Before I say anything else, let me say this: I’ve been paying attention to the RPG industry for 20 years now. And for 20 years, people have been predicting the death of the industry. The industry, you will note, is still here. So this essay should not be mistaken as a heralding of the End Times.
But I did want to address a few of the memes I’ve seen circling recently, and to do that I first need to step back and take a slightly wider view.
THE INDUSTRY IS DYING?
Is the industry dying? The truth is, nobody knows. There are certainly signs that the industry is contracting, but it’s also been 10 years since any meaningful marketing research in the hobby games industry has been made public. And the fundamental shifts in the ways that games are distributed and purchased have turned the number we used to use to measure the size of the market into an arguably apples-to-oranges comparison.
It’s known that the number of independent game stores has shrunk. But, on the other hand, much of that decline can be almost directly linked to (a) the poor inventory management and business practices of gaming stores during the D20 boom-bust cycle (which was not the first time that poor inventory control and business practices had resulted in gaming stores sucking up the bust end of the boom-bust cycle in a game); and (b) the advent of internet commerce. Are the dollars going away or are they going online?
Maybe they’re going away. After all, publishers are almost universally reporting lowers sales on a per title basis. But, on the other hand, we’ve also seen a prodigious explosion in the number of companies publishing games over the past several years. The RPG industry is also one of the few industries to really grab hold of long-tail economics and make its vast back-catalog of material available electronically. Is the easy availability of older games and supplements reducing the demand on newer games and supplements?
There’s a lot of anecdotal evidence going around to suggest that the market is graying — the average gamer is getting older and people aren’t seeing as many younger gamers. I used to be harboring some of those same feelings until recently, when I realized I was making an obvious mistake: When I was 10 years old and started gaming, I was naturally exposed to a lot of fellow 10 year olds. Now I’m almost 30. Why would I expect to be running into a lot of 10 year old gamers?
In fact, I recently went back to my alma mater to direct a play for the students there. I was surprised to discover that several members of my cast and crew were active roleplayers (GURPS and Shadowrun). The minute I was exposed to a younger crowd, younger gamers were there to be found. (And when I was in the exact same theater program 10+ years ago, there were no active gamers.)
In addition, the average graying of the market is almost inevitable, assuming that: (1) The market is retaining long-term gamers (which it clearly is); and (2) Most people start gaming when they’re young. Even if you add the exact same number of young gamers to the market every year, the demographics will steadily skew older as your existing players age.
Are we, in fact, suffering from a lack of replacement players? It’s possible. But there’s absolutely no data to support the contention in either direction.
WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?
But let’s accept, for the moment, that the industry is in a period of contraction (perhaps a terminal one): Players are leaving and new players aren’t replacing them. Why is that happening? There seem to be two popular memes:
(1) Video games are poaching tabletop’s audience.
(2) D&D was a fad in the ’80s. It will never be that popular again.
In both cases, the underlying philosophy is a shrug of the shoulders: The decline and fall of the roleplaying game was inevitable. There’s nothing that can be done about it.
There’s certainly truth to be found in both memes.
Video games, for example, are flat-out better for delivering certain types of entertainment that used to be delivered by roleplaying games. If you’re interested in pure hack ‘n slash play, for example, there’s really no question that Diablo is better at delivering it: The game does the math for you. It gives you pretty graphics. It gives you a built-in soundtrack. You can play it any time you want to. You can even play it with your friends.
Similarly, D&D was a fad in the ’80s. The game itself had gotten mainstream recogition and was able to spawn a wide array of spin-off products andmedia tie-ins.
But, on the flip-side, roleplaying games are still capable of doing things that even the best computers can’t even begin to duplicate. And plenty of things settle into patterns of long-term success after starting off as fads.
THE GATEWAY PRODUCT
I think the underlying decay of the roleplaying games industry can be traced back to one core problem: The lack of a gateway product.
Dungeons & Dragons, for better or for worse, is still the primary route by which new gamers enter the hobby. And the sad truth is that the route just isn’t as easy as it used to be.
