I talk to lots of people in the adventure game industry. We chat about all sorts of things, but the conversation often turns to questions like, “How’s it going?” In this case, “it” usually means “sales.” The answer I hear most lately is, “Not so good.”
This is particularly true of d20 publishers, which most major RPG companies (with a few notable exceptions) are these days. The question then becomes, “Why?”
There are lots of theories. Some people figure this is the long-predicted shakedown from the “glut” of d20 product on the market. The market only needs so many different books on elves, the notion goes. Eventually, people stop buying them.
While that could be it, I think there’s a simpler (numeric, even) answer to why sales seemed to fall off the edge of a cliff this summer: 3.5.
Version 3.5 of the Dungeons & Dragons core rulebooks shipped this past July. They cleaned up some of the mistakes in the 3.0 set, tweaked a few rules, and made enough substantial changes for the game to feel a bit different.
I’m not complaining that Wizards of the Coast put out this revision too soon. Some companies only wait a year between new editions. Others take much longer, but three years isn’t unreasonable, particularly for such a complex and well-played game. There’s nothing like having over a million people play a game to highlight rough edges that no amount of playtesting could sand down, and good designers like to try to fix such things.
The first crack in most d20 publishers’ sales curves came when Wizards announced that 3.5 was coming. Lots of publishers stopped putting out 3.0 products immediately. Sword & Sorcery, for instance, didn’t release a new d20 product for three or four months. After all, who wants to publish a book made for rules that would be updated within a quarter of a year or less?
When 3.5 came out, then, many companies had a pent-up backlog of products ready to roll. These all hit the market nearly at once as people strove to be the first to capitalize on the hoped-for demand generated by the new d20 edition. The market went from famine to feast, and it understandably choked. Even the most die-hard fans can only buy so many new books in a month.
Still, I’m guessing that not everyone who was playing 3.0 was willing to shell out the $90 they needed to fully upgrade to version 3.5. This means that we now have two camps of d20 System players. Those who jumped on the new edition when it came out and those who are satisfied with the three-year-old classic.
The players who refused to upgrade to 3.5 now find themselves faces with shelves of products that are only good with the rules with which they don’t play. Needless to say, they’re not buying many of those books.
So what’s a d20 publisher to do? Well, if you’re savvy, you might give people a chance to sidegrade to something else. If you’re going to have to pop for the new rules, why not go all the way and get a book full of wholly new stuff?
Monte Cook did just that with his smash-hit Arcana Unearthed “alternative player’s handbook” from his Malhavoc Press. Mongoose seems to have scored a similar hit with its Mongoose Pocket Player’s Handbook, which gives you all the rules you need to play with for only $20, making the hurdle to upgrading a lot more reasonable.
There’s no way for Wizards to put this genie back in the bottle, and they probably wouldn’t want to anyhow. Still, I’d be interested to see how their own sales numbers on supplements have fared since the release of 3.5. That would tell us a lot about when we might expect to see 4.0.
January 27th, 2004 at 10:06 pm
While I think 3.5 did have an impact on sales, I most certainly think the game industry, as a whole, is stupid. It failed to learn its lesson when the CCG glut devastated the industry, costing companies hundreds of thousands of dollars and putting many out of business. Ignoring that lesson from the not-so-distant past, they did the exact same thing with d20. When it launched, the industry bought up any and every book that had a d20 logo on it, regardless of quality and sales potential. Just as with the CCG glut, the bubble eventually burst when retailers and distributors realized they still have tons of unsold stock with that snazzy red, white, and black logo sitting on their shelves, representing dead money. Now, too late, the industry is becoming discerning which means a drop in sales for most companies. Had the industry been discerning from day one, I think things would be enormously different now.
I know, you know all this already. You know the industry better than I…
Really, I won’t argue that 3.5 had an impact on sales, but I think it was a very minor impact. I think the innate cyclical nature of the industry combined with pure stupidity are the roots of the current slump in sales.
Jeff
January 27th, 2004 at 10:58 pm
Hi Jeff!
You answer quick! While I agree that there’s certainly some tendency to repeat past errors, I don’t think it’s “stupid” so much as a failure to properly calculate the risks while chasing the money. Any bust from the d20 glut can’t possibly be as harmful as the cyclical fallout we see from the CCG category. There’s just not as much money involved.
