I read Paul’s column from June 10, 2022 and wanted to reply to it.
The RPG market is much bigger than it was 10 years ago and has lots of companies having strong success on crowdfunding sites. I’m glad this is the case and really appreciate that long-standing, quality-minded publishers like Chaosium (Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest), Pinnacle Entertainment Group (Savage Worlds), and ArcDream (Delta Green), as well as newer publishers like Modiphius (Star Trek, Dune) and Free League (Blade Runner, Alien) are succeeding.
However, those crowdfunding sites are taking away sales from us at some point. I have always loved RPGs of every kind and still want to have a large selection of different RPGs, but in my two markets they rarely sell. I still try them and have found some momentum with many of the newer Starter Boxes that we’ve seen recently. I have many, many, many Dungeons & Dragons players and when you add the ancillary products from WizKids and Ultra Pro that is a fair amount of space and inventory.
Additionally, many of these companies are not using crowdfunding sites for their original purpose, which is bringing a risky project forward to find a market, with as little risk as possible. At this point, all of the companies I mentioned should have moved beyond Kickstarter and focused on supporting distributors and retailers to connect with us, the retailers. But they can’t do that because Kickstarter works too well and is just too profitable to bypass.
Finally, while Twitter can be informative, it is frustratingly filled with drama and cancel culture.
I appreciate your point of view and I continually work to find ways to support publishers and the games they make, but even I get tired at times of D&D being the 8000 lb. Gorilla in the market.
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