Thursday, March 15, 2012

Do We Even Need an RPG Industry?

By now you have probably seen a certain blog post from erstwhile WOTC and TSR employee Steve Winter (if you haven't skip over here). Reading his perceptive remarks about how near-impossible it is to maintain a rpg company with a full staff given the cycle both fans and companies are locked into, I kept nodding my head absently.

And then I hit this comment:
“The game, the one fans love so much that they bought 100,000 copies and clamored for more—odds are high that it was self-contained. That's the way RPGs are packaged. If an RPG isn't complete as-is, then you can't really play it, and fans won't love it and clamor for more.”

I couldn't finish the rest of the post without the same dogged question pushing itself into my brain pan: do we actually need a rpg industry? Do we really need commercially published rules, adventures, settings, supplements at all anymore?

When it comes to new, smaller cutting-edge games, I am sure one could still make the case for “yes” and not sound like your flying on auto-pilot. But for the Game--let's be clear we are talking about the Big Kahuna, D&D, in all it's iterations, clones, and heart-breaking spinoffs—I can't help but feel it is time for it to just wither and die as a (failing) money mill.

I don't frame that as a melancholic set of questions looking backward wistfully, but more of a paradigm shift. There is a dawning thought in my head that DIY rpg hobbyists most likely don't need to shell out a single dollar to have a rich and robustly creative life with this Game.

Sure, there will likely always be the small-scale projects we do want to see succeed and financially support—for me almost always a labor of love of a single or small group of people less than interested in making serious money—but I can't help but think that the activity that is most vital to me is the grassroots community and cultural ferment. It's in the actual play and the achingly-creative (and often freely given) amateur worldbuilding that follows behind it. I read Huge Ruined Pile,  From the Sorcerer's Skull, HereticwerksTales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque or the many other comparable blogs and damn it if I can't help think that the content there rivals and often surpasses many of the best larger commercial projects.

Is it time for the Game's "second soul" to take charge? 

41 comments:

  1. Isn't this already the case? When was the last time a big-name publisher put out a product for AD&D, OD&D etc?

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    1. Yes, of course, but I was thinking about the question more broadly beyond WOTC.

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  2. Yes we need it. Assuming you want the game to live on past our lifetime. If that isn't something you care about than I suppose we don't need an RPG industry.

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    1. I guess that line of argument has had less and less truck in my mind over the past couple years. In the parallel G+ discussion of this, Jeff Rients said: "The prospect of expanding the hobby already is approximately zilcho. Roleplaying as a commercial phenomenon peaked when I was ten years old. What's left now is the folk art aspect of it."

      It's a reality of something I think we need to embrace more fully: the idea that we are left with is something more like garage bands, bowling leagues or community theater--activities that are challenged by larger trends--but rarely die because they are rooted elsewhere than a product-centered world.

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    3. @zerohero: Why is that? That is, why do you feel the hobby would die without corporate backing?

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    4. Speaking for myself here, we need it because we humans like bright shinny things!
      Sounds simple but I'll ask all here how many times have we all bought a new rule book or supplement because it looked interesting or it had great cover art?
      Some times the item in question was a dud,
      others it sat in our book shelves for years
      to be used later with some success.

      Without some sort of backing people will not even make the discovery in future simply because there will be nothing to find. I'm not saying it needs to be a huge
      "Games Workshop" type of entity however it
      it does need the long term stability that only an established company can provide.

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    5. About a year ago I started running a weekly Swords & Wizardry game at our FLGS. I chose to post a sign up sheet that simply asked for players for a 'Weekly D&D game.' There was/is a lot of interest. We regularly get 8-10 people a night for the game. These are a mix of mostly new players with a couple 3e & 4e players. They came to the game because I called it 'D&D.'

      This is just one small example, and maybe not a good one. But I feel that our game took off because of the brand name D&D, even if the only official D&D product used was Keep on the Borderlands. These kids had some idea in their heads what D&D was, and wanted to play.

      While I don't particularly care what Hasbro releases, and haven't for the last 7 or 8 years, I do think it is important that the game be easy to find for the next generations. A task that I don't think that we are all that well equipped to do on our own.

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    6. Good points Don and Zero, I do think we have to think about how you keep a living game up and present. It's sad, but I sometimes I wonder if it's the pirate torrents keeping the hobby more alive than the companies (a bad alternative in my mind.)

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    7. Counter-anecdotally, with the exception of my first group all the people I've played with were introduced to roleplaying by myself or someone I know. Some of them were aware of D&D, in a vague way, but I have trouble believing it was because of WOTC pushing the brand. And while some people get into RPGs cold, I would guess that most of them are recruited by a friend who has played before, or who has read good things and wants to get a group together. With the internet nothing is really hard to find.

