Was Fighting Fantasy's '90s cancellation so inevitable?

[CharlesX]

From what I can tell lots of authors had very good ideas for Fighting Fantasy works. My understanding is it was Puffin, not Ian & Steve, who chose to cancel Fighting Fantasy, and Puffin just weren't exactly Fighting Fantasy enthusiasts, which as a side point may have affected their decision about what Fighting Fantasy to go ahead and publish, or turn down. I don't know whether sales were actually that in decline, for example Choose Your Own Adventure carried on until the late '90s instead of the mid '90s, and I hypothesize that with supportive marketing instead of reluctance and dislike Fighting Fantasy could have lasted longer. Were the Penguin\Puffin publishers sitting in their chairs like Michael Grade (the BBC higher-up who cancelled Doctor Who), happy when there was a long hiatus?

   Edit: It was Puffin who published Fighting Fantasy, not Penguin, wasn't it? Corrected post in line with that.

[keef]

I guess the numbers tell their own story, though I remember as a teenager that as my interest wavered a bit, it coincided with bookshops mostly stocking the well known early ones, and failing to shift copies of sky Lord and star strider

[The Editor (Alex B)]

My local bookshop stocked copies of each new title up to 52 (end of 1992) but they stopped appearing after that.

[bloodbeasthandler]

The last Lone Wolf book (The Hunger of Sejanoz) was published as late as 1998, and the last FF was 95.. And yet Wizard books started republishing FF in 2002. That is not such a long time, really, is it?

Yes there was a drop in sales compared to the heyday of the mid 80's.

BUT

As we see, only a few years went by before they were back on bookshelves (albeit reprints and not new titles).

Rather than encourage the books to grow with the readers (more adult themes perhaps? And by that i don't mean triple X stuff...) the publishers came up with the genius idea of reducing the number of paragraphs or plumped for the Goldhawk books. How and why would that work? They didn't know what they were on about did they?

When looking at some of the insipid stuff put out for children and young adults I ask myself was there really no place, no niche, no market at all for these sorts of books from the mid 90s onwards? So what if they weren't one two and three in the children's top 10 bestsellers? Neither was almost all of the stuff already on the shelves. 

I think some of these people in business like to hold court about the demise of things and see them fall over. Maybe it makes them seem knowledgeable and 'willing to make tough calls'.. ? when they are pronouncing things like 'The gamebook bubble has burst, cancel the series'.

Thank goodness we have self-publishing and the internet now so we can be made aware of what folks out there are creating. 

[pip]

As an 80s kid, I was part of the target audience for the FF books. Based on my experience, I can tell that my waning interest in them coincided with their demise.

In the heyday of FF books, video games were primitive and pen-and-paper RPGs weren't mainstream. There were also FF titles that I reckon could be the equivalent of "killer apps", such as Deathtrap Dungeon, House of Hell, etc. As I grew up, video games started offering more possibilities, and I also started getting into p&p RPGs, which had become more steadily available. The newer FF titles, while usually decent, also lacked killer entries, and typically left me with a "meh, more of the same, it was nice but nothing special" feeling. Thus, my interest in FF waned. I used to be an avid fan, but I grew steadily less interested. Sometime in the 90s, I just stopped caring if new books had been released.

A few years later, out of nostalgia, I just randomly thought "hey, I wonder if there are any good new FF books out", went to a few libraries, and saw that there were no FF books to be found at all anywhere (which was a surprise for me, as back then they used to be easily available). I later found out the series had been cancelled. 

I still enjoy the books to this day, and was thrilled about the new releases from SJ and IL (which I both played and enjoyed), but is it because of nostalgia? Would I enjoy them as much if I discovered them today? This is too theoretical for me to answer!

[bloodbeasthandler]

Sept 27, 2022 18:51:12 GMT pip said:

As as 80s kid, I was part of the target audience for the FF books. Based on my experience, I can tell that my waning interest in them coincided with their demise.

That is true for me too, if I'm being honest. 
It applied to Lone Wolf as well- I didn't buy a lot of the more recent books. 

Sept 27, 2022 18:51:12 GMT pip said:

A few years later, out of nostalgia, I just randomly thought "hey, I wonder if there are any good new FF books out", went to a few libraries, and saw that there were no FF books to be found at all anywhere (which was a surprise for me, as back then they used to be easily available). 

I've relied on libraries in the past to maintain a supply of certain books (sci fi series and whatnot) only to find they've been cleared off the shelves. I hadnt realised how quickly libraries churn through titles and get rid of them. 

