Mike Shea

But for each of us, it will help us define for ourselves what a successful RPG means.

And once we know that, then we can use the model that we've put in our head to kind of look at RPGs and go, hey, it looks successful enough to me.

That matters enough for me.

And I think that helps us sort of navigate the conversations that are going on with other people.

Because we can ask not whether an RPG was successful or not.

We can say, are these things true that we have used to define whether or not our RPG is successful or not?

So a lot of the question is like, what makes an RPG successful?

What perspective do we have and what information do we have access to to be able to truly answer the question of whether or not something is successful?

So there's one other major factor in this, which is that success is not static.

A game isn't either successful or not.

A game can be successful for some time and then cease to be successful.

You could have a lot of initial sales.

And this is actually the trajectory of most RPGs.

I think fifth edition D&D is the only one that really hasn't met this trajectory, which is it's usually successful right out of the gate and then sales fall off.

And this is why we saw like a four year cycle for RPGs of like, you know, trying to get that pitch in sales again.

Hey, we sold a bunch of third edition books and then sales trickled off a third edition book.

So then we made 3.5 and they went back up again and so on.

And you see that pattern of putting out new core books because they want that success to come out.

So typically success happens early and then fades off.

So then you can say like, well, what does success look like in the long tail of that, right?