Cost Comparison

[mratomek]

Would consumers be more interested in an adventure with 16 pages of full color for $9.99

or  40 B&W pages for the same price.


Just curious what everyone thinks.

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

There's only one answer to a question like that: no one knows. This is a new industry now, and by "this" I'm not talking about whatever is going on (or not) at the retail stores. I'm talking about what RPG materials sell reliably and generate more sales through use.

No one's opinion means jack shit, at this point. A poll-style thread here will be useless. We can only find out one way, if you, a publisher, decide which will suit your vision of a good product best, and put it out there.

Best, Ron

[Eero Tuovinen]

Well, we do know one thing: repeated long-term sales only acrue to products with continuous support, unique niche and high quality design. This might sound obvious, but shit only sells as a front-list item. Color doesn't seem to come to it. This being the case, I'd say that you can get a pretty useful practical answer to your query by looking at the functional excellence of your suggested products: do you need or want 16 pages or 40 pages to present your product? Looking at rpg material as a homogenous mass of text that can be typed, chopped up and delivered in amorphous masses like porridge is useless when looking for the qualities above. (Note that traditional rpg line planning seems to work exactly like this: we have this game and we can and do continue typing up new material for it in formats and amounts we deem sellable indefinitely, which has nothing to do with what the game actually needs.) There has to be a product-based reason for stopping writing at 16 pages or 40 pages, or continuing it to that point for that matter.

To correlate the above with Ron, the only reason I think I know it is that I've never heard of any product in any walk of life overcoming its shittiness in the long term. While success for quality is not assured, being shit seems to be a sure-fire way of limiting your success to the short-term. All obvious, but at least it should give us young and hungry executives a method of comparison for these kinds of situations. Just ask yourself which product would be of higher quality. Unless you're fine with being shit and thus limited to short-term success, that is.

[Justin D. Jacobson]

Certainly, there are some consumers that would prefer the former and some that would prefer the latter. Even if we knew the answer -- say that 60% preferred 16/color and 40% preferred 40/b&w -- what would knowing it do for you? That answer wouldn't imply that you should be releasing it in 16/color anyway. I.e., what's the real question?

[nystul]

I agree with Ron but ultimately you need to ask yourself what you are selling. Art is great - color art is even better but ultimately we are creating games. As a consumer I was always annoyed by having to shell out the big bucks for hard covers and color spreads. A little color here and there is nice but the game is what is really important. Sell the cake, not the frosting.