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State of the Pen and Paper Industry
Syberghost writes "Kenneth Hite's annual 'State of the Industry' report has been released in his online column Out of the Box for gamer news site http://www.gamingreport.com. Among other interesting bits; Margaret Weis Productions is the sixth-largest RPG maker, on the sales of their sole RPG product line, the Serenity RPG. Sales overall were down, again; the RPG industry as a whole isn't doing well." Sad but not surprising.
Conversley the sale of deoderant and laundry soap is on the rise! Related? You decide!
The following replies are posted by unwashed nerds.
I'm a big fan of the GURPS game system, but everyone around here just wants to play D&D. I bought two new basic set biooks, but they just sit there.
Learn how to use commas!
I would imagine part of the decline of the industry is due to the expense of books. RPG books simply cost too damn much. I can't stand it when WotC releases a 100 page book and wants $35 for it. Not only do they overprice everything, but it seems like they set the price for the rest of the books out there. Considering how many books get released and put on the shelves, I think the price range should be $10-$30 not $30-$50.
So I checked out the site and the simple truth is that I can not get enough people together long enough to play this game.
Same holds for D&D and all the others. Hell we have trouble getting three hours together for a poker game, much less a game of Risk or Conquest of the Roman Empire. RPGs are just out.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Oh, I get it, the status of the pen and paper GAME industry. Jeez, I was all set to post about reams of colored paper, and sharpies...
/me is an old D&Der.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
I'm surprised to find out there even is a 6th largest RPG company...
I thought after the first few it was pretty much guys self-publishing their home game campaigns, unlike the good old 80's when variety thrived.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Here I was expecting a story about the paperless office and it's so called progress and rather I get a story about the pen and paper games industry. Perhaps "State of the Pen and Paper *GAMES* Industry" would have been more appropriate title.
Volume sales of those books are much lower than say.. the latest from a NY Times best seller. They're priced higher to get a return on investment for the printer, etc. Not saying I like it or agree with it.. it is what it is.
{} ------ When I think of a good sig, I'll put it here
The reason is simply that you RPG-Books rarely make it to the bestseller shelf. It's not the paper that costs, it's the people around it. It's the one(s) writing it, the artist(s) painting, the guy who puzzles the layout together and so on. The paper itself is a few cents of the final price.
Sure, Harry Potter has about 10 times the pages and costs about a tenth. Harry Potter also sells about a million times more copies.
It's akin to the price problem with computer books. It simply isn't easy reading stuff.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
" I can't stand it when WotC releases a 100 page book and wants $35 for it."
That's only thirty-five cents a page. You people are just plain cheap. Ten cents a page. No wonder no one wants to be a writer.
Download the PDFs of the books instead...they're out there if you know where to look.
It's not just the price or the time needed to play. It's also the fact that it's really hard to convince most gamers that they need to continue buying supplements. I'll admit that I have a lot of 3e/3.5e books, and I'll also admit that 3.5 was basically a cash-grab by WotC. Having said that, however, the truth is that most of the more recent supplements aren't things that I feel the need to buy. It's either stuff that I'd come up with on my own already, or it's material that is kind of cool, but not interesting enough to warrant purchasing. Hell, I don't even use half of the material in half of the supplements that I have now. Why would I need to buy more?
Also, there is the fact that the industry moves in cicles. If you recall, there was a significant drop-off in the market during the late 80's and 90's, which would correspond to the time between the initial frenzy over 2nd edition and the release of 3rd. I think that the same thing is happening here, and that when 4th edition comes out, we'll see a big boom in the market again (at least for a few years).
Another factor this time is the sheer glut of 3rd edition materials that were released. Everyone and their brother jumped all over the open-source nature of the d20 system, so there's even more dross to sort through and more competition in the market than ever before.
In high school, I remember saying something along the lines of . .. "These ballpoint pens today just aren't the same".
I'm sure my daughter will be saying something along those lines when the successor to the gel pens comes out. . .
Same storyline, different generation.
The new hotness is Burning Wheel. Independent games written and published by creative individuals beat the hell out of the book-spam WotC has been promoting these days.
Of course, WotC also has the problem of selling a durable good: these books don't just wear out. Once they're sold, they're on the market forever. No gamer will ever buy more than one. They've tried to mitigate this with tricks like "3.5th edition," but few gamers ever bothered updating. Throw in the rampant piracy of the books and rules themselves, and there's really no way WotC can continue with D&D as it is.
