Fifteen million dollars divided by three million is $5 each, not $3 each. ;-)
More importantly, those appear to be hobby channel numbers, which I believe excludes Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc. It isn't the whole market.
The TTRPG market is incredibly small. It's much smaller than you think.
It's estimated that in the entire history of D&D, roughly 10 million people have played world-wide. That's not active players, that's all players throughout history.
RPG players are an exceedingly small minority.
Last I heard 4e had a million players. But that can't be possible according to your article.
The ROI simply wasn't high enough.
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slight aside here... 5E also has the advantage of being able to take most lower level adventure modules/APs and use them directly. Minimal conversion is needed once the DM is familiar with the relatively simple 5E rules. Which is to say that for 5E WotC need not publish anything like a regular AP series to maintain core sales. There is just too much already available.
I will point out that Paizo doesn't publish a regular AP series to maintain core sales. It's kiiiinda the other way around. In a manner of speaking.
TTRPG has never been a big segment of games. That said, it is still big enough to support the old players. Sure, if it crashes, it would probably mean no new flashy art hardcovers... but that's not what we need, is it? We can still play and share things online, and the old material is still there. New recruitment will be difficult, but hobbies like ours always found it so. Ask the various styles of musicians and bands how easy it is to sell roughly your old product to new youngsters. Also, with less focus on bean-counting and high-priced products, maybe the amateur system architects will be able to do more than they have been.
Kickstarter has strengthened the industry and is an valuable tool. Because the market is smaller than it used to be, being able to secure the money needed for the print run BEFORE you order it means you don't have to take out loans, or hold off paying your people in order to pay for printing/shipping (which eat up over 50% of a companies budget).
I play a weekly game at a company that produces multiple RPG-lines and has recently re-released a 20 year anniversary of one of their games. They have maybe 5 full time employees, despite producing board games, card games and RPGs, some of which have been featured on Tabletop (Wil Wheaton's show). For them, they still WANT to use kickstarter for the exact reason listed above. Securing funding/sales for new products prior to putting money down on the printing/shipping of that product gives them the ability to actually work on those projects and put more effort into writing/testing them.
You should try talking to people who actually publish games for a living about this. You're going to get a different answer than the one you assume you'll get. I know this, because I do talk to people who publish for a living. I understand, it's second-hand and I'm choosing to not name drop.
Publishing books is expensive, really expensive. Investing money into a product that you don't get a return on for 4-8 months is difficult. Particularly if you don't know a game will sell well.
Kickstarter has no impact on games like Pathfinder and D&D. Paizo employees have regularly stated that core book sales have increased year over year, every year. D&D is selling like gangbusters the past 6 months.
Everyone else though, a service like kickstarter is extremely valuable to their business model. Without it, every new product is a major risk. With it, they can gauge customer interest and secure funding for their projects without risking their entire company.
Kickstarter is not the cause of FLGS woes. Maybe the internet as a whole, but not kickstarter specifically. Not sure if you're aware, but there are often game store backer levels for new RPGs. A game store can back the game and get copies at the kickstarter price, with no extras, but often at a discount so that they can offer the book as soon as it's out and at the correct price. Publishers actually use kickstarter to find gaming stores and essentially get their game out to them more efficiently.
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OK. So here's my question for you (and I'm expressly not asking for names to be dropped in the answer):
If Kickstarter is so valuable to the "little guys" (i.e. anyone but Paizo, WotC, and... White Wolf?... and?), how many employees has the place you're most familiar with hired since 2009?
You mention up-thread that "they have maybe 5 full time employees." How many of those were hired, or upgraded, since the Kickstarter phenomenon? How many temps or part-timers have they hired since then?
Most small companies don't last. If you employ five people on a decent wage for 30 years then that is a solid achievement. We don't need every business to expand year-on-year.
OK. So here's my question for you (and I'm expressly not asking for names to be dropped in the answer):
If Kickstarter is so valuable to the "little guys" (i.e. anyone but Paizo, WotC, and... White Wolf?... and?), how many employees has the place you're most familiar with hired since 2009?
You mention up-thread that "they have maybe 5 full time employees." How many of those were hired, or upgraded, since the Kickstarter phenomenon? How many temps or part-timers have they hired since then?
Several.
One of the co-owners has stopped working full-time. They still do work, but on a per project basis. They hired someone else to do their former work load though.
As for creating new jobs? None.
At the same time though, there have been several RPG releases from them that I know for a fact would not have seen the light of day without Kickstarter.
They make most of their money on board and card games. RPG's take up a lot more time and produce significantly lower profits. They want to make RPG's, but they can't commit the resources to funding product lines prior to securing orders for them. Hence why kickstarter makes it possible.
