Here's an interesting article from The Guild Companion, a free eZine that often has some interesting insights. I'm not sure if I agree with all of the analysis of the editorial, but it's definitely food for thought, and confirms some suspicions.

http://www.guildcompanion.com/scrolls/2003/dec/wordsfromthewise58.html

Discussion? What does Nicholas have right, and what do you think is inaccurate? What about Dancey's position?

Mike

The article is spot on for me in places, particularly the change in buying habits -- though my buying habits have changed more due other issues and realizations than those listed in the article (such as the futility of purchasing products I know I won't be using; and the realization that, in many cases, I can simply write it myself if I need it).

In days of yore, I could be found to make at least one RPG purchase a month, often on impulse. Now, with frontlisting pushing new books off the shelf more quickly than I can afford to save up for a purchase has left me spending my money elsewhere.

I can order such titles on-line, true, but knowing a product I found while browsing and tried to put money aside for will be gone when I get to the game store means I don't spare much thought to getting out to the game store to even browse (that I live an hour from the nearest game store is also a factor in this).

So, it has affected my actual shopping habits, even if my spending habits had changed previously -- had the market remained as it was before, and with my realizations of late about why I buy RPG products (for fun, innovation, and light reading), I would likely be moving back into more spending.

In regards to Dancey's proclamations: Ryan, having tied his own dick around d20 and D&D with his stubbornly defended pre-3rd Edition predicitions, as usual can't afford to whore anything else and do anything but paint a picture of "the d20/OGL future" that looks less and less reasonable with each passing year, and in fact appears to be ruining the market.

I have to agree with the article that Dancey's ideas, stripped of their heavy D&D focus, might have some merit. Really, Dancey is suggesting going back to the "backlist", just with a d20 focus.

I still make at least one RPG purchase a month on average, but it's starting to come down to "a couple of books every other month".

I tell you.

First, my buying habits are also like they describe, but not because of frontlisting or any other catchy buzzword. It has more to do with not really having more than a passing interest in any product, really. That and I'm sick of buying new games hoping to find that magic game that will give me satisfying play.

However, this "frontlist" business model can be seen in other forms of entertainment, I think. Novels are published in much the same manner with the same shelf life of about 90 days or so. The difference is a year later the novel is republished in paperback to gain more sales for those who prepare paperback books or cannot afford hardbacks. A similar feature of the motion picture distribution industry when the movie goes from opening weekend, cheap theatre, video/DVD.

Perhaps RPGs can learn a bit from this...or perhaps the frontlisting is attempting to emulate a different business it really shouldn't because it can't.

Jack Spencer Jr wrote: However, this "frontlist" business model can be seen in other forms of entertainment, I think. Novels are published in much the same manner with the same shelf life of about 90 days or so. The difference is a year later the novel is republished in paperback to gain more sales for those who prepare paperback books or cannot afford hardbacks.

Er. I dunno, Adam. That sounds like discounting to me. One of the only rules that I'm familiar with from my time in retail is that discounting to increase sales is a losing tactic. Essentially you add to the glut instead of reducing it, and don't end up making any more money. After a while it's no longer the inability to buy the products, its an inablility to read them all (much less employ them in any fashion in a game). The backlist idea, if I understand it at all is to have few expensive, high quality items that continue to sell steadily. What you're talking about sounds exatly like a frontlisting tactic to me.

Your games are worth more than $10 without a big book or lots of art. I pay more than that for games all the time, and I don't care one whit about the art or layout (I actually prefer artless PDF files). I bought the Tristat basic rules for one dollar, but would have payed $15. The point is that if it takes putting the art in or whatever, fine. But sell your excellent products for the price that they're worth.

That's just one opinion from a person who is, no doubt, vastly uninformed about the specifics of your situation. If you're aiming for penetration, then maybe your tactic makes sense. I just hope that in the end you have enough of a backlist going to keep you alive for the long run.

Mike

I'm actually kind of intrigued by the SGE concept.

Back when I was a lad on a $2 a week allowance and playing wargames that cost $40-$50 even in those days, I often longed for such a thing.

In fact, as that wee lad I said to myself "If I ever grow up to own a wargame company, I'm going to release 2 versions of every game. One with a nice heavy map and thick cardboard counters in a sturdy box, and Once on a flimsy paper map with thin cardstock counters in a zip lock so that people like me with no money can buy these games"

Of course, now that I have money I say, "to hell with that give me the fancy version", but its an intriguing concept.