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    8. I'm not giving WOTC much credit for pushing the brand. Just suggesting that D&D as a brand maintaining some pop culture relevance is a good thing for the hobby.

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  3. I remember the first "RPG" my younger brother and I played. We didn't have any rulebooks of any kind. I made up some rules based mostly on my experience with "Choose Your Own Adventure" books and the similar books that actually had a character sheet and some minor dice-rolling rules. It was completely whacky, in retrospect. Our characters did straight, non-rolled damage based on their weapon's plus. We had forty-two characters at final count. A veritable army of fantasy characters, many of them blatantly ripped from existing properties like Masters of the Universe and the like, tromping through the dungeons I drew on the cast-off grid paper my father brought home from work.

    We stopped playing this version probably around the time I got the red box Mentzer Basic D&D set. I still have the folder around here... somewhere...

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    1. I always thought it'd make an interesting post (or series of posts) to explore the proto-rpgs we played as kids. I used to do these elaborate games around 8 or so where I'd take out my football cards and pretend I was the quarterback of my dream team. I'd roll a regular dice against another and just make up the resolution of plays.

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  4. I think many of us embraced the Game's "second soul"
    years ago, this has been made far easier with Internet
    access of course. I do agree with zerohero however, there
    must be a commercial source of rules available to spark
    that individual creativity if the concept of the RPG is to live on.

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  5. I would agree. I think the same thing is true in some other creative endeavors where previously the control over the means of distribution gave the power completely over to corporations.

    I do feel that production values matter, though, and those sorts of things still cost money, but I think they that are not completely out of the financial range of individuals and certainly not relatively small companies or cooperatives.

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  6. I can't speak to the larger issues, really, but I know that most, if not all, of my future RPG purchases will be small POD projects. I find them to be infinitely more satisfying than the stuff from bigger companies.

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    1. I disagree on a couple of levels, but I'm only going to address one here: we have an industry because we keep buying their products. I don't think "need" or "don't need" enters into it. RPG companies put out games we like, we buy those games, they put out supplements, and we buy those too. If one company stops supporting the games we like, other companies step into the void if at all possible - look at the OD&D, AD&D, and retro-clone market, with for-profit and for-sale products supporting a game system a larger company abandoned.

      Some companies die off, some new ones are formed, and others just keep on going year after year. And we buy stuff. We will always have some kind of RPG industry, in my opinion, until such a time as there are so few people playing that it can't sustain itself. Until then, if companies go away new ones are formed to their their place. Theoretically need or don't need, we support an industry by our buying habits, and buying from small publishers doesn't fundamentally change that.

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  8. Oh, you know. People who want this to be their "job" need some semblance of an industry and get locked into these supplement-pumping cycles. Everyone else just keeps doodling knights & such.

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    1. I don't know if we need an industry... perhaps a better goal to have a consortium of cottage industries (more granulated overall industry)?

      If WotC had subdivided into separate, more specialized companies, would the history of their products be different?

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    2. (What the hell is going on with these comment forms, lately?) Sorry, B... this wasn't meant as a direct reply.

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    3. The "reply" on the last existing comment is too temptingly close to the "add comment."

      But what the heck. I think the question of whether "an" industry is better opens up much bigger discussions about changing work/life/hobby boundaries in the post-recession.

      Do people want to one day quit a "day job," do games all the time and still meet their basic economic responsibilities? Do people want a full-time "day job" at all?

      They used to. Folks like Winter's bosses wanted to grow their company so they could get paid more. Other folks wanted to grow other companies around that company to get a piece of the action. That ecosystem became "the industry."

      I like to read some William Morris these days when I have time. Arts & crafts. Cottage industry like you say. If the cottage is warm and enough, people don't have to ask for more.

      What if an OSR hooked up with knitting people, calligraphers, Cosmic Encounter fans, Marx Playset freaks, stamp collectors, even those model train guys? An endless hobby store at the end of time, maybe minus the store.

      Is that the cottage consortium of which thou speakst?

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    4. I loved Morris' News from Nowhere despite it's strange guild-socialist utopian trappings (well truthfully maybe because of them). And truthfully I guess I just don't understand those who want to turn the joy of a hobby into the grind of traditional work (or even the Puritan work ethic fantasy "dream job").

      "What if an OSR hooked up with knitting people, calligraphers, Cosmic Encounter fans, Marx Playset freaks, stamp collectors, even those model train guys? An endless hobby store at the end of time, maybe minus the store."

      I look at what the Special Lady Friend does with her knitting hobby and I just see such a more sustaining and healthy dynamic. Tool around the robust social media sites for knitters like Ravelry and you see that paradigm shift into a more DIY-centered approach. We need more of that.