I have signed an NDA, and I'm not breaking those right now (whether I name them or not). I just prefer to not sit around pointing out who I play games with is all.
Your music industry analogy is false. Artists are making comparable money to what they used to make. The thing is they aren't making that money from the same sources. This site has some interesting statistics if you want to look. Revenue streams in music have become more diversified. Singles sell more than albums. Streaming licenses matter. Getting paid as a session artist, touring member, teacher, etc, all contribute. Musicians have never really led stable lifestyles, but trying to measure it the exact same way you might measure it 20 years ago will give false results. People who weren't giant superstars never had an easy go of it.
I think the overall pie is shrinking, at the moment it might be shrinking slowly though. In the positive side, gamers are getting older. Older people have more disposable income. The negative side is that more people are leaving the hobby than joining. I know a lot of gamers who buy books but don't get to play the games they buy any more. Eventually that market is going to start drying up.
It's always been a tiny niche hobby. I don't think that will change, unless someone can fundamentally change how we roleplay, and then I'm sure most of the existing community will continuously argue "no true scottsman...!"
Kickstarter serves as a stop gap, maintaining an open line of communication between producers and consumers, helping both sides communicate with each other more effectively. It's capitalizing on that positive aspect of an aging market to sustain the industry at a higher level than it could otherwise maintain. If RPG's do take off and become more popular, say doubling in size, the pool of people who have run successful kickstarter campaigns will be a great resource to help provide content for companies that choose to publish works.
Someone to check out would be Fred Hicks (he owns/runs Evil Hat). He's one of a tiny number of RPG publishers that releases financial data, if you want to get some insight into how small some of the larger names (outside of the big 2) are. He also tends to be fairly responsive if you're polite and ask questions in a friendly manner.
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I find part of the realization of how small our hobby is, is that I have some responsibility in supporting what I find important within it. Being a consumer is not passive in this hobby IMO, but rather something that should be done actively and with care. I personally don't have a lot of money to spend, so I spend it carefully and on products/creative people that I really want to support.
The other thing is that because it is so small, if you get active it isn't hard to meet the movers and shakers within the industry. I haven't even come close to meeting all the big names, but I've met/played with at least one person from most of the big companies.
Also, for at least scratching that itch of oddball games, conventions are a great place to go. Not every convention has every game, but you can often find something that's interesting. You don't get the sense of the long-term campaign play, but you at least get to have fun with the game and scratch that itch. Plus the time commitment for conventions is much smaller, one weekend of busy activity compared to a weekly game.
Recently I went to just the last day of a local convention. I went as a referee/judge, so I could only run games, but I ran 3 very different ones and had a great time. Plus my badge was free since I was a referee.
Switching gears to the local gaming stores, I think they have to reinvent themselves. I think the inclusion of RPGs on their shelves is an act of love that I truly appreciate and hope they continue. The successful store here recently moved into a larger space (not on purpose, they got kicked out by their previous landlord and lucked into a larger space). They serve primarily as a comic and M:tG store. RPG's take up probably 5% of the floor space. They also have a significant space of tables, which they let people play whatever. They host PFS and previously D&D Encounters, along with wargaming nights, magic tournaments and other activities. Stores have to be ambassadors for their hobbies, not just a place to get supplies if they want to stay relevant.
As I mentioned, many RPG kickstarters have included a store backer level, where you get 4-10 copies of the book and nothing else. They do it at a reasonable rate so that the stores can get the copies right along with all the other backers and start selling them right away. The LGS hasn't been completely forgotten with the advent of kickstarter.
thejeff and GeraintElberion - Points taken and granted.
But I'm curious as to whether this has made the TTRPG economic pie:
1) Bigger or
2) Just reapportioned into smaller slices the same pie or
3) Is just reapportioning a shrinking pie.
I understand that, especially from the outside, it looks like WotC and Paizo are deflecting the Kickstarter arrows just fine but what about the TTRPG industry as a whole?
My perspective is skewed (because crowd funding has increased my expenditure on RPGs significantly) but I suspect it's made the market bigger overall.
I don't really understand how it would make the pie smaller - if kickstarter and the like were outlawed or something, what do you think would happen? Less stuff would get made, I'd guess and less would be spent.
More importantly, those appear to be hobby channel numbers, which I believe excludes Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc. It isn't the whole market.
The fifteen million is an estimate of the whole (US/Canada) market, through all channels.
Of course, as you point out, the survey from which they presumably get their most reliable data is limited to the hobby trade distributors and retailers. So it's perhaps not clear how accurate their whole market estimate is going to be. Nonetheless, it's probably the best there is.