Sept 27, 2022 18:51:12 GMT pip said:

I still enjoy the books to this day, and was thrilled about the new releases from SJ and IL (which I both played and enjoyed), but is it because of nostalgia? Would I enjoy them as much if I discovered them today? This is too theoretical for me to answer!

You'd have to turn yourself into a youngster all over again and be born, what.. in about 2010 to find out. It's impossible to answer, really, as you say. 

Yes, there might not be a mass market for FF, but was there always a niche market?  

[revenant]

They stopped selling well. You think Penguin would have cancelled if the profit was still rolling in?

I forgot about about FF from the mid-90s. In the year 2000 I became interested again, and looked around for recent books. Guess what? FF titles in the 50s were still sitting on shelves here in Australia. Both in major general retailers (Coles and Target) and in book chains. In numbers. I mean, there were a few straggly 5+ year old copies on the shelves, and if you asked them to check in the warehouse (which I did!) they were able to rustle up some more. I picked up a copy of Magehunter, wish I had taken 5 now.

[thealmightymudworm]

Sept 27, 2022 20:38:15 GMT revenant said:

They stopped selling well. You think Penguin would have cancelled if the profit was still rolling in?

I forgot about about FF from the mid-90s. In the year 2000 I became interested again, and looked around for recent books. Guess what? FF titles in the 50s were still sitting on shelves here in Australia. Both in major general retailers (Coles and Target) and in book chains. In numbers. I mean, there were a few straggly 5+ year old copies on the shelves, and if you asked them to check in the warehouse (which I did!) they were able to rustle up some more. I picked up a copy of Magehunter, wish I had taken 5 now.

This is logical (and I don't know what the sales figures were like around cancellation time) but my impression was that Puffin/Penguin somewhat shared the negative opinion of FF – that is that it was morally bancrupt trash that was keeping kids from 'real reading'. If sales merely dropped from spectacular to solid, that might have been sufficient for them to make a 'strategic' decision to junk the range in case they missed out on being offered the next big thing by being 'the ones that do those bloody awful Fighting Fantasy books'.

[kieran]

I got into gamebooks in the early-mid 90s. While CYOA and Lone Wolf may have kept on going till the late 90s, I don't recall ever seeing either series for sale in a book shop (those that sold new books I mean, plenty of battered copies in 2nd hand book shops). The only series I ever saw for sale were FF and licensed series like Knightmare, Asterix, Nintendo, Sonic the Hedgehog, Goosebumps and Eternal Champions. The one exception were the first two Fabled Lands books which seemed to be everywhere, though never saw any of the following four for sale and then the series was cancelled soon after. This makes me think that the only gamebooks that were profitable at that time were ones with high brand recognition - and even the likes of Lone Wolf and CYOA weren't making that cut. This suggests the format in general just wasn't very popular at the time.

I think it's a similar story in the 2000s revival - FF was a moderate success for a while, but the likes of Fantom Empires and Spellcaster gamebooks were flops. FEAR adventures lasted a bit longer, possibly because of the younger target audience but still don't seem to have been wildly successful. CYOA had a fairly underwhelming revival. Destiny Quest was an underground success that wasn't able to make it in the mainstream. The only other gamebooks that seemed to have any success at that time were a few Beast Quest spin-offs - again an established brand.

Today, Scholastic is keeping FF going for now but releases are slowing down. Endless Quest attempted a comeback but it seems to have flopped. I'm not aware of any other mainstream gamebook series. Vulcanverse seems to be doing ok so far but seems pretty niche.

Even if you look at the heyday of the 80s, there were tons of gamebook series but nearly all were short-lived - hardly any produced as many as 10 books.

Sadly I think this all illustrates gamebooks are a niche product - their financial successes have been few and I don't really see them having a massive revival.

[CharlesX]

Sept 28, 2022 10:51:09 GMT kieran said:

I got into gamebooks in the early-mid 90s. While CYOA and Lone Wolf may have kept on going till the late 90s, I don't recall ever seeing either series for sale in a book shop (those that sold new books I mean, plenty of battered copies in 2nd hand book shops). The only series I ever saw for sale were FF and licensed series like Knightmare, Asterix, Nintendo, Sonic the Hedgehog, Goosebumps and Eternal Champions. The one exception were the first two Fabled Lands books which seemed to be everywhere, though never saw any of the following four for sale and then the series was cancelled soon after. This makes me think that the only gamebooks that were profitable at that time were ones with high brand recognition - and even the likes of Lone Wolf and CYOA weren't making that cut. This suggests the format in general just wasn't very popular at the time.

