Number of copies distributors sell to retailers?
Number of copies retailers sell to customers?
RPG $sales as a % of overall game sales at any of these?
Some other measure?

See "steady decline" doesn't really ring true with my experience of RPGs over the past several years.  For me the "decline" of RPGs occured from about 88 to 98 and the last 3-5 years especially have been something of a renaissance for RPGs.

But that's probably because I have a different way of measuring the success of the market.

See number of sales to customers really doesn't concern me all that much.  In my experience a significant number of purchased game books never get used.  They sit on a shelf after having been read through once.  A few people talk about starting a campaign, some characters are rolled up, some time is spent argueing on a discussion forum and maybe a session gets abortively played and that's it.

Those sales mean nothing to me.  In fact, ultimately they're probably damaging to industy in so far as they encourage designers to publish books designed to be read rather than played and since no RPG ever is as well written as a good novel if people are going to spend valuable entertainment time and money reading its no surprise to me they're going to chose to read something good...which isn't most RPG books.

I'm far more interested in people playing RPGs.  But even then its not the number of people playing that really interests me.  Lots of folks will be spending many hours this weekend playing any variety of RPGs at their regularly scheduled sessions.  Significant numbers of them won't be having fun doing it.  Not really.  They'll show up, they'll socialize, they'll spend time talking about movies or the latest XBox game.  They'll play in some abortive largely dysfunctional fashion which usually ends in disatisfaction for most of the participants and this will continue week after week until they finally learn to do something else that's actually fun.

No, the people I'm interested in are the people who are LOVING playing RPGs.  People for whom 4 hours around a table roleplaying is easily the equal of going to the movies or playing the latest computer game.  People who read books, play board games, go skiing and all manner of other leisure activities and for whom roleplaying is a much beloved cherished activity along with the rest because everytime...EVERYTIME...they do it its extraordinary.

See I'd rather have a group play once every two months and have a mind blowing emotionally moving experience each time, than play twice a week out of some painful, masochistic force of habit.


Now, to me, by that measure...the RPG industry is thriving.  People who've given up "gaming" years ago are now having mind altering play sessions. "Man, I never new gaming could be like that..." is a common refrain.  The level of excitement I see around (certain) RPGs at GenCon, read on a variety of online forums, and experience myself through gaming indicates to me that far from a steady decline the industry is thriving.

Now that doesn't mean every publisher will thrive. But to suggest that the RPG industry is in decline simply because a passel of d20 publishers or <fill in your own product line here> are having trouble selling their latest supplement mill offering through retail is, to me, based on the fundamental false assumption that those folks' ability to sell those types of product through that particular channel is an appropriate (or even worth while) measure of industry health.

I'm concerned about people having extraordinary experiences playing amazing games with people who are truly friends, and deepening that relationship as a result of their play experience.  I'm not really all that concerned about page count, print vs. electronic, or what channel they bought the games through.  I'm not really sure why any game designer should care about those things.  I'll use any format and any channel to get games in the hands of fans who'll love them.  If that's print through distribution to retailer's shelves, fantastic.  If not...fantastic...

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Our FLGSs have been under the impression that they're doing us a favor by stocking our games. They don't feel like they're being cut out. In fact, they have no idea what's going on at all. They don't realize that there's something happening that they're not looking at.

Thank you, Joshua, for saying this.

And Sean, Ron's been more than pleasant to you - much more pleasant than I'd ever be.

Everyone reading this, let me ask you something. Why, after more than four years of existing, working our hardest to make a new business model and new artistic statements, is this GAMA officer here? I'll tell you - it's because we're doing something right. It's because we are successful artisans, making our goods and selling them in a new marketplace that did not exist before. This is a marketplace in which GAMA and large scale productions of endless supplements and distributors and all of these things that speak of the traditional RPG hobby have no relevance whatsoever.

And without relevance, they fear. Let them. We've already proven ourselves.

What did that one-page say? What solutions did it bring? I read it over and over and only saw the statement that you could somehow get POD books into a distributorship. I saw nothing more written in those words. If that is all to be said, then it is said and we know it and we can safely walk away and talk no more on this thread.

Even my good friends here on the Forge - I can't see the question you're answering or the answer you're questioning. Is this a discussion? It seems like we are just telling Sean we are right and he is telling us he is right, and I do not think that either of us will ever convince the other.

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

It's simple, Clinton: the three-tier can get a lot of books in peoples' hands. If it can get enough out there to make me the same profit, it's more books out there for the same effort on my part. That means more fans, and fans breed fans.

If they can't sell that many, they're doing promotion that I get paid for, or at least don't pay for myself.

If they sell very few, they're cannibalizing my sales.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

It's simple, Clinton: the three-tier can get a lot of books in peoples' hands. If it can get enough out there to make me the same profit, it's more books out there for the same effort on my part. That means more fans, and fans breed fans.

