Is the Traveller Market Fractured

[Liam Devlin]

A new poll, raised by the T5 poll question:

Is the Traveller Market fractured, or diluted?

The question stands, based on sales of the various Traveller versions CT, MT, TNE, T4, GT, T20, and the expected and somewhat previewed T5 (To be fair, some on these boards were privileged to have seen it, I have not, but I trust their judgement).

Based on the fact the RPG market is large, and that the Science Fiction RPG's (Of which Traveller is undeniably one of the oldest, and less "Over the Top", and less alien-race driven --like ST, SW to name the top contenders of aliens galore),is but a subset of the RPG market in and of itself.

Traveller has within itself 6-rulesets, as a poster from the T5 poll pointed out. Stripped of rhetoric, and names there lies bare the question.

Is Traveller in danger of becoming an even smaller niche of a niche market--are we further balkanizing around our camps of which rulesets we use, and buy, and thus by doing so are we further dividing ourselves, and not uniting?

If fewer people buy less of a product, can the company that does so, still justify it's being in business?

 

[kafka47]

Well, it seems that I am the dissenter in the midst of polling thus far. While, I agree we are fractured, I don't necessarily see that leading balkanization, as Traveller fans seem somehow to be collectors and will by-in-large buy everything that looks cool and has Traveller on it. I am not too sure what constitutes dead or not, for the Internet seems to keep many things alive that ought have been declared dead a long time ago. If anything Traveller exists in a long tail marketing strategy, might not make immediate profits but makes profits over the long term.

 

[Liam Devlin]

No, not the sole dissenter, Just the (at present)sole voice of why you dissent.

I see it as "balkanizing", and further splitting off with the various rulesets. reprinting them pdf or CD is walking the same road in a different format, and changes nothing, but sustains the market briefly for those who do not have space or $$ for deadtree.

You don't. Fair enough, and well said, kafka47.

sincerely,

 

[ravells]

I think you needed one more question, and that is if the balkanization of traveller (nice use of the word from a traveller sense to the real sense) means that as a product on the whole it will make fewer sales. I think not - the balkanisation might actually be an advantage in that people can choose the ruleset which most appeals to them.

But here's the rub. Even if traveller as a business were to die, it wouldn't really matter in terms of playing the game. Refs would still write more adventures, there would still be fanzines. In 30 years time when the majority 40+ fanbase are too old to do much it may die for lack of interest, but at the moment, there is too much of a dedicated fanbase for that to happen.

Ravs

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

The balkanization is not limited solely to GURPS and the Canon, but in the variety of "House Rules" and other variants. I have a half-dozen different methods of generating a Traveller character on file, and about as many ways to generate a random star system.

I see also a general trend away from in-person RPG's and more towards multi-player online games, and multi-player home video games.

Our deadtree games, while valuable to us, are seen as quaint and archaic by people raised on virtual gaming. I wonder if there is even a market among the under-20 crowd.

But I digress. Will T5 be the Grand Unifying Ruleset under which all other canonical versions of Traveller will fall? Will there be a melding of the best in all versions to make T5 viable for anyone used to any given earlier version?

Will I ever get through the entire CT disc before I lose interest entirely?

 

[Rhialto the Marvelous]

Funny, I certainly see balkanization, but I don't see market fracture.

In order for a market to fracture, there'd have to be a significant number of goods for sale--too many for me to buy them all, so that I'm forced to make a decision, presumably based on my favorite Trav system.

If so, that's not the case right now. This is 2007. There's so few Traveller things being published, I could buy them all. The only reason I don't is that these days I only ever buy RPG material on a need-right-now basis, i.e. for actual play, not for reading.

But I'm sure there are scores of people who bought a lot of T20 material in full knowledge they'd never play it. If you need a whole new sector for your CT, might as well get Gateway. I know I would.

The only problem I could see would be in publishing *highly* setting-specific material for the non-CT/MT era. With that, you marginalize yourself by catering only to small faction (who, on the upside, WILL buy your stuff). But as somebody said, setting-free stuff like the BITS publications may be a more viable proposition.

