As I said on Monday, I do have the sickening feeling, that there may be too much supply and not enough demand for RPGs. But I don’t think that is the entire problem. I think most people and corporations actually believe that the RPG game industry is larger than it is, and that only serves to inflate the problem of perceived demand.
If you are reading this blog, it’s safe to say you fall within a very small but active demographic. You are passionate about RPGs. You are probably a gamemaster, or if not a GM, you’re an organizer for your group. You are not only interested in play RPGs, you are also interested in the business of RPGs. You may even harbor a desire to become an RPG designer (developer, editor, illustrator, cartographer, brand dude), or you are one already.
Now when I say small, I mean small in overall size. The funny thing is I think that group is large within the set of RPG enthusiast. Let me explain what I mean.
It’s actually challenging to figure out how many RPG players are out there. There are many claims, at least when it comes to D&D. According to a 2004 BBC News Online article released during the 30th anniversary marketing push and celebration of the game—and still is still touted as gospel in just about any Wiki entry you read on the subject—20 million people have played D&D since the game’s inception. It goes on to say that in that year Wizards of the Coast claimed that 3 million people played each month.
According to the 1999 Silver Anniversary Retrospective booklet for D&D, there were over 1 million copies of “B2 Keep on the Borderlands” in circulation. Much of that distribution probably had to do with the success of this boxed set, which was released in D&D’s heyday. The game has rarely reached those heights since.
I remember being in a meeting at WotC that year when that number was bandied around. My response was a guffaw. I had good reason to believe the number was a fraction of that. I saw actual sales numbers and organized play number—real metrics of the ground war. Another article for the associated press by Peter Svensson claimed that 6 million people played D&D in 2007. I think that number is just outright bullshit, and even Scott Rouse (the brand manager at the time) admitted that those numbers come from a survey and might be inflated.
What do I think is closer to the truth? My best (dare I say educated) guess is that I think 250,000 people are active in 4e D&D each month in the United States. That number may be as high as 350,000 people. I also think that anywhere between 15 to 25% may be active users of the product. It’s important that I say expert users. That means that they play, read, or spend a good part of their down time daydreaming about 4e D&D. More importantly, I think expert users means least one of the following things regularly: buy almost everything that is released for the product, organize or participate in organized play events, or are extremely active on forums and discussion groups, attend Gen Con Indy. And for my more controversial statement, I think those numbers have not changed significantly between 2004 and 2010. Heck, I’m not sure they have changed that significantly since D&D hit it big in the 80s (see the Acaeum research on sales and print run estimates).
“What about Pathfinder and its effect on those numbers?” some of you might ask. I think they have had an effect, but it has been pretty minimal. I do think that the Pathfinder RPG gave a home to 3e players who didn’t want to move on to a new edition that seem strange and disconnected in their point of view (2e didn’t really have a home, but then D&D was in a major state of decline when 3e was released, that wasn’t true for the release of 4e). I don’t think that’s a bad thing. You should play the game you want to play. I think that Pathfinder did affect the numbers but so did the influx of new or disenfranchised people who like the new system. I think it was a wash or a small decrease that enabled Paizo to thrive, which is great. The RPG industry is all the better for having more successful companies. That was true in 2000. It’s true today. I think the success of the Pathfinder rules are not only a symptom of a segment of the audience that was not ready to change rules, the also the fact that hardcore D&D fans who play 4e are more likely to buy Pathfinder products than vice versa, and that Paizo has harnessed a lot of soft power in the RPG industry, just like White Wolf and Wizards of the Coast did before them. (See the Kobold Quarterly interview where Sean Reynolds where he outlines his thoughts on the matter.)
But everywhere you look game fans and even game companies try desperately to make their games appear larger than they actually are. Now I don’t mean that RPG companies shouldn’t try to grow their business. I’m all for growing the RPG business, what I mean is that they should be realistic about the actual size of their business.
