What concerns does the tabletop RPG industry have? I see three main issues currently affecting the industry.
1) Fewer retail stores. This affects both sales and player recruitment.
2) The format of presenting content is changing (consumers use less books in favor of online sites, PDFs and ebooks).
3) Increased competition from other entertainment platforms.
People on the enworld or RPGNet forums might complain that WotC is losing their edge in the RPG market to newer companies, but looking at the above issues, I see WotC actively trying to address them (to various levels of success) whereas other companies are not. Paizo has a leg up on PDF sales, but they’re not exactly going out of their way to address any of the other issues.
In fact, I once asked a panel of independent game publishers at a convention if they feel obligated to support local game shops and what programs or incentives they have in place to do so. To a man, they all said that it was not their concern and they don’t have, nor plan on creating, any program to entice customers to support retail shops.
I guess they didn’t share my concerns.
They’re not very good business people or they don’t care about their impact on local economies and how that impacts their business. This is a constant issue for me that I regularly think about; most business majors in college study these trends and issues as part of their studies (I know I had to write a paper about the impact of the online marketplaces like amazon, etc on local economies). This is why America is having a hard time recovering this time around. We do not have as many small locally owned businesses to help us recover as we once did due to the advent and success of online marketplaces. This is why CompUSA went out of business and why Borders is closing 70% of their brick and mortar stores. Add to that things like digital downloads for music, games, movies, books and anything else that used to be in a print format and you begin to see where this should be a major concern for every company that does business in one of these areas being impacted. Game stores create communities where people learn about games and decide on a purchase. The fewer game stores you have, the less knowledge people are going to have about the games you make as a company, the less knowledge people have about your game, the fewer copies of yoru game are going to sell and the less money your company makes. Borders closing down should be a huge concern to book publishers…if Barnes and Nobles goes next which is likely, book publishers should be hugely concerned and we better all learn to enjoy the lack of talent creating movies in Hollywood right now.
Is Wizard trying to use the Jedi Mind Trick on Toad in panel 3?
And does Wizard really suck at naming things so much that he doesn’t even have a name himself?
“This is not the plot thread you are looking for.”
He has a name, but it just hasn’t been revealed yet.