I think it's a similar story in the 2000s revival - FF was a moderate success for a while, but the likes of Fantom Empires and Spellcaster gamebooks were flops. FEAR adventures lasted a bit longer, possibly because of the younger target audience but still don't seem to have been wildly successful. CYOA had a fairly underwhelming revival. Destiny Quest was an underground success that wasn't able to make it in the mainstream. The only other gamebooks that seemed to have any success at that time were a few Beast Quest spin-offs - again an established brand.

Today, Scholastic is keeping FF going for now but releases are slowing down. Endless Quest attempted a comeback but it seems to have flopped. I'm not aware of any other mainstream gamebook series. Vulcanverse seems to be doing ok so far but seems pretty niche.

Even if you look at the heyday of the 80s, there were tons of gamebook series but nearly all were short-lived - hardly any produced as many as 10 books.

Sadly I think this all illustrates gamebooks are a niche product - their financial successes have been few and I don't really see them having a massive revival.

Wikipedia lists Choose Your Own Adventure as one of the most successful book series with sales of some 250 million en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books.* Fighting Fantasy used to boast on their back covers they'd sold 10, 15, 20 million worldwide - I don't know why, because young people like me weren't giving a hoot, and they weren't phenomenal numbers (I couldn't imagine a book by Dahl or his alive modern counterpart Walliams with the numbers sold on the back). As you say series like Fabled Lands are barely breaking the 10,000 mark which is the definition of niche.

   With the arguable exception of Choose Your Own Adventure, no they have never been more than niche and that's because they have been taken over by computer RPGs, which haven't had the slightest problem with financial success. Take Knightmare, which was a huge hit on UK TV in the 1980s and 1990s. The concept was always wildly popular and even most critics reckoned it was a really good show. There were several reasons it was cancelled, but a key one was the same game was becoming less palatable to an audience which was developing RPGs on their PC instead of things like ITV or Ceefax (meme drop). 

[kieran]

Sept 28, 2022 14:54:05 GMT CharlesX said:

that's because they have been taken over by computer RPGs, which haven't had the slightest problem with financial success.

I suspect that's a major factor, but I feel it can't be the full story. Movies never killed novels, so I don't see how video games killed gamebooks. I certainly find playing a gamebook feels very different to playing a video game - it's an itch that video games can't quite scratch. But maybe it's just not an itch many people have?

[CharlesX]

Sept 28, 2022 15:00:28 GMT kieran said:

Sept 28, 2022 14:54:05 GMT CharlesX said:

that's because they have been taken over by computer RPGs, which haven't had the slightest problem with financial success.

I suspect that's a major factor, but I feel it can't be the full story. Movies never killed novels, so I don't see how video games killed gamebooks. I certainly find playing a gamebook feels very different to playing a video game - it's an itch that video games can't quite scratch. But maybe it's just not an itch many people have?

That's an interesting point. I read somewhere (don't remember just where) someone wrote "gamebooks are just a duller version of those text adventure video games they had in the eighties".

[kieran]

Sept 28, 2022 15:04:17 GMT CharlesX said:

Sept 28, 2022 15:00:28 GMT kieran said:

I suspect that's a major factor, but I feel it can't be the full story. Movies never killed novels, so I don't see how video games killed gamebooks. I certainly find playing a gamebook feels very different to playing a video game - it's an itch that video games can't quite scratch. But maybe it's just not an itch many people have?

That's an interesting point. I read somewhere (don't remember just where) someone wrote "gamebooks are just a duller version of those text adventure video games they had in the eighties".

If anything I would say the opposite is true. 

[bloodbeasthandler]

Sept 27, 2022 20:38:15 GMT revenant said:

They stopped selling well. You think Penguin would have cancelled if the profit was still rolling in?

That's the bottom line and has to be true.
It's a business not a charity but I just don't like to see things worth keeping going ending up cancelled. We know the books did extremely well initially so the fall in sales must have been very noticeable. What role did that fact play in cancelling the series, if any? Could FF have carried on but expecting more modest sales?
Obviously I don't have the answers but i just wonder about what we were seeing back in the 90s and even more recently concerning the methods to boost sales: 
Reprints, aiming at a younger and younger market, fewer paragraphs, poor artwork. Are these the paths to success? 

Like we saw with Dr Who [already mentioned here] -.. old Dr Who did look cheap - so one possibility would have been to spend more money on it - increase production values and make it a flagship sci-fi show. But that didn't happen and so the series folded for a while. That was a decision made by those in charge who didn't care much for the show. Did something similar happen with FF?

[CharlesX]

Sept 28, 2022 18:27:47 GMT bloodbeasthandler said:

Sept 27, 2022 20:38:15 GMT revenant said:

They stopped selling well. You think Penguin would have cancelled if the profit was still rolling in?