While it may be that d20 was a bubble that was waiting to be popped, I think that 3.5 may have been the needle that finally pricked it. It gave people a reason to stop buying product.
Of course, as the header says, this is only a theory. The strongest evidence that I have for it is that the companies I’ve talked with point to this summer as the breaking point. It could be that 3.5 didn’t cause the problem, but the timing spurred my suspicion that Wizards may have inadvertantly bifurcated its own player network.
January 27th, 2004 at 11:53 pm
I think the answer is a combination of the 3.5 release and Jeff’s thoughts on the deluge. I’ve noticed in the admittedly few retailer RPG top 10 lists from the past year that the 3.5 supplements - Draconomicon and Complete Warrior - have done better than the 3.0 ones. On one hand, I think the 3.5 stuff has a broader appeal than the 3.0 books of ‘03, but I do get the sense that gamers were holding back their purchases for 3.5.
I also think that 3.5 has caused a gap in the audience. Of my regular gaming group, only 2 of the 6 of us bought the new books. With the economy still uncertain, I’m not sure that many gamers are ready to drop $90 on new books. Furthermore, I think releasing one book a month, or maybe only revising the PHB, would’ve helped push 3.5 to a lot more people.
On the other side of the issue, there is still a LOT of stuff coming out. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate the product lines. We still have a dozen class books, race, books, and so on.
January 28th, 2004 at 5:31 am
I dunno. With the 3.5 SRD available for free on WotC website, people could do what I did - download the SRD and use the 3.0 books with notes to the SRD where there are rule changes. You don’t HAVE to buy the books for 3.5 (I eventually did, but it is doable with the old books and the SRD).
January 28th, 2004 at 7:17 am
Mike:
Leave it to you to be reasonable and take the middle road. I have some thoughts about the commodification of supplements and what it’s meant for the publishers, but I’ll get to that in another post.
Paul:
True enough, but many people who buy games prefer to have a book. I’d guess that a good percentage of those who play D&D have no interest in the SRD or d20 material at all. Just think of the rough numbers for the best-selling D&D books versus the best-selling d20 books.
Also, those who are willing to download 3.5, print it out, and use it in a game aren’t as likely to be purchasers of new d20 material, so they don’t matter as much to a d20 publisher.
January 28th, 2004 at 8:02 am
Funnily enough, I was thinking recently about posting something similar to your 3.5e thoughts on my own blog, only from a more personal standpoint.
I’d pretty much dropped out of roleplaying by 2000. I hadn’t played in a regular game in probably seven years. The enthusiasm was gone. Then 3e came along and it seemed like a way to recapture past fun while embracing a rules set that (frankly) made better sense than the one we all struggled with. That there would be new struggles with some aspects is immaterial; 3e got me excited.
If 3e rekindled the flame, 3.5e extinguished it. I simply was not, and am not, interested in the revision. I’d already had a pretty negative reaction to the rapid revision of STAR WARS, regardless of what fixes the new version contained, and I had the same feeling about 3.5e. The real deal-breaker — and this may just be specific to me, admittedly — was 3.5e’s shift to a miniatures-based system of measurements and combat. I never liked the use of miniatures in roleplaying “back in the day,” and I like it even less now. ESPECIALLY when those miniatures are part of clicky-type rollout. No, thank you.
So I quit buying stuff. All the publishers seem to be fixated on releasing 3.5e material, and so my antipathy toward the revision extends to them. Even books I might have bought because they seemed interesting no longer engage me, because I don’t want to reward a change of which I didn’t approve. Perhaps this might be seen as punishing other companies for the decisions of one, but if those publishers have chosen to go along with WotC, then I don’t have a lot of options.
Since 3.5e’s been released, I’ve spent a great deal more time looking at non-d20/OGL material released from other publishers. I’ve even taken a gander at some old friends, like SHADOWRUN. I don’t even bother perusing the racks of 3.5e-compatible books anymore. The only thing I’ve purchased lately with a d20 on it is VIRTUAL, and that’s pretty much its own game. I ignore the reams of fantasy material that seem to hit the shelves every week.
Wizards is a company, and companies have to make money. I can appreciate that. At the same time, I don’t like being made to feel like little more than a wallet that can be opened at will. The release of 3.5e, and the subsequent parade of releases from other publishers designed to conform to 3.5e have simply left me cold.
