Monday, January 17, 2011

State of the Hobby 2011

I wanted to share this link.
http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/19151.html

According to ICv2 the hobby is on the rise.  I have to say this does have some face validity to it.  More people staying in and engaging in the relatively cheap hobby of rolling dice and talking in-character.

Hopefully their data is good.

7 comments:

Pontifex said...

Certainly you are not equating hobby gaming to RPGs perfectly, Tim. A lot of that is talking about CCGs and boardgames.

To me, Pathfinder tying WotC in sales is a bad omen.

Timothy S. Brannan said...

No, not equating them, but there is a bundle of interconnected data here.

We really do lack good market analysis in RPGs and even good market intelligence.

Sometimes all we have are these marginal indices of performance.

Pontifex said...

I know. The data sucks.

Timothy S. Brannan said...

I am hoping that with Gen Con up 3,000 people this year that we are seeing a potential rise.

Greg(ory) Senpai said...

I think you mean 30,000 ... 3,000 would be pretty pathetic for a con of that scale... I am pretty sure that Strategicon gets about that many each year, but for a local con, I would say 3k is pretty good. I have never been to Gencon, but honestly, I thought the numbers might be a bit higher given that it is the biggest con of the year.

Timothy S. Brannan said...

No no, it was up by 3,000 over last year.

Rhonin84 said...

Just for fun:

Walked into my FLGS today and was shown the preview of the new 4th Fortune Cards. There will be (8) cards and there will be a rare, (2) uncommon and (5) common cards. I was asked if I will be buying these cards...I said flatly NO!

The employee then proceeded to show me the cards and the artwork, I reiterated if you are in a hurry to go, please don't let me stop you. I won't be buying any of those cards.

He stopped and saw that I was serious and said ok, that is the kind of information we have been asked to provide back to WOTC.

I don't mind cards in a game, heck I've used critical cards and treasure decks before BUT when you start making the cards collectible...that cuts it, I don't do CCG's. I did when I was in my twenties and thirties but I got out of that in my early thirties.

Good Luck WOTC with that.