Topic: What should White Wolf do? (I'm asked)
Started by: Ron Edwards
Started on: 9/8/2004
Board: Publishing
On 9/8/2004 at 1:28pm, Ron Edwards wrote:
What should White Wolf do? (I'm asked)
Hello,
In the White Wolf Discussion thread, John Kim responded to a point of mine:
Anyway, back to White Wolf. Its four-game, supplement-heavy treadmill tactic failed in the mid-90s. People are gonna argue with me about that, but you'll have to get over it. It failed. The goth thing was over, and the company's initial success based on becoming gear for goths was past its sell-date. The company faced financial crisis.
The company survived, in my view, by switching away from the supplement-support of those four games and into the scorched-earth approach, by regularly releasing new games. By new games, I include highly-colored revisions of old ones, new settings for them, and so on. (I hesitate to speculate on whether and how shifts of power and ownership within White Wolf itself, at this exact time, are related to this shift in policy. None of the insider accounts are especially pretty, but all of them seem so jaundiced that I have no idea where to assign credibility.) This takes us through Trinity, Aberrant, Adventure!, Hunter, etc, etc. Arguably Dark Ages and Kindred of the East count too, earlier.
Can you give examples of big-company games which do not fall into these two categories? Because this seems like a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation. If they keep coming out with new stuff for a game, then they're engaging in the "supplement treadmill". If they instead don't keep coming out with new stuff for a game but instead move on, then they're engaging in "scorched earth".
Now, I don't follow White Wolf releases much. I am perfectly willing to believe that they behave in stupid, short-sighted ways. But I don't see even in principle what distinguishes "scorched earth" from other games.
Whoa nelly! First of all, I do not think anything about the scorched-earth publishing policy is stupid or short-sighted for the company which does it. It is quite effective. I don't consider the supplement treadmill very wise, but that point of view isn't especially controversial any more.
Now, as far as the damned thing goes, I see all this as a layered thing rather than a dichotomy. We're starting with the observation that a company has already committed itself to a rapid release schedule of books. This is, if you like, the "damned" part, although I prefer to think of it as a baseline starting approach, devoid of judgment. It does, however, entail certain consequences, specifically that production costs will be quite high and must be off-set through print volume (reducing per-unit print cost). Another important consequence is that retailers need to be convinced to order the books on a periodical model - that is, getting them to say, "Oh, the 'new one' is out, I shall order it." The more this can be established as a habit, the better; the more the habit can be leveraged into a necessity, then still better.
So faced with these consequences, the company now has a choice: whether to stay with a given game as long as possible, pumping out the supplements, or whether to shift to a new game sooner or later. The former has been widely shown to be fatal or nearly so - if you're wondering what happened to Daedalus, R. Talsorian, or even the original Chaosium, look no further. (Individual details vary widely; my claim is that the supplement treadmill is like AIDS - the immune system is so weakened that it doesn't really matter what pathogen actually administers the deathblow.) The latter represents a further sophistication of the basic policy: if your goal is to keep pumping out the books, then you need to shift to a new thing periodically as well.
The new thing might be a whole new game, or a new setting that's promoted as essentially a new game, or a cross-over with another company, or a significant revision of the existing game, or maybe a couple other things I'm missing or that we haven't seen yet. Many companies saw d20 as their opportunity to make a scorched-earth shift.
My point is, "supplement treadmill" and "scorched earth" are not dichotomous. The latter is the way to make the former work.
Your "damned" comment doesn't apply because (a) I'm not offering value-judgment and (b) scorched-earth works.
You asked for big companies which do not accord with this model. One might be SJG, whose supplement line isn't really supplemental at all, but rather a line of encyclopedia references specialized for the reading and buying habits of the hobby gamer. As such, the company provides a unique service which really does operate nicely on the periodical model.
I think it would be helpful to talk about what is positive: i.e. do what you consider good company practice to be, and what would be your advice to White Wolf on how to publish? i.e. What's your alternative? Shutting down the business and instead selling a few dozen PDFs over the internet on nights after their day job? I don't think that's going to go over very well -- nor do I think it would be good for the hobby
I get asked this a lot, very often by White Wolf freelancers. Malcolm's rhetoric is all familiar to me; I suspect these guys talk among one another about the Forge a lot.
For an example that illustrates the might-as-well-be-alien dichotomy of outlooks involved, one friend of mine who's written humongous amounts of text for White Wolf asked me, "What would you do if you suddenly were president of White Wolf?" I looked at him and said, gently, "I'm already president of Adept Press." He didn't get it. It is just a different world or mind-set or whatever you want to call it.