January 28th, 2004 at 8:03 am
I think there was/is more of an impact from 3.5 than many in the industry realize. I’m running a game with players that have been gaming more than 10 years each, so we have all seen the “new system” hype before and each time major changes usually also bring about major errors or over-corrections.
Plus, the further away from version 1.0 we go, the further we have moved from a role-playing game into a miniature combat simulation game.
Crunchy bits are great, but I haven’t bought many of the products on the market not because they were 3.0 or 3.5 but because they were just rehashed crunchy bits.
Just how many prestige classes, feats, etc does one game need? Given the total number of feats even a 20th level fighter might have, having 4,000 feats seems outlandish.
The products I have bought were because they put personality back into the game, and the crunch was in support of it and not just because they felt they needed 20 classes and 2-dozen feats to compete in the d20 market.
AU is full of crunch, but it also gives you something to work with on a role-playing level with ceremonies and the various aspects of the new classes. Still works like 3.0 and 3.5 and easy to learn, but it “feels” different.
If I pick up a supplement and it feels like the SRD and nothing else, I put it back and move on. And even if I’m playing an elf, having 20 books on elves doesn’t mean even one of them would fit the elves of the current campaign.
January 28th, 2004 at 9:53 am
I don’t see how the changes in 3.5 really affect the usability of supplements for players still using 3.0. Most of the changes have to do with the presentation of information and individual rules for adjudications during combat.
I think that you do have a good point, though, about publishers holding back on product prior to the release of 3.5, with a deluge of new product following the release of 3.5.
January 28th, 2004 at 10:04 am
I haven’t bought as much in the past few months myself becasue I already bought a whole bunch of stuff in the past couple of years that i have yet to make much use of. Do I need more stuff then i can use..nah. Even so i still got 3 hardcovers for christmas from family members so someone beside me was buyign products.
January 28th, 2004 at 10:06 am
Jim:
Thanks for the anecdotal support.
Jeb:
The 3.5 revision did change a number of things, not enough to be called a 4.0, but they’re still there. What annoys those who stayed behind, it seems to me, is not that the 3.5 rules aren’t better. It’s that the bedrock upon which the game is founded has shifted, if only slightly. They’d rather stay on familiar ground.
We saw this with the progression from AD&D to AD&D 2 as well. Lots of people just never made the upgrade. That’s one of the problems with RPGs as a product. Once you have a set of rules you like, you don’t ever need to buy anything else. While that’s great for the player, it’s tough for a publisher on the cash-flow treadmill to deal with.
January 28th, 2004 at 10:55 am
I myself feel the reasons for the downturn are threefold: the changeover to 3.5, the long-feared glut, and the economy. Plus piracy has *definitely* become an issue (as well pointed out by John Kovalic in his latest Dork Tower in Dragon Magazine).
Matt covers 3.5 and d20 in general very well above. My own personal experience with it, however, has been mixed. My group switched over after a debate of a month or so. I brought my 3.5 books in one session, loaned them out, and after reading over them, everyone agreed that the move was valid. However, out of a group of six only one other player actually bought the three main books. Two did not (due to financial concerns), though they had the original 3.0 books, and two, whom I shall call “Blackbeard” and “Jolly Roger” pirated PDF’s of all three books off the Web. These guys later saw the light (two by fours being quite helpful in that regard), but still only bought a mixed bag of books (altogether the two of them accounting for the purchases of one “full time” consumer). So I figure only 1 in 2 players or thereabouts actually “bought in” to the new edition, though all played with it. As to secondary d20 products, if this is reflective of the market, it would be a good indication of why things have fallen off.
