The Journey Continues…
By The Warden
Excuse me while I get a little teary-eyed for a moment, but today is a momentous day. One year ago this weekend, Under the Hood premiered with the first article, Initiative in the Computer Age. How fitting is it then that the inspiration for that first piece plays a role in this anniversary edition?
That’s right, the Pathfinder Online MMO is back in the news with their second Kickstarter, this time raising funds for the actual production of the game. Plus they’re now asking for (wait for it) one meeeleeeon dollars!! While the previous pledge drive raised the funds required to produce a technology demo for potential investors, the latest drive (and something tells me it’s not the last) seeks the money to develop a complete version for release in a few years.
Before we go any further, today’s post is not going to be a diatribe on the merits of yet another Kickstarter project (though it does play a factor into my latter point). Instead, I want to discuss the size and strength of the RPG market and I’m being a little sarcastic. It’s pretty safe to say we’re all aware of the limited scope of this gaming sub-genre and we embrace it despite or because of that fact. Goblinwork’s endeavour demonstrates just how small it truly is in an alarming way.
EXPECTING A LOT FROM A LITTLE
Depending on the source, the Pathfinder tabletop RPG is either the leading product or running neck-in-neck with Dungeons & Dragons. Yet they’re going to the tabletop fans for the funds on their computer MMO. I feel a bit uncertain about their true purpose behind this because the second Kickstarter seems to fly in the face of the last one’s purpose and it brings up a scary potential: they couldn’t find any backers, AKA recognized distributors or producers, such as Atari, Bioware, or whatever. (Video games are not my thing, so I may sound like your parents when I start tossing out any big name I’ve heard just to sound hip.) D&D has been able to for decades, darting back and forth between companies, and games such as Battletech and Shadowrun, both former FASA product lines and that company diverted into video games in the late 1990s. That’s about it. This means even our very best tabletop RPGs cannot measure even a ripple in the giant ocean of modern games. Ouch.
There are various causes we can point at for one reason or another: the growing age of original players, the death of the print medium, competition from electronic games, etc. It’s a trying issue for roleplaying publishers to overcome as much as it is with many traditional mediums such as board games or novels and RPGs are turning to electronic delivery as openly as everyone else, if not more so.
If you haven’t read Matthew Sprange’s State of the Mongoose, I would highly consider it required reading for anyone interested in the highs and lows of publishing. Closing out 2012, he discusses the difficulties of print editions versus PDF sales in the past year.
“The current RPG market is miserable. There really is no other word for it. I was talking to the owner of a certain well known RPG company just a little while ago, and he mentioned that he had sold a few hundred of his latest release. We agreed it was a good total in this day and age for the average RPG product (not saying his book was average but… oh, you get the point!). Then he dropped the bombshell; he had reliable information that his book had outsold the latest supplement of a very well known, not to mention market-leading, game.
“If the top tier games are selling at these levels, then something is seriously wonky in the market.
“That is not to say that good sales are impossible. Publishers can still get into decent four figure ranges on new releases (our own 2300AD is a good example). But it is not the norm. Most RPG books these days are being bought by just a few hundred people, no more. Think on that for a moment…
“On the other hand, RPG sales among PDFs, spearheaded by DrivethruRPG.com, are fairly booming. Which, of course, brings us to the inevitable question; is digital taking over?”
Matthew Sprange, State of the Mongoose 2012
As a predominantly PDF publisher myself, this is indeed outstanding news. It’s also disturbing news. Check out the front page of DriveThruRPG and it’s crowded with new products added by the dozens on a near daily basis. Not to say it’s impossible to make a difference and stand out in the pile (DwD Studios recently came out of nowhere and has found great success with their BareBones Fantasy Roleplaying Game PDF), but the complication multiplies as the market becomes more and more dependent on online sales as a dominant source of sales and profit. If I have to compete with companies like Paizo and Fantasy Flight Games refocusing their resources on PDF sales only, it could be detrimental to my own material. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not bitching about it, I’m looking forward to it. Survival of the fittest and all that. Recognizing these changes in consumer culture before it becomes reality is essential to any publisher’s survival in the years to come.
I stand by my views on the RPG industry. It’s not going away any time soon, through it will likely undergo constant evolution into new forms with the same goal in mind. For Paizo, their strategy involves branching out into electronic mediums to create a versatile brand sustainable across multiple formats through the formation of Goblinworks and the creation of Pathfinder Online. Hell, every point on the entertainment tree is doing the same, including movies. Anyone can watch a big screen, high resolution, surround sound experience at home. Why should they pay extra money to see it in a theatre? Bring on 3D screenings and filming at 48 frames per second. It’s the same thing with RPGs.
Others in our field look to the next generation through promotions like Teach Your Kids To Game Week through all OneBookShelf sites. Those with the resources look to smartphone apps and it’s been highly successful for tabletop board games like Ticket To Ride (app sales have been linked to a surge in tabletop sales) and gamebooks like Fighting Fantasy (companies like Tin Man Games have launched a successful line of gamebook apps complete with animation and character tracking). Even the upcoming Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG has a dice app for its unique randomizers.
Some efforts to boost declining sales have been ironically old school, such as Wizards of the Coast’s limited edition reprints of classic editions, a sound tactic considering sales for 4E products could be lacking in light of D&D Next‘s growing popularity. In fact, we’ve been looking at numerous efforts by RPG publishers and designers over this past year while the industry lies in a state of flux, including licensed games to the impact of Kickstarter.
A PARALLEL UNIVERSE
So if the state of Pathfinder Online went in a different direction and they found a powerful name to help bring this sucker to market, would I still feel the same? Or would I see this as a turning point for the return of another boom for roleplaying games everywhere? Since I’m not Abed and can’t see into parallel universes (come on, people, who doesn’t watch I?), it’s all theoretical and thereby pointless unless we look at it from another direction.
Let’s say Pathfinder Online becomes the next big hit in computer gaming and leads to a splash back in the tabletop community, will it be a fluke or the real kick in the butt the rest of the world needed to behold the splendour of rolling dice at a table with friends? Or will it simply dignify the argument that computer/console games are the only way to truly succeed in the entertainment business (and by succeed, I mean by North American standards where you’re only considered successful if you’re pulling in billions of dollars of profit)? Or perhaps it will launch other mediums for fans to enjoy their favourite worlds through a decent D&D movie or a Pathfinder TV show? Will we ever see the day when a brand is built off a roleplaying game instead of the other way around as it was in TSR’s golden era? (Oh, and by TSR, I mean the original version of TSR.)
These questions are the culmination of everything this past year has been about and represent the struggles of every publisher, designer, editor, artist, gamemaster, and player connected to these games. Somewhere out there, the fate of this industry lies in waiting for the right moment to pounce and the rank of significant players have begun to shift. Just look at Evil Hat’s immediate success with the Fate Core Kickstarter project and Monte Cook’s dramatic support for the upcoming Numenera. The irony of it all is the similarities between the exploits of RPG publication and the games they create: sometimes the only way to solve the problem is to just roll the dice.
Join me in a year’s time and we’ll see what happens, yes?
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