The first thing I always say, although I think no one believes me, is that White Wolf is doing nothing wrong. In fact, by all accounts, they pay their staff and freelancers on time, which puts them right at the pinnacle of "good company" praise.
The second thing I say is that I do not have a "right way to publish" that I'm waving in anyone's face as an accusation or demand for them to comply with. If someone wants to pump out that many books per unit time, and if they want them to look like thus-and-such, well, then they can do it. The market speaks, eventually, and what happens, happens. (I do not consider immediate sales to distribution to be that market, but that is another topic.) It's not about me telling White Wolf what to do. The Forge as a whole is not about telling White Wolf what to do. I don't think anyone believes me and Clinton about that either, but that's the way it is.
What would be my advice to White Wolf about how to publish? To do whatever it is they (the owners) want to do. Which is what they're doing. The question is a non-question.
Second-to-last-point: I think you might be under-estimating the economic gains of self-publishing. Adept Press makes good money. The publishing approach I'm advocating has nothing to do with being minimally distributed or starving nobly.
One final point: "good for the hobby" is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot, and I think it's a very bad thing. It is the industry-equivalent of fixating on non-terms like realism and balance. I've seen or heard it used literally thousands of times in the past five years, and here's what it always means: either (a) preserving the current power-structure of the three-tier system (more accurately, resuscitating it) or (b) making sure the person who's speaking isn't about to go down the tubes, i.e., a plea for special treatment.
This is probably worth a new thread ... I think the hobby is doing quite
well.
Best,
Ron
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Topic 12616
On 9/8/2004 at 3:28pm, ADGBoss wrote:
RE: What should White Wolf do? (I'm asked)
Ron
Allow me to just play Devil's advocate for a moment and comment on why I think "Good for the Hobby" has a special relevance with regard to White Wolf. I do not think that White Wolf's marketing / game design plan IS good for this hobby. I think it is good for White Wolf, obviously it is since they have been churning out their products for some time.
Now I am not going to suggest here that White Wolf is going to single handedly destroy role playing and they are not the only guilty parties but I think that of anyone they in particular are great examples of : Deadwood.
Deadwood is not a phenomena only related to the CGM and companies who follow it though they are more likely to be a part of it. In WW's case, they have made several Deadwood Forests.
I think we have all seen it, at the LGS or the local Book Store: a long row or series of rows with essentially useless books and supplements. I do not for a minute pretend to know exactly how the LGS orders their books but I can say that the LBS has a limited amount of room for their RP section and that those companies that can afford to be part of the big distributors get distributed. I imagine it is similar for the LGS though they have the luxury of ordering from other places more easily. Still, I know my own LGS had (and has) a huge section of WW games that collected dust for three years. Now I know, the owner could sell them on ebay or sell them cheap and get in new stock, but the flood of books that quickly become out of date can be burdensome.
Now with WOD2.0 we could assume that these new crop of books will be relevant for many years to come. Unfortunately this is not WW normal pattern and with WOTC's release of 3.5 I (cynically) expect that we are acting as Playtesters for the new WOD2.0
Somehow, White Wolf continues to be successful though and I would not wish them ill nor wish them OUT of the hobby. My only wish is that they would take a hard look at their current direction and maybe re-think it. <shrug> For what it is worth.
Sean
On 9/8/2004 at 4:44pm, Ron Edwards wrote:
RE: What should White Wolf do? (I'm asked)
Hi Sean,
See, see, that is exactly the approach I am not taking.
White Wolf or any company is under no obligation to do anything except "what's good for White Wolf."
Retailers as business-people have to make their own decisions about that ("that" meaning all companies' policies, not the 'Wolf alone, obviously). They have to decide what they're gonna order, how they interact with customers in their stores, whether they'll be advocates for particular companies or games, etc.
Some of them have embraced the scorched-earth publishers; the periodical model of publishing matches the familiar approach of magazines, comics, and CCGs. Some few of these retailers have done well with this, although I suggest that the RPGs actually are a minimal contributor to their success. A lot of these guys run secondary e-bay sales accompanying their stores, again relying mainly on CCGs. And some of them are really good at working with the scorched-earth approach to avoid getting stuck with a line that represents the "about to jettison" phase.
It is also clear that many retailers do not handle this approach well and that many of them go out of business. I do not suggest that this is "bad for the hobby" or "good for the hobby" or anything. They own the stores, they make the decisions, they deal with the consequences.