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    5. Also on Ravelry, you see more of the cottage industry approach that I think Scott is alluding to. She and others sell patterns and other tools directly off the site for prices that are in line with a hobby approach (affordable PDFs).

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    6. We have Ravelry on around here all the time like CNBC at a '90s hedge fund. It's great.

      Had this ruckus with Zak about six months ago and am now convinced that the dark satanic mill of The Industry is greased with the creamed corn of treating a hobby like a business. Having fun is great. Getting paid to have fun is a bonus. Working like a dog to get in a position to one day get paid to have fun is the original sin.

      I always think of the guys who hang around extreme sports facilities and help out in exchange for free lift passes or jumps or whatever. The goal isn't so much to turn pro and get paid to have fun. The goal is to just make yourself useful to the scene to ensure that the air field or mountain or video rental or paint ball arena or game shop or yarn store stays open and solvent enough to keep giving you passes. And was Jerusalem builded here...

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    7. The knitting hobby still has its version of the friendly local game store. What would knitting (and quilting?) be without the fabric store? That's not a rhetorical question.

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    8. Oh, now I get it with the WOTC, sorry SSZ. Slow.

      I bet it's reached the point where people who want to be in The Industry can find out. Identify a niche product moldering in the archives that you want to rescue, raise cash to buy it off the $HAS. Fix it up good as new. Run your cottage the best you can. Accept cash or barter, or don't. Help people near you raise the occasional barn. Take back the clubhouse. Make it as real as you want it to be.

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    9. @bombasticus: Something like what crafters are doing is a good foundation to investigate. Some crafters do a wide tour of markets/shows to sell their wares up close and personal. Maybe energies are better directed towards that, synchronized with mini-cons, perhaps? Not knocking online sales, mind you, but there's the dot-commer risk set, especially in the age of SOPA class legislation and diminishing items naturally flowing into public domain.

      Regarding professionalizing a hobby... I have to blame TSR for that. They were in the position to create infrastructure and apprenticeship and just... didn't want to share the secret sauce recipe (instead wasting their money in court) and could've used the RPGA much more effectively.

      Regarding seeking the full time job, I agree - I don't think it's the right way to go if content really matters. I really don't think there's a real sustainable model. Hell, maybe it's better to make limited series of games, throw them up on eBay, and let the market pay what it wants...

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    10. I love the knitters for the way they bind time first and foremost and then trade a little cash between each other. The more offline any of us can be, the better -- although I think a lot of us are afraid we won't actually like our neighbors.

      The Wicked One raises a great point with pro sports versus hobby games. I think TSR (and before them, Avalon Hill even) dreamed of two pro paths. You could compete on the tournament dungeon circuit for cash and prizes, or you could become management. D&D never really got its World Cup, the in-house guys tried to monopolize the mechanics and here we are. I think linking this to the RPGA is brilliant but I don't want to antagonize a sleeping Mentzer.

      I think the yarn girls get more or less what they need in terms of sustainable models. (Thus do I renounce YBIS!) They feed each other and the sheep keep getting hairier. That might be cottage enough. Et in arcadia, to quote Psychic TV.

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    11. I like the crafter community model...

      Regarding sports vs hobby... one of the problems RPGs have always had is they aren't much fun to watch - the proximity/intimacy needed for a tabletop session makes them small space gatherings but not really public events. Professional sports relies on TV or on-site fan viewers... the salaries of the players, etc. are wholly contingent on a events happening on a large scale... volume observer business model.

      Perhaps rethinking/experimenting with conventions/gatherings/events? You're right, no one wants to wake up Mentzer. Tournaments, though, in order to be fair must have standardized play procedures/rules... would 'event driven' retro-con play enforce a one true way? Or several? That pulls everything towards the Warhammer vector... certainly advantages in that, but (apparently) GW doesn't think that offsets the need for a new edition.

      An event/minicon organization could help - it doesn't need to be a business (the PGA Tour, for example, is a non-profit) but that's a lot of crap to deal with. It's probably best to maintain a loose consortium of worldwide local groups.

      My brain hurts now and you PROMISED I COULD HAVE MY BOURBON AND MY PLASTIC BUBBLE WRAP BACK AT THE END OF CLASS!!!

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  9. I don't think the hobby directly needs the industry. As pointed out in Steve Winter's post (and known in the OSR), once the DM has the basic rules you don't need more "product" to play the game.

    However, even in these new days of meetup, google+ and other aspects of the internet, I still think that the hobby itself needs friendly local game stores. They provide a place for folks outside the networks to discover us, they provide a location and they are distributors of what basic tools even the DIY hobbyist will need.

    And I'd be surprised if local game stores could survive without the churn of product that Steven Winter (I think mostly accurately) says that the industry needs. Which is rather distressing given how he sees internet subscription type services as a solution for the industry.

