I think he was talking more about Asia as a broad scope. I also think it is assuming a lot that he only looked at games translated into English. Japan may be the one exception in Asia to that rule, but I doubt that. There are always exceptions to the rule because no one fits into a cookie-cutter mold. We, here, are the exception to the rule playing VNs when you look at most of the US, even most gamers.
Tactical games, along with puzzle games and other sub-genres do sell better in 2D, yes. However, there are a lot of cases where that’s not true. Shooter games, stealth games, non-tactical rpgs (although specific 2D titles still can sell quite well), horror/survival, etc.
And no, I don’t “prefer” 3D games. For one, I don’t like games that move to 3D and don’t take advantage of the medium very well.
That’s not all there is to it. Graphic design in 3D is much easier for things like map design and models, especially when all you need is tweaking. PC companies which want to make user-mods more friendly move this direction because the 2D maps usually have special, sometimes proprietary, imaging and often to change one thing you’ll have to change several. For console games, this probably isn’t as big of an issue I’ll admit.
I guess then we can see whose right in 20 years.
I see a few. I’ve even helped introduce a younger friend to it. However when I compare numbers, in all but one location its always older > younger members and sometimes by a substantial number and as part of my job I go to a lot of places.
While you do make some valid points, I will say that your model assumes a lot of stuff there, a lot of which I have found does not corraspond with what I see.
First off, the simple miniatures are what attract most young players. Miniature games like Star Wars where the rules are much more simplified. These games I’ve found tend to interest younger players moreso than TCGs. Then usually around 10-12 year-olds start playing card games. Most of these are imo the ones that come from afluent families where their families can afford to buy them hundreds of packs or plop down $500 on a single deck. The more complex minature games usually come in at the late teen, 16+ as they require more math and pattern recognition skills (for army design). Role-playing, for those that I see, does generally match at the low-end of the threshold the 16+ crowd, but I’d say only 2/3 of them came from it through any of those routes. The others are usually from spinoffs from video games, or cinema (usually anime). Most of the female tend to favor LARPing over tabletop in addition.
Not to disrupt the debate here, but just as an aside…
I started playing MtG when I was like 14, which completely coincides with the comment above, however, I recently got back into it after 10-12 years of not playing at all. Now that I’ve been shopping around getting back into the game and maybe even trying to get on the Pro Tour next season, (for teh lulz of being able to go “Yes, I moonlight as a pro Magic Player.” ) Magic is predominately dominated by older persons. (All of whom I’m assuming caught the bug back in the day) Now don’t get me wrong, there are a few older teens around, but I have yet to encounter a 7 year old at a tournament… unlike 12 years ago. That being said… it’s much easier to get cards when you have a full time gig, and not have to mow lawns/wash cars/clean houses for pocket cash.
I’m gonna have to disagree on this one. It seriously depends. 3D is not easier until you’ve invested into the expertise, software, hardware, and manpower to layout the initial groundwork. It has a significantly higher “starting cost” than 2D. AFTER you’ve developed the core engine and development tools, then 3D becomes easier. Until then however, it is harder, and requires more eggheads involvement. More complex the graphics, more brainiacs you need. Now all three of the big players, when you’ve paid all the licensing costs, provide basic development tools for 3D design on their various systems. This helps cut costs… unfortunately it’s mostly proprietary (expect Microsoft), and therefore has a learning curve. This is why porting between the various consoles is a major pain in the ass. Unsurprisingly, Sony does NOT give you a dedicated 2D dev kit, as they’ve got a major hate against them (you gotta make your own). Nintendo gives it to you in the same package that has the 3D. The PS3 is notoriously horrific to program on, and their tools suck ass even when they’re already made for you. God help you, if you wanna make your own development suite. Of course Nintendo isn’t exactly a walk in the park, but since the Wii and DS aren’t powerful systems to begin with, you don’t have to worry about getting all that fancy. Also Nintendo is VERY helpful with the support team thing. Of course the level of that support, depends on what level of license payment you’re doing, but even the entry program is better than Sony’s supposed “premium” version.