(I prefered AD&D 2nd Edition anyway ^_~)
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Frankly, WotC have only themselves to blame for the piracy.
I have a set of 3E hardbacks, but they're very heavy to carry to a game. I wanted to buy searchable PDF copies of 3.5E.
Guess what? WotC won't sell the 3E rules as e-books. Not for any price. So I was forced to seek out unauthorized copies, or make do with the SRD.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Pen and Paper RPGs have always been more niche than industry. This is a business that cannot survive on terms of growth, only in servicing the niche. TSR collapsed under the weight of their attempts to grow outside of the confines of the niche. They were producing far too many boxed games built on expensive liscences (Indiana Jones RPG?) and simple name shufflings of the D&D rulesets (Star Frontiers, Gamma World). Rather than focus on a fixed set of products that would be profitable, they kept spending to try and grab more marketshare where there wasn't any. Hasbro/WOC were smart- they realized that the real power in D&D is the liscening, not the game itself. All of the startups and ex-TSR company people are at a huge disadvantage by not having a compelling IP to go along with the pen&paper products. Even White Wolf, arguably the most successful RPG system outside of D&D has only a sliver of the name recognition that D&D has.
So it's off topic to talk about a pen used in a pen-and-paper game. Sheesh...
I can't wait for the My Little Ponies RPG from WotC. It would be a huge boon for the industry in general.
"Something's wrong with you...and I hope we never do meet again." - Deftones When Girls Telephone Boys
Waste several hours of your life for the purpose of getting glare in your eyes, breaking the binding on your hardcovers, and collating a huge pile of tilted bitmaps, when what you want is searchable text and clear graphics? Damn that's a stupid suggestion.
Nobody in their right mind uses pen for them anyways... It's pencils all the way.
I been in a few games in my younger years where some of the players did drawings with pens while someone was taking a bathroom break. If they didn't have paper, they would draw on their T-shirts or themselves.
The big, glossy, expensive games may not be doing so well. And if you're taking total revenue as a measure of health then maybe the paper&pencil gaming scene isn't doing so well. As the subject says, meh. A drop in Britney Spears sales does not indicate a crisis in music.
What TFA mostly failed to mention was the extraordinary progress in indie RPG design over the last few years. The indies may not be raking in money hand over fist, but that hasn't stopped them creating some very good games (Vincent Baker's Dogs in the Vineyard and Matt Wilson's Primetime Adventures, f'rinstance) and, more importantly, getting a solid theoretical handle on what RPGs are about and how they work. What Lajos Egri did for playwriting and Robert McKee did for screenwriting, these guys are doing for RPGs. I've been following the industry since the early 1980s, and the last few years have been a real eyeopener. No, the GM is not God. Yes, system does matter. No, throwing together a huge heap of rules and expecting fun to magically fall out is not going to cut it.
You see, what makes role-playing games fun is creativity, and that's not for sale in a game store. I have brought several new players into the game and they did buy some dice, miniatures and used Player's Handbooks for $10 (I feel like they should cost more!).
All the industry has to offer groups like mine are supplements, but we don't need no stinking supplements. I'm smart enough to compose my own adventures, supplementary spells, items and worlds. My home-made character sheets suit my campaign much better than anything I can buy. I OCR'ed all the spells from the Player's Handbook and Unearthed Arcana (and added a couple of Hackmaster-inspired and home-brewed ones) and I print these for my spell-casting players. To be honest, there are so many supplements now that I feel they allow too much. I think the only reasonable reaction is to revert to the "real" rules, and add to them exactly those things that the DM feels should be there. What are the "real" rules? By far the best candidate is Gygax's unpreverted first edition. It's not perfect, but since people will disagree on what its imperfections are, they should use it as a base and tweak it with sensible house rules.
I have a great group which consists mostly of Ph.D's and advanced graduate students, and this is one of the most fun social things we do. (We also play sports, poker, BBQ, etc.) Still, nobody seems to be making much money from all the fun we have, and I think we like it that way.
I think it's no accident that the Firefly party consists of three fighters (each with a different specialization), a healer, a priest, an empath, a mechanic and an "ambassador". The mechanic plays the role the D&D magic-user because only she can rig up things with massive effects. This is the epitome of the balanced adventuring party, and Firefly is the first time such a thing was on television - and it worked really damn well.
So I'm not going to be playing the Serenity RPG because my group is busy enough with D&D. Still, I wanted to applaud the idea.
