Mike Shea

If an RPG is popular in the world, it's probably also popular at conventions.

It seems to me that those two would have a pretty good connection.

It seems to be pretty rare to find a game that is only big at conventions and no one else ever plays it, or a game that everyone in the world is playing but you never find at a convention.

There are probably examples where that's the case, but I think that that was pretty rare.

Do you actually know or can you find groups of people playing a game or talking about it or running it, right?

Can you go and find people on Discord or Reddit or wherever you hang out and see that, yes, there actually are people who are talking about this and running the games, right?

They're running it regularly.

I think that that is a good measure that a game is successful.

If you see people regularly playing the game, it's successful.

Here's one that I would add, and I think this is because it's kind of my thing.

Does a game have some form of open license so that it can remain successful even if the publisher walks away from it?

This to me is not so much a measure of whether or not it's successful, but it tells me that a game may be more successful in the other in the long term because publishers are going to make new versions of things.

They're going to put new versions of things.

But if people like it and there was an open license, it means they can stay with it.

See third edition D&D.

See other games that have open licenses for things.

When they have that, it doesn't mean it's going to be a success, but it's giving it a bit of resiliency that a game that doesn't have an open license or particularly a game that is tied to an IP, like a third party intellectual property, those are harder to remain successful because they can actually stop you from buying it anywhere and there's no other versions available.

It doesn't mean those are totally dead, but it means it's going to limit the success of a game if it has something like that.

Yeah.

So I think having some degree of an open license that you know that other people can continue to develop for it in the future matters towards the success of a game.