The last time I wrote about ProFantasy business was at the end of 2011, during the world economic downturn. Our market is primarily in the US, where there has been a steady recovery. That said, I think our business depends far more on factors unrelated to the economy, and more to the tiny sector of the market we inhabit, and to some extent our own endeavours. I will continue our proud and misguided tradition of ascribing most of our success to our own endeavours rather than those outside factors.

Outside Factors

On those outside factors, first, there is evidence of the steady growth of the tabletop RPG hobby alongside the continuing of mainstream acceptance of genre media (super hero and science fiction movies and paranormal romance). It’s become easier than ever before to publish table top RPGs and there are more games and players than ever before. GenCon, which features the world’s largest concentration of tabletop roleplayers has grown year on year for the past four years by 10% a year. This year saw the succesful launch of D&D 5th Edition, which has given everyone in the hobby a boost.

Sales

This graph shows that despite the absence of new version of the software for which users have to pay, sales continued to increase slowly. December 2013 saw the release of Character Artist 3, our first updated add-on for a while, and that included a free upgrade to CC3+ when it was released. The huge spike at the end was our Jan 15 CC3+ early adopter launch – the first new, paid for upgrade since 2006.

This graph gives a clearer picture of total annual sales. Our margins were cut in 2013-2014 as we invested heavily in the new version, employing Joe Slayton on a permanent contract to improve CC3+, but the successful launch of 2015 showed that risk to be worthwhile.

CC3 sales are a pretty solid measure of new customer acquistion, which you can see increased. The 2015 orange spike is CC3+ upgrade sales – high in absolute terms, but also high as a percentage of CC3 sales to date. It’ll be interesting to see if they match the total upgrade percentage of CC2 + CC2 Pro to CC3.

Our website vistor base has fractured a little, with customers looking at our blog, forum facebook and other social media outlets. Our biggest community success is the forum – the quality and quantity of maps posted there increases month on month.

More Trends

In 2010, download sales were 25%. This has increased in 2014 to 75%. In part this is a general trend, but our download guarantee had an immediate impact when we introduced it. Media is still useful for our very modest retail sales, but we are taking steps to further eoncourage download purchases over media purchases.

The average order level increased by 10% from 2012 to 2014 driven by improved take-up in bundle sales.

The percentage of women buyers remains stubbornly at around 10% (based on comparing first names with a list).

You can get an idea of our sales spikes on product releases here.

Next up, the relative sales of our most of our products for 2012-2014 – I am surprised that City Designer 3 has overtaken Dungeon Designer 3 as our best-selling add-on.  The relative popularity of fantasy over modern and SF settings continues.

Predictions

Oh, dear. I will go out on a limb and say that this year will be our best yet (in terms of sales and margin) unless there is a huge event outside our control. I think, unlike the CC2 to CC3 transition, CC+ full versions will outsell the upgrade, though the upgrade will do well. We’ll get one new product (in addition to the subscription) out, and we will have run our first Kickstarter.