From 1974 until 1991, D&D was continuously available in an affordable, all-in-one box that was a legitimate game in its own right: From ’74 to ’77 there was the original boxed set. From ’77 to ’81 there was the Holmes Basic Set. From ’81 to ’83 there was the Moldvay Basic Set. And from ’83 to ’91 there was the BECMI Basic Set.
With the publication of the Rules Cyclopedia in 1991, however, the Basic Set or Basic Game products became nothing but a preview for other products. And they were previews that you had to actually pay for.
(Note that I’m not condemning the existence of supplements. I’m talking about the Basic Set becoming a preview for some other product. What’s the distinction? Well, when I had finished playing through my BECMI Basic Set, I went out and bought the Expert Set. But I didn’t stop using my Basic Set in order to use my Expert Set. The Basic Set wasn’t a preview of the Expert Set; rather the Expert Set expanded the game presented in the Basic Set.
But if you bought the Basic Set in the mid-’90s, then your next step was to buy the Rules Cyclopedia — at which point you stuck your Basic Set on the shelf and never touched it again.)
This lack of a gateway product has had several major effects:
(1) There hasn’t been any legitimate version of the game packaged to look like a game to the average consumer.
(2) Similarly, there hasn’t been a legitimate version of the game packaged to be sold through mainsteam toy stroes and game shops right next to the other boxed games.
(3) Once the Rules Cyclopedia went out of print, the entry cost for playing the game tripled.
(4) The investment time in terms of reading the rulebooks also drastically increased. The BECMI Basic Set I started playing with had roughly 100 page in it, and a significant chunk of that was actually a solo play adventure. By contrast, 4th Edition’s core rulebooks are 800+ pages.
(The solo play adventure, by the way, meant that you were playing D&D within 5 minutes of opening the box. You didn’t even have to get a group of your friends together in order to get a taste of what the game had to offer.)
So the game has become less available, less accessible, and more expensive. Is it really that shocking that sales declined?
We lost our entry level product nearly 20 years ago. And people stopped entering the hobby.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
When AD&D came out, TSR stiffed Dave Arneson. They claimed that he wasn’t owed royalties because AD&D wasn’t the same game as D&D. Arneson sued and, by all accounts, TSR was forced to keep the basic D&D game in print as a result of that lawsuit. If it wasn’t for that lawsuit, TSR would have most likely discontinued the publication of the D&D game and focused entirely on AD&D.
I think TSR lucked out. I think the success the game enjoyed in the ’80s was as a direct result of keeping the game available in an all-in-one box that wasn’t just a preview for a more expensive product.
In fact, I think I lucked out. I think there’s a fairly good chance that, if it wasn’t for the BECMI Basic Set, I would never have started gaming.
Let me lapse into a tangent here for a moment and tell you my own story of getting into gaming:
The general concept of a roleplaying game had sort of percolated into my brain (I remember the novelization of E.T. being a significant moment, along with the ads TSR used to put in Marvel comics). And I liked that concept a lot. It sounded fascinating.
So I was perfectly primed the first time I ever saw a roleplaying game for sale: It was the BATMAN ROLEPLAYING GAME, a spin-off of Mayfair’s DC Heroes game. I bought it. I read it. I bounced off of it. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
So, in lieu of that, I ended up making my own BATMAN game. My brother played Batman and every single action was resolved using an opposed roll of 1d6: I, as GM, rolled an unmodified 1d6. My brother, as Batman, rolled an unmodified 1d6. If his roll was higher, he succeeded. If my roll was higher, he failed.
And we rolled for literally every declared action, leading to the one moment of hilarity I can remember from that game: Batman crashing the batmobile on his way back to the batcave.
My father saw my interest and pulled out a copy of Middle Earth Role-Playing. I tried reading that. I bounced off of it. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it: What was I supposed to do with it? And the density of the rules blew my mind. I managed to create a character for the game, but I never actually did anything with it.
I also bounced off his copy of Bunnies & Burrows.