RPGs never were and will probably never be a mass-culture phenomenon, even when they are the object of mass-culture hysteria or the butt of mass-culture jokes. It’s played by a small tribe that is nerdier than the nerdsons. Often that tribe is at each other’s throats. But game fans and game companies keep trying to act like RPGs are big business. They are not. They don’t have to do some of the stupid upon-high garbage that makes big business seem so cold and disconnected. At the same time RPG fans don’t have to take every business decision as a personal assault on their likes and dislikes. It’s a fucking game not an affront. But then when you have such a high percentage of active users, that’s when the internet echo chamber becomes even louder.
Because our hobby is relatively small and filled with loud-mouth know-it-alls (I’m one, I admit it) we often amplify our drama with hyperbole and asshattery. What we don’t realize we are doing is driving away fans who just want to enjoy a hobby. And that is the biggest problem the RPG industry faces right now.
But I’ll get to that on Friday.
SRM,
As a in the trenches retailer I have to say that little company Paizo is gaining player share faster than most in the WotC camp would like to admit in public or believe. Currently in our midwestern market we see almost 30% of the alpha customer role-players have shifted to Pathfinder as their primary game (almost 80% of the Living Greyhawk fans) and of the new player acquisition the shift is slightly more – at almost 40%.
With the brains behind 3.5 at the wheel – a corporate willingness to learn and adapt, armed with the best core group of writers active today and no predisposition that they can;t beat WotC at their own game, they have a significant opportunity to upset the applecart. While D&D will always be the Coke of RPG’s, being the Pepsi of an industry gives much more freedom and potential for growth.
The gamble of 4E = Video Game Mechanics may not have the big payoff expected. It certainly doesn’t have the vibrancy of sales that 3.5 had – yet I see more role-players today than at any time over the past decade.
Hey, color me a Paizo fan. I agree with you. Jason and Erik are long time friends, and I know they are feeling fantastic about what Paizo is doing. Heck, I wrote a chunk of the Patherfinder Advanced Player’s Guide, so no one has to sing the praises of Pathfinder to me.
I have no doubt that Paizo is represented well represented in brick and mortar stores. But there are groups out there entirely sustained on the web and Amazon.com. There are a lot of reasons for it. It’s convenient. And when you’re a nerd on the go, convenience is everything. I also think there is a large group of RPG gamers who remember the game stores of the last decade. The game stores of the 90s were pits filled with strange people who didn’t seem to want to help you. I think that turned an entire set of gamers away from brick and mortar, even though game stores have changed for the better.
Now that being said, Paizo sold quite a few Pathfinder Core Rulebooks on Amazon, so I don’t think this entirely works only in 4e’s favor. In my mind they are both D&D. They are definitely both RPGs. Two successes equals awesome for the industry. Let’s make some more!
Thanks for this article. I’m very curious on the number of rpg players, and it’s difficult to find current industry numbers.
I think the asshattery is lower on rpg boards than it is in many other boards. I think it’s more the internet than it is rpg gamers. I’ve been in very few games where people have gotten kicked out due to bad behavior (granted I play with mostly friends and friends-of-friends). I think the nature of message boards in general lend themselves to trolls and flaming. Look at the comments on CNN’s political ticker or Youtube, for instance. Trolling on rpg boards pale in comparison.
I disagree with Pat about the difficulty of finding games, but then I live in Minneapolis, which seems to be a pretty strong market for rpg’s. I think some of the utilities for finding gamers online help, such as pen-paper.net and nearbygamers.com are very useful. Wotc used to have better support on their website. This is a tool that should be priority #1 bc gamers who aren’t playing regularly are less likely to keep buying products. I think obsidianportal.com, facebook, twitter, and meetup.com are also very valuable resources. RPG companies should pay close attention to advances in social networking tools (facebook, twitter, google wave, meetup, etc) , support game stores with *FREE* events (instead of events that cost game stores money or resources of any kind), and actively engage in improving tools for connecting gamers. I think D&D Encounters is very successful at this. I personally got turned away twice in a row because of full events at my gaming store (6+ players the first week, 12+ players the second week), and while that’s just a small anecdotal instance, the owners of the store were very surprised by turnout.