2D games are easier and cheaper in most comparative scenarios, because the pay-off ratio in development costs for 3D doesn’t make a return unless your game has an insane model count or is going to have lots of follow-on and spin offs using the same material. Even then however, 2D isn’t that bad off (see Dragon Quest, Pokemon, and Castlevania for recycling materials). Adding or changing things in 2D, is a lot easier than it used to be, because of shared development tools. There’s a sort of “open source share” kind of thing in the industry, once you’re official in and make the right contacts. Even if you don’t have access to that, you don’t draw pixel art dot by dot anymore: it’s all Adobe software and the various equivalents (which is basically what the doujin and indie use). 3D also has a flood of things 2D finds far easier (and again cheaper) to execute. For example collision detection is a pain in the ass with 3D (more complex, more painful) and as easy as breathing in 2D. You want long flowing hair for that Rapunzel look alike in 3D? Gonna need some serious CPU crunching and flamboyant programming. In 2D, you just draw it. Also the low cost of 2D is a major investor appeal - and unfortunately a major reason why 2D Castlevania doesn’t get Hollywood movie budgets like the 3D version. Because the cost is 90% less, you get 90% less. It’s a double edge sword - and why you don’t have a multimillion dollar 2D game for Castlevania. To create a top tier 3D game, takes an army of programmers and artists who are experienced with 3D techniques. Comparatively, to create a top tier 2D game really just takes a lot of artists, who can actually be “taught on the job” a lot of times.
I honestly can’t stop tripping over the little maggots (and I use that term endearingly). As a case in point, the official Yu-Gi-Oh tournaments. There’s an entire division dedicated to under 14 years old, called the Duelists League that’s across RPG stores all over the country. This has become so flooded with children under 12, that Konami has sanctioned the creation of a Dragon Duel League for them, which I believe is undergoing new testing this year. Admittedly the Yu-Gi-Oh population might be a little low right now, because the National Championship just ended three weeks ago… would have been better to seen it in June and July (it was like a Zerg Rush of kids). The other one I can’t stop avoiding them on, is the Pokemon TCG, [url=http://www.pokemonworldchampionships.com/2010/videos#pokmon-vgc-junior-finals]which has a dedicated Junior League[/url], but that too just finished it’s Finals a few weeks ago. Yes, video game company ran, but still held in tabletop RPG stores.
Yes, the upfront costs are much costlier, but PC market, where a majority of the VNs are made for, as you note it isn’t propreitary and upfront thus the cost, which still high, isn’t as bad as for gaming consoles. In addition, most companies, even and especially smaller ones, buy or develop an engine they plan to use over multiple games. When you factor this in, even counting the costs of programing tweaks into the engine, it is much cheaper down the road.
Again, like 3D the cost reduction from 2D is only good for single game release unless the spinoff games heavily rely on the initial game, like a fan disc or expansion. However those games will invariably sell far less copies (unless you’re WoW) for every person who bought the original also buying an expansion.
This means basically that unless you are making sequals/expansions where the art doesn’t change much, then the costs of redoing many things is not worth the time and money in the long-term. In addition, if your end goal is to have the art user-modifiable (and that isn’t always the case) then unless you’re using unmodified bitmaps or other common raster image formats (jpg, png, etc) then its not very accessible. Even if a company does, it can often make adding an image far more complex, especially when animation is involved which affects production times whiter you plan to make those images moddable or not.
As we all seem to be basing this on anicdotes, perhaps some hard data would be better. I’m not arguing there are a lot of players under 12 for TCGs, just not nearly as many as teenagers.
In the case of VN though, there’s a number of robust 2D engines are already made for them: of which are either free or very low cost to license. Vast majority of indie, doujin, and professionals make widespread of these: System-NNN for example.
Actually it’s not that difficult with 2D if we’re talking about VN’s specifically. The Japanese have a specific word for this phenomena, which for the life of me I cannot remember right now. However I’m certain everyone has already noticed this before, so it should be easy to explain using the derogatory term for it: “all anime characters look the same.” Of course that’s a half truth: characters drawn by Naoto Tenhiro and characters drawn by Akira Toriyama look nothing alike… however all the characters drawn by Tenhiro look alike, and all the characters drawn by Toriyama look alike. Some joke they really draw only six different characters.
For example these four lovelies: different height and hair style, but otherwise, exactly the same. Komori is the hawtest though.
Of course while there are exceptions to the rule, because of this truth, I’ve discovered that artists can crank out galge paper dolls very quickly. It depends on the complexity and deviation, as well as the skill of the artist, we’re talking something like one every few hours. The hard part is actually creating the character design: that can take several weeks ¬ñ even months. However once the character design is decided upon, the same “head and body” is used over and over again. The only difference is the face and what clothes they wear (which is decided during the design phase).