Its especially interesting when applied to RPGs...

You're intentionally editing out the art for the game. Now I assume that the art (and continued use of it) is already bought and paid for. I'm further assuming that there isn't all that many pages saved simply by removing the art. So I'm guessing that there really isn't a whole lot of cost savings by removing the art, it is rather a "cripple ware" strategy of "if you want the art you have to buy the full version.

Similiarly you actually paying (with time and effort if not actual $) to have a whole new layout for the book. I imagine that eliminating attractive formating elements as well as making a smaller font will allow for a smaller book and some unit cost savings...but this is also a form of crippling the product.

I'll be real interested in discovering how this experiment works out. It seems like theres alot of complex interactions going on here, I hope you're able (perhaps with a survey of some kind) to track some of these. Such as:

1) people who buy the SGE version who wouldn't or couldn't afford the full version (the market you're obviously trying to tap into).
2) people who would have bought the full version but hadn't gotten around to it yet, or who actively decide to wait for the SGE version (i.e. cannibalizing your full version sales).
3) People who wouldn't have bought the full version but already own a scanned or xeroxed copy of the game acquired through illicit means who decide that kicking in $10 for the SGE version would be a "fair" thing to do.
4) people who would fall into group #1 above, but instead decide that your crippling of the SGE version goes too far and makes the SGE version not worth even the discount $10 price to them.
5) People whose first contact with your game is the SGE version which they rightly judge as being real shoestring, but which leaves them with a bad opinion of your company's production values because they don't realize (or take the time to find out) the difference between the SGE and full versions.

I'm really excited by the SGE idea, because, even though its something I have no interest in at this point (because I'm not a stingy gamer) I think it represents a "new idea" that's worth trying. And this industry could sure use all of the "new ideas" it can get.

If you aren't planning on trying to track some of the above, I'd really encourage it so that if it doesn't work as expected (or works better) that you can get a clearer idea of whats going on and hopefully share your findings with us.

Again, the "crippleware" thing is a penetration strategy. The idea being: get to the people and let them see how good the product is so that they buy more.

I'm more ambivalent about that POV. I will be interested in how it works.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: Er. I dunno, Adam. That sounds like discounting to me.

After a while it's no longer the inability to buy the products, its an inablility to read them all (much less employ them in any fashion in a game). The backlist idea, if I understand it at all is to have few expensive, high quality items that continue to sell steadily. What you're talking about sounds exatly like a frontlisting tactic to me.

Your games are worth more than $10 without a big book or lots of art. I pay more than that for games all the time, and I don't care one whit about the art or layout (I actually prefer artless PDF files). I bought the Tristat basic rules for one dollar, but would have payed $15. The point is that if it takes putting the art in or whatever, fine. But sell your excellent products for the price that they're worth.

Valamir wrote: You're intentionally editing out the art for the game. Now I assume that the art (and continued use of it) is already bought and paid for. I'm further assuming that there isn't all that many pages saved simply by removing the art. So I'm guessing that there really isn't a whole lot of cost savings by removing the art, it is rather a "cripple ware" strategy of "if you want the art you have to buy the full version.

2) people who would have bought the full version but hadn't gotten around to it yet, or who actively decide to wait for the SGE version (i.e. cannibalizing your full version sales).

5) People whose first contact with your game is the SGE version which they rightly judge as being real shoestring, but which leaves them with a bad opinion of your company's production values because they don't realize (or take the time to find out) the difference between the SGE and full versions.

Adam wrote: Also, having better penetration of your core products makes it much easier to have successful backlist products, as you're creating a larger market for them.

IMO, none of this will make much difference, and Danceys idea is doomed.

I agree that I like high production values and am willing to pay for them; but I think the real problem is much moe fundamental to the product.

Yes novels have a similar shelf life, but once they are done they are done. Then you go back to the shop and fork out another few quid for the next in the series or something else and bobs your uncle.

RPG's are a completely different animal as they do not require further purchases. And being several times more expensive then novels, are bought much less frequently. It's quite viable to be playing today with a battered copy of Traveller you bought more than a decade ago, whereas it would NOT be viable today to still be reading the same novel you bought at the same time, battered or otherwise.

The fundamental gap in the publishing model is: modules/scenarios/stories, call em what you will. The problems surrounding this have been frequently discussed, but IMO an industry that keeps trying to sell you a stand-alone product has to either keep moving onto a new set of buyers, or try to convince you to buy products you don't actually need.