I really want to emphasize that no one can point to any feature of the three-tier system (what I call "the industry"), identify some failure rate within it, and then call out, "Look! The hobby's in danger!!" If every single game-store retailer went out of business tomorrow, the hobby would remain. Same goes for distributors, same goes for companies. Yeah, the companies, me included! Poof, gone. Hey, look, the hobby's still here.
The same does not hold for the creators of RPGs and the players of RPGs. These are the fundamental (yeah, "fundamental," John - I'll fight ya on this one) components of the hobby. Its size, in terms of number of people is irrelevant. It is neither good nor bad that more or less people engage in it, over time.
Everyone: I urge that you quit identifying any aspect of current publishing, distribution, and commerce of role-playing games with "the hobby's health." I include in that the direct-sale internet stuff too. Any aspect. All that matters is that games get designed and made available for play somehow, and the hobby's still here.
Does that mean I hate the stores, distributors, etc, and wish they'd all disappear? No. I like a hell of a lot of retailers and (dammit) can't find it in my heart to loathe the folks I know in distribution either. A lot of them make a lot of good decisions for their own business success, and a lot of them do so in a way which helps me as Adept Press too. So I've got nothing to bitch about or dislike.
I am mildly sympathetic to those store-owners, distributors, and company owners whose decisions seem, to me, to threaten their own success in either the short or long term. But I cannot disapprove of them or tell them they are doing anything wrong. I am absolutely not going to wave my "save the hobby" flag as a weapon in telling them to do anything; that is ... repugnant, actually. It's on a par with telling them that carrying Adept Press books would "save the hobby" or guarantee the solvency of their stores, which would be a vicious lie.
Am I being clear here? Quit trying to save the hobby. All anyone "ought" to do (if they want to) is to seek success in the hobby.
Now, I do try to take an ethical approach in my own business, which is to say, doing it in a way which promotes success for others as well. I don't discount my internet sales specifically because it would be unfair to retailers. I post retailer contact information if they carry my games, so people who hit the website can find a nearby store. I practice full returnability, so a retailer whose store is poorly suited for my books can get their money back. I provide high-discount sales to retailers if they want to buy the books directly from me.
But all that is merely a personal ethic and does not bind anyone else in an obligation to do anything like it. If a retailer wants to buy into the scorched-earth, periodical publishing model, he or she simply must be clear-minded about it and be willing to deal with the risks. It is not wrong to do this.
Best,
Ron
On 9/8/2004 at 10:43pm, John Kim wrote:
Re: What should White Wolf do? (I'm asked)
Ron Edwards wrote:John Kim wrote: Can you give examples of big-company games which do not fall into these two categories? Because this seems like a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation. If they keep coming out with new stuff for a game, then they're engaging in the "supplement treadmill". If they instead don't keep coming out with new stuff for a game but instead move on, then they're engaging in "scorched earth".
Now, I don't follow White Wolf releases much. I am perfectly willing to believe that they behave in stupid, short-sighted ways. But I don't see even in principle what distinguishes "scorched earth" from other games.
My point is, "supplement treadmill" and "scorched earth" are not dichotomous. The latter is the way to make the former work.
Your "damned" comment doesn't apply because (a) I'm not offering value-judgment and (b) scorched-earth works.
You asked for big companies which do not accord with this model. One might be SJG, whose supplement line isn't really supplemental at all, but rather a line of encyclopedia references specialized for the reading and buying habits of the hobby gamer. As such, the company provides a unique service which really does operate nicely on the periodical model.
Well, you haven't really answered the question here. Regardless of whether you're judging it or not, what is the quality by which you decide to call something "scorched earth"? In particular, why is a new GURPS book a "non-supplemental supplement" and thus neither treadmill nor scorched-earth; while a new Vampire book is either or both?
I can see a few possibilities, but I'm not sure which you are thinking of. You apparently consider the "supplementalness" of the supplement important. One factor might be how well the supplement works on its own. i.e. Is the corebook + just a few supplements worthwhile, or do they have a lot of material which depends on other supplements? That's a definite annoyance to me.
Another big difference of SJG and WW is that SJG tends to release supplements to the core universal rules rather than new games which include the basic rules (although this is changing with the "Powered by GURPS" line). WW will instead release a new core rulebook. WW's strategy is superior for a single-game, non-hard-core player: i.e. they can buy just the core book for the game they want; whereas with GURPS they need to buy at least two books.
Another possible factor is the frequency of new releases. Then again, both SJG and WW have pretty regular release schedules, so I suspect this isn't definitional.