You really aren’t going to cut more time or money off by going 3D with a galge, simply because there isn’t all that much complexity or cost in producing the artwork for them. First someone has to first draw the illustrations for the 3D modelers to work with: it’s highly rare that anyone goes straight to 3D images without 2D references. These must also be high quality illustrations, for the texture mapping process to be done right. With 2D galge, you’ve already gotten all you need: the process stops right there. However for 3D you’ve only begun. There’s back facing, vertex shading, wire framing, lighting calculations, and buffering - among other things - all of which must take consideration for real time and synchronization. It takes significantly more man hours to produce a single 3D character library, than it does to produce a single 2D character library, and more people (you’re at the very least hiring a rendering artist and a sequencing artist), thus even more costs.
The savings you make in 3D over 2D, is like the savings you make in wholesale: you have to buy a whole lot of the stuff, before the savings are worth considering.
The NPD provides that information for several thousand dollars per month, on their Toy Subscription (with a 12 month minimum entry program). Super Data Research has their own study available for $700.
But I don’t think either of us are going to pay that much to just settle a forum debate to say, “I told you so!” I’d rather buy twincest.
As for the data I have on hand: unfortunately neither Konami or Nintendo “breakdown” the earnings for Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh on their internal investor reports. The entire Pokemon franchise has earned over $25 billion in profit since its first inception as of 2009. The entire Yu-Gi-Oh franchise has earned around $8 billion in profit since its first inception as of 2009. Pokemon has sold over 14 billion trading cards. Yu-Gi-Oh has sold over 22.5 billion trading cards (this has been confirmed by the Guinness World Records Organization).
They don’t give specific age demographic information on who buys what, other than (on the Konami document): “global adolescent market shrank by 1.7%”. It was blamed on the poor economy and 4Kids Entertainment failing television negotiations to have the Yu-Gi-Oh cartoon ran on premium time slots.
Hardly the end of the world.
On a side note, after doing some digging around, I noticed that back in 2000 WotC released one of their market studies without charging a single cent. They never repeated it again (you have to pay them now). While it was funded by WotC, who is certainly not an unbiased entity, this analysis is what paved the “rpg golden age” of the early 2000. While you’re reading this, let me quote something from WotC on why they did the OGL thing:
Ironic how they instrumentally crashed it again in 2003 to 2006, with the proliferation a single, compatible, core game system. :roll:
Although the whole 9/11 economic crash had an even bigger hand. Anyways… without further ado:
[code]Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Release Date: February 07, 2000
Summary prepared by:
Ryan S. Dancey,
Vice President, Wizards of the Coast;
Brand Manager, Dungeons & Dragons
Permissions: This file is Copyright 2000, Wizards of the Coast. This file
may be freely redistributed or quoted in whole or part, provided that this
attribution remains intact.
Methodology: Wizards of the Coast regularly surveys various aspects of the
adventure gaming channel; distributors, retailers and consumers to better
understand their preferences, concerns, and needs. That data is regularly
reviewed and distributed internally to senior management. The contents of
this file are excerpts from those sources; the source materials themselves
are confidential internal documents and are not available to the public. You
have my assurances that to the best of my ability, the information presented
in this document represents a fair and accurate representation of the data.
Sources: The primary source is a market segmentation study conducted in the
summer of 1999. No confidential information provided by non-Wizards
companies was used in the preparation of this report.
Exclusions: The internal information gathered by Wizards is considered an
important competitive advantage. Therefore, not all the information
available to Wizards is incorporated in this document, and there may be
areas where substantial, significant information is purposefully not
included. An effort has been made to ensure that the absence of any portion
of this confidential information would not render the material provided
herein inaccurate or invalid.
Pokemon Effect: As this study was conducted just as the Pokemon TCG
phenomenon was gathering speed. For this, and several internal reasons, I
have elected not to present information on the TCG component of the industry
at this time.
Updates: From time to time, I intend to revise and update this file to
reflect our ongoing efforts to understand the industry. When an update
occurs, the version number of the document will be changed, as will the
“release date”. Interested parties can write to me at ryand@frpg.com to
request an up to date copy of this document.
Section 1: The Segmentation Study
Since so much of this data is derived from the '99 Segmentation Study, it is
important that the reader understand how this data was gathered.
For the purpose of the 1999 study, the following methodology was employed:
A two phase approach was used to determine information about trading card
games (TCGs), role playing games (RPGs) and miniatures wargames (MWG) in the
general US population between the ages of 12 and 35. For the rest of this
document, this group is referred to as “the marketplace” or “the market”, or
“the consumers”.