The glut, as Matt and Jeff noted, has hit. Everyone pushed through a bunch of “3.5 compliant” material right at or after Gen Con, and then all the retailers realized they already had tons of now-dead 3.0 materials on their shelves, and sales just died. As Matt said above, few enough D&D players had bought into the d20 thing as it stood. In my group above, only three of us have non-WotC d20 products… myself and the two pirates. And they didn’t buy them (though they have begun to do so now, however complainingly). So if this is typical, only 1 in 6 players were actually buying d20 to begin with, which sounds about right from the overall numbers I’ve seen (this doesn’t count those who play but have *never* bought a D&D book, which I think in less formal groups than mine above is far more common than we’d like to think). I imagine piracy is even worse with d20 products, as they are not quite as “cool to own” as the snazzy WotC books. So there’s a lot more material out there now, and fewer than ever are buying…
Finally, while normally this industry is immune to recession, or even thrives during financial hardship, the current economy is a major factor in the sales fall; or perhaps it is a vector driving the other two above-listed factors. As relatively cheap games are an excellent entertainment value, compare the value gained for five people from a $9.95 adventure module or sourcebook versus a single purchase of a $7.00 movie, games generally do not lose out in a recession. Unfortunately, I believe that this country has passed from a recession into a full blown depression, regardless what the government and the talking heads on TV tell us. It also doesn’t help that a big portion of the gaming industry’s consumer market got hit by the bursting tech bubble and related job re-location; many gamers I know (even the ones not in Seattle) were involved in computer related businesses (most of which are gone) or customer service careers (most of which are now in India). Now if they have a job they are working at Chuck E Cheese or McDonald’s part time and barely paying the bills. So people that may have well been buying everything they could get their hands on suddenly can barely afford to buy the new edition, let alone secondary level products.
So these three factors, the new edition, a glut at the worst time, and a really bad economy are all to blame for the dramatic fall in sales. Then, as mentioned here and there above, piracy is all too common. I’m lucky in that I’ve been able to convert the heathens in my group, but if a 1 pirate per 3 players is typical, then this industry is in for a hard future.
January 28th, 2004 at 12:17 pm
There are certainly a lot of theories floating around about why the RPG segment is down, and this industry is never shy about spouting them off. But from my view in distribution I have a slightly different take on it.
I don’t believe that there is any one reason to point to about the down turn in d20/RPG sales. There are way too many things happening at once to try and pin down a single culprit. There are more RPG publishers now then I can ever remember. And with the rise of the consolidator more and more companies are finding their way into distribution then would have in the past. The more mouths at the table, the smaller your slice of pie becomes.
There is also a new player in the game. Collectable miniatures. At some level CMG’s have to be dipping into the pot and taking away from RPG’s. You don’t think that all that money is coming from new hobbiest’s do you?
There is also a huge upswing in the board game market. More money is being spent then has been in a long time. Usually when one segment is up in this industry another is down. Maybe it’s RPG’s turn on the down slope for a while.
All that said, I don’t believe that we are in trouble. Or that we are going to see an implosion of companies in the near future. There have been people in this industry crying doom and gloom for the seven years I have been involved with it. I don’t see it changing anytime soon. And I don’t see myself paying any more attention to them then I have in the past.
January 28th, 2004 at 12:30 pm
James:
Well put. I think all these factors contributed to the current problem. The timing of the drop seemed to coincide with the release of 3.5, which is what triggered my theory.
Brad:
I don’t think the RPG/CMG crossover is strong enough to have cause the recent downturn. If it was, I would have thought we’d have seen the downturn hit in 2002 instead of 2003.
While it may seem I was playing Cassandra here, I’m not one for doom and gloom. I think that good products with solid marketing can still sell well. In any case, I’ve been through several turns of the “Adventure Game/RPG Industry Is Dying!” wheel. It always comes around to the good again, and I have faith it will this time too.
January 28th, 2004 at 12:42 pm
Salient points, everyone. My own personal theory, aside from those presented here, is that the gaming industry rides the economic curve a few years behind everything else. There is a pattern that supports this: there was an RPG boom back in the late 70’s/early 80’s when times were tough, but a lot of those companies imploded in the mid-80’s about the time the economy got better. Throughout the d20 boom, the industry was at the height of an overheated economy (97-2000), and now we’re in a lull. If this is true, we’d be hitting late 2001 right about now - dark economic times indeed - and who knows how long it will last. Hopefully I’m wrong…
As for riding the storm out, one particular comment of Matt’s seemed especially true:
“So what’s a d20 publisher to do? Well, if you’re savvy, you might give people a chance to sidegrade to something else. If you’re going to have to pop for the new rules, why not go all the way and get a book full of wholly new stuff?”
I think the strongest performers right now (aside from WotC’s core stuff) are these games that have sidestepped hinging their lines on what WotC chooses to do with d20, in favor of building their own iterations of the system. We have to accept that whatever WotC does with d20, the community is going to look at it as gospel - and non-compliance is blasphemy. Mutants and Masterminds, FFG’s Horizon line and Spycraft and Stargate have all done well for themselves as far as I can tell. As a freelancer on Spycraft and Stargate, I can say we’ve weathered things so far pretty well, I believe partially because we don’t have to worry about their fan bases splitting each time WotC decides it needs a new edition.
