Google Trends: The Retroclones

It crossed my mind tonight that there is scant information out there about how big of a piece of the RPG market OSR-style gaming represents. We hear the occasional odds and ends in relation to Kickstarter print volumes vs. the economics of the big game publishers like Paizo and WotC, but beyond a vague idea that the OSR market is 'small', there isn't much information available. Despite its small size, the OSR community makes a lot of noise online. So I started plugging things into Google trends to see what I got.

Several surprising things:

D&D Past and Present

Great pair of articles from the Escapist about the history and current state of D&D:

• The Ghosts of D&D Past
• The State of D&D Present

My two cents:
1.  The loss of continuity- not just between the design of 3e and 4e, but between the people responsible for the two editions and the huge change of direction regarding the OGL- seems to emerge as a significant theme.  It may just be coincidence that Gary Gygax passed away during the same period- certainly, he hadn't had direct control over the game or its direction in many years- but it does seem to indicate that a sort of 'changing of the guard' has taken place in the industry, and that some of the continuity that comes from having everyone be on the same page and having started from a similar place may have gone with him.

2.  The release of 3e under the OGL may well emerge as the most significant act in the history of D&D since Gygax and Arneson released 1e.  The OGL essentially let the genie out of the bottle, and it isn't going back- the core features of the most popular system in history are out there for the world to use, and for the last 10+ years the sort of homemade rules and monsters that everyone had been making for decades became not just a fun part of the hobby, but a potential business sideline.  In the end, the OGL may be what undoes the D&D trademark as a tabletop RPG brand, while the underlying game lives on.

3. Lurking beneath all of this is profound uncertainty about the hand of Hasbro in the future of D&D.  Anyone who glances at Hasbro's corporate filings will notice that D&D really never garners a mention- WoTC seems to be small potatoes in the Hasbro world, outside the occasional mention of Magic.  Hasbro could easily decide that D&D is more valuable as a licenseable property (for movies, video games, board games, toys, and miniatures) than it is as a niche RPG product.

Green Ronin's Freelancer Benefit

Now through GenCon, purchases from Green Ronin's online store will go to help GR pay off some of the many freelancers who have done work for the company during the past few years. Much like poor Palladium (which seems to be bouncing back nicely- press release here), Green Ronin was the victim of some skimming- this time, on the part of its fulfillment house. GR has been paying down its debts, but, as is often the case, the priority has had to be people who can threaten to turn off the lights or grind the printing presses to a halt. Nice of Green Ronin to make an effort to give their freelancers their due- freelancers by and large get the short end of the stick in any time of economic hardship.

Check the Green Ronin site for more details.

Filesharing and the RPG Biz

The news that Wizards of the Coast is planning to throw nearly their entire D&D catalogue into eBook format (discussed earlier) got me thinking again about the topic of filesharing/P2P/piracy/what have you.

So far, the publishing world has not gone into hysterics over the P2P problem the way that the RIAA and MPAA have with music and movies. One reason why this is the case... is that there is still no paper-slayer hardware device. iPods, CD & DVD burners, RCA & S-video output jacks on computers, and high-quality computer speaker rigs have meant that the transition of the family (or more likely, dorm room) computer into a media center has been a quick and easy one.

The State and Future of Gaming

This entry by Gareth-Michael Skarka puts some concrete numbers from Comics & Games Retailer to the rather rickety state of the RPG industry. The numbers look, in a word, horrible. Clearly, the growth of MMORPGs and other factors are taking a big chunk out of the gaming world.

A lot of people seem to blame Wizards of the Coast and the d20 system for killing off a lot of companies in the RPG market... Wizards certainly has the strongest visibility in the RPG market, and enjoys penetration into the main-stream retail space that other publishers just can't match right now. I think as a result, Wizards has picked up more and more of the 'new gamer' market over the past several years, which has probably put the hurt on some other companies.

On the other hand, you could make the argument that really, Wizards is responsible for making the market as a whole larger than it previously was. TSR long had an edge in the 'new gamer' market that gave it a competitive advantage over the other systems. Dungeons & Dragons remains the single most recognizable name in gaming, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, the d20 system and the OGL did a lot to lower the barrier to entry in the market for new publishers and new games. Potential writers no longer had to either convince an existing publisher to take a chance on them, or overcome consumers reluctance to learn a new, untried rules system. d20 meant that you could write your modules- whether it was a new setting, an expansion, an adventure, etc.- without worrying too much about the nuts and bolts of the rules. If your product made it to market, there was a large body of players and DMs that already knew and played by the same ruleset, and had a big hand up on learning or using your game. Even if your product couldn't stand on its own two feet, there was a good chance that if there was something worthwhile in it, people would be willing to buy it since it was so easy to incorporate things into other d20 games.

What I suspect happened is that this spawned a whole generation of hobbyists who thought they were going to be the next Gary Gygax, and tried to enter the traditional publishing market. The traditional publishing market, if you haven't heard, is hurting all over. Production costs are remaining high, demand and retail outlets have declined, and challenges from other media are threatening their consumer base and their bottom line. Add to that the fact that entering the publishing business involves managing issues of inventory and production that are capable of destroying even veteran players (TSR anyone?), and you have a recipe for disaster. Hundreds of new companies offering products in 1,000 different d20 lines simultaneously waded into the publishing business, unaware of what they were really getting into. It's little wonder that five years later, most of them are belly up in the tank.

The retail space has its own problems. Note that the figures that Skarka was quoting are primarily gathered by game retailers. RPGs are a perfect example of the sort of niche product that translates very well to Internet delivery- hence the 'long tail' discussion. The inevitable result is that as the number of gaming shops declines, more and more companies will go to direct sales and PDF distribution. And as more publishers make an end-run around retail distributors, more and more retailers are going to exit the business, either by going under or by deciding that it is no longer worth their time and money to be in the business of selling RPG products.

I try to support my local gaming stores on principle, but I can see a coming time when they just won't have a place in the market due to a combination of economics and redundancy. I've recently been thinking about buying the new Knights of the Grail supplement for WFRP. Now, do I buy that from Amazon for less than $20, or from a local retailer for $30+? What, really, other than instant gratification, am I getting from my local hobby shops? What are they getting from me? I do sometimes browse games in shops, and see things that I otherwise might not (though one place I shop occasionally shrink wraps all their games; very irritating), but is that really worth paying a premium for my games?

I think that gaming can survive losing the brick-and-mortar retail channel. I'm sure that retail could survive losing gaming (though it would be a hardship for some of the most dedicated retailers, which is a shame). Unless someone can come up with a more fruitful relationship for the two, they're going to have to.