There've been some discussions here about the current pricing range of RPGs during which I've offered my opinion that in general RPG books are priced to low (which IMO is a big reason why so many companies are struggling). I offer the following two reasons for why RPGs should be priced higher.


1) My realization that even at nothing other than a mediocre $5 per hour rate, the number of hours of enjoyment I've had playing, reading, referring to, thinking about, etc. most of the games in my collection easily equates to a value to me in excess of the $20 to $35 dollars I paid for it. If I value an hours worth of pleasure at the same rate as I value an hours worth of my labor this difference is even more vast.

If you play a game, 4 hours per session for 6 sessions and enjoyed yourself even just 50% of the time; but you'd only be willing to spend $30 on the game book, than you are valueing 12 hours of personal enjoyment at only $2.50 per hour. Thats less than most all day passes at a major amusement park gets you (a lot less if you only count the time you enjoyed riding rides and not standing in line). I personally value my time a hell of a lot higher than $2.50 / hour.

If I were to go to my shelf and pull down 10 games I might wind up with a distribution of something like this in terms of hours of enjoyment.

1 game: totally sucked...I couldn't even finish reading it...0 hours
2 games: pretty bad...I read 'em but wouldn't ever play... 1 hour of enjoyment.
3 games: pretty good, I refer to them frequently for ideas but may never have played or if I did only once... 5 hours of enjoyment
3 games: good games, I refer to frequently and have played extened campaigns of them...12 hours of enjoyment.
1 game: love it. can't get enough. 30 hours of enjoyment.


Now lets see, thats 83 hours of total enjoyment spread out over the cost of 10 games. Or 8.3 hours per game. At $5 per hour I should be willing to spend $41.50 per game.

I suggest that everyone try this excercise and come up with your own distributions. Factors to take into account include, how much enjoyment you get from just reading the books, how often you flip through them for ideas for other games or activities, and number of hours of actual play multiplied by some percentile assessment of how enjoyable those sessions actually were. I for one would be fascinated by the resultant dispersion of percieved RPG value based on enjoyment recieved.


2) Something less subjective. Inflation.
If memory serves correctly the hard cover AD&D 1st ed books that we all know and love so well cost about $15 when I bought them in the late 70s. Plugging that in to my handy dandy inflation calculator (U.S. inflation, of course), I find that based on inflation alone those books should cost over $41 today.

Now remember, about the best thing that could be said about those books production quality wise was that the cover and binding could take a tremendous beating (unlike 2ed books). The art ranged from a few "pretty cool" pieces to filler in quality, and the text layout resembled newsprint.

Yet today, even for high gloss, wonderfully layed out, beautiful art, and more pages than the old PH, most gamers start balking if the price goes above $30or $35.

For something with double the production value of those 1ed books (i.e. would have cost $30 in 1978) inflation alone says the equivelent price in 2002 is over $80. And note, that broad CPI inflation, not specific to entertainment and media, which if the cost of movies is any indication is probably higher than the economy at large.

ROS looks at least twice as good as my old Players Handbook (especially if the printing problems get fixed in the new release). Yet I doubt Jake ever considered pricing it at $80 except for the special edition leather bound version at $100.

Now even allowing for modern enhancements to the printing process, and computerized layout bringing production costs down, the price should still easily fall around $40-$50...$35 at the lowest. Yet most gamers still seem to expect to pay $25.

I don't know how to break people of this mindset...but from my perspective its wrong wrong wrong.

Even though I get the benefit of paying much less for games I'd be willing to pay much more for, the industry as a whole suffers for it I think.

What i find so funny about the whole thing is that alot of us gamers also play computer games and will drop $40-$60 on the initial game and even shell out $10 a month to play the crap online.

Let's not even talk about the freaks that buy Diablo II crap on eBay...

I think one of the biggest concerns comes from the fact that paper rpgs require several people to play therefore causing GMs to ask themselves, "If i shell out $35 for SCHTUM rpg core book...are my players going to play...or are they just going to talk to me about Everquest? Maybe i should just suck it up and go online..."

Hell, i would rather pay $35 on 'Choose Your Own Adventure' books than on a core book simply because i know that i can always play with myself.



Wait...that didn't come out right.

-
h

Hey Ralph,

If memory serves correctly the hard cover AD&D 1st ed books that we all know and love so well cost about $15 when I bought them in the late 70s.

I recall paying either $8 or $10 for the Player's Handbook and Monster Manual, and either $12 or $15 for the Dungeon Master's Guide, when I bought them as they were each first printed in the late 70's.

Am I misremembering?

Paul

Or I could be...either way. If you substitute DMG for PH in the above (with the exception that the DMG actually had a hefty page count), you wind up in the same place.

