Rolling for Initiative is a weekly column by Scott Thorne, PhD, owner of Castle Perilous Games & Books in Carbondale, Illinois and instructor in marketing at Southeast Missouri State University. This week, Thorne looks back at his predictions from the beginning of 2025 to see how he did.
It is that time of year to make predictions for the future and to look back and see how many were fulfilled. It is very easy to make a prediction because most people will forget about it a month, 6 months, or a year later. Somewhat similarly, people can make outrageous claims about something that they get on the front page but notices when they are proven wrong appear tucked away in a spot read by almost no one. That being said, I made three predictions for 2025 so let’s take a look and see how well I did (See “Predictions for 2025”)
Prediction #1—Tariffs
“After giving them some thought and observing Trump’s behavior since the election, I do not think he will impose them, or if he does, they will get dropped quickly or reduced to a much saner level.” Well, I was wrong on this one, at least as far as tariffs that impact the game and comic industry. On “Liberation Day” the administration imposed sweeping 10% tariffs on nearly every country with which the US does business and much higher retaliatory tariffs on many nations. Tariffs did get rolled back as the administration negotiated with countries and removed completely on many imported foods in November as prices continued to climb and consumers complained. However, the mean tariff imposed by the US has risen from under 3% at the start of the year to 10 % currently and GAMA, in co-ordination with other organizations is still pursuing its lawsuit against the administration, arguing the imposition of tariffs went far beyond the powers granted legally to the executive branch (see “Returning to Tariffs”). There is a good likelihood the Supreme Court will find the administration’s tariffing unconstitutional and order a rollback but that will not happen until the first half of 2026.
Prediction #2—TCG Shakeout
“I do not see any groundswell of support from the player base for any of those releases so I would expect to see a shakeout of a lot of systems this year.” Really wrong on this one. I count at least 30 active trading card games, both digital and physical, with at least half a dozen more scheduled for release in 2026. Meanwhile no-one announced in 2025 they were ceasing publishing new sets, although the release schedule for several, such as Force of Will, has slowed greatly. Digital publication of TCG set expansions, such as Hearthstone, has allowed publishers to continue releasing new sets with significantly lower expenses and to smaller market segments than a physical trading card game requires to remain profitable. I still expect to see a significant shakeout in the market as the customer base can only support so many TCGs but not before later in the decade.
Prediction #3—D&D Gift Set
“I mused briefly last year on a gift set collecting the new core Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks, but based on the release schedule for the 5E Gift Set, I do not expect to see one release much before 2026.” Spot on with this one. I do expect to see a D&D 2024 Gift Set, but probably not until 2027.
Comments? Send them to castleperilousgames@gmail.com
Read more at this site