 

[Liam Devlin]

Originally posted by ravs:
I think you needed one more question, and that is if the balkanization of traveller (nice use of the word from a traveller sense to the real sense) means that as a product on the whole it will make fewer sales. I think not - the balkanisation might actually be an advantage in that people can choose the ruleset which most appeals to them.

Good question, ravs! The trouble with it is, that takes more than 15 words to write out.

But here's the rub. Even if traveller as a business were to die, it wouldn't really matter in terms of playing the game. Refs would still write more adventures, there would still be fanzines. In 30 years time when the majority 40+ fanbase are too old to do much it may die for lack of interest, but at the moment, there is too much of a dedicated fanbase for that to happen.

Ravs

The fanzines and fanbase might keep the flame alive as it did off and on until another QLI & Avenger Press revived it, true.

But as a demographic of numbers of tables at gaming conventions we are still a minority. there is virtual online gaming, and pbem gaming going on.

The poll above certainly does not address "gaming the game" or if "it (Traveller) is dead, dying, and so forth"--I know it is still being played around the world today!--but it does address its sales in the RPG market, the hard facts of the amount of sales, and any RPG game driven by sales & a lack thereof, is it seen as "dead"?

Anyone in business is in business to make money.

Without a sizable market to sell to, why would anyone bother, with all the overhead costs,time and effort, artwork, editing and so forth to be paid?

Without new official products, and merely reprinting the already deadtree ones, the fan base is still left with what they started with, in a newer more compact format--don't get me wrong, having all the MT-era,CT era, and what there is of TNE stuff on my harddrive is easier than carrying a suitcase about of books at GenCon! Been there, done that--should have left them, and just took my laptop! (we live & learn!)

I do however, believe new pdf publications of the game can get us out of where we are, as we advance into this 21st electronic data information storage age.

 

[Liam Devlin]

Originally posted by Heretic Keklas Rekobah:
The balkanization is not limited solely to GURPS and the Canon, but in the variety of "House Rules" and other variants. I have a half-dozen different methods of generating a Traveller character on file, and about as many ways to generate a random star system.

Agreed & quite true.

I see also a general trend away from in-person RPG's and more towards multi-player online games, and multi-player home video games.

Yes.

Our deadtree games, while valuable to us, are seen as quaint and archaic by people raised on virtual gaming. I wonder if there is even a market among the under-20 crowd.

Yes.

But I digress. Will T5 be the Grand Unifying Ruleset under which all other canonical versions of Traveller will fall? Will there be a melding of the best in all versions to make T5 viable for anyone used to any given earlier version?

Will I ever get through the entire CT disc before I lose interest entirely?

My Opinion on T5 is posted elsewhere.

My thoughts on your second query for that are yet hopeful.

Only you can answer the last one!

sincerely,

 

[Liam Devlin]

Originally posted by Rhialto the Marvelous:
Funny, I certainly see balkanization, but I don't see market fracture.

In order for a market to fracture, there'd have to be a significant number of goods for sale--too many for me to buy them all, so that I'm forced to make a decision, presumably based on my favorite Trav system.

I disagree respectfully--there are: The entire CT, & MT era, and some TNE-era books can be had in pdf format (Regency Sourcebook). JTAS reprints, once re-done in deadtree and now recently available in the CD format.

If so, that's not the case right now. This is 2007. There's so few Traveller things being published, I could buy them all. The only reason I don't is that these days I only ever buy RPG material on a need-right-now basis, i.e. for actual play, not for reading.

And why are there so few new ones going out? Seriously...GURPS traveller is dwindling in output. BITS is still going. Avenger is still going..QLI is struggling (currently).

But I'm sure there are scores of people who bought a lot of T20 material in full knowledge they'd never play it. If you need a whole new sector for your CT, might as well get Gateway. I know I would.

The only problem I could see would be in publishing *highly* setting-specific material for the non-CT/MT era. With that, you marginalize yourself by catering only to small faction (who, on the upside, WILL buy your stuff). But as somebody said, setting-free stuff like the BITS publications may be a more viable proposition.

