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Post by ironnikki on May 9, 2012 7:10:09 GMT -8
I posted this in UTM's thread about OGRE as a response to rickno7, but soon after realized that it was entirely off-topic, so I moved it here. Personally, I would rather order a game through a FLGS than through Amazon, even if there is an increase in price. Obviously, the price increase would have to be within reason, but I feel like most people that are invested in this hobby would do the same. Now, I have no idea how much profit a store generally makes over special orders like that, but in either case, I generally end up buying a set of dice or something else while I'm there anyway. My dice collection is growing at an alarming rate, and I think I'm going to need a supplementary tub for dice that I can't fit in my bag anymore. Something that I've noticed around here is that there are few stores that really cater to gamers. Most of the places near my house are actually comic shops with some games thrown in as an afterthought. Even then, those are mostly card and board games. The only RPG books they carry are DnD and Pathfinder, and I guess I can't blame them, since those are likely the most profitable lines. Game shops have to be at a relatively low density to survive, especially in non-urban areas. Playing at game shops and cons is great for people who are already into the hobby, but there's almost no reason for someone unfamiliar with games to enter a shop or attend a con. Someone who's never played a PnP RPG before likely has very little exposure to them outside of what they see on TV, which typically portrays a less than favorable stereotype. The hobby needs to be exposed to the public in a manner which doesn't make it look like a nerd circle jerk, and has a low barrier of entry to those who don't tend to jump into the middle of things. In other words, there needs to be a stepping stone between the general public and the world of gaming. I think it'd be great if some coffee shops hosted a bi-weekly or monthly game. Although the modern coffee shop is somewhat linked to hipster "culture," (shudder) lots of people spend time in coffee shops. If someone is perhaps interested in seeing what RPG's are like, they're more likely to do so in the coffee shop that they're already comfortable in than in a store stereotypically associated with antisocial jerks. Once they get a feel for it, and they realize that the people who play these games are not loathsome toads, they're more likely to visit local stores. Of course, this could work anywhere that people regularly congregate, though probably at some places better than others. It would be awesome to have a regular game night in a bar, for example, but it would be pretty difficult to make it work well, considering noise and the other patrons. It's worth noting that there are projects that are aiming to bring the games to the masses, such as WotC's Afternoon Adventures with D&D and The Escapist's (not the video game magazine,) Terra Libris project. My local library participates in Terra Libris, though I haven't yet had a chance to visit. Terra Libris hasn't really gotten much attention, and I have no idea how popular WotC's program is or was, but I think that they're steps in the right direction.
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Post by jazzisblues on May 9, 2012 8:03:37 GMT -8
As a rule I prefer to go to my FLGS if possible, and we have a couple nearby that are good. (WarHouse and Game Empire). That said, if they don't have / can't get what I want or need I will order it though I usually go to the publisher directly rather than to Amazon with FRP Games or Studio2 being more common than Amazon.
Just my 2 krupplenicks worth, your mileage may of course vary.
JiB
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Post by CreativeCowboy on May 9, 2012 10:04:00 GMT -8
Aneta is that you? ironnikki has seen the future. You know, great minds think alike. Aneta just had this conversation on Facebook with Brian from RPG Circus. www.facebook.com/RPGCircus/posts/10150799295151915?notif_t=feed_comment Playing at game shops and cons is great for people who are already into the hobby, but there's almost no reason for someone unfamiliar with games to enter a shop or attend a con. Someone who's never played a PnP RPG before likely has very little exposure to them outside of what they see on TV, which typically portrays a less than favorable stereotype. The hobby needs to be exposed to the public in a manner which doesn't make it look like a nerd circle jerk, and has a low barrier of entry to those who don't tend to jump into the middle of things. In other words, there needs to be a stepping stone between the general public and the world of gaming. You know Gary Gygax was trying to address this same situation when Lorraine shut him down. He even hired Dr. Joyce Brothers, the celebrity psychologist, to do a travelling roadshow and media junket on behalf of D&D. The problem with WotC outreach is that its arms never reach beyond the people already in the community. It's more like community relations than it is outreach.