So I checked out the site and the simple truth is that I can not get enough people together long enough to play this game. Same holds for D&D and all the others. Hell we have trouble getting three hours together for a poker game, much less a game of Risk or Conquest of the Roman Empire. RPGs are just out.
I'm genuinely curious, as a newcomer (6 mo) to D&D 3.5. What is it you do all day, every day, that prevents you from playing any RPG?
My group has 6 people (5 PC + DM), and we meet maybe 2-3 hours a week. It doesn't have to be the same time every week, and if one person can't make it at all a week somebody else can play that character, or he can be written out of the story for that week.
I guess I'm puzzled by the fact that you claim to not have a couple hours a week to spend with a handful of friends. (I thought that's what friends are: a small group of people you know and spend time with regularly.)
I like Hero Games. Champions is just on of the best point based RPGs out today and the have 1/2 price book sales monthly.
Onward to the Aether Sphere!
non-gel rollerballs for the win, definitely! Most enjoyable writing/drawing experience I've ever found.
What about the Open Game license? I was under the impression that while all the interesting flare and history (things good for a DM or setting up a campaign) were all owned content, the /rules/ themselves (That is, the things a searchable DB would be good for) were, as the name implies, "Open".
That is, while I can't give away detailed descriptions of the cities in Ebberon, it's perfectly okay for me to use one of any number of free, searchable online databases.
please correct me. I assume I'm missing something here.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Perhaps on the bright side, they haven't started getting into a patent war yet... probably because the business is small enough and interdependent enough that they realize the economic ecology won't support the associated legal expenses.
Myself, I haven't bought anything from WotC since... hm, 2nd ed MM. (Well, leaving aside the illegal first edition of Deities and Demigods I picked up used.) Most of my purchases have been from slightly smaller outfits: SJG (In Nomine) and West End (Paranoia). I've also noticed my circle (due to time constraints) are playing more card games, such as Munchkin, Sem Dej Mozek, and Chrononauts.
It's a pity that such interestingly creative people have trouble making a living, especially when Hollywood makes so much money on such monstrous amounts of crap.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
mini chocolate chips? how big are your regular chocolate chips?
my password really is 'stinkypants'
See, imagine if the US Gov't upheld a ruling that said that the source code of an OS could be copied regardless of the creator's wishes, and only the actualy UI appearance and layout could be copyrighted.
And then MS Released the "Open Windows" that came with everything except Office, still proprietarily Deathgripped.
THAT is what the OGL is!
And I'm an unapologetic fanboy for most of WotC's DnD stuff.
BTW, In my Simile... DnD Minis are iPods.
*smacks self in head*
OMGWTFVTRMTA!
The SRD, it's DARWIN!
It might just mean that there's little impetus to go out and buy a role playing manual. Or even to purchase the PDF. No sale, no statistic.
One factor might be supply and demand. There are a million and one zero cost systems out there, not to mention the wealth of OGL suppliments and modifications. Why spend $90 on the Core Three Books when you can get what you need for a third of the cost or less with a similar, lesser known system?
Another factor might be the shift toward more collaborative storytelling with less mechanics, like FUDGE, FATE, or RISUS. These games are *fun* and involve significantly less algebra to play than any D&D edition I can think of. They're also much faster to learn, in part because they require a creative--rather than encyclopedic--understanding of how the game works.
<plug>
Anyone interested in pen and paper role playing might also enjoy my podcast, Dice Make Bonk.
</plug>
"He did say he wanted "searchable". Producing searchable PDFs with your scanner is a non-trivial task."
Pfft! Only for you guys.
1.) Video Games. New computer every two or three years. Say 400 dollars a year. New console every three years. Another hundred. 'Bargain' games, 20 each, say one a month. 200 bucks a year. New releases, say, three times a year. 150. Makes about 850 a year. True, I also surf the web, pretend to get some work done, and pay some bills / do banking online. But I'm probably underestimating what I spend on the new computer, anyway, and I'm not including internet & the like. Still, not a cheap hobby, but not really a crusher.
2.) Wargames. Well, when I was just playing Confrontation, it wasn't too bad. I mean, small numbers of models, and they're not too badly priced to begin with. But then we moved, 'cause of the job, and the only stores near us are big on the Games Workshop stuff. I don't really want to think about how much I'm spent on this in the last year, but it's probably close, or exceeding, the cost of the first hobby.