It was the BECMI Basic Set that got me playing. It’s a near-perfect example of an introductory product should be: A complete game (including all the funky dice you need). A crystal clear example of play. A solo-play adventure so that you can immediately get a taste for how awesome the game can be. And a complete module for the first time you DM.
A product like that hasn’t existed before or since. About the only change I would make is to expand the number of levels supported (1-3 is a fairly shallow gameplay experience). I’m not a fan of 4th Edition, but I still wish that WotC would release a product like this supporting the entire Heroic Tier of play using a stripped down set of core rules.
(It also wouldn’t hurt if WotC developed a mini-version of the game that could be included in computer games, DVDs, and other licensed products. They could also develop a line of D&D Adventure Novels that would incorporate a stripped down D&D system. They are virtually the only company that could realistically do this. The only other company that could even try would be White Wolf, who could theoretically produce an E.V.E. roleplaying game and include mini-versions of the game in copies of E.V.E. Online.)
ARCHIVED HALOSCAN COMMENTS
Justin Alexander
Both of those, unfortunately, were (using my definitions) preview products, not gateway products. Neither the Diablo Fast-Play set nor the Alternity: Starcraft product had character creation rules, for example.
In fact, the entire Fast-Play trademark was TSR’s way of announcing: “This product is a preview we’re expecting you to pay money for.”
If they had been legitimate gateway products — i.e., complete games — they might have met with more success. (Which is not to say that someone out there didn’t buy those as their first introduction to roleplaying games. Just that they weren’t particularly well-positioned for that.)
Unfortunately, I don’t think WotC’s current business methodology allows for the creation of gateway products — they view them as competing with themselves.
Sunday, March 22, 2009, 7:15:24 PM
Illiterate
I disagree on the absence of “gateway” products. Just none that necessarily worked out well.
http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Alternity:_StarCraft_Edition
http://diablo.wikia.com/wiki/Diablo_D%26D
Both were intended to cash in on the brand recognition of Blizzard properties. Both should have worked better, been marketed better. Never played either one myself. I already had Alternity and D&D. These should have been sold at gamestop and EB, not at the Wizards and Games and Gizmos (where my reaction was typical)
Keep on the Shadowfell should have been sold next to stacks of monopoly and boggle
Saturday, March 21, 2009, 10:33:45 PM
“John Lee”
My “gateway product” was a combination of Warcraft and Magic: the Gathering. Warcraft got me into semi-roleplaying (custom maps on BattleNet), and M:tG familiarized me with WotC and its complexities.
Saturday, March 21, 2009, 1:05:08 PM
Tetsubo
I got into RPGs in 1978 via a friend. I had never heard of role-playing nor ever seen a role-playing game advertised or for sale. But once exposed I was hooked. Since then I have collected enough games to cover 60+ feet of shelves.
Maybe I have a different perspective but I don’t see any ‘shrinking’. There are *so* many games I want to buy I could literally buy a new one every month for years to come. Both older out of print works and new products in both D20 (my preference) and many other systems.
I see the release of 4E as a bad thing though. I think it has created a fission within the gaming community and diluted what was a great game (3.5). The OGL and the SRD helped to grow our hobby. The GSL will not do the same.
My I recommend Game Geeks on YouTube? It has recently exposed me to a host of new RPGs.
Saturday, March 21, 2009, 5:40:13 AM
Justin Alexander
I think there are very pertinent comparisons between RPGs and comic books. There’s no question, for example, that the direct market saved the comics industry… but it also ghetto-ized it. Comics spent most of the ’80s and ’90s completely unavailable in mainstream markets, which meant that the only way new readers were being introduced was through existing readers.
Manga’s availability in mainstream bookstores has helped to change that. But Marvel and DC still can’t seem to quite figure it out, and I think the only reason they’re still alive is because of the success of Marvel’s superhero movies over the past decade.
The reported failure of 4th Edition to significantly convert 3rd Edition players is huge. Ryan Dancey went out of his way to make sure that 3rd Edition converted players of previous editions.
No such effort, obviously, will ever be 100% successful. But 3rd Edition’s successes in this regard were substantial and significant.