They also called out 2013 as being a low ebb for TTRPGs due to D&D's hiatus.
I guess I don't see why crowdfunding has lowered the bar (to use your phrase). I think it's digital publishing that's done that.
Running a successful kickstarter requires a lot of infrastructure, planning, coordination and ongoing communication/engagement - if anything, I think it increases the professionalism of the 3PPs which utilise it (in an ongoing fashion) because the customer base is more demanding once they've paid for something.
I also don't accept your step 3 as being a negative - it may increase competition, but the medium sized companies are only going to be "under pressure" if they are complacent and fail to innovate or to otherwise continue to meet demand. They're still better placed to produce new, high quality stuff than the two-person operation with access to crowdfunding, imo.
The reason I'm such a fan of crowdfunding is that it allows the production of very niche products which wouldn't otherwise get made - I don't see myself diverting funds from the more traditional publishers to buy those. Those "exotic" products are extra revenue to the RPG industry and, if they're priced appropriately, should be high margin too.
The low level pledges are functionally identical to a preorder. However you can include leather bound, signed copies, extra art, more content, etcetera which otherwise wouldn't be made - secure in the knowledge that the market is there and thus greatly reducing the risk.
To me, the result of crowdfunding is that stuff gets made which otherwise wouldn't - I don't see any evidence that it's leading to a decline in sales of the more traditionally produced products (which it seems is what would need to happen if your thesis were correct).
I'm also not entirely convinced it would be a bad thing even if your scenario actually did came about. Change always brings good and bad things. If there were no more medium sized companies doing things "the old way" they could still move into crowdfunding as an ongoing business model (kobold press seemed to operate pretty well in this way for a protracted period). That's not inherently bad, as far as I can see. It's just different.
But 4 isn't really due to the existence of kickstarter - those changes in the marketplace have been happening for years.
I don't know if 5 is true or not - there are fewer beginners starting due to seeing the game in their FLGS, but I don't think that was really much of an avenue for new players anyhow - certainly where I live, the only people going into gaming stores are gamers.
I don't really see what point 6 is - it sounds to me that you're suggesting the kickstarter fad is going to fade (?)
I'd need to see evidence, to be frank. Whenever something new happens in business, there's a tendency to say "it's bad for how we used to do things/currently do things, therefore it's bad". The actual outcomes though are generally just different - it's pretty rare for an innovation to destroy an industry unless it is replaced with something judged to be "better".
In my case, the existence of crowdfunding is definitely a boon - my expenditure on "traditionally produced" RPG supplements hasn't changed, but I'm buying more RPG products overall and some publishers just getting their feet in the door are benefitting from extra exposure and extra revenue that they'd just never be able to get through traditional methods.
If I'm typical, then it's really hard to see how that's bad for the hobby overall.
There are no doubt people who decide to spend $x on RPG products and, due to their support for kickstarters, are now spending less on more traditional publishers' products. However, I'd suggest that's because they want the kickstarter product more, not out of any dedication to the funding model. I think the obvious defence to competition is to get better, so if the medium sized publishers take the bull by the horns and lift their game - those $ will flow back to them. If not, a new medium sized publisher will arise, better servicing the market's demand.
I think we all still win, even if this latter group are the majority (yes some medium publishers might fail, but they'll be replaced with companies who are, by assumption, making better stuff).
It seems to me that the only losing scenario is if there's a whole bunch of half-baked, poorly executed kickstarters draining revenue from established companies and I just don't see that happening. I think the crowdfunding market is maturing - the days of "I've got this cool idea, give me some money" are long gone, in my view. There have been enough failed or significantly delayed projects that people have begun to wise up. I don't think the fragmentation you envisage is going to occur - rather there will be some "run via crowdfunding" businesses working alongside some "financed traditionally" businesses.
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Okay. I don't really have anything else to say. Perhaps we have such wildly different experiences that we're essentially talking past one another (I don't see kickstarters as encouraging PDFs, but the exact opposite, for example - without crowdfunding we'd have far fewer printed RPG supplements, in my opinion).
Ultimately, I disagree with the premise - it seems to me that kickstarter, indiegogo and the like have been great for TTRPGs overall. My concern is more with fraud or (more relevantly) with the health of the publishers biting off more than they can chew or constructing poorly structured kickstarters.
Things aren't going to go back to the 80s, but that's nothing to do with crowdfunding, in my view - I think crowdfunding is a good, modern solution to a shrinking fan base.
FLGS is pretty much a dead or at least dying concept, just like every other kind of specialized hobby store today. Yes, there are cigar shops in places, but not many. The business model for shops today is generalist, that is how you attract customers. Even the generalist shops today have single shelves for specialized interests. RPGs are not going to escape that. Given this, I see #6 above as the starting point, with the alternative distribution models as adaptations. YMMV.