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Post by rickno7 on May 9, 2012 10:43:39 GMT -8
The summary of the post under Ogre is basically this:
I listened to the Steve Jackson Happy Jacks podcast interview, and it seemed to consist of a couple of people who loved the hobby, and Steve Jackson declaring it dead. He certainly did not paint it in a good light. I feel like his Ogre Kickstarter sort of proves him wrong. There are plenty of people willing to throw money at this hobby.
To me, the infrastructure is not there. Our hobby is selling the baseball bats and the ball gloves, but no one is making the ballparks. You can play in your front yard, but how convenient is that? Do you really want to invite all those strangers to your home when you know the retention rate on our hobby is so low?
The game store of tomorrow may look more like a Kinkos than a book store. With rows of computers, it would focus more with print on demand, or PDF downloads. Sure there would be adjustments to a new type of store, but that's a small amount of adaptation to make a store that will not fall into the same trap that so many before have.
Maybe the main income is focused on booth rental. The majority of the store being play area for people in the community. Vending machines could be stocked with snacks that make sense to our gaming, get rid of all that nacho cheese, it harms the papers and books lol. Maybe this is too utopian to my gamer mind.
Someone needs to make the ability to play these games as easy as it is to buy them, and then figure out how to make a profit with it.
With the way Tappy and a few others have expressed the joy of the ease of playing on Google+, maybe the store front AND physically meeting to play is just too obsolete now. I seriously hope it doesn't come to that. All our characters like to congregate in a tavern, not because its in their character's nature, but because its in OUR nature.
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Post by Stu Venable on May 9, 2012 10:51:11 GMT -8
Here what comes to mind when I think about this argument:
With 4th Edition, WotC DID try to target those who hadn't played TTRPGs before. And the group they chose to target was a pretty smart move: MMORPG players.
I think it's fair to say that DnD4E was a GENUINE attempt to grow the hobby; however, it happened at a pretty dramatic cost in market share.
It was different enough than previous versions to cause those who wanted to play those versions to go elsewhere.
In the end, only WotC, with their internal sales numbers, can determine if it was a good move or a bad move. By their actions now, it appears that they probably didn't acquire enough new players to compensate for the losses. But only WotC bean-counters can answer that definitively.
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Post by ironnikki on May 9, 2012 12:54:17 GMT -8
creativecowboy, that's eerie! Despite having a somewhat different argument, Aneta and I managed to almost say the exact same things! rickno7, I agree with you about the lack of infrastructure. Places to play, outside of cons and private residences, are too few and far between. Unfortunately, I don't think that it's feasible for the growth of game shops to accelerate. There aren't enough potential customers for these shops to break even, much less make a profit, without raising prices or carrying games as a supplement to their stock. Like I said before, the shops that are nearest to me are only game shops as an afterthought. The very first time I played an RPG, I played at a game shop, and I was hooked. Shortly after, the shop went in the red, dropped everything except for Warhammer 40K, and then became a martial arts dojo. Seriously. The way I see it, if more people are drawn into the hobby, more money will spent on games, and more shops can open up and host games. I don't think that actually playing the games is the hard part: there are online options like G+, you can look for a regular group online, or try to convert friends. I feel like the most difficult part of the hobby is starting to play the games. I was introduced to AD&D in a game store mostly because there was nobody else around to play M:tG with me, so I pulled up a chair. If that hadn't happened, I might not be gaming today. The hobby is non-existent outside of game stores except as a punchline or the dark back corner of the occasional bookstore. Oh, and on playing online: I play in a weekly game over G+, and it's a lot of fun and works well, but I have to agree with you that I'd rather play face to face. The charm of this hobby is the human element, and I've found that stripping each layer of that element (i.e: talking with the staff and customers at the shops, interacting with other games within and without the actual games, etc) reduces my enjoyment. I've also found that stripping the staff and customers at the shops reduces my enjoyment too, so don't try that Stu, I am not a big fan of 4e, but I have to say that in retrospect, WotC did a great thing for gaming, for exactly the reasons you laid out: it grew the hobby. It was a chancy move, and it probably didn't work out for them financially as much as they were hoping, but I think it helped the hobby as a whole. I doubt that Hasbro much cares for the health of the gaming hobby as much as they do their pocketbooks, which is probably why it sounds like the next edition will be targeted more towards their core audience again. Hopefully that doesn't mean "to the exclusion of everyone else," because the hobby needs all the new blood it can get.