This age bracket was arbitrarily chosen on the basis of internal analysis
regarding the probable target customers for the company’s products. We know
for certain that there are lots of gamers older than 35, especially for
games like Dungeons & Dragons; however, we wanted to keep the study to a
manageable size and profile. Perhaps in a few years a more detailed study
will be done of the entire population.
Information from more than 65,000 people was gathered from a questionnaire
sent to more than 20,000 households via a post card survey. This survey was
used as a “screener” to create a general profile of the game playing
population in the target age range, for the purposes of extrapolating trends
to the general population.
This “screener” accurately represents the US population as a whole; it is a
snapshot of the entire nation and is used to extrapolate trends from more
focused surveys to the larger market.
A follow up survey was completed by about a thousand respondents from the
“screener”. The follow up survey is an extensive document with more than 100
questions. The particular individuals chosen to participate in this expanded
survey represent the population, as determined by the screener. In other
words, the small detailed survey group can be reasonably extrapolated to the
larger screener group, and the larger screener group can be logically
extrapolated to the public in general. This is a common, standard, and
accepted methodology within the market research field.
The data from the detailed survey was collated and prepared by the Wizards
market Research Department, in conjunction with an external consulting firm.
We believe that the data is a fair and accurate representation of the hobby
game consumer profile and that it does statistically correlate with the
population as a whole in the US for the target age bracket.
Section 2: Basic Terms
As a part of the detailed survey, the following terms and examples were
provided to the respondents:
Term Example
(*)Paper RPGs Dungeons & Dragons
Card Games Bridge, Solitaire,
Uno, Poker
Trading Card Games Magic, Pokemon
Word/ knowledge Scrabble,
Trivial Pursuit
Puzzle computer games Tetris
Non-competitive problem solving Sim City, Myst
Puzzle table games Jenga, Dominoes
Class board games Chess, Monopoly, Go
Action/Shooter/Arcade Doom, Mortal Kombat
Miniatures table-top fantasy/sci-fi Warhammer
Games that use miniatures Battletech
War games Historical
Simulations Flight/car
Simulators
Strategy games Risk, Civilization
Social/party games Charades,
Pictionary
Strategic sport simulations Madden, MLB
Other non-sport games N/A
Specific questions were also designed to separate users of “computer Role
Playing Games” vs. “paper Role Playing Games”.
(*) For my own purposes, I choose to use the term “Tabletop RPGs” in this
document; the term “paper RPGs” was used in the study. The terms are
synonyms; my choice is simply personal. I believe that in the fairly near
future “paper” RPGs will hybridize with computer assistance ¬ñ not becoming
“computer RPGs” as that term is commonly understood, but not being games
played simply with paper anymore either. Consider this a “forward looking”
terminology.
The term “D&D” is used herein to describe all flavors and types of D&D play;
from old “white box” players up to people playtesting 3rd Edition.
Section 3: Basic Demographics
The study provides the following information about the basic demographics of
the tabletop RPG marketplace:
Size: 6% play or have played TRPGs (~ 5.5 million
people)
3% play monthly (~ 2.25 million people)
Gender: 19% are female (monthly players)
Crossover: 17% of the total play MWGs monthly
46% of the total play computer RPGs monthly
26% of the total play TCGs monthly
The study provides the following information about the basic demographics of
the computer RPG marketplace:
Size: 8% play or have played CRPGs (~7.3 million
people)
5% play monthly (~4.5 million people)
Gender: 21% are female
Crossover: 33% of the total play tabletop RPGs monthly
21% of the total play TCGs monthly
13% of the total play MWGs monthly
The study provides the following information about the basic demographics of
the MWG marketplace:
Size: 4% play or have played MWGs (~3.7 million people)
2% play monthly (~1.8 million people)
Gender: 21% are female
Crossover: 37% play tabletop RPGs
40% play computer RPGs
29% play TCGs
The age breakdown of players within the marketplace is:
(*) “All Gamers” means people in the study population who reported playing
any< of the game types monthly, not just TCGs, RPGs, MWGs or CRPGs.
Conclusions:
Few “General Gamers”:
The first, most notable conclusion we can draw from this information is that
the mythical “hobby gamer” who plays TRPGs, CRPGs, MWGs and TCGs comprises a
very, very small portion of the total market. A minority of gamers play more
than one category of hobby game; very few play all three. The largest
overlap, though still a minority, is with CRPGs and TRPGs.
This is an exciting conclusion, because it indicates that a company can
successfully create brand in one of the three hobby categories, and extend
that brand into the other two without significantly cannibalizing sales. In
other words, the people who buy the RPG are not likely to be the ones buying
the MWG or the TCG.