If they can't sell that many, they're doing promotion that I get paid for, or at least don't pay for myself.

If they sell very few, they're cannibalizing my sales.

Are you arguing with yourself? I could have swore you said the retailers are missing out before.

I ask you to seriously look at the model and tell me if you can say that either of these things are true:

(a) Retailers and the three-tier model have been responsible for the widespread success of any RPG product in the last 5 years.
(b) Your target audience primarily finds out about/buys games at the local game store.

I know for a fact (b) is untrue, and I am not aware of any example of (a).

[Valamir]

I'm not sure what you're missing Clinton.

If I make $10 selling direct and $4 selling through distribution, but I sell 3x as much through distribution, then being in distribution is a good thing because $12 > $10.  Heck if sell even 1 game through distribution that I wouldn't have sold direct that's $4 more I have than I wouldn't.

I've got no problem with distribution.  I've got no problem with retailers.  I love retailers.  I love anybody who buys my books.

Where I'm coming from is simply that:  The Health of the Distribution Chain is not an effective (or even relevant) proxy for The Health of the RPG Industry.

Sean's one pager would have been accurate if he'd said "Sales of RPGs through traditional distribution channels have been in steady decline".  That's a true statement.  Its also one I don't really care all that much about because distribution channels come and go based on supply and demand and at no time ever in history has there been more viable alternives to that traditional distribution channel than there is today.  Because of those alternatives "bad for traditional distribution" does not equal "Bad for the industry".  It just means "bad for those whose business models are dependent on traditional distribution".  Which ain't any of us.


But just because we aren't dependent on traditional distribution doesn't mean we can't profit from it.  I get phat checks from Key20 on sales they've put into distribution for me.  They cleaned through my inventory fully 2 years before I expected to need another print run.  Where's the down side to that?  More games sold ---> more word of mouth ---> greater base to generate future sales ---> more money in my pocket.  Sounds like a good thing to me.

Distributors are great.  Retailers are great.  Anything is great that moves my books and pays me money (the last being an important, and too often uncertain element).  But none of us would be out of business without them...which is the big difference between us and most of Sean's GAMA audience. 

I'm in no way beholden to the distribution chain, but honestly Clinton I don't comprehend your automatic hostility towards them.  And for the record, I think displaying that hostility on the forum is probably a bad example for a moderator to set.

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

Are you arguing with yourself? I could have swore you said the retailers are missing out before.

I ask you to seriously look at the model and tell me if you can say that either of these things are true:

(a) Retailers and the three-tier model have been responsible for the widespread success of any RPG product in the last 5 years.
(b) Your target audience primarily finds out about/buys games at the local game store.

I know for a fact (b) is untrue, and I am not aware of any example of (a).

I'm willing to give it a shot if it doesn't cost me anything other than increasing my experience, is what I'm saying. If what Ron is saying is true, that it works as promotion that doesn't cost him, then it's worth it.

I'm just willing to entertain the idea. My skepticism remains intact, but if there's something to the distribution model, I don't see why we shouldn't have a piece of that pie. Ron's done more exploration with it than have I, and he uses it, so it's at least mince pie, if not apple. If it turns out to be a cow pie, I expect he'd have stopped using it altogether.

It's a tool. I want to know what its uses are.

[Bankuei]

Hi,

I'm still not seeing very the value in this is for me as a consumer.  The one page indicates that the distributors take up the role of POD production, which either means distributors have to invest in the capacity to do so, or else outsource it to a POD printer.  In which case, we've just added another step in time and money before the product reaches me as a customer.

And, assuming we're talking the value of shelf space as advertisement- retailers would still have to order a few copies for something they wouldn't know if it would sell or not, or how well- which gimps POD's strength of not having to stock product for which there is no sure demand.  And again, money & time taken out of the process.  So it doesn't seem like the retailers gain in any serious way either.

Anyone?

Chris

[Michael S. Miller]

Hi, Sean. Nice to see you here.

Aaron Acevedo, the guy who runs Talisman Studios, gave me a real wake-up call when he pointed me at this rather amazing web article. Frankly, it has dramatically altered my entire viewpoint on the gaming industry. Granted, it's oriented towards the computer game market, but I believe the modeling applies even more appropriately to our product and our fan base.

I read the article you linked and found it very exciting. But, of course, I'm biased because the "village computer game" it's talking about operates very similarly to the indie RPG many of us produce around here. Those village games are making money for the game designer, not the game retailer. Those travelling bands are making money for themselves, not the record stores.

I want retailers to succeed. I want more retailers to be like Marcus King of Titan Games who expends a lot of time and energy and enthusiasm trying to create and run a continuously-better game shop. Too many retailers I've had personal interactions with have displayed a sense of entitlement to my business (as customer or as publisher). Entitlement doesn't cut it. The only way they're going to prosper is by finding new ways to add value to gaming. Then they will have earned their business.