January 28th, 2004 at 12:48 pm
Thanks for sharing your ideas, Matt. Am I understanding you in that you think 3.5 created an unusual glut, along with bifurcating the market? I guess I can agree with that, but the fact that 3.5 split the market (as Mr. Mearls’s anecdote supports) begs a question. Was the 3.5 release necessary? I’d say probably not, given that the average D&D player didn’t rush out and get it (economic forces acknowledged, of course). Am I wrong?
Yes, the ranger did need some work. The rules clarifications are great (except that my specialist transmuter no longer has access to teleport as a specialty spell). Some of the new rules are cool. The fact that they’re in the SRD is superb. Yet, I will fault Wizards for some of their (Hasbro-influenced) behavior. 3.5 seems to be more of a money making move than a service to the industry or the players. Its also seems to be a promotion for the collectible miniatures line, which is collectible not because it needs to be, but so it will make more money.
Monte Cook seemed to suggest at least the former point in a recent review of 3.5 (http://www.montecook.com/arch_review26.html), and Monte probably isn’t feeling the d20 slump as much as others. One reason Monte’s stuff sells is, let’s face it, he’s Monte. Another reason his stuff is popular, I suspect, is that he pushes the envelope in many ways that others fail to. He even sells record numbers in the PDF market, where 100 copies sold is considered a successful release by small companies.
Do you think that the quality in the market, which is dubious excepting a few publishers, had any effect? Isn’t the “yet another elf book” phenomenon is a symptom of an industry that, with a few notable exceptions, tends to chase money more than display innovation? For example, there are so many prestige classes in the marketplace now they begin to seem like “filler”. This is not to say that there’s no space for a new, well-crafted, and campaign-specific prestige class, but when 66% of a new book is generic prestige classes there’s a problem. That’s true even if the classes are “updated for 3.5″. That’s why I didn’t shell out the dough for Complete Warrior. Was I wrong?
Yet Wizards, of all of the d20 companies out there, has more reason to chase profit than any other. They have to worry about their viability in the eyes of Hasbro. Hasbro has to worry about market forces and growth so the analysts on Wall Street will evaluate their stock well. Without getting into an analysis of the stock market and its effects on corporate practice and governance, my opinion is that these forces have an unnatural influence on the way a company performs. Speculation and market valuation become more important than innovation and actually turning out an interesting product, because there’s simply more money to be made that way.
However, these latter facts are why the OGL was such an attractive idea from a big-business standpoint. Let the players and small companies take the risks associated with innovation. Their work supports the core system, which needs no regular work. As a big company, that means you have a product that continues to sell and its support market takes all the risks. You also don’t need a big R&D staff, so you can get rid of many employees, further enhancing the bottom line. Heck, if you license your game’s support magazines to another company, since those magazines require constant work and support staff, you further enhance that profit. The licensee still has to follow your rules, you make money from the arrangement, and you don’t have salaries and benefits to shell out.
My conclusion is that the market is suffering for a mélange of the reasons suggested by others here and corporate greed. For small companies that greed manifests as a product line that is little different from the product lines of other companies (yet another drow book). It also manifests in mediocre (or worse) writing, poor editing, mediocre (or worse) art, and mechanics that fail under any sort of real playtesting. (Perhaps these things are what Jeff meant by “stupidity”.)
Gamers tend to be intelligent and analytical, and poor craft can’t fool them for long. They’ll simply stop risking a non-WotC purchase, and be more discerning about what they buy from the core manufacturer as well. Gamers, being somewhat discerning, also get insulted by what they may feel is a greedy grab by anyone for more cash (ala 3.5). These things combine to result in less dollars spent overall, regardless of the economy.
I can’t complain about actual prices in the industry, however. This form of entertainment is very cheap for the hours of diversion it provides multiple persons. It would be reasonable if each book were intended for a single user (compared to the entertainment hours per dollar of other individual amusements).
Thanks for listening.
January 28th, 2004 at 1:13 pm
Hi Matt,
I didn’t mean to imply that you (or anyone else who responded) were being a naysayer. I know better then that. The ideas that you put forth are certainly interesting, and not without merit. However I believe the issue runs a little deeper, and cannot be attributed to one or two causes.