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Post by greatwyrm on May 10, 2012 4:40:29 GMT -8
Right now, becoming a gamer is like joining a secret society. You have to either:
1) be invited in or 2) discover it on your own and ask
That's not a model for robust growth. The only thing I can thing of to cast a wider net would be honest-to-goodness advertising. That takes money, which is something game companies usually don't have. Hasbro could do it, but we never saw a sustained ad campaign for 4e.
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Post by CreativeCowboy on May 10, 2012 7:56:15 GMT -8
Stu, I cannot but to disagree with your thinking that going after an entirely different market category (passive video gamers) by redesigning the flagship product is a sound strategy. It is sheer foolishness. It’s like Coke going after Pepsi, which sparked edition wars too. Not only did it do that, splitting New and Classic, but also it threatened the whole business because it was Coke using the corporate brand to do it. The key to recovery there was quick retraction. Another example would be as if your podcast started to play Barry Manilow music because you want a larger share of Barry Manilow listeners along with the current listenership. Or a less vivid example is the one you cited yourself about belching in reasoned answer to a listener complaint a few months back. People listen to your show because the belching is part of what generates the inhibitions to speak into the mike and that inhibition mixed with discussion of RPGs is what makes HappyJacks fun. If it felt inhibited or was un-fun, you would not do it. And if it were not fun, we would not listen. [Now some smart ass is going to say they listen only for the belches …and I will just roll my eyes for comment. But I admit I like Barry Manilow music so I guess that balances everything in the world.] To attract the MMO market, WotC reformulated their star product (big Marketing 101 mistake). And 4e failed to bring in the projected sales revenue on the new player demographic and failed to cover the expected revenue loss (one thinks they did expect some loss) to the current player demographic. It seems they failed (and still fail) to grok important information: TTRPGs are not some inaccessible software on a controlled operating platform that is obsolete every 24-months. It is a book. Now some inside baseball. Aneta and I worked with Hasbro Belgium’s marketing of D&D 3.5. WotC Poland is Hasbro here and operates a publisher under license. What we saw puts to shame the Keystone Coppers. Now I grant you that Europe is not World HQ. But I have seen Europe and its dramatization of Car 54 Where Are You? For her trouble, Aneta received a very nice, public commendation from her Hasbro/WotC liaison, an executive who finally fled “Cthulhu Europe” after 11 months. Others may also have quit after a successful SAN roll as well. A few were publicly scapegoated. I can relate tales of WotC’s marketing madness myself. Brian’s Cthulhu reference is serendipitously apt. So the issue of genuine, sincere intentions is not called into question. And there are some really nice sincere people I would not trust to give me the correct time of day either. Does WotC see its RPG industry market share separate from the hobby? Your comment suggests to me WotC took a hit for the team, succeeding in bringing new people into the hobby but failing to make enough sales from them. I do not think they play for that team otherwise there would be no edition wars, which is bad for the hobby to begin with. So I am more of the business view. I think the hobby is on WotC’s radar only if it exists on a consolidated balance sheet. And from that cold viewpoint I will tell you what I see: I see a circling of the wagons rather than any bold move to pioneer forward towards an identified trend. I see attacks on a beleaguered D&D from all sides past, present and future. And I have my experience with European HQ which does nothing to champion marketing intelligence. Convention attendance, if it is up, is not an indicator of market strength. Conventions are a reason to party for most attendees regardless of the industry. The insider discussions will be a more accurate indication of the market, as will the movements of its industry leaders. Steve Jackson using Kickstarter is not a healthy sign, despite the fact that all his contacts and his contacts’ contacts funded his latest project in a kind of sanctioned pre-order chain letter. Business decisions will evidently substantiate and testify as to whether the market has grown by its strategy to progress forward in 5e (a name WotC does yet not want to own) or regress and entrench. Making a new game to encompass all games and testing the market waters by republishing AD&D 1e (to a larger than anticipated international market) has to give the industry whole food for thought. This going English international was one of our recommendations in 2007, by the way. In my business experience, an entrenchment strategy suggests a market plateau and eminent shrinkage or a managerial problem of the highest order. As a player the anecdotal evidence suggests the market is very much a Greenfield. I play with a group of multi-cultural newbs who have never played any RPG before and who do so in their second language and enjoy it. In my anecdote the people WotC appealed to in their re-formulation of D&D, making more of D&D hardcoded computer-ational rules, drove away newbs with bickering 2:1. That is not a good trade off for my local group, now growing with the departure of the very gamers WotC brought to me when I say D&D. It is only anecdotal evidence but it gives me great pause if I want to have a regular group to which group do I appeal. Kind regards! Here what comes to mind when I think about this argument: With 4th Edition, WotC DID try to target those who hadn't played TTRPGs before. And the group they chose to target was a pretty smart move: MMORPG players. I think it's fair to say that DnD4E was a GENUINE attempt to grow the hobby; however, it happened at a pretty dramatic cost in market share. It was different enough than previous versions to cause those who wanted to play those versions to go elsewhere. In the end, only WotC, with their internal sales numbers, can determine if it was a good move or a bad move. By their actions now, it appears that they probably didn't acquire enough new players to compensate for the losses. But only WotC bean-counters can answer that definitively.