FLGS is pretty much a dead or at least dying concept, just like every other kind of specialized hobby store today. Yes, there are cigar shops in places, but not many. The business model for shops today is generalist, that is how you attract customers. Even the generalist shops today have single shelves for specialized interests. RPGs are not going to escape that. Given this, I see #6 above as the starting point, with the alternative distribution models as adaptations. YMMV.
Depends on where you are I think. Canberra is a relatively small city (population somewhere around 400,000 people I believe), but we've got two gaming stores currently with a third opening next month. Each of them would be within an hour's drive of each other (and that's in bad traffic), and each appears to be doing well. The centrally located store has been operating for as long as I can remember, and focuses primarily on board and cardgames, but also stocks wargames and RPGs (mostly D&D and Cubicle 7 stuff); the South Canberra store focuses on wargames and RPGs (and keeps some of the more obscure stuff in stock) but also has board/card games, has just moved to a bigger location and is in the process of getting a liquor license so they can open a bar in the adjacent shop, and the North Canberra store will be Australia's second largest gaming store, and already has a lot of interest building for it. All of the stores run or will run RPG days, weekly events for wargames and card games (both CCG and the "living card games" that Fantasy Flight Games make), and so on (though the central one has by far the least space for it, they make up for it by being right in the middle of the busiest public area in the city, so they get the most walkthrough traffic).
So it's not really a dead or dying concept here, or doesn't seem to be. They've just adapted by becoming a community hub as well as a store. Keep people happy and give them somewhere to play, and they'll buy their stuff there to support you is the theory, and it seems to be working. I may get my Pathfinder stuff through subscriptions, but almost everything else I buy comes from the South Canberra store unless they honestly can't get it for me.
Okay. I don't really have anything else to say. Perhaps we have such wildly different experiences that we're essentially talking past one another (I don't see kickstarters as encouraging PDFs, but the exact opposite, for example - without crowdfunding we'd have far fewer printed RPG supplements, in my opinion).
Ultimately, I disagree with the premise - it seems to me that kickstarter, indiegogo and the like have been great for TTRPGs overall. My concern is more with fraud or (more relevantly) with the health of the publishers biting off more than they can chew or constructing poorly structured kickstarters.
Things aren't going to go back to the 80s, but that's nothing to do with crowdfunding, in my view - I think crowdfunding is a good, modern solution to a shrinking fan base.
Kind of like how Facebook and it's spin-offs keep people connected despite all the moving on that happens after high school?
Yes, your comments and Irontruths help me to understand that not even most TTRPG Kickstarter-type events are PDF-only. It's just the lowest bar for getting into the market, but I can see how most TTRPG backers want something tangible, something collectible.
I also see how it pays (in theory) for FLGSs to be backers. But putting products on the shelf that largely appeal to people who are already backers or can be if they wanted to... well, that doesn't seem like a good business risk. Only Kickstarter products that "go viral" will actually pay a FLGS owner to back.
I guess we would need to know the numbers behind sales for backed products. Does 90% of the product go to backers? 50%? 20%? Seems to me if the number isn't 50% or less then the crowdfunding phenomenon isn't growing the TTRPG pie.
Yeah, the more I talk this over with people who know things I don't, and have preferences that I don't, the more I see your last sentence - in bold above - as being both descriptive and prescriptive.
Thanks for being civil :)
As stated by Steve, Kickstarter has increased the number of books that are printed and the quality at which those books are printed (more books with sturdier bindings, more color books, etc).
Honestly, no small RPG is financially worth the investment for LGS. They've never been worth the investment and carrying them has always been an act of love by store owners. They never sell at a rate that justifies the space they take up, even if they're just on shelves with only the bindings out. A game like Burning Wheel might sell a copy a year, and that's a relatively popular indie game.
Reaper's Bones kickstarter was pretty successful. It got $3.4 million in backer money. They've also been successful in sales after the fact as well and probably worth their rack space for stores that sell miniatures. A popular kickstarter represents a popular product. But the kickstarter is limited in nature, only 30 days, so not all consumers will acquire what they want during that period.
Local stores have had trouble long before kickstarter. Amazon is a bigger problem than kickstarter. For stores to stay relevant, they need to sell other products that make more money (or have higher product flow) and make themselves into a community center focused around games. They can't just be merchants any more, they have to be ambassadors and curators of their hobbies. Also, they have to exist in a market large enough to support them. That means large and medium cities get gaming stores, but probably only a few small cities. It's a specialty thing, and specialty stores can exist in larger cities. They struggle in small communities.
