Why RPGs go unnoticed?

[NPC]

Since we're all giving our opinions on why so many games aren't successful....

(And yes, I suppose I sound a bit elitist too, but this is a discussion board not a social board and elitism often produces interesting viewpoints. It's good for analytical discussion but not good for other social interaction.)

Okay, someone below said it was a shame not many people played anything besides D&D, and didn't play Jared's games or other "niche" games that aren't big sellers or popular.

Maybe I'm just completely full of it, but I'm just wondering if anyone's thought about this from a simple marketing / advertising viewpoint.

By the way, to avoid confusion, when I say "sell", I don't necessarily mean for money, though that is common. In this writing, I'm counting a game that is adopted and played regularly (with or without paying for it) OR a game that is paid for (regardless of whether or not it is played much.) Either way, it constitutes someone noticing the game as something more than just one more name in a list of many.

D&D sells a lot. D&D is advertised a lot (formally and informally, and more often informally.)

"Niche" games (I use the "" because I'm not sure if many of these would remain niche games if more than just a small specific group of people played RPGs) do not sell a lot. Niche games do not advertise a lot.

D&D does not advertise a lot because it sells a lot. Rather, it sells a lot because it advertises a lot. Wizards of the Coast and White Wolf actually _market_ their games.

Marketing mainly consists of

A) Letting people know a product exists.
B) Convincing them that they should acquire it.

You can do this through paid advertisements, or you can do this through word-of-mouth, but either way, you MUST do this to have a successful RPG. People will not play your game if they don't know it exists or think they might want it. Now, if you put a tiny amount of effort into this (maybe put your web site on a search engine and leave it to people to read it out of boredom and then find they like it), you will likely get a tiny amount of "sales." If you put a lot of effort into it, you will get a larger amount of sales. Quality is important, but even the highest quality product will not be noticed or bought if you don't market it, and sometimes even low quality products can be temporarily successful if marketed correctly.

D20 is successful and popular because people have heard of it. It's being cooperatively marketed by everyone who is making a product using it. Even some crappy hack and slash dungeon module that's put on the shelf in only one bookstore helps a tiny bit, and you can bet that Sword & Sorcery is probably helping a lot.

I would hazard that most of us are not interested in marketing everything we work on, and that many of us are not interested in marketing anything at all. But, if a game does the following, it would probably stand a better chance, in my humble opinion.

1) Exist (sad, but some people try to market games that do not exist yet)

2) Makes its existance known to more than just a few people (advertising on RPG sites is helpful; advertising through RPG players is more helpful; advertising to people who do not play RPGs but would be interested in it could possibly be even more helpful, but is also more difficult.)

3) Has a relevant name that gives an idea why someone would want it (Swords & Monsters: The RPG sounds like something that's been done a million times. The World of (insert funky name that's not a real word, doesn't sound like a real word or phrase, and sounds medieval) sounds like someone's homebrew world that they love but nobody else would like as much.) A description beyond "Fantasy Role-Playing Game" is good. The idea that the game is about some INTERESTING genre or style that either hasn't been done (this includes settings where games that have been done but have not been made known or obtainable so might as well have not have been done) or haven't been done well (I've seen five or six Final Fantasy RPGs but dislike them all and would LOVE to see a good one) or haven't been done to fit a certain style (there are lots of superhero games and several political games but not many games that have superheroes and politics and the only published ones I've seen are X-men mutant discrimination ripoffs.)

4) Is obtainable (you can't play something you can't acquire, this is the part I'm at with my Elite games unfortunately which is why I don't consider myself a very good designer at the moment)

5) Is complete

6) Is readable (if someone don't understand your rules, he probably won't have much desire to play your game)

7) Looks like someone with at least a junior high school education wrote it, and looks like they put actual effort into it (if you're too lazy to use a spellchecker or proofread, you're probably too lazy to make a game worth the time it takes for a consumer to read it.)

8) Appears to be of good quality.

9) Actually is of good quality at first. (D&D 3rd seemed low quality at first to me, but then I got used to it and was impressed)

10) Actually is of good quality over the long run. (Some games are fun at first but quickly lose their fun over time, usually either because preparation gets tedious or because the mechanics break down and it becomes unplayable with the rules system later on in the game.)

11) Has mechanics that buyers both like and understand. Explanations of why things work the way they do are often very helpful.

Well, that's about the end of my little outburst.

[Belac]

That was me again. This stupid thing apparently logs me out after a while of "inactivity" because it takes me a while to finish my posts. I guess either I'll have to write the posts in Notepad and paste or just sign my name in the contents.

