The Forge Archives

So I regularly read the news at Hero Games, and recently they announced that they are tightening belts for the future.

Among the usual reasons they cite the general downturn in the industry. They noted some smallish "mainstream" companies (GOO for example) that are scaling back or fading away.

Thing is, I've been playing RPGs for a couple of decades now, and I have always heard tell of the "downturn in the industry". I can't remember a time when an RPG company that wasn't doing as well as they hoped didn't blame it on a rough patch in RPG sales.

What I have never seen are any real numbers about the RPG business. I read the WotC market research from a few years back, but it seemed incomplete and inconclusive to me.

So has anyone ever seen any real data about the people in our hobby? Are roleplayers really a dwindling breed, or is that just the ready excuse for when the supplement treadmill  model doesn't work out?

Insights?

For the most part good data about the rpg 'industry' doesn't exist.   The 'industry' does no market research to speak of.   The oft quoted WOTC survey remains the high water mark of efforts in this field. It if seems incomplete and inconclusive, it's because it was, and the problems with the type of mail in survey they did are discussed in detail in the first chapter of the classic 'How to Lie with Statistics".  Most of the 'debate' about the nature of the rpg marketplace occurs in a near complete intellectual vacuum, and consists largely of people drawing sweeping conclusions based on the doings at their own FLGS.

I have  been working on an essay about this issue based on what little data is available,  the short form is that 90% of the rpg market is based on the purchases of less than 10% of the participants, this is the group that decides who shall be a 'success'. They are basically habitual buyers, whether pure rpg bibliophile/collectors or readers, they buy up to two orders of magnitude more material than they actually use in play.

Given this group is so small, it doesn't take much of a change in their buying habits to create a genuine downturn.  And from what I have seen of the 'industry' the perpetually complaints about the market are entirely valid, the rpg field has always been a weak sister.  Its never been easy to make money given the glaring inefficiencies of the 3 tier distrbution channel,and the near complete lack economies of scale.

Based on this I have conluced that 'gamers' are not in fact a very good market for the burgeoning indie rpg world.  Most of them don't buy anything and the rest are already buying about as much as they 'can'.

The thread about WotC's recent market research just dropped off the front page. Burrow deep enough into its links and you'll find:

- Charles Ryan, brand manager of D&D, claims that the "dwindling breed" idea (advanced at a panel I was on at Gen Con SoCal) isn't supported by their data, which show more D&D players than at any time before. These data aren't public, so you can't get more incomplete than that, but it stands to reason that with Hasbro's budgets and business culture, WotC's market research is likely to be more thorough than anyone else's. (To be sure, it'd be skewed towards their interests - but then, space-time in the solar system is skewed in the direction of the sun).

- Ken Hite does a yearly state of the industry report based mainly on data from Comics and Games Retailer magazine; he's found RPG sales to be holding steady for the last two years, and at SoCal was among the proponents of the dwindling audience theory (he used the analogy to model railroading)

In this thread about d20 sales, vaxalon suggests RPG sales are down 20% since the start of the war in Iraq, since so many gamers are on military duty


My own mini-essay about the (wacky) future of gaming in response to the SoCal panel is here.

I look forward to your essay, b_bankhead, and your basic insights seem sound to me.

I want to state that my information is tentative; it comes from one insider, at one company, whose claims to be in contact with insiders at other companies is plausible.

Also, the theory makes sense to me, on its face.  Military folks are big buyers of RPG material because it can be easily used in the field, when many other entertainments common to the 18-25 market (video and computer games, sports, etc) are unavailable.

I would have to concur with vaxalon. Many military and air force people (including many of my family members) were quite bothered with the fact that they wouldn't be able to buy any RPG books while they were there. So they bought as many as they could before they left.

-Mister Poppet-

Back in the late 70s or early 80s I was in a hobby store, and a navy sailor came in with a big wad of money to spend. Apparently his carrier was about to deploy, and a bunch of guys dispatched him to stock up.

RPGs and board games also have an advantage for military personel in that you can get a lot of mileage out of a few books which are easy to keep in your limited space for personal effects.

Frank

The short answer to my question is, clearly, no. Nobody has any reliable statistics about RPGs.

The posts about military folks being a major factor in teh industry highlight this. It is a fact that there are people in the military who play RPGs. But any assertions about their affect on the military have the typical "I heard it from a guy" flavor of all statistics I have ever heard about RPGs.

Unless anyone has hard facts to share, my question is answered.