I see what you’re saying, but it it’s higher in frequency than the rest of the internet. And it’s also not like if someone is an asshat on CNN and YouTube, you are going to throw out news and videos.
RPGs? You might be out forever.
There is this idea in user interface that you want to transition your beginners to you intermediates as quickly as possible. It’s within this period that if the user becomes frustrated, he or she will not give the interface a chance, and maybe move on to a competing product. It’s a big deal in software, but it’s also a big deal for games.
RPGs have steep learning curves from beginning to intermediate. So steep that by the time a RPG’er is an expert (the point beyond intermediate) they’ve put in so much time and effort they feel entitled. Entitled to lower prices, entitled to deference, entitled being an asshat.
In the old days we were starved for geeky entertainment. D&D was the best show in town. Now, geeky entertainment is seeping out the walls. Those interested in RPGs have little interest in stroking another person’s ego, mostly when there are entire geek industries out there that have started to stroke their ego with reckless abandon.
Now I feel dirty.
I am actually *surprised* that the esimated numbers are so high, and to all those who think otherwise I invite you to try to start a group; and to truly gain a respect for how few players there really are, don’t use game stores or your friends. There’s still plenty of resources out there (Craigslist, school bulletin boards, etc), so it’s nowhere near impossible.
For an added challenge, don’t use D&D or anything from Whitewolf.
Wait a week.
You’ll be amazed at how the number of responses will rival that of posting a rusted, broken car on eBay.
With how much easier it is to pick up a controller and go nowadays, Pen & Paper gaming has gone the way of Beanie Babies: it’s no longer as popular as it once was. Heck, (and correct me if I’m wrong) Dungeons & Dragons has never gotten NEAR the popularity of Beanie Babies. Sure, there’s longevity, but most of those are just people who have been playing the game since they were young. To rephrase the last paragraph up there: P&P Gaming is a hobby and the industry needs to realize that (if it hasn’t already) before it can grow to the size they claim.
I see what you are saying Pat, and we may be in different situations, but I know we don’t live in different cities. With the turnout at D&D encounters and strong meet-up groups, and a number of good game stores, I think the best way to network is face to face. I think the bulletin board used to approach because gamers didn’t have a lot of options. These days they have tons. Few people will make the leap of going over to a stranger’s house to play a game called “All Flesh Must Be Eaten” but they will go over to their good buddy Pat’s house to do it.
Oh, I was just creating an activity that would serve as an example of how many P&P players there are out there. Of course if you really want to find gamers you would go to gaming stores or events like D&D Encounters, and if you want to find sports fans you would hang at a sports shop and go to a bar that’s playing a game that you enjoy. What I was trying to do was eliminate the obvious meetup points and allow one to see how many gamers are really out there.
You could take the same exercise and apply sports to it. “D&D Encounters all day. BYOS” would become “Tyson -vs- Mr T Payperview. BYOB”
I’m sure you can imagine which one would get the larger turnout.
While I think your play numbers might be just a smidge low (maybe 500k 4e players who play at least monthly), I think you are spot on. The tabletop RPG industry is a cottage industry compared to other worldwide businesses, but the “hyperbole and asshattery” really does seem disproportionate compared to elsewhere. Then again, people in general seem to be more that way when it comes to hobbies than other parts of their lives.
I would love my numbers to be a smidge low, but I don’t think they are. In fact, I think they may be a tad high. D&D and RPGs is often a passion. Hell, I know it is for me. I know it is for you, Shawn. Maybe I’m getting old, but I really just don’t get why, quiet often, we are totally dicks to one another taking about our fantasy worlds or the business of creating fantasy worlds. Never mind, I was like that when I was younger too. There are much better reasons to be a dick. Don’t you know there’s a war going on? Two even!
I don’t think the asshattery phenomenon is limited to just gamers. I know otherwise normal people who go onto sports forums (not to mention actual sporting events) and act like true asshats, including physical violence.