4th Edition’s marketing, OTOH, seemed almost specifically designed to alienate 3rd Edition players. Even more bafflingly to me was their decision to alienate third-party companies. If WotC’s goal was to fragment the market, they could have hardly done a better job of it.
Friday, March 20, 2009, 11:15:30 AM
Confanity
Interestingly enough, there *is* in fact a mini-version of the game, called Tiny Adventures, available as an “app” on Facebook. You choose a pregenerated character, equip it, choose “adventures” to go on, and buff and heal your friends’ characters. Each adventure is broken down into a series of little scenes, each of which comprises a single check (ability, attack, or AC… no skills at all!) and some flavor text. Resolution is a simple pass/fail system with HP loss, XP and treasure gain, and occasionally adventure progress or stats, determined by the results.
The attractive part: the vignettes are often amusing, and in terms of combat resolution are far more imaginative than actual 4E would ever be able to encourage, with its minis and grids and codified “moves.”
The negative part: player choice is minimal and near-meaningless, after encountering the same scene twice it starts to wear thin (especially if you somehow manage to fail an Intelligence-based check that the same character passed on a previous adventure), and there is literally no role-playing. The fact that everything is literally out of your hands means that you can click to start an “adventure,” log out of Facebook, wait a couple hours, and next time you log in, it’ll be finished. Worse, because the player has no meaningful influence over anything that happens, I was only able to bear running the app at all (in order to buff a couple friends) by deliberately cultivating this level of apathy about my own character.
In short, they tried, but they could hardly have made a mini-game more calculated to turn me off of the product if that had been their goal.
Friday, March 20, 2009, 11:12:15 AM
JohnnyDM
Polling the area game store owners about 4th edition sales revealed some interesting results. Slightly less than half of their current D&D customers bought 4th ed. with the other half swearing loyalty to 3.5 and/or openly deriding 4th ed. Surprisingly, there was a significant initial spike in new gamers buying 4th ed. Possibly due to a savvy, targeted ad campaign. Very few of those new gamers have come back for more 4th ed products. One of the four stores I polled actually sells more out of print 3.5 product than new 4th ed. I can’t speak to why 4th ed dropped off in sales other than anecdotes, but I can’t help but draw parallels to the comic and sportscard markets. You are looking at close to $100 to start playing D&D with little attempt to provide an inexpensive gateway product.
On a similar topic the stigma of being a D&D player has NOT gone away. While it has gained more acceptability overall (possibly due to people who played in the past are now influential adults), it is still synonymous with “nerd” in popular culture. D&D players are still subject to social persecution in most jr. and sr. high school circles despite the acceptance of video games which derive most of their concepts from D&D.
Friday, March 20, 2009, 7:31:40 AM
JohnnyDM
Justin, your comments on the importance of a gateway product are dead on. Having ran a comics/game/card shop from 1985 to 1996 (and still visit weekly for my comic fix) I’ve seen a major shift in customer demographics. It was most blatant in the sports card market which exploded in 1989 with the “chase card” marketing schema. The manufacturers rapidly escalated the price of the packs which kept pushing the cheap, basic “gateway” packs off the shelves. The result? Kids don’t buy sports cards anymore and the industry has completely imploded. This is happening right now with comics as the price of the entry level (cheapest Marvel or DC) comic just jumped in price by $1 across the board. Remember the “Still only .35!” Marvel days? When a major price increase was a dime. Now the cheapest superhero comics are $3 and there are virtually no kids buying them.
Friday, March 20, 2009, 6:59:09 AM
Justin Alexander
@Bob: I think you’re underselling the strategic complexity of Magic. I never really got into Magic, but I do appreciate that it’s a game which (a) can be picked up and played very quickly; but (b) has a lot of depth to it. That’s one of the reasons it was (and continues to be) so successful.
This is actually a quality that D&D had during its hey-day: You could pick up the BECMI set and be (solo-)playing within 5 minutes. And it didn’t take much longer than that to wrangle and run a fun and successful dungeon crawl.