We can spend hours debating this on the net, or we can do it proper. GTS is coming up, I would not not be adverse to sitting down with a pint or three and discussing this further.
January 28th, 2004 at 1:54 pm
Alex:
Good comments. I once had a similar theory about the cyclical nature of the industry. It goes hand in hand with what others have said about how games tend to do well in a recession. The corollary is that they can then do poorly in the post-recession bounce.
Chris:
Thanks for your comments. Was 3.5 necessary? It’s a game. No part of it or any other game is necessary. From Wizards’ point of view, it probably gave the game a bump in monthly sales from where it was, so in those terms, it’s a successful product.
The fact that companies tend to chase safer bets for sales instead of taking risks isn’t unique to the adventure gaming industry. From the point of view of the company owners, this is smart business. It doesn’t allow for breakout hits, but it can keep a company happily profitable–or so the theory goes. In most cases, at least, you won’t lose too much money.
For-profit orporations are inherently “greedy.” Their stated reason for existence is to make money (within the bounds of the law, of course). To rail against that seems to be like being concerned about a dog for acting too much like a dog.
This is grist for another topic I’d like to weigh in on: “Does quality matter?” That ties into the notes on marketing I have. Hopefully I’ll get to that next week.
Brad:
I agree. If the woes of the industry were so simple that they could be encapsulated in a single short essay, we’d have fixed them by now.
As for beers and conversation at GTS, that’s a given. See you there!
January 28th, 2004 at 4:57 pm
I’m one of the players/DMs who has decided to stay with 3.0. Our group looked at 3.5 (one of us bought the new PHB, and we looked at the new SRD), and decided we prefered 3.0. You are right that now I’m faced with a problem when looking at new d20 books. If the book seems heavily influenced by the changes in 3.5, it instantly becomes unattractive. I’d never buy a new d20 book about rangers, for example. Our group is currently playing Arcana Unearthed. The new books that most interest me are those with new, optional rules (I’m seriously eyeing Green Ronin’s “Advanced” books now) or are less dependent on the core rules (I recently got Cityscape and I’m very happy with it).
January 28th, 2004 at 6:24 pm
Any bust from the d20 glut can’t possibly be as harmful as the cyclical fallout we see from the CCG category. There’s just not as much money involved.
While I agree with that, I must point out that while RPG companies deal with less money, they also have smaller bankrolls backing them. A loss that a CCG company may barely notice would be sufficient to knock out most RPG companies. Basically, while the dollar amounts involved in the CCG bust and the d20 bust may be drastically different, the impact it had upon the companies involved (well, primarily the manufacturers) is probably the same.
January 28th, 2004 at 7:12 pm
Matt
Thanks for responding. Of course games aren’t necessary within the context of survival/existence, but that’s talking on a whole other level and not really addressing the point. Was 3.5 necessary to anything other than a boost in WotC’s sales in the context of the gaming industry and the player base? Once again, it was probably not. That was my point.
I’ll admit that I’m idealistic when it comes to corporate practice. I did point out that I believe WotC has better reasons than most for pursuing pure profit. I didn’t rail against anything, nor did I deny that it’s reasonable to pursue cash if that is truly your goal. All I said was how sad it is that there’s so little unique work and a whole slew of “elf books”. Idealistic? Perhaps. Unreasonable to expect better? Probably. Still sad? Yes.
A dog acting like a dog doesn’t usually do more harm than good. Corporate practice can certainly do so. That’s why many of the more interesting things in the world come from the devoted creator, and not the corporate hack. It’s an unusual company that allows creatives enough leeway to produce something truly great. That’s too bad.
Thanks again! And thanks for the great topic.
January 28th, 2004 at 7:33 pm
Not sure if this directly impacts ‘D20′ sales, but I know that at least a portion of D&D players have become interested in the new D&D Miniatures from WOTC.
With 2 sets coming out in the latter 6 months of the year, a player could spend a fair amount of money trying to get the minis they want.
In my case, the release of 3.5 and the miniatures have renewed my interest in gaming, and led to the purchase of at least 3 non-WOTC D20 products in addition to upgrading my core books from 3.0 and buying some minis. For others, the miniature purchases may be taking away from funds they would have spent on other printed gaming material at this time last year.
I could probably have bought 5 or 6 more books from various companies for what I’ve spent on the miniatures.