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Post by CreativeCowboy on May 10, 2012 8:06:07 GMT -8
Right now, becoming a gamer is like joining a secret society. You have to either: 1) be invited in or 2) discover it on your own and ask That's not a model for robust growth. The only thing I can thing of to cast a wider net would be honest-to-goodness advertising. That takes money, which is something game companies usually don't have. Hasbro could do it, but we never saw a sustained ad campaign for 4e. This. Check out the comment on RPG Circus! You want to know why D&D is still the #1 in evoked set from newbs? It's the old advertising TSR did.
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Post by Stu Venable on May 10, 2012 12:32:05 GMT -8
I didn't say it was a sound strategy. I was talking about going after MMORPG players' demographic to build market. They *are* of a similar ilk, and it's likely the move attracted many of them to the hobby.
I don't know what 4E's sales figures were like, as I've never seen them published (or compared to 3.5 sales for that matter), so I can only guess. My guess is that new players attracted (which I'm sure there were some) didn't compensate for the loss of market share to Paizo.
This is informed by the fact that they're overhauling the game YET AGAIN after just five years.
I certainly don't think WotC *knowingly* "took one for the team." I'm sure they figured they would retain most if not all of their market share, but also gain some of the 12million+ WoW players.
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Post by CreativeCowboy on May 10, 2012 15:28:23 GMT -8
I do not believe WoW and RPers are of same enough ilk to positively impact the RPGs hobby market together, just from my anecdotal evidence. Focusing on the intersection of these two Venn Diagrams is a dangerous and myopic strategy. Without realising the focus on the Venn intersection is wrong, I can understand how the market can be interpreted to be shrinking.
I also see how the market could be caused to contract because of that focus, hurting brick and mortar FLGS. The explosion of independent publishers (akin to the comic book industry of the 1980s) has superior delivery support technology today that end run traditional distribution channels further hurting FLGS revenue. So everyone has their own statistical "end is nigh" train car.
MMO will understand the concept of fantasy game play easier than a non gamer because of WoWs' evolution. But attracting that gamer market requires a different game. WotC chose to re-formulate their star product in an ill-advised brand extension move rather than publish two games simultaneously, hence the New Coke reference to backlash.
The great hope of the virtual tabletop wholly automating the social experience of TTRPG (like an MMO) presents me with a fascinating strategy of invading a Pentium 3 marketplace with 486 technology. Fascinating in the way of a massive train wreck.
Now the same technology that will appeal to the TTRPG market is unnecessary to the MMO market, though they will be more familiar with it on an evolutionary scale. There will always be a sliver of MMOers who simultaneously intersect with Felicia Day and her hairy primate ancestor.
But that is going to turn allot of people off unless they happen to be in that narrowest sliver of the Venn.
ergo sum: WotC has to forget the MMO market and reach out (advertise) to new to the hobby people who will enjoy TTRPGs.
The best possible outcome I can see from the current play test is not a 5e iteration itself, but the chance for D&D R&D to redraw and re-understand their market demography and disabuse their vision of the preconceived notion that the thinnest slice of the TTRPG diagram is their market.