Ron Edwards wrote: One final point: "good for the hobby" is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot, and I think it's a very bad thing. It is the industry-equivalent of fixating on non-terms like realism and balance. I've seen or heard it used literally thousands of times in the past five years, and here's what it always means: either (a) preserving the current power-structure of the three-tier system (more accurately, resuscitating it) or (b) making sure the person who's speaking isn't about to go down the tubes, i.e., a plea for special treatment.
This is probably worth a new thread ... I think the hobby is doing quite
well.
Well, I can't speak for how the phrase gets misused, but "good for the hobby" matters to me. I, personally, am affected by what happens in the hobby at large -- because I get enjoyment from finding other players and how they play. If there are a lot of people out there playing high-quality RPGs, then there is excitement -- I get more people who sign up for my convention events (for example) and it's easier for me to convince people to play in regular games. Conversely, the more people who leave the hobby (and especially the more social and/or intelligent people who leave the hobby), the worse things are for me.
I think the hobby overall is doing OK, but it could certainly do better. I have companies whom I disapprove of how they do their business. For example, I think Decipher was damn stupid with their Lord of the Rings RPG release, which went for short-term profits by getting out of the gate quickly with a pretty-looking book but a poorly-functioning game. Unfortunately, this slick-looking/poor-functioning layout is becoming pretty standard.
On 9/9/2004 at 4:55am, DannyK wrote:
RE: What should White Wolf do? (I'm asked)
John, you've got the WoD 2.0 model exactly wrong. The WoD corebook is analagous to the GURPS corebook, and each game that comes along (Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, ?) requires an another thick book of special rules and setting elements. The corebook has very little setting or GM-specific material.
Also, I wonder if the term "scorched earth" still applies when it's a good remake. By this I mean that in the various online fora I frequent, I haven't heard from almost anyone who didn't think Vampire 2.0 was a worthy remake and worth the investment. I'm not trying to be a WWGS apologist, just suggesting that a remake/remodel after 11 years has significant added value to the consumer.
On 9/9/2004 at 5:23am, eyebeams wrote:
RE: What should White Wolf do? (I'm asked)
Enh. Supplement Treadmill is a commonly misused buzzterm. It's a fact that the critical sales period is 90 days after release. This is true almost all the time, and in more than RPGs, when you count publishing beyond the micro-scale.
This is why, among other things, WotC has beefed up its release schedule and followed the same old bog-standard serial grind. The "We do the core, you do the fluff" experiment was a failure.
The Treadmill is actually only relevant when it applies to self-competition (I release book B to fans who will have to choose between it and book A). TSR and WW both had this problem. It does not consist of simply having a large release schedule.
I don't know how anybody can claim that White Wolf's model "failed in the 90s." *Gaming* failed in the 90s, and even for the paradigmatically pure of heart, folks. The Underground example (moderate to disappointing at 15,000 sales, back then) remains topical.
What has changed is that the actual Treadmill (as oppsed to the definition of Treadmill as a large release schedule) has been fixed. WotC will probably never pump out competing books again, and I highly doubt WW will bother to fracture itself between Clan Elfpants and Clan Seymour, or between the Guide to the Judean People's Front and the Guide to the People's Front of Judea. What they will do is go for releases that have broad appeal and speak to a central facet of the line. With 24 books divided among 4 lines per year, there's plenty of room for it, and there are always exceptions (like magic/powers books) that people will buy in series anyway.
(Metaplot? As I've said before, the chief virtue of no metaplot is design-side, because it's increasingly hard to write and develop under legacy drag. One of the most common complaints from fans about the new setting is *lack* of metaplot.)
What the reset allows is for this model to really take hold. WW's sales legacy is in no small part because it's the result of an ad hoc experiment on a shocking success. The new game (and the 2-3 year planning on subsequent releases) can take advantage of lessons learned.
On 9/9/2004 at 7:03am, John Kim wrote:
RE: What should White Wolf do? (I'm asked)
DannyK wrote: John, you've got the WoD 2.0 model exactly wrong. The WoD corebook is analagous to the GURPS corebook, and each game that comes along (Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, ?) requires an another thick book of special rules and setting elements. The corebook has very little setting or GM-specific material.
Really? Well, I was speaking about past White Wolf trends. I am intrigued to learn that WW is moving more towards a GURPS-like model, while in the meantime SJG is releasing spinoff games "Powered by GURPS" (like WWII, Hellboy, and others) in a similar manner to the previous WW games.