Just another angle on things.
January 28th, 2004 at 8:49 pm
Jeff:
I agree. However, a single CCG overprint can ruin most companies and has. See ICE, Chaosium, Mayfair, etc. Interesting to see, though, that most of those companies started as RPG outfits and so maybe had less ability to soak a short-term loss than a better-financed startup.
Chris:
I certainly didn’t mean to slam you there, and I hope it didn’t come across that way. I certainly understand your feelings about this. My point was that Wizards is only beholden to Wizards. If they harm the d20 industry as a byproduct of actions that benefit them, they can hardly be faulted–although I don’t believe for a moment that they intended such a thing.
It’s good to be idealistic. Hold on to that. I love unique work myself. I also know that it historically hasn’t sold as well as things that are easier to digest. That’s a whole other topic though.
I’m optimistic about the industry as a whole. I just put forth a theory as to why the d20 sector seems to have stumbled at this particular time.
Paul W and PaulJohn: Thanks for your notes. It all helps to illuminate the situation.
January 28th, 2004 at 9:48 pm
No worries Matt. I didn’t feel slammed or insulted in any way. The written medium is too easy to misinterpret for me to take things too much to heart. I try to be careful with what I write so others don’t take things the wrong way. I was just trying to clarify—words like “greed” often carry more weight than I intend to portray.
It’s very intriguing and enlightening being able to speak to you and other game designers. I agree with the fact that Wizards must do what is best for Wizards (with a nod toward what’s best for Hasbro). Everyone has to do that, whether player or corporation, right? Don’t worry, I don’t think in terms of evil corporations trying to hold down or anything. It’s just that playing it safe often leads to very “middle-of-the-road” products. There’s only so much room at the middle of the road, isn’t there?
It’s too bad that innovative things don’t often sell as well. But then, to be realistic, an innovative product may be a niche within what’s already a small market. I look forward to your column on marketing and product quality.
Back on topic: What do you think can ease these d20 doldrums? How long might we have to wait until the market takes a swing up? Will there be some game companies who fall to Darwinian law? Will we see something new in the d20 arena from Human Head any time soon?
January 28th, 2004 at 10:29 pm
The biggest problem is that the game currently seems uninterested in bringing in NEW players. Fresh blood.
What happened with the boxed sets? Why isn’t Wizards interested in bringing NEW people into the hobby? Rather than just add more and more rules, why aren’t the interested in streamlining the game?
It seems to me that Wizards is just interested in sucking an extra 90 bucks out of it’s current fan base and it reallly doesn’t have any long term plans for the game.
January 28th, 2004 at 11:24 pm
An extremely valid point Troy. Unfortunately for the industry at large, Wizards and only Wizards has the mass market penetration to make a “Basic Dungeons & Dragons” set to bring in the new players. They are actually going to bring out a new “Basic” set later this year, or at least announced intentions to do so. However, since the last Red Box Basic set, no “introductory” level game has ever had the influence and draw those early Basic and Expert sets did (the purple Holmes set, the red/blue Moldvay/Cook set, and the red/blue Menzter set). This is because each was an “introductory” set, not a true “basic” set. Basic sets include everything you need to play and to build your own game. This is greatly at variance with Introductory sets, which require that you must buy further additions or sets in order to continue playing. The Intro set they had at the beginning of 3E was jsut such a set; beyond playing with the prepared characters you could not make your own setting, make your own adventures, or go any further without purchasing the three D&D books. And that’s the mistake I fear they will make with the new “Basic” set. In order for a Basic set to catch on, and draw (or “pull”) new players into 3.5, the big books, splatbooks, campaign books, etc., it must be designed to enable a player to not have to do that; it must be complete and stand on its own. Otherwise the new prospective consumer is going to lose interest rapidly. This has been proven time and again with all the “basic sets” and “intro sets” they’ve had since 1983.
Unfortunately, the folks with the vision and the desire to do it right don’t have the mass market “footprint” to make it work. And some of the new “basic” sets or “simpler” editions that will be coming out this year, while inspired and market niche worthy, do not fit the bill (i.e., “Castles & Crusades” by Troll Lords, “Ultimate Player’s Handbook” (or whatever it is) by Mongoose, etc.)
Only White Wolf/Sword & Sorcery Studios has the mass market penetration to make such a product work. And they are not interested (at least, as far as I have seen so far) in doing any such product.