That's like anti-D&D thinking if the D&D brand is to be the gateway drug to the TTRPG recreational habit.
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Post by gandalftheplaid on May 10, 2012 18:37:36 GMT -8
From my perspective the most effective bit of marketing wotc did with 4e was when they did the games with Penny Arcade and Robot Chicken. A friend's video clip of Wil Wheaton smacking Scott Kurtz with a book during a game led me to their sessions which then gave me the kick in the butt to give TTRPG another go. www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6Ot3KimQdI
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Post by greatwyrm on May 10, 2012 20:48:42 GMT -8
I don't necessarily think it was an attempt to make a grab for MMO players. The thing is, there are things MMOs just do better than PNP games.
Before 4e was even being talked about, Cyberpunk v3 was in the works. I wasn't a fan of the finished product, but one of the design goals was spot on. In a video game, your lead-in time to action is about 15 minutes, tops. In a PNP game, 30 minutes is fast, after you already are familiar with a character concept.
DND4e did (at times) address that. "I want to hurt things at a distance." Okay, pick one of these four classes, two powers from column A, and one each from columns B and C. You're pretty much ready.
And the virtual table top is essential for sustaining the hobby, if not for growing it. VTT games do lack some things that you get in face-to-face games. On the other hand, my life currently lacks the time for a face-to-face game. If it wasn't for MapTool, I'd probably have dropped out of the rpg market entirely and be in the care of skilled mental health professionals. It saved my sanity AND brought back my old buddies who now also have jobs and wives and kids and no time to game like we used to.
That's another field where MMOs are good. You can sit down, login, and play. No travel. Play with people anywhere there's internet access. Sit down at the computer and ten minutes later your raid is going. I can email my friends, sit down in front of MapTool and I'm gaming.
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Post by ironnikki on May 11, 2012 11:39:10 GMT -8
Here's an interesting article from Jan 2012 that sheds a sliver of light on the design goal of 4e. Supposedly, 4e was designed to be similar to an MMORPG, and that the game should have really pushed DDI. Obviously, that didn't work out. The intersects between MMO's and TTRPG's make me wonder if PFO will be any more successful at drawing some of the MMO market towards TTRPG's. I agree that advertising should be a major goal to grow the hobby. Although I could be wrong, I don't think that the people who post on this board have fat enough wallets to launch major ad campaigns, unfortunately. I'm interested in what your every day gamer can do to keep the hobby healthy, drive sales, and help game stores spread, and I think the biggest thing is word of mouth. It's unfortunate that society at large disapproves of RPG's, although this trend seems to be slowly receding. Parading around professing your love for rolling dice will likely get you nowhere, partially because people don't want to be associated with gaming. This is the major hurdle that must be jumped before things can really pick up. Running or playing in a game at your FLGS, or a reserved room in the library, etc places you in a great position to do some free advertising for the hobby. When people see that normal*, fun people play these games, and that the stereotype of the anti-social gamer is not entirely true, their opinions of the games themselves may raise. Additionally, you can invite them to their first game, and hopefully, they'll get sucked in. There are a lot of people out there who are intrigued by gaming, or would really like to play, but are just waiting to be asked. It's clear that they won't come to us, so maybe it's time we went to them. *Note: Relative term
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Post by Stu Venable on May 11, 2012 12:48:22 GMT -8
Back in my college days, I had the opportunity to meet Edward Bernays ("the father of public relations") and hear him speak. He related a story about the early days of PR, when he was hired by a tobacco company in the 20s to get rid of the stigma of women smoking in public. So he hired models to smoke in some parade. It was public and they were beautiful, glamorous women.
Most of us, sadly, are not.
Bernays' campaign was a smashing success because he changed the public's perception of the activity he was trying to promote.
No amount of advertising dollars could have done that. None. That's done by creating influential spokesmen and public advocates.
Add to this the fact that there's a long-simmering stigma left over from the Patricia Pulling days -- one that could rear its ugly head at any time.
Does Hasbro want that headache? Hell no -- not a company that makes "family" games. They probably didn't want DnD to begin with. They probably bought WotC for Magic.
I would be very shocked of Hasbro started some multi-million dollar campaign to promote DnD. They probably prefer if people don't know that they own it.
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