In general, I would say that the core book + worldbook model (i.e. GURPS, HERO, WoD 2.0) is aimed more at hard-core players who will play more than two games. To me, this makes sense for WoD, which has a large existing fanbase. This is offset by having things like SJG's free "GURPS Lite" and WW's free V:tR intro. The all-in-one rulebook model (i.e. earlier WW, Powered-by-GURPS, and many others) is a little faster and cheaper to start up with, and thus better for newbies.
DannyK wrote: Also, I wonder if the term "scorched earth" still applies when it's a good remake. By this I mean that in the various online fora I frequent, I haven't heard from almost anyone who didn't think Vampire 2.0 was a worthy remake and worth the investment. I'm not trying to be a WWGS apologist, just suggesting that a remake/remodel after 11 years has significant added value to the consumer.
I don't know -- I'm as yet totally unfamiliar with the remake, and I didn't understand the "scorched earth" term in the first place. By the way, it's been 13 years since the original Vampire, and 6 years since the Revised edition. That's okay in my book, and certainly better than some companies (cough-D&D3.5-cough.)
While I like some of White Wolf's stuff, I have come to expect poor quality in their rulebooks. In particular, my review of Aberrant is riddled with things I think should never have made it to print. That said, I was still eager to join in an Aberrant campaign, so it's not all bad. I'd be willing to give WoD2.0 a look, though with a certain amount of skepticism.
On 9/9/2004 at 1:26pm, Ron Edwards wrote:
RE: What should White Wolf do? (I'm asked)
Hello,
Gotta back up a little. John, thanks for asking this about the scorched-earth thing.
Regardless of whether you're judging it or not, what is the quality by which you decide to call something "scorched earth"? In particular, why is a new GURPS book a "non-supplemental supplement" and thus neither treadmill nor scorched-earth; while a new Vampire book is either or both?
I can see a few possibilities, but I'm not sure which you are thinking of. You apparently consider the "supplementalness" of the supplement important. One factor might be how well the supplement works on its own. i.e. Is the corebook + just a few supplements worthwhile, or do they have a lot of material which depends on other supplements? That's a definite annoyance to me.
Another big difference of SJG and WW is that SJG tends to release supplements to the core universal rules rather than new games which include the basic rules (although this is changing with the "Powered by GURPS" line). WW will instead release a new core rulebook. WW's strategy is superior for a single-game, non-hard-core player: i.e. they can buy just the core book for the game they want; whereas with GURPS they need to buy at least two books.
First things first: these are not hard-and-fast answers yet. I don't claim to have gone through every company and every supplement published with a pen, marking them as to whether they count or not. Lots, yes, but not all. So the more feedback you and others give me, the more suggestions like the one above, etc, the better.
I agree with your first factor quite a bit, but it applies to the treadmill, not to scorched-earth. One example of the treadmill in action includes the famous "players' guide" books which became common in the 1990s, which amounted to a secondary core book, timed to be released just after people had bought the core on its first 90-day spike; the players' guide contains all sorts of options and details which aren't in the original core - effectively making itself a necessary second purchase. By itself, that book isn't "the treadmill," but it's a good indicator that the treadmill is under way. A line of splatbooks, which is to say, one sourcebook per item on a list of character options, could be the topic of a treadmill-sequence. So can installments of metaplot, and so can a setting-based approach (one book per continent, etc).
To be clear as possible about the treadmill, it's not merely releasing lots of supplements. The point of the treadmill is to drive sales of the core book by releasing supplements on a periodical model, i.e., so many per unit time, so many in a particular sequence, and usually highly correlated with the core book's contents in a 1:1 fashion. Basically, the company is "exploding" the core book so that every concept in it has a whole book of its own coming out eventually, many of which are themselves ongoing series. This is an important point because supplement sales typically do not meet their own production costs, or not for very long at all. The core sales are the goal; the supplements are mainly promotion. Instead of a single release spike, you're looking for little spikes with each supplement release. It's pretty much a given that the spikes get shorter as you go.
So your utility-factor is part of the picture, but not the major one. Just to stick with it for a second, though, GURPS has released lots of supplements, but they are independent of one another and really don't have much to do with modifying or expanding features of the core. To play GURPS Russia, you don't need Transhuman Space too. Whether you "need" the splats for Exalted or (to go back to a less-charged example) Cyberpunk 2020 is a matter of customer choice - but the publishing model is predicated on the possibility that many people will feel that need.
And to be absolutely clear, since people often do feel it, then we are not talking about doing anything wrong. My criticism of the treadmill concerns its economic viability for the company. This is not a conspiracy theory about how White Wolf brainwashes people to buy stuff.
