Author Topic: 4 Reasons to Fear An RPG Extinction  (Read 5098 times)

Jubal

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4 Reasons to Fear An RPG Extinction
« on: May 21, 2019, 02:10:11 PM »
I thought this was an interesting piece:

https://www.highlevelgames.ca/blog/4-reasons-to-fear-an-rpg-industry-extinction

Basically the tl;dr is that if the US, the biggest market for RPG products, starts slapping a 25% import tax on toys and games from countries like China, where most of the actual manufacturing happens. The upshot in an industry as low-margin as RPGs will be to massacre the small players (because it still won't be profitable to produce stuff in the US, it just won't be profitable to make things in China either).

Thoughts on this? (NB - please keep the thoughts to the impact of this on the gaming world: if too much discussion happens on the pure politics of tariffs, I'll have to split it off and take it to the debate area)
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Pentagathus

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Re: 4 Reasons to Fear An RPG Extinction
« Reply #1 on: May 21, 2019, 04:47:45 PM »
I don't think I've ever played a Chinese made RPG.

Jubal

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Re: 4 Reasons to Fear An RPG Extinction
« Reply #2 on: May 21, 2019, 05:55:22 PM »
I've never played a Chinese *designed* RPG (which I'd like to, I think it'd be interesting getting more non-Western designers/perspectives in games generally), but it's printing, minis, all that kind of stuff that many if not most Eur & US tabletop game manufacturers get done in China. I'm sure I have got boardgames made in China, don't think I've got any RPG books but then I don't actually own many of those (and the ones I have are mostly PDF). Smaller creators especially rely on the cheaper manufacturing China offers, I think. Of course, there are some pretty problematic reasons why Chinese manufacturing costs are lower, but given Eur/US manufacturing costs aren't dropping, it's tricky to see how smaller businesses can make things work with this change.
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comrade_general

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Re: 4 Reasons to Fear An RPG Extinction
« Reply #3 on: May 21, 2019, 06:48:28 PM »
It's probably best not to rely on slave labor for our games lol

Jubal

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Re: 4 Reasons to Fear An RPG Extinction
« Reply #4 on: May 21, 2019, 07:27:26 PM »
It's probably best not to rely on slave labor for our games lol
Is a fair point. I guess we'll see a lot of moves to producers just e-publishing everything.
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