I'm going to put in a dissenting view regarding RPGs being too low. I think pushing prices up is going to hurt the indie creator-publisher the most, because what is happening/going to happen imo is the same number of consumers will be spending the same amount of $$$ annually on games- purchasing fewer books a year, and being more discriminating, sticking to what's "hot" or what they already know. I think the solution, ultimately, is to maintain prices but expand the market, increasing the number of RPG consumers so that more product is being purchased and played. Indie games are especially good for appealing to people who like things that are "cool & trendy in a supposedly non-trendy way" like anime, Farscape, alternative music, and Birkenstocks.

But what do I know? I'm not in sales & marketing.

Pushing the margins of product costs either higher or lower than consumer expectations are always going to hurt the indie creators. Indie creators are their namesakes and will always take the underdog role in any market. They suffer and wonder the lower gross market desert for years. Its their lot in life.

If they lived comfortibly then they wouldn't be indie anymore. Would you call Ron an indie creator after he establishes Edwards Toys and pumps the world full of Sorcerer figures?

-
h

I like Ralph's calculations, and I'll expand on them. Only take the average cost as he's doing, if you assume that the game you're pricing is average. If it's better than average, price higher.

In addition to the number of hours of pleasure that a game gives you personally, consider adding on all the hours that it pleases your friends. It is a shared activity, and presumably you are getting something back from them for your efforts. They could, for instance, pitch in to buy the game (my friends and I used to do that frequently back in college). Or perhaps they buy games and run them for you for free. In any case, their enjoyment is worth something too. Say you have four players, that may cut the hourly rate in half or less.

RPGs cost less to purchase than a decent ticket to an NBA game, lift tickets at the ski hill for one full day, or a ticket to a play. And that's just for one person. They are a fraction of the cost for the number of people for which an RPG can be fun. And you may get much more play from an RPG than the few hours of fun you get from any of these other activities (all of which I enjoy).

The queston of uncertainty is an unfair one - do you balk at the price of a play ticket because you are unsure if you'll like the show? No, you do your research in either case, reading reviews and talking to people that have experience, and you make your purchase. I'll bet that people check the reviews even harder on RPGs than they do on play's they see.

Also, consider that to play D&D you pretty much need more than one book. At $30 a throw, you need probably $60 just to start playing. Add a setting (like TROS has included), for example Forgotten Realms, and the price jumps to $100 to start playing. Do they have high production values? Sure. Is the content of D&D better than TROS? I doubt it. TROS could go for fifty dollars and be seen as a 50% cost savings on D&D. And that's before we consider the issue of editions. RPG players are willing to lay out the money for games. Ask any avid D&D player how much it's cost him over the years.

Hell, I have over $1000 dollas worth of Traveller stuff alone. Going tonight to get my $40 copy of Hero System 5th edition. I'm guessing it's a bargain.

Mike

Mike: <smacking my fore head> I can't believe I forgot that. If you add in the hours of enjoyment friends recieved who didn't pay for the book (discounted by some factor based on how much you personally get enjoyment from witnessing your friends enjoy themselves) the percieved value would be even higher.

Thinking about this pricing model more, what it does do it confirm what many of us take for granted...that mass supplement glut is not a good thing.

For instance if I play a game for 24 hours and estimate that 50% of it was truely enjoyable and I paid $30 for the rules, than I paid $2.50 per hour of enjoyment.

If I buy a pair of $20 supplements to the game and over the same campaign possession of those supplements increased my enjoyment to 70% of the time than I paid $70 for 16.8 hours of enjoyment...or $4.16 per hour.

If I buy 16 7th Sea supplements...most of which are mediocre at best....hmmm....sounds like a good argument for standalone core rules, and limiting supplements to only those that are so incredible they're likely to increase the overall playing time of the game.

Like, for example, Sorcerer and Sword, which seems to have greatly expanded peoples play of Sorcerer.

I remember when the AD&D became AD&D2 and the books went up $2 from $16 something to nearly twenty (with tax). And I remember feeling ripped off by the game I loved. Especially since the DM's book was cut nearly in half content-wise. I also remember thinking that they should have combined the books for $10 more. Hell, I had the entire library of AD&D manuals, supplements and so on. I even bought a few of those career-class manuals (remember those atrocities of redundant rules?)

Now look at us. Indies books are usually 'all-in-one' manuals and we still argue over whether or not we should charge $30+ (or pay that much) for one. Additionally, I don't think that I'm unique in having this perfect indie vision of 'one book is all you need' sales pitch when the reality is that *typically* each player likes to have their *own* book. When it comes to our great hobby I tend to think like a fan instead of a businessman, sue me.