That's the bottom line and has to be true.
It's a business not a charity but I just don't like to see things worth keeping going ending up cancelled. We know the books did extremely well initially so the fall in sales must have been very noticeable. What role did that fact play in cancelling the series, if any? Could FF have carried on but expecting more modest sales?
Obviously I don't have the answers but i just wonder about what we were seeing back in the 90s and even more recently concerning the methods to boost sales: 
Reprints, aiming at a younger and younger market, fewer paragraphs, poor artwork. Are these the paths to success?

If you're referring to purely terms of paragraph size, point taken, but in terms of references I can't think of one new (non-reprint) Scholastic edition with fewer references, and filler or not a couple have more - Eye Of The Dragon (407) and Gates Of Death (470).

   Of course back in the 2010s (with Wizard, not Scholastic) Jonathan Green wrote I think three FFs with more than the normal 400 but TTBOMK that didn't become the standard.

[a moderator]

Sept 28, 2022 19:21:26 GMT CharlesX said:

Sept 28, 2022 18:27:47 GMT bloodbeasthandler said:

That's the bottom line and has to be true.
It's a business not a charity but I just don't like to see things worth keeping going ending up cancelled. We know the books did extremely well initially so the fall in sales must have been very noticeable. What role did that fact play in cancelling the series, if any? Could FF have carried on but expecting more modest sales?
Obviously I don't have the answers but i just wonder about what we were seeing back in the 90s and even more recently concerning the methods to boost sales: 
Reprints, aiming at a younger and younger market, fewer paragraphs, poor artwork. Are these the paths to success?

If you're referring to purely terms of paragraph size, point taken, but in terms of references I can't think of one new (non-reprint) Scholastic edition with fewer references, and filler or not a couple have more - Eye Of The Dragon (407) and Gates Of Death (470).

Puffin were considering reducing the paragraph count to 300. IIRC, at one point Jonathan Green faced the prospect of having to trim 100 sections from Bloodbones, but then the series was cancelled instead.

[misomiso]

It becomes a vicious circle - the series has lower sales, so less marketing money is put into, less money on art, so the books sell less, which means less marketing etc etc...

For what it's worth, had the series been taken care of properly I think it could have gone on quite a bit longer. I don't think people really understood gamebooks though - nowadays with our knowledge of game development the two recent FF books had a lot of playtesting and balancing and it shows. Some of the very later series are very poorly put together, with not so good art as well.

[CharlesX]

Sept 27, 2022 18:51:12 GMT pip said:

As an 80s kid, I was part of the target audience for the FF books. Based on my experience, I can tell that my waning interest in them coincided with their demise.

While the 40s FFs were some of their finest, w\o defending the cancellation I think 50s were variable and some of the weakest. Legend Of Zagor, Spellbreaker (which I hate but other people here like), Deathmoor, Revenge Of The Vampire, Curse Of The Mummy. Sadly the Scholastic books turned out to be even more weak, and I would have preferred even weak new titles to reprint after reprint. I can't answer whether I would have bought more FF if the quality was up, either in terms of writing or artwork, because I'm the kind of FF fan who would buy if Ian or Steve peed in a bottle - as far as the others went, to me there were only two other big series, and I'd long outgrown the kid-orientated CYOA and just never gotten into Lone Wolf. The gamebook scene today, such as it is, isn't the same as in the 80s and 90s - I think that then there weren't terribly many FF style, sophisticated dice-system solo gamebook series, and they didn't tend to approach the quantity of FF (although they could and did approach\surpass the quality), and maybe more simple gamebooks aimed at younger kids such as Endless Quest and Wizards, Warriors and You. Who knows whether Fighting Fantasy was poor literature and Choose Your Own Adventure was childish - they had 15 minutes of fame, and after they stopped selling in large numbers, back they went in the book-burning pile.

[Jonathan Green]

Sept 28, 2022 21:17:06 GMT a moderator said:

Sept 28, 2022 19:21:26 GMT CharlesX said:

If you're referring to purely terms of paragraph size, point taken, but in terms of references I can't think of one new (non-reprint) Scholastic edition with fewer references, and filler or not a couple have more - Eye Of The Dragon (407) and Gates Of Death (470).

Puffin were considering reducing the paragraph count to 300. IIRC, at one point Jonathan Green faced the prospect of having to trim 100 sections from Bloodbones, but then the series was cancelled instead.

I planned Bloodbones to be 400 sections but ended up writing it as a 300 section adventure. However, as you know, Puffin didn't publish it. When Wizard Books wanted to publish it, I added in all the stuff I had originally had to miss out, plus some new stuff, to make it up to 400 sections.