10 by 10 room

From RPGNet: Greg Stolze on How much money should Industry types make?. His vision is a bit negative on the traditional gaming / distribution model, but he’s upbeat on how gaming as a hobby will endure and remake itself. He outlines a 5-step process, and here’s step 2:

2) Mass FLGS extinction. Some of them get hit by the asteroid of “we have terrible customer service and a desperately fragmented consumer base” while some evolve into birds by ditching RPGs and concentrating on TCGs, minis, DVDs and computer games.

I will take any and all reports of industry-death with several grains of salt! But Greg has shown to be firmly interested in trying alternate distribution methods, as his frequent use of the Ransom Model.

From ENWorld: A publisher looks for freelancers willing to work for 1c/word. Malcolm Sheppard (eyebeams) calls bullshit. Thank you, Malcolm!

My own hunch is that if a freelance deal is already paying this bad, why not just go DIY or pure amateur, at least until you can find someone willing to pay a fair wage? But I’ll admit I’ve got no experience freelancing myself, and merely don’t like seeing people screwed.

1. Game genres need to change and expand to succeed in the long run.
2. Change is risky.
3. People in charge don’t like risk.
4. Our core audience (the “hardcore”) generally don’t reward risk, either.

Evolution and niches. Psychochild looks it over. Is super-nichifacation of games a symptom or a reaction to a stagnant mainstream? Do niches mean further focus on the hardcore rather than causal players? (Ex: several first-person shooters.) Or are they a means of reaching out to them? (Counter-ex: Puzzle Pirates?)

Those of us playing/making pen and paper games are lucky, because the cost barrier is much lower, whereas that is becoming the limiting factor in video games. (On the flipside, the profit margin is also much lower.)

I think I’m going to make a collection of people within the “industry” talking about “the industry”. Here’s TS Luikart:

Role-playing games are never going away, despite our omni-present Chicken Littles. I’ve been hearing about the “death” of my beloved hobby for 28 years. However, the market has changed and many companies have been slow to react or look for new opportunities. MMORGs provide an immediate visceral “hack & slash” kick for the casual gamer and they have unquestionably diluted the gaming dollar. If companies wish to continue to produce pen and paper RPGs they need to play to their strengths, so yes, I do think the “industry” as it presently exists will be all but gone in a few years unless they get their act together…

The majority of RPGs are still being presented exactly as they were three decades ago. Make no mistake, WFRP 2nd is an awesome product and I’m very proud to have been a part of it – but it’s still a book full of rules, very similar (though far more pretty!) to those books of yesteryear…

Amen! Brother Luikart also has great taste in literature, at least according to Shreyas.

“It is already impossible to ignore the economic impact MMORPGs are having on the tabletop sub-segment – they decimated it in 2005. Only time will tell if some value premise can be rebuilt from the foundations available to entice a new generation of gamers into the hobby – or if the battle has already been lost. Me, I’m betting on the guys with $480,000,000.”

Ryan Dancey, as resposted here.

“Here are some wolves and trolls that your dwarf character can shoot in the face.” – Mike Mearls was sold on World of Warcraft.

“Traditional rpgs built on long term campaigns are high commitment and very fragile social structures. MMORPGs do not require the high commitment at a single time, and are very resiliant to social shifts amongst the individual play groups.” – Chris

“So make RPG’s that offer other focuses, building on the Story & Role/Sim strengths of RPG’s, combat is cool and all, just don’t make gamist power-leveling and character strategizing a focus.” – Rob

“This is what RPGs lack. Even “light” games like PTA require (comparativly) lots of setup, lots of time, lots of organization [...] and I think that we should look to expand the territory they’ve opened up.” – Brand