Ron might jump in to moderate this thread: Is it 'How much do I charge?' or 'How much do I pay?' or 'What's the exchange rate of $ to fun?'

Who can say?
All I know for certain is that for many people your role-play game will be their first. Treat 'em right. Don't rip off your fans.

Jeff

I feel I should interject here for a moment and point out an important fact.

You attest hours of enjoyment to a roleplaying game the same way you do to a basketball game or a movie. The reason is that there are other factors to consider.

1) Who you play with.
A great deal of your enjoyment factor comes from who you are playing
with, not necessarily the game you are playing.
In most circumstances a basketball game or movie will be equally
enjoyable regardless of the company you are keeping.

2) Effort
A roleplaying game requires exceptional effort on your part to be
enjoyable. You can't set a copy of sorcerer on a table and be
entertained by it, but you can put a tape in a VCR and enjoy a movie
with no more effort than it takes to hit play.

,Matt Gwinn

MattGwinn wrote:
1) Who you play with.
A great deal of your enjoyment factor comes from who you are playing
with, not necessarily the game you are playing.
In most circumstances a basketball game or movie will be equally
enjoyable regardless of the company you are keeping.

2) Effort
A roleplaying game requires exceptional effort on your part to be
enjoyable. You can't set a copy of sorcerer on a table and be
entertained by it, but you can put a tape in a VCR and enjoy a movie
with no more effort than it takes to hit play.

System doesn't matter?

Do you go to movies and/or basketball games alone? I see them all as social activities, and so, yes, the people are important.

If you really felt that the activity portion was uninteresting, then why would you play? There has to be something fun about RPGs or we'd never play them (or maybe we're seriously deluded?).

RPGs are a relatively cheap activity. OTOH, TV is cheaper still. So then you have to consider the quality of the fun in question. Would you rather play an RPG or watch TV? Maybe that effort is worthwhile after all?

That assumes that the effort part is unenjoyable. I don't find it unenjoyable. In fact, the hours that I put into preping stuff I count as part of the pleasurable hours in my calculation.

Again, I hope that the effort you put into actually playing is actually enjoyable. If not I suggest a different hobby.

(DISCLAIMER: This applies mostly to print-and-bound games, not PDFs or HTML; though some points apply to those as well.)

This comes up all the time. And the same old analogies always pop up. To me, however, all this comes down to one thing. Outside of fun-per-square-inch, power-per-hour, and all that, game companies (even/especially indie designers) should price to make money. Recoup that investment if nothing else.

Now, I'm not saying making money should be the goal of game design--far from it. But too many companies pop up and die away because they underprice their stock.

The role-playing game industry is a fucked up business. It is really is. The structure and philosophy of game companies is mind-boggling. I know Ron has seen this (I point to him because I know he's read through as many, if not more, posts and rants (by professionals) on these same things as I have). Hell, the whole "let's lose money on supplements in hopes of pushing mainbook sales" is flat-out stupid.

The RPG industry suffers from chronic influenza. Mid-level companies that have uber-popular lines (DP9, Pinnacle, White Wolf) could fall out at any time. Low-level companies (where we lowly indie publishers reside) die and then take a financial cold pill to squirt out another product before they die again. Being in the black in the games industry pretty much equates to "Hey, I could supersize my lunch with the profits I made of this book!"

The simple truth (as I see it) is: Game prices need to come up. A handy rationale is nice and all, but the only thing those that would bitch need to know is, "If I don't raise prices, those games you love that I make? Yeah, they won't be around anymore."

This is probably reaching out of the scope of this discussion. If so, I apologize for that.

Mike Holmes wrote:
2) Effort
A roleplaying game requires exceptional effort on your part to be
enjoyable. You can't set a copy of sorcerer on a table and be
entertained by it, but you can put a tape in a VCR and enjoy a movie
with no more effort than it takes to hit play.

That assumes that the effort part is unenjoyable. I don't find it unenjoyable. In fact, the hours that I put into preping stuff I count as part of the pleasurable hours in my calculation. Again, I hope that the effort you put into actually playing is actually enjoyable. If not I suggest a different hobby.

contracycle wrote: If I buy a trowel, I do not attribute the beauty of my garden to the trowel, but to the work I did with the trowel.

If I buy a trowel, I do not attribute the beauty of my garden to the trowel, but to the work I did with the trowel.

Jason L Blair wrote:

contracycle wrote: If I buy a trowel, I do not attribute the beauty of my garden to the trowel, but to the work I did with the trowel.

To expand on an analogy: The game should be the seeds as well.