January 28th, 2004 at 11:48 pm
Chris:
I don’t think there’s much that small companies can do to help d20 along. That’s up to Wizards. Sword & Sorcery or Mongoose might be able to make a dent, but that’s up to them.
I’m hoping that this summer will be a punch in the arm to the industry, but it might be another year before we really recover. In the meantime, we’ll see some consolidation and some lost companies. The trick, of course, is that’s it’s easy to put a small RPG company on life support instead of killing it, so many times they don’t entirely go away.
As for Human Head, we have no d20 products on the schedule at the moment. That’s not because of a lack of faith in the system. We’re doing a few boardgames this year and one RPG, which has a flavor that’s different than that of the d20 system.
Troy:
As James points out, Wizards has announced plans for a new basic set. Let’s hope it turns out well.
James:
I don’t know that the D&D Basic Set has to be a complete game, but it should do a better job of teaching someone how to play the game than the original introductory set for 3E. The d20 System is complex and must be daunting to a rookie. Anything that the Basic Set can do to ease entry would be a help.
Another company recently approached me about writing such a starter set. Sadly, I wasn’t in a position to be able to take on the project, but it does mean that other companies out there are considering tackling this problem.
January 29th, 2004 at 10:06 am
I’m hoping that this summer will be a punch in the arm to the industry, but it might be another year before we really recover. In the meantime, we’ll see some consolidation and some lost companies. The trick, of course, is that’s it’s easy to put a small RPG company on life support instead of killing it, so many times they don’t entirely go away.
Ryan once said that the most dangerous spot for a game company is between the half-million a year and $2 million a year marks. At first, I thought he was insane - there are tons of companies that would sell their sould to fall in that range but, as with many things Ryan says, I eventually realized he was right. The small companies (beloww the hal-million mark) are able (as you say) to go on life-support when things get tough. They often have low overhead (sometimes being run on the side of “real world” jobs) so when things get tough, it’s easy for them to wait until things turn around. Above the $2 million mark, the company is often bringing in enough money on a regular basis that they are a proven force in the industry so, when things get tough, they have the ability to still muscle through. In between those two are companies that must pay for things (offices, advertising, warehousing, marketing, etc., etc., etc.) yet they don’t have the income to justify all those expenses and, more importantly, they lack the safety net to easily survive rough spots.
Think about it, during each down-turn in the economy, which game companies have gone under? The majority of them fall into that 1/2 to 2 million range.
Kind of annoying that the companies that are achieving notable success are also the ones at the greatest risk…
Anyhow, enough rambling - my print job has finally sent to the printer so back to work with me.
January 29th, 2004 at 6:12 pm
Re: New Gamers
I agree with Troy regarding bringing new players into the game. With Hasbro taking over, I thought we would see a little more product showing up in non-game/comic shops. I’m not sure putting the D&D books in toy stores would work, but while HeroClix, and the new LOTR Mini game from GamesWorkshop have both found their way into Toys R Us, there was no sign of the D&D miniatures game.
Also, last year, a D&D board game type product was release in England (and possibly elsewhere), but not here in the US. While not a true RPG, it would certainly be a way to get younger gamers familiar with the D&D brand name. Perhaps the game never sold well overseas and that is why they never released the game here.
I’m sure there’s probably market research saying that these things wouldn’t make any difference, but they seem like logical ways to attract new customers to D&D, which one would expect to create some trickle down to all the D20 publishers.
January 29th, 2004 at 7:32 pm
Hey, how did Redhurst Academy do for Human Head? Well, I hope.
January 29th, 2004 at 9:01 pm
PaulJohn:
D&D itself doesn’t belong in a mass-market setting. A basic set, though, might work. Pokémon Jr. apparently did well in Wal-Mart, although not until the price was cut almost in half. Roleplaying, as most of us understand it, is too complicated for the mass. It lacks a broad appeal, much in the same way that needlepoint, RC cars, and tying flies do. There’s a lot there if you love it, but most folks can’t be bothered.
Chris:
Redhurst did all right, although not as well as we’d hoped. We’re talking about a sequel, though, so that’s a fine sign. Sadly, it came out at exactly the moment I spoke of in the initial post: right at the release of 3.5.
January 30th, 2004 at 8:20 am
Never underestimate the power of a poor economy to slow luxury industries. Jobless recovery my ass.