[Belac]

I capitalized interesting in my first post and it may be misunderstood. I did not mean to imply that many games are not interesting. Rather, I meant to emphasize "interesting" so that people would not think I meant that marketing a game called "Sharpened-Sticks Wielding Electricians that Fight Giant Vegetables" would automatically be successful just because it's original. (Though to be honest, I would at least give a game with a title like that a quick browsing :)

-Belac the Spectral Rambler

[Jared A. Sorensen]

I think you're spot on. But what always gets my goat is when people start throwing around the "your game isn't good because it's not popular." How soon they forget that Vanilla Ice had a #1 album for awhile...

Oh, would that I had the marketing budgets of Wizards of the Coast. Mmmm...

Now give me back my goat!

[Belac]

(I'm going to put my name in every subject from now on because I don't want to make a post and then it come up as NPC even though the Logged In User clearly says Belac :)

Anyway, I'm definately against popularity being a measure of a game's quality or worth. Some published games I've played looked like they were probably awesome games when they were someone's personal game, then they declined in quality when published. Forgotten Realms, for example, sounds like it'd be loads of fun if played with Ed Greenwood, but as a DM I just don't like it all that much. (It's not bad, it just looks like it would be a lot more fun for someone who started playing it when it first came out, or even better, someone who played it before it came out and now has their former PCs in the sourcebooks :)

In fact, I think that recognizing that the original campaign that used Elite rules (and still my personal favorite) is a bit too entrenched in my mind as "my campaign" is the main thing that's made me unsure if I'll ever publish that campaign, and my group liking that campaign too much seems to be making it hard to come up with new settings because I have trouble making a complete setting without some GMing involved.

Anyway, there should be a balance between the marketing side of things and the artistic side of things, though which particular blend is correct depends on what designer you're talking to and what their goals are.

[NPC JSDiamond]

The terminology "high sales" needs defining. D&D sells very well, to retailers. How many of those books get into the players' hands is another thing. How many of them actually play, still another.

I won't even get into how many who do actually play D&D (or any other so-called 'successful' game) actually play it AS WRITTEN, which is certainly another quantifier for success or 'goodness' of a particular game.

Add to the mix the fact that distributors often charge manufacturers/publishers a fee for listing their game as a 'featured item' in their catalogs (sent to retailers nationwide). Which is like paying for someone to hype-up (e.g., 'lie') about how cutting-edge-kewl your product is.

I'm not sure what the reason for this thread is. However I'll finish with this: if you plan to do it yourself (create, publish and market your games), work hard and give people their money's worth.

Jeff

P.S.
And to Jared I would add:
Hooty and the Blowfish
Four Non-'talents'...er.. I mean 'Blondes'

But that's another hated list.

[Belac]

I posted this because someone else mentioned that it was a shame that games like D&D are hugely popular while better, less-known niche games go unnoticed.

And by "sale" I meant getting people to notice one's game, not actual monetary profit. I just used the term "sale" because that's a marketing term; in marketing terms, even charities that ask for donations are "selling" something.

[NPC Whymme]

Originally posted by NPC Belac
Marketing mainly consists of

A) Letting people know a product exists.
B) Convincing them that they should acquire it.

This kind of marketing doesn't work anymore in today's society. This push-based marketing is of a bygone age, if you are not Microsoft.

If you want to use today's marketing, you:

* Find out what people want
* Create that product
* Let people know that it exists.

Face it: everybody here knows that World of Senzar, Synnibar and FATAL exist, yet not many people would buy them.

Marketing is a bit subtler than shouting louder than the others.

Whymme

[Belac]

I've noticed that for some reason, RPGs seem behind in the way business relating to them is done.

We're not a very big group. It's probably different in other places, but where I'm at, RPGers just aren't organized or common enough to "pull." The local RPG providers are book stores with a tiny RPG selection. There are no RPG stores that I know of within several hours of driving and I've asked around, so even if there are any, few people know about them. If I go in and ask for a product they don't have, they'll order it for me, but they won't get the idea to order extra to put on shelves. Electronic Boutique was carrying some D&D products, then they thinned out, although lately they now have a few more and some non-D&D products, including Warhammer which was previously unknown in the area. I've been thinking of trying to convince them to get more next time I go there, so maybe that would help a bit.

Anyway, there's no pull here. And there's no pull in a lot of mainstream places. Expansion is slow and tends to collapse when a CCG store decides to stop carrying RPG stuff since nobody buys it. I've been thinking more and more about trying to start a "pull" here since I have more free time, and I do think a modernization of the consumer base could lead to a modernization of marketing tactics.