Gentlemen,

I'd like to take the opportunity to focus the discussion, as it's getting sort of strange, at least to my eyes.

What is the question at hand? Ralph has proposed that game publishers raise their MSRP. He is not the first to suggest this; in fact, such a proposal is very popular among most publishers that you folks know of. The sales success of both Godlike and Nobilis seems to bear this out.

I don't see much room for debate on this issue aside from individual publisher's judgments regarding what to do. There is no "policy" to discuss (MSRPs are not set by politics or by committee, but by individual publishers). There is no issue surrounding the origin of "value" (that is negotiated via the market).

So, again, what is the question at hand?

Best,
Ron

My ski's cost $400. They will not ski themselves either, requiring so much effort that I once ended up in the hospital. Still, I would not have any fun trying to ski without them. Neither would I have any fun trying to play Inspectres without the rules. OTOH, I cannot think of what I'd use either for except for their intended activity. The price of the "tool" or "toy" is influenced by the fun it produces. RPGs are toys (as has been frequently pointed out) and are worth to me only what fun they particularly provide.

Matt, I suggest using an average happiness in your calculations of the particular game's worth that takes into acount that occasionally your players will not be up to snuff. I'm not saying that players are unimportant, but the system does not change in it's ability to help provide fun. That contribution of the system is what we're looking at as far as value. I cannot account for your players in my assessment of the value. I have to assume the average.

Mike

Ron Edwards wrote: So, again, what is the question at hand?

Hi Gordon,

It does help a bit, although I think that "What do you feel about ...", as a topic, is about as unsuitable as I can imagine.

Ralph, can you help? Your basic point was made in your first post. Is there anything else to ask, inquire, present for debate, or anything beyond "Share what you feel"?

Best,
Ron

My purposes for this thread was basically this.

1) Prices are abnormally low compared with other prices and rates of inflation.

2) Gamers have come to expect these low prices and somehow think that they are entitled to $20, $25 game books

3) Publishers in my mind, are fearful of 2 things. First that if they raise their prices too much they'll run into #2 above. Second I think a lot of game designers themselves just don't think their product is WORTH more than current prices...because as gamers themselves, they also hold the irrational beliefs of #2.

4) The low prices make it so difficult to make money in this business, that we as gamers are robbed of seeing many promising games that never get published and see many cherished companies go under, and have to suffer through many ridiculous marketing schemes which companies try in an effort to get into the black. In other words, the low prices may benefit our pocket books in the short run, but are fundamentally damageing in the long.


So ultimately I was hoping to, at least for the small group of both gamers and publishers here, put the issue of RPG prices into hard numbers to try and present an alternative way of thinking about how much an RPG game is worth rather than people just expecting every book to cost between X and Y because they've always cost between X and Y.


If enough people start to realize that its OK to pay $40 or $50 for an RPG book that they'll get many hours of enjoyment from, and that they aren't being ripped off, and if enough publishers (indie crowd included) starts to believe that its OK to charge what the product is actually worth rather than some artificially depressed price out of fear for lack of sales...than maybe some progress can be made on this issue.

The RPG gaming industry is the only one I can think of where the producers themselves willfully resist signals from consumers that they're willing to pay more. Its boggling.

Well, as the co-creator of a $39.95 product that starts hitting shelves tomorrow, my feeelings on this are probably easily guessed. Truthfully, even in the current market, I think the book might be underpriced (well, that or some other things may be over-priced) as crazy as that sounds. Having said that, I think pricing the book higher than 40 would have crossed one mental barrier too many and possibly done a lot of harm.

I don't think the textbook analogy holds up well. Most people don't buy 100 dollar textbooks because they want to do a bit of light reading. The counter-argument, of course, is that RPGs are a luxury item and many consumers are willing to pay a premium.

I'm happy with the cost to print Children of the Sun relative to the retail cost and I think we are providing a good value to customers. Naturally, any assessment of value is subjective, and what I consider a good value may be viewed quite differently by others.

As for Laurel's comments, I doubt that publisher's raising prices is bad for small press. On the one hand, I do see your point. On the other, I think there are many people who equate value with inexpensive. If many publishers start pushing prices upward, it leaves more room to slip products into the niches that have been vacated. Then again, I suppose Gareth might argue that this isn't necessarily the case. I'm not speaking from a position of fact, merely conjecture.

Hey,

Gamers have come to expect these low prices and somehow think that they are entitled to $20, $25 game books...

The cynical response is that most $20-$25 game books are little more than the second rate fiction of frustrated authors, and provide purchasers, the vast majority of whom probably never actually play the game, with about the same amount of reading entertainment and wistful daydreaming as a hardcover novel. It's not a surprise the prices of game books and hardcover novels are in accord.