(The ease of both running and playing in a successful dungeon crawl is the topic for an essay I’m currently working on. I feel strongly that this has a lot to do with the success of D&D.)
And look at when Magic conked D&D over the head and took its lunch money: 1993. Two years after D&D’s last legitimate gateway product went out of print, a new fantasy game shows up with (a) a low price point; (b) quick gameplay; and (c) high replay value. Did Magic take that market? Or did it just step into the vacuum that TSR had left?
@Gareth: Good point when it comes to advertising. I saw WotC doing some pretty savvy targeting of online communities with the launch of 4th Edition (the PvP, Penny Arcade, and Wil Wheaton out-reach was well bethought) — but I still don’t see the type of mainstream advertising that TSR was doing in the ’80s.
Of course, on the flip-side, what’s the point of advertising in the mainstream when you don’t have a mainstream product for sale?
@Alastair: Absolutely. The importance of word-of-mouth in developing new RPG players cannot be understated. That’s always been a part of the hobby and it always will be.
But if your marketing plan consists entirely of word of mouth, then you’ve got a problem! Wink
Thursday, March 19, 2009, 11:54:03 PM
Alastair
Nail, head, hit! Bam! You rolled a Critical Explanation check!
I introduced a bunch of players at a gaming club to D&D 3.5 by doing just what the Basic set did for me: I ran simple, one session adventures for the kids. Some of these guys are now playing in my high level games, some are playing among themselves. That’s the way to get new players – but I had to write it for myself.
Thursday, March 19, 2009, 6:40:16 PM
Bob Oboc
In the mid 90’s the big game in my Jr high school was Magic the Gathering, which offered the kind of quick and easy, “dumbed down” play that appeals to many younger players. In a way its popularity set the stage for the arrival of MMORPGs – fast and easy with little to no thought necessary on the part of the player when compared to traditional RPGs. I dont remember ever seeing a game of D&D played there; I was introduced to it by a friend from another school.
Some sort of Basic set would be a boon for attracting younger/new players to the game. Now that the “nerd” stigma has worn off and even achieved some degree of mainstream acceptance, kids are probably more likely than ever to be open to the type of game playing experience provided by RPGs.
Thursday, March 19, 2009, 6:06:35 PM
Gareth Wilson
On a similar topic, how do 10 year olds find out about DnD in 2009? Do Wizards advertise it anywhere kids are likely to see it?
Thursday, March 19, 2009, 2:17:49 PM
David
I started with the Rules Cyclopedia. It still holds a place of honor on my RPG shelves.
As far as a gateway game, there is Dungeons and Dragons Tiny Adventures on facebook. A tabletop version of that would be great into to new players.
Thursday, March 19, 2009, 2:00:47 PM
Starfox_SFX
I also started with the old basic, advanced, expert rules set boxes.
When 4th ed was coming out and a lot of people were talking about how they felt that the amount of rules in 3.5 was a barrier to new players, I thought that a good move would have been to put out a stripped down “basic edition” rules set for 3.5 that removed or greatly simplified what people thought were the more difficult aspects of the rules.
Include only the basic 4 classes, cap out the levels at 5 or so to minimize spell lists and include some of the most basic feats. Then like in the days of the boxed sets, when you wanted to add complexity and more options you could buy the advanced set and add in new classes/feats/levels/spells and combat options (like grapple, trip and the like).
Or, the basic set could go all the way to lv 20, but again leave out more difficult rules, keep only the 4 basic classes and smaller spell and feat lists. To add complexity, again you buy the expert set adding in the more advanced rules/spells and expanding your class options.
Thursday, March 19, 2009, 1:35:52 PM
Welleran
I think your point about a “gateway game” is spot on. Pretty much every gamer I ever knew either started with a simple game like the boxed D&D set, or learned from someone who did. Ten year olds do NOT buy a $100 worth of hardcovers and go to town!
Thursday, March 19, 2009, 12:18:35 PM
And now in 2018, thanks to Stranger Things, a new, simpler edition of DnD, and a great starter product in Lost Mines of Phandelver, we’re in a boom part of the cycle again. It’s funny how the world turns.