However, until then, it seems like games using a push strategy are prospering in spite of all other marketing trends. D&D 3rd managed to at least put RPG books back on B. Dalton's shelves here (they have two rows of a 5 foot wide shelf instead of just half of one now). Wizards wasn't exactly quiet about releasing it, and in fact I'd really say that encouraging designers to use D20 constitutes a "push" tactic, though I barely have any education in marketing so maybe I'm wrong in saying that. I haven't heard a lot of people around here asking for RPG products, and most people that do buy RPGs here do so only because someone made an effort to get them to play.

I do realize that I'm not exactly in an RPG-intense area, but it also seems to me that except for a few rare games like Big Eyes, Small Mouth, there's not a lot of pulling going on.

[14thWarrior]

Forgotten Realms, for example, sounds like it'd be loads of fun if played with Ed Greenwood... You darn right it's loads of fun! I am one of a privileged few who has had the opportunity to participate in a game session with Ed.

It happenned at a game convention (Knight March, in Cobourg Ontario, not far from where Ed lives) a few years back.

Hands down the coolest frikkin' gaming experience of my life! :D

That's all. You may now resume this topic. :D

[Alexis Machine]

Anyone here remember the rpg from Mayfair called Underground?

IMO it met all 11 points of criteiria that NPC mentioned...in fact I think it exceeded in some places and did some things better than any other rpg has yet that I've seen.

A high quality product, yet it bombed.

Like BetaMax vs VHS....sometimes the reason one prospers doesnt really seem to make sence.

[S. John Ross]

<B>(And yes, I suppose I sound a bit elitist too ...

... I'm just wondering if anyone's thought about this from a simple marketing / advertising viewpoint. </B>

Yes, when you wonder aloud if anyone else has ever thought of the thing you've been thinking of, it does sound a bit elitist :)

[DavidRM]

I agree with Whymme's assertion that "marketing" as it is described in the initial post is too simplistic.

I remember Magic: The Gathering's televised commercials. They tried to "spin" the game as a "party game for smart people", as I recall. I would be interested to find out if those ads actually had an impact on sales, or if, as seems more likely, they were an inexpensive ego-boost for WoTC ("Look! We have a TV commercial and it's not Pokemon!").

Marketing is about finding the people who *do* want to hear what you have to say, and then telling them in a way they want to hear.

For a new product to get broader appeal than the current product(s), it must have value outside the market of the current product. And it must be enough of a value that those people who have tried to stay the hell *out* of the "gamer stereotype" can justify that they haven't moved into it by purchasing the product. They can play this game and still be "cool" (or even "normal").

I would say that RPGs aren't "ignored" by the general populace so much as RPGs have dug a niche/rut for themselves and tended to stay there. They market only to their existing players, focusing more on making money from the players they have than on enticing new players to check them out.

[Alka-Seltzer]

Originally posted by Belac
(I'm going to put my name in every subject from now on because I don't want to make a post and then it come up as NPC even though the Logged In User clearly says Belac :)

What an incredibly great idea! I think i shall start doing the same. Sir, I thank you.

[NPC Chapino]

My Account is giving me the same problems, soon as I click anything... I'm loggeed off!

And yes, Advertising is the root of all success, and evil. If you've ever been to my site ybull.net, you'll have notice 2 things.

1. It has decent amount of hits that usally goes 100 a day.

2. The site is decent, but not enoguh content to warrant suchs hits.

Why is my site so moderatley succeful for homepage, cause I advertise the lving hell out of it. My site is my voice to the world, and man do I voice it. I put links inall my sigs, I've submitted it to every seach engine, got links to my site on dozens of popular sites and homepages. I've even gone as far as writing the URL on all my homework, hopeing my teachers could be a manner of word of mouth type thing, I write the URL in everythings, and I bring it up in every conversation. If I keep adding stuff to it like I have latley and keep advertising at this ate my site just might be something that people will visit more than once as I add interactivity.

So is advertising useful, hell YEAH! This who'll reply was advertising, greatly! I mean my site, britney Spears, and the Teletubbies are shame on the usefulness of advertising, isn't it a great world.

[Jason Sartin]

Originally posted by NPC Whymme
If you want to use today's marketing, you:

* Find out what people want
* Create that product
* Let people know that it exists.

Face it: everybody here knows that World of Senzar, Synnibar and FATAL exist, yet not many people would buy them.Yes, but that's because they didn't succeed with step B: "Convincing people that they should acquire it."

