The Market
As I mentioned in my earlier post on Gencon, there's still a palpable gloom over the production end of our hobby. I have friends quitting the industry, talked endlessly with publishers and full time professionals about what's gone wrong, see companies spiraling down the drain, 4 guys on horses spotted riding through the game stores...well, not the last one, but there's no denying the RPG industry's taking it on the chin. A 10 year chain of fad games is broken and there's no new developments like CCGs or Clix or Pokemon to bail out a retail industry that has built its structure around the newest, hottest thing. This sends fear out in all directions - down the chain to consumers, who see their fave LGS's closing, and up to publishers, who see sales drop and designers, who see their jobs end or be shored up to save costs. Combine this with the issue that the "industry" is not run with the same level of margins or accounting accuracy as other more traditional ones and there's a lot of doubt to feed and fuel that fear.
Morrus over at EnWorld highlighted a thread on whether the market is dying that I found quite interesting. The thread itself is a monster and full of mis-/dis-/non-information but his summary is quite good. I'd suggest giving it a read.
As for me, well, I still believe that a good game will still find the way. While the RPG market is not necessarily a growth one - often, I think it works at cross purposes to its own growth in many ways - I know there will always be gamers, and they will always be attracted to new, solid, interesting ideas. I have no intention of not releasing Ten Thousand Bullets as a print product, nor to abandon my ambitions to design and print other projects like C:S and it's spinoff product, or many of the other stories I have to tell. For me, it's about reigning in what "success" means. As an independant, small developer, I can call a book that makes $1 after costs a success; in the end, I have set myself up to make another book. I may have to modify my means - frex, using direct sales, PDFs or print on demand options instead of more traditional routes - but I can still succeed there. It's evolve or die time - companies are going to either scale back their expectations, take the tough actions that will keep their doors open, discover new or better ways of doing what they've been doing for the last 10 years, or get the hell out of the way.
As I mentioned in my earlier post on Gencon, there's still a palpable gloom over the production end of our hobby. I have friends quitting the industry, talked endlessly with publishers and full time professionals about what's gone wrong, see companies spiraling down the drain, 4 guys on horses spotted riding through the game stores...well, not the last one, but there's no denying the RPG industry's taking it on the chin. A 10 year chain of fad games is broken and there's no new developments like CCGs or Clix or Pokemon to bail out a retail industry that has built its structure around the newest, hottest thing. This sends fear out in all directions - down the chain to consumers, who see their fave LGS's closing, and up to publishers, who see sales drop and designers, who see their jobs end or be shored up to save costs. Combine this with the issue that the "industry" is not run with the same level of margins or accounting accuracy as other more traditional ones and there's a lot of doubt to feed and fuel that fear.
Morrus over at EnWorld highlighted a thread on whether the market is dying that I found quite interesting. The thread itself is a monster and full of mis-/dis-/non-information but his summary is quite good. I'd suggest giving it a read.
As for me, well, I still believe that a good game will still find the way. While the RPG market is not necessarily a growth one - often, I think it works at cross purposes to its own growth in many ways - I know there will always be gamers, and they will always be attracted to new, solid, interesting ideas. I have no intention of not releasing Ten Thousand Bullets as a print product, nor to abandon my ambitions to design and print other projects like C:S and it's spinoff product, or many of the other stories I have to tell. For me, it's about reigning in what "success" means. As an independant, small developer, I can call a book that makes $1 after costs a success; in the end, I have set myself up to make another book. I may have to modify my means - frex, using direct sales, PDFs or print on demand options instead of more traditional routes - but I can still succeed there. It's evolve or die time - companies are going to either scale back their expectations, take the tough actions that will keep their doors open, discover new or better ways of doing what they've been doing for the last 10 years, or get the hell out of the way.
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