I disagree. The game's historical setting cannot be forever stuck in 1105. Or 1203. Differing eras don't balkanize as much as the differing rule sets.

Where I agree, is that if Traveller is remain viable beyond "we happy argumentative few", we must redress the things that keep us apart, and address more products that all of us can use & enjoy.

Traveller gamers arguments remind some times of Winter sports. Not everyone watches them, but they have fans, and sponosrship.

I once bought tickets to a boxing match and a hockey game broke out.

I leave you with that illustration and a smile, Rhialto. thanks for voting & the explanation.

sincerely,

 

[Supplement Four]

Originally posted by Liam Devlin:
Is Traveller in danger of becoming an even smaller niche of a niche market--are we further balkanizing around our camps of which rulesets we use, and buy, and thus by doing so are we further dividing ourselves, and not uniting?

I know it's a question, but it's well said.

My answer: Yes.

Unite, or Traveller dies a slow, lingering death.

-S4

 

[al duc]

Originally posted by Liam Devlin:
Seriously...GURPS traveller is dwindling in output.

Funny how the fact that JTAS publishes a new issue every two weeks doesn't even register with many Traveller fans...

 

[Malenfant]

Thinking about it, if you're saying it's "fractured" then that implies that there's a single large group of people who would have bought just one product but is now having to choose between many.

Thing is, there's no such thing as "Traveller". Instead there's Classic Traveller, Megatraveller, The New Era, Traveller4, GURPS Traveller, Traveller20 and soon Traveller5. What we have to determine is how compatible the markets for all those different products are.

For example - there's probably a group of people whose first purchase of Traveller was GT or T20, and who bought it specifically because they were GURPS or d20. They're not interested in any other ruleset, so they didn't get CT, MT, TNE, or anything else. Are they really part of the "Traveller Market" or just an isolated group out on their own. What is the "Traveller Market" then?


I think what people like Martin (or any writers, really) would probably like is to be able to write a supplement that will be equally usable by all of those separate groups. Right now, one can only write for specific systems, which appeal to specific subsets of the combined Traveller market. It makes more sense to be able to write something that can appeal to everyone... but I think it's become apparent from previous discussion/argument and the T5 poll that T5 isn't going to really do much to bring everyone together to use the same system - it's just going to add yet another system to the mix.

 

[Liam Devlin]

Supplement 4

thank you sir.

 

[Liam Devlin]

Originally posted by al duc:
Funny how the fact that JTAS publishes a new issue every two weeks doesn't even register with many Traveller fans...

I was never a subscriber when it was a quarterly one either. Guess I wasn't much of a "joiner" then. GT lost my wallet's vote when Varian had a bad dream--and they went ATU, but that was my call, my bucks, and my opinion.

Thanks for responding,

sincerely,

 

[Liam Devlin]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
Thinking about it, if you're saying it's "fractured" then that implies that there's a single large group of people who would have bought just one product but is now having to choose between many.

In my own yes/no, Black/White, wrong/right viewpoint, yes. Simple, thats me.

Thing is, there's no such thing as "Traveller". Instead there's Classic Traveller, Megatraveller, The New Era, Traveller4, GURPS Traveller, Traveller20 and soon Traveller5. What we have to determine is how compatible the markets for all those different products are.

IMO (see my above mindset), there is "Traveller", then there are the rulesets, which you mention above. someone googling nowadays thinking of playing has 6 versions to choose from, then gravitates here to watch us pick over (again, IMO) "the sick-man" of the SF RPG market.

For example - there's probably a group of people whose first purchase of Traveller was GT or T20, and who bought it specifically because they were GURPS or d20. They're not interested in any other ruleset, so they didn't get CT, MT, TNE, or anything else. Are they really part of the "Traveller Market" or just an isolated group out on their own. What is the "Traveller Market" then?

Those who jumped in after those aforementioned previous rulesets are still (IMO again) under the tent of "Traveller". that's how I see it, plain and simple.