;)

(Oh, and I HAVE bought every Synnibarr and SenZar product known to man. But my masochism is well documented.)
<br>

[Razgon]

Originally posted by NPC Whymme

If you want to use today's marketing, you:

* Find out what people want
* Create that product
* Let people know that it exists.

Whymme

Well, I'm sure most people in this industry do this the other way around.
I mean, most of us do this because we love to play games, not because we see a potential in the market for a Mutant Britney Vs Alien Killer Ripley game.

But I do agree, that marketing is crucial, but it's limited what small companies can do, being without a great budget for marketing.
This is why Cons are such a great idea. Here you can for a relatively low price show people what you have made, and even have a game session with them, letting them try your excellent rules.

Other than that, advertising in major mags like Dragon magazine would be helpfull to, since it hits the target audience without being too expensive (200-300 dollars)

Just my two cents on the topic :)

[Desperado]

When people stop asking questions about the questions being asked . . . Art of Game Design actualy becomes an excellent pool of unending knowledge on and around RPGs. I'm just sitting here, reading this thread, absorbing <i>everything</i> that <i>everyone</i> has to say on this topic. Beautiful, just beautiful. :cool:

[NPC Bryan]

Originally posted by Alexis Machine

Like BetaMax vs VHS....sometimes the reason one prospers doesnt really seem to make sence.


Actually, Donald Norman wrote a bit about why VHS won out over Beta and why Macintosh lost to DOS. He calls these markets nonsubstitutable - once a buyer invests money in one system, it takes more money to switch systems, and the buyer is usually reluctant to switch. The best won't win - a system just has to be good enough. RPGs are, I'd guess, "semi-substitutable". You can switch from one to another fairly easy, but there is a learning curve. Which is why AD&D is so popular - it is good enough, and it took the market share quickly.

[Lord Iron Wolf]

The first thing I'm going to suggest is a book: "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" by Al Ries & Jack Trout. It's published by HarperBusiness and has an ISBN 0-88730-666-7. Read that before you invest a penny in advertizing; it has a lot of good advice and much of it applys to this industry or any other.

If you want a game to be successful, you had best invest in artwork both exterior and interior. Nearly unusable rules (FASA's first editions anyone?) can be overcome by good artwork. Bluntly, it's the artwork that sells the book, the writing may sell the next module.

I can't emphasize playtesting and blind playtesting enough. If a buyer has several good things or a bad thing to tell his buddy, about your game--which one do you think will be said? Or put another way, one complaint equals 5 compliments.

Another thing does your game look professional? Or does it have unconcious little mistakes that tip off it is an amateur effort? Here I will suggest the book: "The Non-Designer's Design Book" by Robin Williams, by Peachpit Press Inc., ISBN 1-56609-159-4. Be sure you have spell checked, proofread and copy-edited every page! In one book I have a section of rules refers back to (pg XX) a glaring example of carelessness.

Another thing to consider is what makes your game stand out besides your name? Either it is unique enough to be original or it will be seen as an attempt to jump on the bandwagon i.e. a simple rip-off of a a more popular game (D&D clones, anyone?) Or put another way are you presenting to the customer through your advertizing dollars. If it is information about something new, that will be listened to. If it is just advertizing to divert their dollars, you will be justafiably ignored.

A lot of games have some color in them in the form of short stories, character quotes and quick bits of information (Gurps: Traveller comes to mind) and this allows the customer a feel for the game-verse. Can they extrapolate adventures out of this information? Is there other sources they can buy to get ideas from: paperback books, comics, graphic novels, cartoons, movies or is the idea very isolated. An isolated game is hard to grasp and not very playable after a time without constant novels or a subscription to a house organ or magazine/webpage.

Due to the low dilution of gamers in any area, advertizing must be in speciality magazines, website banners and other media that have a very broad reach yet shallow numbers overall.

A final note, a new business is always a gamble--odds are you will fail. Yet in the trying and failure your next attempt will be with greater knowledge and the odds will be better. Do your best effort and give it your all, be resilient and smart.;)

[Max S.]

I read somewhere this very neat quote, and I think it was Thank You for Smoking:

"If you can't judge a book by it's cover someone's not doing their job."

I've loved that one since first I saw it.

[B. Miller]

Originally posted by Razgon

I mean, most of us do this because we love to play games, not because we see a potential in the market for a Mutant Britney Vs Alien Killer Ripley game.


I'd buy it!

[Razgon]

Ok, then. I'll make it then, seeing there is a market for it :)