The Death of the RPG Market?

[Hotfoot]

Yes, this is a provocative title, but it's one that I think is appropriate. I've been mentioning to friends and in posts here my views on the RPG Market in general, and the direction I see it taking.

A few points:
Numerous smaller RPG companies have fallen on hard times as of late. Friendly Local Gaming Stores are no longer stocking many lesser known products, opting instead to stock WotC, SJG, and WW material, card games, Clix, and standard miniature gaming (largely GW).

WotC has adopted a GW model for D&D, including heavy miniatures gaming, republishing rules at fairly quick intervals, and in general doing all it can to maintain its dominant position.

Since the advent of the PC and Internet, several gaming products have been made obsolete. Most modules can easily be created by a GM with MSPAINT and Wordpad, or equivalent programs, which are pre-installed on pretty much any OS these days, to say nothing of superior versions of software for low amounts of money. For the cost of a good 5-6 supplements, one could get a program like Fractal Mapper or Campaign Cartographer and make unlimited dungeons on one's own. With a little creativity, one can make the flavor text and all that with any word processor.

Source Material supplements are easily ignored by most gamers, replaced with sometimes better material from sufficiently creative GMs. Since the advent of easy word processing, aspiring writers can easily crank out loads of material with very little effort.

The glut of games that have come out over the years have flooded the market with all manner of rules systems, and with thousands of gamers coming up with hundreds of thousands of house rules, for said systems, just about every possible variation of rules has been created. Amateur statisticians who are gamers can easily come up with new systems as needed, but really, one does not have to go far to find a system that they like, and barring that, make their own.

On top of that, let's talk about piracy. We all know that it doesn't really hurt the music and movie industries as much as they like to pretend it does, but gaming companies, with much, much smaller markets are more noticeably hurt by this. Add to this that many gamers are at least moderately competent with computers (or at least one in every group tends to be), widespread piracy within the gaming community can be brutal. Add to this the fact that gaming books have gone up in prices as of late, and were never cheap to begin with, and are targeting a group of consumers that are almost universally short on cash for all the books they want, and you have a recipe for disaster. Before, one person would buy the books, or the group would pool together, but now piracy is common. WotC is hurt the least by this, obviously, but smaller companies, such as R.Talsorian Games, Dream Pod 9, West End Games, and numerous other such outfits can be crippled by such an event, especially given how little the books usually sell.

Print on Demand alleviates some of the problem, since books can sell for lower prices and still give decent profits to the company, but because such smaller companies mean fewer shelves for Friendly Local Gaming Stores, the stores are less likely to carry them. Since the most popular things sell the best, they need to stock what sells, especially since they are in direct competition with Amazon, Borders, Barnes & Noble, Toy Stores, and to a degree, gaming shops and Best Buy. It's also a losing battle, since it's very hard for local shops to compete with chains in general, and the growing lack of specialty products is driving gamers from the Friendly Local Gaming Stores. At this point, the only thing keeping said stores open is the inclusion of gaming spaces, pay-for-play LANs, and even selling food.

Now, at the various conventions I go to, I've noticed that only in a very few does the RPG section have a good amount of activity. Most of the activity is in wargaming, board games, and card games. The RPG with the most face time, of course, is D&D, and the way the RPGA runs things (and they tend to run the bulk of the games), the game might as well be a wargame anyway.

Meanwhile, the "Indie RPG" market is something of a misnomer. Instead of creating products that compete with D&D, GURPS, or WoD, they tend to create more beer and pretzel games that can be picked up and played with minimal fuss, but also lack a bit of the depth and freedom allowed in a larger RPG.

Now, the silver lining to all of this: RPGs themselves aren't dead. Not by a long shot. People will continue to play them, and play things other than D&D, but there really won't be anything left to sell except the tools with which to build settings, campaigns, and adventures. Sure, the odd campaign setting, module, etc. might still be sold online in PDF format through DriveThruRPG, RPGNOW, and other select sites, but only the really good ones that gain momentum through word of mouth will really sell much of anything.

Now when I say that, I really mean anything outside of the big three. Even with them, WotC will soon homogenize the RPG market, with of course with the minor exception of GURPS. So long as SJG rakes in cash with their card games and such, they can keep their RPG division going forever. White Wolf, well, sure, there's a solid fanbase, but it's still fairly niche compared to the overwhelming might of D20.

I know this is fairly long, but if anyone has any comments, criticisms, or devestations of my points, please feel free.

[frigidmagi]

Death my ass, the RPG market was glutted due to the Open Gaming Liscene. When a niche gets to crowded you have mass die offs until the population balances. That's pretty much what you're seeing.

[Hotfoot]

I think that OGL just hastened what was coming anyway. The RPG market was in something of a lull when D&D 3.0 came out. When OGL hit, yeah, a lot of shit hit the market, most of it the result of decades of amateur projects finally having a possible way to "get rich and noticed".

That said, yeah, OGL has likely done more harm than good, but it shows no sign of slowing down, and even if it did, I don't think the market would spring back for smaller companies again. I think smaller companies, or at least anything non-OGL is going to go completely online at this point.

[The Minx]

The "death of RPG" was also claimed as TSR was dying years ago, and yet, roleplaying games bounced back.

These things come in cycles.

[Hotfoot]

The "death of RPG" was also claimed as TSR was dying years ago, and yet, roleplaying games bounced back.

These things come in cycles.

Remember, I'm not saying that the games are dying, but rather the market for smaller companies in brick and mortar stores.

[SirNitram]

There was a hell of a dieoff in those at the TSR end. Hell, some never recovered. I'll fully believe there's a dieoff. But that it's over completely? It'd defy all observed evidence.