[Keith Senkowski]

Isn't this the same bunch of hot air that blows through every year.  It is like Christmas.  Once a year someone rolls through thinking they
have some sort of solution that can salvage the current model of business.  The problem is that the solutions are never really solutions cause they can't see what the actual problems are, which is clinging to old ideas on putting new party hats on them.

Oh and I love the comment about using single distributors because otherwise ordering would take 50 hours a week.  That is such crap.  My family owned a polish bakery/deli/grocery store/restaurant in Chicago for the better part of 25 year.  Do you think we used a single distributor?  No.  We used many for many different products.  Partly to diversify cause not every distributor has what you need and partly to get the best price.  Anyone that makes that bullshit argument is a lazy fucker and deserves to go out of business because of it.

The fact of the matter is we are a diverse market, which is good, and in order to grow this diversity needs to be encouraged.  If anything
the retailer is to blame for the decline because most have absolutely no idea how to run a profitable family run/personal business.  A good
retailer changes to match the needs of his market, he doesn't sit back and lament the loss of the good ole days.  Same goes for publishers and distributors.

Keith

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Despite our differences in style and hot-buttons, I am seeing a crucial consensus among Ralph, Luke, Clinton, Keith, me, and others. It is:

Given POD printing and internet ordering, as well as useful fulfilment houses, there is no reason for further centralization of any step of the current model.

Which means tossing POD into the hands of a single distributor is no "solution" - because there's no current problem, at least not for us, nor for anyone who wants to do what we do.

We've already seen what happens when a middleman tries to "be" the printer too. He simply turns around and farms the work to an existing POD guy, the very same one who could have done it directly, and collects a markup fee! That's what Aldo Ghiozzi did with Impressions, using Express Media. At least those books got printed at all; Ken Whitman is the latest example and his services could have been better managed by chimpanzees. Clinton opened a book printed through them to show it to a customer, and it fell apart in his hands.

The "solution" is nothing but a barrel of unnecessary and disastrous problems, the more so because no actual problem exists. Printing has never been easier, nor capable of such great-looking product for so little money. What I see in your "solution," Sean, is that distributors are desperate to make themselves relevant in some way, now that they've effectively become obsolete. So, they have a problem. Not us.

Best,
Ron

[Sean P. Fannon]

Wow.

I've been flamed before, but this was pretty impressive. I can honestly say I've never been so thoroughly roasted by the hosts of a forum, especially in the face of my intense effort to be friendly, open, and civil.

Clinton, I will say that your efforts here are noteworthy. My entrance here was an act of respect.

On my own part.

I am not really here as a "GAMA Officer." I was simply sharing something I am working on at GAMA with a group of people that I felt could give me some useful feedback.

And that has happened, to be sure. I am grateful for the insights and the ideas that I had not considered. I am also grateful for the perspectives that indicate other innovations of business that are at work.

I really enjoyed reading Valamir's definitions of success. Personally, I am right there with you, man. However, in that I have an admittedly altruistic desire to help my colleagues in any way that is available to me, I am forced to look at how everyone can make some more money.

Clinton. I honestly do not understand where your hostility and ugliness is coming from. I'd like very much to know what I have done, personally, to draw such a torrent from you.

I am not afraid of anything you've accomplished here. Quite the opposite. I think there's a lot of good stuff happening here, and I am proud that so many excellent writers, designers, and creators have found effective ways to stay in business and even have a healthy success in their efforts.

It was out of respect for your collective accomplishments that I sought you out as a brain trust to vet these ideas. I didn't come here as a sign of fear, or with any desire to change a thing any of you are doing. If what evolves out of these ideas gives some of you a chance to sell some more books, or to see more of your works in print, then I will have had some small measure of success on your behalf.

Mostly, I came here because I heard it was a cool place to hang out with talented people and share ideas.

Sadly, Clinton, you chose to damage my first experience here. For no good reason that I can see, either, unless you somehow felt it advanced an agenda that I frankly was not directly in opposition to in the first place.

(Ron, you were kind enough to recognize the situation and offer a reasoned response to it. That I appreciate, even if we remain apart in ideas).

Now then.

If anyone is interested in the larger document, which does say considerably more on the subject, I would be happy to share it with you. I am currently on holiday until next Tuesday, so it will be that long before I can send it to you.

Please feel free to e-mail me at events@gama.org, and I will send it right out.

I just want to leave off with this last impression.

I am a game designer and writer. I create games and I would like to sell my games and share them with people.

I am also an employee of GAMA who wants to find ways to serve the whole games industry. That includes all of you. If nothing I can bring to the table is of any service to you, so be it.

But that's why I came here.

Sincerely,

Sean