I think what people like Martin (or any writers, really) would probably like is to be able to write a supplement that will be equally usable by all of those separate groups. Right now, one can only write for specific systems, which appeal to specific subsets of the combined Traveller market. It makes more sense to be able to write something that can appeal to everyone... but I think it's become apparent from previous discussion/argument and the T5 poll that T5 isn't going to really do much to bring everyone together to use the same system - it's just going to add yet another system to the mix.

Here, I concur wholeheartedly, Mssr Malenfant. Its far better to unite, than divide for the game to flourish and regurgitate itself like a serpent eating/ gnawing its tail eternally.

My opinion, once again about T5, is on another thread.

sincerely,

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by al duc:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Liam Devlin:
Seriously...GURPS traveller is dwindling in output.

Funny how the fact that JTAS publishes a new issue every two weeks doesn't even register with many Traveller fans... </font>[/QUOTE]I don't think there's much to register. Even speaking as someone who's had articles published in it, it's basically catering to an isolated group in the way it's published. I mean, it's published by the company that does GURPS Traveller, and many Classic Traveller fans wouldn't even look at it as a result. And you have to pay for a two year subscription just to read a single article that interests you, whereas with a real magazine you could just pick out the issue that piques your interest.

And also I think the format really sucks - 4 or 5 articles every two weeks online at 5000 words tops (and I think my articles are among a handful that have actually neared that limit, most others were closer to the 1000-2000 word mark) isn't really a magazine IMO, it's more like a leaflet.

What they need to do is make it more accessible. Something that is long overdue is for SJG to sell the more useful individual articles from JTAS on e23. Call 'em a dollar or two each and I bet many of them would sell like hotcakes, and it opens it up a bit more to the rest of the market.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Liam Devlin:
IMO (see my above mindset), there is "Traveller", then there are the rulesets, which you mention above. someone googling nowadays thinking of playing has 6 versions to choose from, then gravitates here to watch us pick over (again, IMO) "the sick-man" of the SF RPG market.

I think this is what people get hung up on though. There's a sizeable bunch who say that Traveller is "the system" or "the rules" (which system or rules, I dunno. But that's what they say). But it really isn't.

The systems are all different, sometimes wildly so. The one thing that has remained common to all of them is the setting. Even though it's set in a whole span of eras, the setting has always been the same in general (even if in detail it's different because of how it's shoehorned in to fit the varied systems). The intent is clearly that the general universe is the same one across all of the different rulesets.

The people that realise that it's really the SETTING itself and not the rules that makes Traveller unique from other scifi games are the one that don't care so much about the system, and are therefore more likely to buy supplements for any of the rules to adopt into their own Traveller games.

 

[Liam Devlin]

think this is where people get hung up on though. There's a sizeable bunch who say that Traveller is "the system" or "the rules" (which system or rules, I dunno. But that's what they say). But it really isn't.

The systems are all different, sometimes wildly so. The one thing that has remained common to all of them is the setting. Even though it's set in a whole span of eras, the setting has always been the same in general (even if in detail it's different because of how it's shoehorned in to fit the varied systems). The intent is clearly that the general universe is the same one across all of the different rulesets.

The people that realise that it's really the SETTING itself and not the rules that makes Traveller unique from other scifi games are the one that don't care so much about the system, and are therefore more likely to buy supplements for any of the rules to adopt into their own Traveller games.

Agreed.

The setting is what makes traveller, "TRAVELLER".

The divisions I see arise on what rulesets to use (A primary point of strife), then what era to use that ruleset in(the secondary point of strife).

 

[Supplement Four]

Let's look at some quick-figuring numbers and take some guesses.

I have no idea how big the market is for Traveller, but I'm sure, by looking at game store shelves, that Traveller's market is a small subset of the entire rpg-buying public.

For figuring sake, let's pick a big, round number. Let's say that Traveller's market is 100,000 consumers.

That's the entire market--all of those who buy Traveller items for any rule edition.