3.) RPG's. My costs for the last year? Umm... well, nothing, really. I may have bought some new dice, at some point... And I might not spend anything this year, either. (see the aforementioned 'moving'.) The problem isn't the cost of the stuff - even when I was only playing one session a month, I didn't have a problem putting 30 or 40 bucks down on a new book every other month, or even every month, if there was anything worth getting. But RPG's are a lot more committment-intensive than either of my other hobbies - But since I got out of college, and I've moved away from all my high school & college friends, it's a lot harder to find a group of five to seven people willing to meet up, every week, or even every other week.
(Stops to think for a minute)
Okay, actually, I think I'm going to end up disagreeing with myself. The problem with RPG's is that the people who have the ability to play them regularly (people who have a lot of free time, or flexible schedules, and a group of friends that have the same) are generally not the kind of people who have the money to support an entire industry. Now, there's exceptions, to be sure - but I'm willing to bet that a whole lot of people who played D&D in high school, or college, stop, or greatly cut back, afterwords due to the time constraints.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
As far as time constraints, how much time do you spend playing video games? How much time do you spend watching TV, surfing the internet, reading a book, twiddling your thumbs, whatever? My friends and I play once a week, from 8-Midnight. Four hours is enough time to get in some good role-playing, do some exploring, find a few clues and get into a fight. It's a nice, well-rounded, enjoyable session, one that I can almost always end on a cliffhanger, and keep everyone's interest for the duration.
Now, I'm not trying to make this personal or anything, but it's just irritating to hear "I don't have time. I don't have friends that want to play. Other people must be the same way. That's what's wrong with the industry." You've got time, you've got friends, you just don't have the interest. Loss of interest is a real problem. Loss of interest is something that might be addressed, something that can be changed.
Sorry about that. I will agree, though, that P&PRPG companies have an uphill climb ahead of them, no matter how you slice it. It's a hobby that requires that one person either be able to pull stories out of thin air, or have a lot of time and patience for prep. It requires imagination and an attention span not often found in the age of TV. It requires a hefty entrance fee, when you take into consideration the fact that an RPG book has no other reasonable use except as an RPG book, whereas a gaming PC has many many other uses. Hell, even wargame miniatures can look cool on a shelf. The PHB is worthless if you're not actually playing D&D.
It doesn't surprise me that the P&P industry is in decline. I just think that, unlike player attention span, time constraints and storytelling ability, price is one of the factors that can be changed, and might make a difference if it was.
"This set of statistics is bullshit. This set of statistics is slightly less so. I'd rearrange the numbers without actually /saying/ anything, but if you're into RPGs you can presumably do the same thing for yourself. That, right there, is why the industry is failing."
Someone said someone had to make their games open? And windows magically becomming open for no reason, except Office, would be bad somehow?
:)
If the OS code were forced to be open, I wonder how long before things like IE, the standard shell, the window manager, explorer, and more and more and everything that is "windows" and "is so ingrained into the operating system that it cannot possibly be seperated" [p.s.: anyone who though MS should be forced to not distribute IE with windows is an ass-weilding asstard with a +3 against ass-based attacks] would magically become seperate stand-alone products
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Yeah, I used p.s. in the MIDDLE OF A SENTENCE. I'm so good at language I can bend the laws of reality, altering the time stream, and such. It's not an obscene error, it's a sign of godliness.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
See, if you'd just put that, I probably wouldn't be so annoyed right now. It's great that you enjoy small games - I've tried it a few times, one GM and two or three players, and, personally, it sucks. I really enjoy playing with a larger group - when I go home to visit my parents on the holidays, I try to get up with my group from college, and we've played a number of one-shots, or two sessions if we were both around for a week.
As far as time, I think you just missed my point - it's no good for one or two people to have the time if you have a group of seven. That's why video games & wargames are much easier on my schedule - only need two people to play, really.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
First they make a big deal out of the new rules (3rd Edition = Win98) and we buy all the books, then just a few years later they realize how messed up the 3rd editon is so they put out a 3.5 edition (WinME). That means you get to buy all new books again while your old ones barely fetch half price on eBay.
Maybe we're all just waiting for Version 4.0 (WinXP) to come out and be done with it.
...All I can say is that my life is pretty strange...
Didn't you notice the glut of themed monopoly clones in the past decade?
You can't copyright the rules of a game.
Thus, WotC is just "releasing" what you'd be able to use anyway.
I give kudos for them for running with it as far as they have, but I never think of it as totally altruistic.