The scorched-earth part concerns the release of new core books and their content. The reason I call it scorched-earth is because you have Game X, with its line of supplements following the treadmill-approach, then shift to Game Y - rendering all of those supplements for Game X "done," because X core sales are no longer an issue for the company. Game Y is released with its own treadmill before X reaches its saturation or limit for supplement sales.. This approach works especially well when the company does not accept retailer returns, but policy for that issue tends to vary all over the place. Anyway, the point is that as the Game X spikes get shorter, you release Game Y before they're gone. The retailer is already in the habit of ordering your stuff, and the wall of Color X transmogrifies into the wall of Color Y.
(Again, Game Y is usually another whole game, but in some cases editions/revisions would count.)
So I think looking at a singsupplement on its own and saying "treadmill? Scorched earth?" isn't possible. These are patterns that concern dozens of books, not just one. Does that work, John? I'm still working out how to phrase or think of this stuff ... I need your mind ...
Best,
Ron
On 9/9/2004 at 5:47pm, mearls wrote:
RE: What should White Wolf do? (I'm asked)
eyebeams wrote: This is why, among other things, WotC has beefed up its release schedule and followed the same old bog-standard serial grind. The "We do the core, you do the fluff" experiment was a failure.
I have been told, and I've corroborated this with a few different sources, that D&D's sales are higher now than they have ever been. A D&D 3 book outsells an AD&D 1 or 2 book. I suspect that the increase to the number of titles is a case of WotC seeing how far they can stretch things without losing sales.
d20 has been a remarkable success for companies that know how to use it. I never knew exactly how cavernous the gap was between Malhavoc and everyone else until GenCon of this year. There are plenty of people willing to buy d20 books, if d20 companies would start making products they actually want to buy. The social pressure to produce d20 material for non-d20 gamers is too much for most companies to resist.
The Underground example - anyone who releases a core RPG book that sells 15,000 units and CANNOT make a profit on it has serious problems. Given how easy it is to find Underground on the secondhand market, I sincerely doubt that all those copies find their way into gamers' hands. It's telling that when this came up on EN World, Ray pointed out that WW sold 25,000 copies of Mage in its first two weeks. Mayfair set themselves up to fail by assuming they could sell as many books as WW at the peak of the Wolf's fad-driven success. Even back in the mid-80s, the alleged golden years of RPG publishing, companies printed about 10,000 copies of a core rulebook in its first run.
I think I disagree with Ron on some basic definitions of the treadmill. My understanding of it, from when Ryan Dancey first coined the term, is that the treadmill refers to the business plan of keeping a company afloat with a steady stream of supplements. Much like a comic book company or a magazine publisher, an RPG company on the treadmill *needs* the money from each month's releases to stay afloat.
The problem is that, almost invariably, supplement sales drop steadily each month. Thus, the income a company can count on drops.
In many cases, companies on the treadmill decide to release more supplements to cover the falling revenue. This increases their expenses, but the flood of even more product causes sales to drop for each title even further. The company splits its audience.
The tricky thing for RPG publishers now is that retailers have wised up to the treadmill. The good ones, the ones that can draw in new customers and actively present new RPG material, are also invariably sharp enough to monitor their sales or avoid obviously bad products. I'm not sure there are any non-d20 companies that are still on the treadmill model.
What Ron calls the treadmill, I'd call the core rulebook model. In this case, a company focuses on evergreen sales of its games and uses supplements to keep people interested and to keep the game in retailers' minds. This model recognizes that supplement sales invariably slow down, but core rulebook sales can remain steady. Even if few people buy your supplements, you might still have a lot of people buying the core rulebook and playing the game. Remember, most gamers don't need or want anything beyond the core book.
WW has decided to go for the core rulebook model - they're off the treadmill. Exalted has shown them that they can make a lot more money by focusing on a limited number of high quality releases. It's a simple acknowledgement that RPGs are a luxury good. People like color interiors, playtested rules, and so forth. Malhavoc has had tremendous success with a similar model - we focus on a small number of high quality titles, and it's really paid off. Gamers really can see the difference that playtesting, editing, and thoughtful design can make.*
What's interesting about d20 is that a lot of companies have hopped on to the supplement treadmill. The "failing" in the market right now lies with the publishers, not on any lack of customers. IMO, we've basically seen the entire history of RPG publisher writ small in the d20 market.
*And the lesson here for indie publishers is that, if you have a game that does something new and interesting, you can find an audience for it if you work hard enough.