I am trying to find an article that I read a while ago, but I'm having trouble locating it. If I find it I will post the reference, but to summarize, it reflected on how the "original" target market for table top RPG's was aging out and that companies which still produced table top style materials were having difficulty attracting new consumers. The main reason behind this was the video game alternatives to table top RPG's.
Organic growth is certainly achieved when a company is able to sell more product to a larger market than it previously had, but I'm not sure if that is what is happening here. I feel like many many RPG's are playing a defensive strategy, just attempting to maintain market share. Shadowrun seems to be struggling to find an identity in today's market place.
There was an interesting video on Youtube that had some of the writers examining the way certain things in Shadowrun are phasing out due to shifts in societal perceptions of what is considered high tech. For instance, the credstick, which may have been seen as futuristic and cool in the 80's and early 90's, is almost archaic and seen as a form of untraceable currency rather than the future of the way our currency will be handled. With that in mind, Shadowrun has always sought to be a cyberpunk/fantasy crossover with futuristic overtones. I'm just not sure it is putting image across with new players.
I think that the major problem that Shadowrun will face in the future is with the change in the way new generations will view product quality. As I'm sure you know, the generation that is moving in to fill the current consumer markets are brand insensitive. They are quality and price sensitive, which presents a problem in the manner that Catalyst is producing their printed product. I think that Catalyst needs to solve their editing issues above all. It makes the finished product look inferior and like it was rushed through production. For a market that is not necessarily married to any brand, but considers "bang for the buck", the quality issues that plague Shadowrun printed materials may prove to be a major thorn in their side.
Above all, I believe that the creators truly need to start addressing the issues being brought up by critics, even if they do not believe that those critics represent the market as a whole. There is that old saying about how a good services will be shared with additional person but a bad service will be shared with ten additional people. In my particular case, I am one of the ten people who have not been convinced to purchase any 6th edition materials. I'll admit I bought the 6th edition starter box, because it was the only product out at the time. But then I started listening to people who were playing 6th edition when the additional resources came out and the reviews were, at best, mixed. I became lukewarm in my desire to purchase additional materials due to those mixed reviews. The radio silence initiated is not helping that cause at all.
Hey Kato! Awesome ideas, some proper marketing crunch there
Spot on! Ageing of the target customer base is one reason for changes, second one is competition and threat from highly innovative industry, like Entertainment is. There is so much content out there, that long standing titles need to be re-introduced and often changed, modified or expanded. ( Battlefied, D&D, Batman, you name it). It would be interesting to see the if there is a correlation between attention span of young people and development of entertainment industry ( correlation is not causation, but it can lead to interesting insight ).
I agree that RPG tabletops are playing a defensive, or entrenched type of strategy, just holding on to their market share, trying to diversify. I assume that there was a time when TTRPG peaked, booming with new systems. Could we make an argument here, that if economies experience cycles, TTRPG's experience the same ? So that there are times when they peak and times when they drop ?
Now this is an amazing perspective. I would love to see that video. I can relate to this, as for me reading about Eurowars from today's perspective didn't make sense in my mind. Why would Russia go in with full scale military, when as we can see on Ukraine case, hybrid warfare on multiple fronts (media, cyber, politics, economics, society) is proving to work quite well ( from a warfare perspective ). It could be totally justifiable thinking when authors wrote those books decades ago.
On the other hand, we have things like LEO and Arcology habitats, Mars base, and the Corp monopolies being crazy accurate. Space X can land a returning rocket from space on a drone ship. Google is getting 2.5 billion Eur fines for abusing dominant market power, Facebook is used to manipulate elections. Volkswagen cheats on their emission output data. Volcanoes erupt and halts air traffic in large parts of Europe, Boston gets winters which can outright kill people. Sounds like Shadowrun to me.
I agree to a point. Yes the CRB is flawed. No one can argue about that. How much tho, is subjective.
Neo - Anarchist streetpedia and No Future are in my eyes outright great. Yesterday I was laughing my ass off reading how sports work in the Sixth world. Very entertaining writing, they kept the oldschool concept where you had parts of text as a forum conversation.
You are right that consumers are not brand sensitive anymore and they want quality and releasing badly edited product will not bring other customers along, it will discourage others by words of mouth, which is the strongest type of advertisement.
However I am an example of disregarding the negative fuzz.The added value of such deeply evolved setting with its own history and flavour is for me (and I hope that also for some other consumers) more than mistakes in editing.
Finally, there is a radio silence which is understandable but also a missed marketing opportunity. But I disagree that Catalyst doesn't give a damn about the community, as I find it almost rude towards all the people with " Catalyst Demo team" handle here on the forums. (That is more of a reaction towards other posts than you what you wrote)