There are “Women in Gaming”
Second, it is clear that female gamers constitute a significant portion of
the hobby gaming audience; essentially a fifth of the total market. This
represents a total population of several million active female hobby gamers.
However, females, as a group, spend less than males on the hobby.
Adventure Gaming is an adult hobby
More than half the market for hobby games is older than 19. There is a
substantial “dip” in incidence of play from 16-18. This lends credence to
the theory that most people are introduced to hobby gaming before
high-school and play quite a bit, then leave the hobby until they reach
college, and during college they return to the hobby in significant numbers.
It may also indicate that the existing group of players is aging and not
being refreshed by younger players at the same rate as in previous years.
Section 4: The Role of Computers
There is an intense, ongoing discussion between publishers and customers
about the use of computers and the interaction between computer game play
and adventure game play. The market research study presented some revealing
insights into this ongoing debate.
Internet Gaming: 51% of the TRPG players report that they have ever played a
game on the internet. 28% report that they play an internet game monthly.
% Who want to buy software to help manage game and speed up combat: 52%
% Who want to play D&D over the internet with others: 50%
% Who read newsgroups, mailing lists and web sites: 37%
% Who currently play with computer assistance: 42%
What computer do gamers use?
Wintel Platform: 63%
Macintosh Platform: 9%
(The question was essentially “What platform have you used in the last
month”, and “none” was an option, probably accounting for the missing
percentage.)
What’s sitting at home?
Wintel Platform: 54%
Macintosh Platform: 7%
Three quarters of the sample use the Internet at least once a week, but only
two thirds have access from home.
“Who plays electronic games?”
Computer Console/Handheld Both
Average Age: 26 23 20
Education
% 6th-8th: 5 20 27
% 9th-12th: 23 52 37
% College: 53 26 31
% Post Grad: 20 2 5
Marital Status
% Single: 52 65 76
% Partnered: 46 29 22
One conclusion we draw from this data is that people who play electronic
games still find time to play TRPGs; it appears that these two pursuits are
“complementary” or “noncompetitive” outside the scope of the macroeconomic
“disposable income” competition.
Section 5: Tabletop RPG Business
We asked questions of people who play TRPGs to get a better and more
detailed picture of that category. This section explores some of that data.
The market research study provides some useful information on the games TRPG
players play when they’re not role playing:
51% play a non-TCG card game monthly
43% play a puzzle computer game monthly
43% play a classic board game monthly
58% play an “action/shooter” computer game monthly
41% play a “simulation” computer game monthly
The >least< played game types were:
26% play a TCG monthly
24% play a puzzle table game monthly
17% play a MWG monthly
17% play a social/party game monthly
When asked how likely a person was to be the DM/GM, the responses were:
2+ Sessions as DM/GM: 47%
Don’t DM/GM: 41%
When asked to describe a variety of past game experiences, the market
provided the following data:
Question: Result
Used detailed tables & charts: 76%
Included Miniatures: 56%
Used “rules light” system: 58%
Diceless: 33%
Combat Oriented: 86% ()
Live Action: 49%
House Rules: 80%
() Looked at in reverse, this interesting answer tells us that 14% of the
gamers who play an RPG >have never played< a combat oriented RPG.
Of the people who reported playing a TRPG, we further screened for people
who played D&D and asked those individuals some more detailed questions.
This data comes from people who have played D&D, not necessarily those who
play monthly.
Age: <12 12-15 16-18 19-24 25-25
Learned D&D: 23% 41% 15% 12% 9%
One conclusion we drew from the data was that if a player had played longer
than one year, the chances they would play another year were greater than if
they had not yet been playing for a full year. In fact, the longer a person
plays, the higher the chance they will stay in the game; in other words,
players are >less< likely to quit playing D&D the longer they play, not
more< likely.
<=1 Year >1-5 Years >5 Years
Expect another Year: 40% 75% 88%
We asked what the frequency of play was:
Total D&D <=1 Year >1-5 Years >5 Years
Monthly: 7.2 4.9 13.2 5.9
So we see that the longer a player is in the game, the fewer times per month
they play after the 5th year. Once the “acquisition” period (1st year) has
passed, frequency of play accelerates tremendously, then drops. One
explanation for this fact may be that since acquisition happens most often
at age 15 or less, “new players” may have a lot of time available for
gaming, but as they age, they have less time per month to play.