Being an indie designer and trying to price based on play value is like owning the nicest home in a run down neighborhood. If you put it on the market for what it would be worth in a good neighborhood, you won't sell it.

Paul

Paul Czege wrote: Being an indie designer and trying to price based on play value is like owning the nicest home in a run down neighborhood. If you put it on the market for what it would be worth in a good neighborhood, you won't sell it.

Mike,

So now The Forge is a ghetto? Indie games are somehow less valuable simply because they are indie?

You are criminally misinterpreting what the cynic was saying. The cynic didn't say anything about "less valuable because they are indie." And he didn't say anything about prices going up being bad for the indie guy.

It's common knowledge in real estate that owning a run down house in an hot neighborhood is good for the value of the house. And certainly an overall increase in the price of games at large is good for the indie guy, regardless of how good his games are. But that wasn't what the cynic was talking about.

The actual issue for the indie guy is that he's selling into a neighborhood dominated by the run down AEG, Pinnacle, and White Wolf game books that consumers won't pay more for than $20-$29. The indie guy has a nice house for sale in a run down neighborhood.

Does Paul completely believe the cynic? No. He thinks it's possible for some premium products to sell at prices greater than those of the surrounding market landscape. But he also thinks there will be many excellent products produced that fail to do so.

Paul

The actual issue for the indie guy is that he's selling into a neighborhood dominated by the run down AEG, Pinnacle, and White Wolf game books that consumers won't pay more for than $20-$29. The indie guy has a nice house for sale in a run down neighborhood.

Ah, I see. We're talking about whether or not there's a potential in the RPG market for gentrification. No, not Mike, the other kind.

I think it can be done, personally.

Mike

The way I see it is that indie games serve an important purpose:

1. a direct competition to big business. Not with money, but with quality of writing and orginality of ideas. If someone spends a lot of time and money on design, layout, and publishing then it is worth more. Materials and labor costs can be high. If an indie publisher provides a game with comparable labor and appearance involved then it is worth the same amount as the big business version. Ideas do not change price labels-demand does. If a game concept is "fantastic" and becomes popular then it is worth more than something released by big business. But, because big business can spend more on marketing, and demand is lower on the indie game, it cannot have an equal value. So, basically, indie's have the potential to act as competition, but probably never will.

2. Indie games serve as an outlet for creativity. Rehashing D20 campaigns do nothing for most rpgers. But, new systems, simplification of systems, new themes, etc. are handled by big business only if there is a strong enough demand or enough money. It is the indie who often comes up with terrific new ideas or breathes new life into old concepts. Flash versus substance.


As far as changing MSRPs, go tell someone who buys one novel per week to pay $20 for them.

I know this seems like a rant --- it is. I just had to get it off my chest. Why does everything have to be a long winded debate? Nothing is ever as complicated as people make out.


Brett Bernstein
www.pigames.net

Sorry. I forgot something:


Q. How do you put worth on something as intangible as an idea?


A. By what people are willing to pay for it.


No offense to anyone here, but, I am not interested in paying $40 for a game. When I first saw the quality of WOTC's D&D, I would have probably paid $30 (I did for the White Wolf hardbacks). But, maybe I'm just getting old and need to face facts that phone calls are no longer a dime.

Heh...well maybe if ABC Construction company starts building nice houses in that neighborhood, developers will come it bulldoze all the dilapadated ones and build a nice upscale neighborhood...;-)

I saw a copy of Nobilis yesterday at my FLGS. Sweet sweating Jesus! It's big and clean looking (kinda like a coffee table book, about 12" by 12" square). So nifty that I had to touch it. Oh, and the feel of it, it's got that cover stuff that's soft as silk. So nice I had to flip it open. Wow, what layout on sturdy, glossy stock. What production values!

Still, beguiled by it's production as I was, I wouldn't pay anything for a coffeetable book of exactly the same quality (oh, maybe five bucks so I could just rub up against it sometime). Why? Because such a book wouldn't have any interesting content to me, likely. I'm thinking about paying the $40 or $50 for it (or what ever it costs), however, because I've read a lot about it, and I hear it's pretty good. If I weren't hoarding money to produce my own games I'd have a copy by now, in fact.

In any case, talk about sprucing up the neighborhood on both ends of good production and good design. Yes, and right next to it was "The End" in the aforementioned leatherette. And D20 supplements with very nice production values. And we all know what Sorcerer and Little fears have done. Seems to me that the indie scene is doing just what the doctor ordered.

Mike

pigames wrote: No offense to anyone here, but, I am not interested in paying $40 for a game.