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    1. Come to think of it, my current group and return to gaming owed itself to the internet. I might ask our current group of players what they think of game stores.

      Me? I still really enjoy a trip of oogling stuff and make a point of buying some stuff occasionally.

      I've only played a few games at game stores, but other folks in my orbit regularly do.

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    2. I have to admit that I am pretty gamestore phobic. I have literally only stepped into Dragonslair here twice in the entire time that I have lived in San Anto.

      But I get your point about the need for a physical locale--though I think the vast majority of people who are looking into trying (or returning to) roleplaying are likely first turning to Google rather than anywhere else.

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    3. We need to import some old, cranky wargamers to run game shops.

      I hate being 'the old guy' in the store.

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  10. > I couldn't finish the rest of the post without the same dogged question pushing itself into my brain pan: do we actually need a rpg industry? Do we really need commercially published rules, adventures, settings, supplements at all anymore?

    I know where that's coming from, but does soccer really "need" an "industry" when it's a complete game with a single ball and four shirts for goalposts?

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    1. Wicked fellow. Clearly soccer "enjoys" the World Cup and the World Cup "needs" soccer. Some people hate soccer but love throwing World Cup parties.

      "The ball is round, the game lasts 90 minutes. Everything else is [theory]."

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  11. It seems to me that the there are differences between an industry and several little ones. Primarily, small press stuff for out of print games lacks the sheen of an "official" release. Also, small press stuff tends to be the realization of a more coherent less committee guided vision. I think these two differences alone have a huge and positive impact.

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  12. I have plenty of fun without "the industry." I'm baffled by the notion that the amount of fun I can have is in some way contingent on whether other people are making money, and I doubt I'd even notice if the whole commercial enterprise went tits-up tomorrow. There aren't many people with my tastes anyway, and we tend to find each other regardless of whether the hobby is "being grown."

    I realize that's selfish and solipsistic of me, but since I don't really buy game products, I doubt "industry people" give much of a shit about my opinion anyway. Then again, I'm not super worried about people who tune out when they realize I'm not going to buy anything.

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  13. Agree 100%, as I said Steve's comments.

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  14. Not only do we not NEED an industry, it may be the single most destructive thing about gaming.

    Will there continue to be a hobby business? Yes. Even the most recent sales numbers show that tabletop gaming grew somewhere between 23-28% while videogames, the very thing we say is killing the hobby, dropped again:

    Video games sales down, hobby games up in 2011

    In a move that may reflect the shifting United States economy, video games sales plummeted 38% and hobby games sales are up 25%.

    The NPD Group's January figures indicated that sales of video game hardware fell 38% to $199.5 million, down from $324 million in January 2011. Video game software sales also slid 38% in January to $355.9 million. Sales of accessories in the U.S. dropped 18% to $195.2 million. Total industry sales were down 34% to $750.6 million....


    ...ICv2 reported the hobby game market sales increased by up to 25% in 2011, over twice the growth rate for 2010. Collectible games were led by Wizards of the Coast's Magic: The Gathering, Konami's Yu-Gi-Oh, and WizKids' HeroClix in Q4 2011. Games Workshop's Warhammer 40K led non-collectible miniatures, followed by Privateer Press' Warmachine, and Warhammer Fantasy. Paizo Publishing's Pathfinder continues to lead the role-playing game industry in sales with Wizards of the Coast's 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons in second place, Fantasy Flight Games' Warhammer 40K role-playing games (Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, and Deathwatch), Green Ronin's Dragon Age, and Cubicle 7's The One Ring. The print edition of Internal Correspondence elaborated:


    "D&D's going down faster than Pathfinder is going up," one distributor said. "I've been shocked at how badly received D&D is right now," another distributor said. "D&D is still down," a third distributor told us. "There's no getting around that. Pathfinder is continuing to gain more market share in our RPG category."


    So if you see what is being said, a part of the market just seems to be disappearing...but it's not...it's us...building our own, selling our own own in ways that current tracking doesn't account for. I believe the hobby business may account for as much as 30% of the overall market right now.

    We don't 'need' any entertainment industry right now. Film, music, books...all of these are being self-produced and I have found many to be superior to 'industry' items (Primer compared to the new Conan film for instance).

    Industry = dog food, toilet paper, bulk items-lowest common denominator for most amount of profit.

    Hobby Business (Gaming) = Products made by gamers for gamers that meet specific needs and don't try to be bland pablum designed to sell in the millions.

    There is a place for the big guys, but they will never see it. Do what happened in the 70s and 80s-produce the items that fans don't...accessories, miniatures, maps, dice, etc. Those items are always needed.

    Meanwhile, we gonna keep on gamin' :)

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