We looked at a few other questions based on how long a person had been
playing the game:
[ if this chart gets mangled in the formatting, it has three columns of
data ]
Typical 4 or More Average Sessions
Session Gamers In before Restart
5+ Hours Group (New Characters)
Total 28% 62% 15.4
<=1 Year 10% 48% 8.8
1-5 Years 14% 60% 12.9
(*)>5 Years 42% 71% 19.6
(*) Remember that frequency of play is down sharply for these gamers)
This data tells us that the longer a person plays the game, the longer the
game sessions get, the more people play in the game, and the longer the game
progresses before a character restart. In fact, if you look at the >5 year
group, you realize that the big jump in long sessions and in average
sessions before a restart means that the 5+ year gamers are playing the same
characters, on average, vastly longer than anyone else.
One conclusion might be that it takes 5 years for a player to really master
the system and really figure out what kind of character that player likes to
play.
The following financial figures are for TRPG players in general (D&D
information, where available, is provided as well)
This data seems to validate the theory that young gamers, while very active,
don’t spend a lot of money. (The following data is reported by for RPG
expenditures) The big dollars come from adults…
Total spending by age:
12-17: $297
18-24: $850
25-25: $2,213
And, the longer they stay in the category, the greater their total
outlays…
Play <=1 Year: $116
Play 1-5 Years: $562
Play >5 Years: $2,502
And if they can be induced to become a DM/GM, expenditures skyrocket.
Will DM/GM: $2,048
Will not DM/GM: $401
Some breakouts for the D&D population in particular¬Ö
Total D&D spending by age:
12-17: $164
18-24: $443
25-35: $1,642
Total D&D spending by time in game:
<=1 Year: $123
1-5 Years: $338
5 Years: 1,756
Monthly D&D spending by time in game:
<=1 Year: $7
1-5 Years: $22
5 Years: $16
(Interesting note: Monthly spending in the first five years after adoption
of the game is higher than the spending beyond that point – though the
older, longer gamer plays the game more, they spend less. This may relate to
the frequency of a character/game restart.)
D&D DM willingness effect on expenditures:
Will DM: $1,444 total / $21 monthly
Will not DM: $187 total / $7 monthly
(Interesting note here: Even people who don’t DM buy a heck of a lot more
than just a PHB…)
Effect of miniatures addition to RPG mix:
Few miniatures owned/used: $139 total RPG spending
Many minis owned/used: $4,413 total RPG spending
We found that players who were ¬ëlapsed’ ¬ñ reported that they had played
TRPGs but were not currently doing so; had spent more money than the current
players, and had played more different games monthly – but interestingly,
they had spent less money, on average, on D&D than players who were
“current”.
(Current/Lapsed)
Mean RPG Spending Mean Total D&D Number
Spending RPGs Played
$1,273 / $1,667 $895 / $599 2.2 / 3.3
One conclusion that could be drawn from this data is that gamers who don’t
like D&D will spend a lot of money and try a lot of systems to find
something they do like before they quit. Gamers who like D&D will spend less
money and try fewer systems, but will spend more on D&D than those who don’
t.
When asked why a gamer lapsed, the answers (multiple choices allowed) were:
Got too busy with other things: 79%
Too few people to play with: 63%
Not enough time to play: 55%
Found a game I liked better: 38%
Unhappy with the game and the rules: 38%
Cost too much money: 32%
Burnt out from frequent play: 29%
Getting back to the people still playing the games, when asked what games
TRPG players play monthly, the answers (multiple choices allowed) were:
D&D: 66%
Vampire: The Masquerade: 25%
Star Wars: 21%
Palladium: 16%
Werewolf: The Apocalypse: 15%
Shadowrun: 15%
Star Trek: 12%
Call of Cthulu: 8%
Legend of the Five Rings: 8%
Deadlands: 5%
Alternity: 4%
GURPS: 3%
When asked to describe aspects of their games, on a scale from 1 to 5,
answers were:
(normally/rarely)
Create Own Adventures: 42% / 11%
Create Own Campaign Material: 29% / 17%
Replay Adventures: 18% / 35%
Use adventures from magazines: 21% / 40%
Follow official D&D Rules 33% / 17%
When we asked RPG purchasers how many had purchased D&D at a particular
retail type, the answers were:
(*)Hobby/game shops: 36%
Book Stores: 27%
Comic book stores: 18%
Specialty toy and game: 17%
Large toy store chains: 15%
Conventions: 4%
(In other words, 36% of the respondents indicated they had purchased a D&D
product at a Hobby/Game shop.)[/code]