Now, again, I'm just picking a number out of the air. Maybe that real number is bigger than 100 grand. Maybe it's smaller. Nobody probably knows for sure. But, since we'll be working with percentages, the point can be made. (Just insert the real number.)

OK, let's consider the fractionalization of the Traveller market. Already, we know that the entire Traveller market is but a small part of the entire RPG market (I'm sure no one would argue that D&D has the largest market share).

As MJD has already stated elsewhere, what's happening is that an already small market is yet again subdivided among the various rules sets.

Or, in other words, the small Traveller market is fractured.

I don't have real good data, so I've got to use what I do have in this table-top eyeballin' and figurin'. So, in no way do I think the sample is large enough to provide meaningful data in any poll taken here on the CotI forums. But, it's all I've got to work with, so I'll use the numbers from my own poll where I asked, "what type of Traveller do you play?"

Currently, with 50+ people who have taken that poll, we can guess that the Traveller market is fractured along those lines represented in the poll....

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">CT 52%
MT 24%
TNE 0%
T4 2%
GT 11%
T20 11%</pre>[/QUOTE]Now, using our guess of 100,000 buyers as the entire market for Traveller products world-wide, we can break down buyers for each rules set...

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">CT 52,000 buyers
MT 24,000 buyers
TNE 0 buyers
T4 2,000 buyers
GT 11,000 buyers
T20 11,000 buyers</pre>[/QUOTE]See...THIS is representative (even if we're not using correct numbers) of what's happening in the Traveller market place.

THIS is how the market is fractured.

If you're a publisher of T20 products, you're selling to 11,000 people when you could be selling to 100,000.

The reason T20 isn't selling to a larger number of people is because there's too much choice in the Traveller marketplace (it's too fractured).

Even if T20 is credited with growing the Traveller market by 5% (and 6% of the market "converted" to T20 when it was released), there's still over half the market out there not buying T20 items!

If Traveller converts to one system, maybe the total Traveller market will shrink...let's say it shinks by 25%.

Traveller would now have a total market size of 75,000 people world wide.

BUT....

The T20 publisher now publishes for the one, single-system Traveller market.

And what happens?

His market share is increased.

He was selling to 11,000 people when the market was fractured.

Now, he's selling to 75,000 people.

The market for his product has grown by almost 7 fold.



When I say that the Traveller market is fractured and that Traveller would benefit by going single-system, this is what I'm talking about.

Heck, even if T5 is a stinker that NOBODY likes, and 90% of the Traveller market evaporates in protest....

....the publisher that used to sell T20 items has lost nothing....because he's selling to 10% of the entire Traveller market...which is the SAME SIZE as what he was selling to before.




One, true, Traveller system is the only way to go. All licensees publish material for the same system.

That is the only way Traveller is going to survive.

-S4

 

[Rhialto the Marvelous]

Liam, when I mean products available right now, I don't mean pdfs or reprints of old material. Nobody* new to Traveller will bother buying those. If you were 25 now, would you buy reprints of games that are as old as you are yourself?

The only people who buy them are--our fine grognardy selves. We get them as backups, or to fill this or that hole in our 25+-years-old collection.

Then there are recent Trav products that cater, again, to us grognards, and that's where the fragmentation does set in, e.g. with Avenger's 1248 (setting fragmentation), or something like Trav HERO (rules fragmentation).

But with all respect to the authors and publishers: those are small enterprises, $$$-wise and community-wise. They're not large enough to atomize a market or a community.

What really counts, in terms of atomization or not, are currently supported, full-blown, stand-alone Traveller game lines. Here we have a choice between GT and T20. And those are both on their way out. (Yes, both. We have the T20 corebook and a worldbook. Maybe we'll get a player's book. Nowadays, three books is a fairly good run for a game line.)

If and when T5 gets published, it would be just in time to replace GT and T20. And suddenly, we'd have a single market leader. Things would look very neat and simple to those who are new to Traveller. A clean slate.

All this is assuming T5 turns out great, of course...


*Where "nobody" = so few people as to not matter financially.