I think much of the change is just numbers. The small operations like TSR at a start, they could live on the limited turnover that was mostly adults buying books for kiddies xmas presents. Now we have an industry that much bigger in simple terms, I don't think it can surivive on the intermittent purchases, it needs continuous rolling purchases of much greater volume. the only solution IMO is to rediscover a form of serialisation or other continuous publishing model.

And being several times more expensive then novels, are bought much less frequently.

I think I understand what you're saying Gareth, but I'm not sure I agree with the premise that the company needs ongoing regular sales. of a certain level.

Personally, I think the game publisher should be much more project revenue oriented than annual revenue oriented. If a project earns enough revenue over its life cycle to pay for itself (printing, freelancer, and advertising costs) and earns what the publisher would consider an acceptable return on the capital invested, there's no need for ongoing sales of that product or new products to keep a revenue stream up.

Each game book is an investment. You put money in, you pay expenses, you collect revenue, you're done. Any revenue that continues to trickle in from future sales down the line is gravy, but hardly necessary. You can calculate your annualized return on investment rather easily. A profit oriented outfit like Hasbro will demand a higher ROI than a guy doing it for love in his garage, but the principle is the same either way. Only the threshold as to what is a worthwhile project and what is not changes.

The problem that game publishers ran into is that they got this crazy idea that they were a corporation with salaried employees and leased office space and such. Once you start heaping fixed expenses on the business instead of variable you open up a whole new set of cash flow problems.

It simply isn't necessary to go there. There is no aspect of the game industry that requires salaried employees or leased space with the exception of large scale centralized distribution and fulfillment.

LordSmerf wrote: This really jumped out at me. As i understand it, backlist products are your high quality, long term sellers. Wouldn't this imply that your core products are your backlist products, or am i missing something here?

Anecdotally, i wouldn't purchase BESM Tristat hardback, but if i see another copy of the SGE i'll be picking that up...

Valamir wrote: The problem that game publishers ran into is that they got this crazy idea that they were a corporation with salaried employees and leased office space and such.

It simply isn't necessary to go there. There is no aspect of the game industry that requires salaried employees or leased space with the exception of large scale centralized distribution and fulfillment.

Hi Adam,

The term "real business" in your post fascinates me.

Your use:

a corporation with salaried employees and leased office space and such

And when possible, game companies minimize this through the use of freelancers and telecomuters. But the simple fact is, there are many advantages to having as many people as possible - especially the production team - in a single location.

However, that's an entirely different topic, so I won't stray too much.

I don't have time to write up more detailed replies today, but I'd just like to mention that obviously, the "real business" bit was tongue in cheek, and I wasn't trying to piss on businesses that don't have or don't see the need for some centralization of resources.

Best,
Adam

My take on this issue (and I commented to Ryan directly when the letter cited in the original article came out) was that Ryan is aiming for following the herd, even more so.

On the other hand, here are some realities of the three teir distribution engine.

There are roughly 3000-4500 retail game stores in the US, depending on whether you count "Well, we stock magic, but mostly we sell comics" to "We carry and support RPGs."

There are, effectivly, three distributorships in the US. Diamond/Alliance (which has had more to do with front-listing than anyone else), ACD and pretty much everybody else.

There are nearly 1000 manufacturers based on GPA and GAMA Manufacturers listings. This translates into something akin to 800 new product listings in the games field per month.

The average game store buyer thinks about next week's purchase on Thursday night or Friday night -- after a long week of trying to sell things rather than dust them, managing employees, dealing with customer special orders, and trying to make enough retailing revenue to keep the lights on.

Most game stores fold inside of 5-7 years. They fold because they either go broke, or start losing money (for really inept ones), or because after 5 years, the owner is realizing that working on a salary of 25-30K a year with no pay raises on 65 hour work weeks is burning him out.

Love isn't enough in the retail side of this business.

It frequently IS on the manufacturing side, and there's the dichotomy.

Distributors cater to the people who pay them money. This is the fundemental nature of capitalism. They don't cater to the people who provide them product, because, quite simply, the game you spent 4 years writing is another colored box that they have to sell to their existing customer base.

Distributors look at products and go through a mental check list.

1) Is the cover dark? If yes, this is a down-side. Lots of game manufacturers do black or very dark cover art, which blends with everyone else's black or dark cover art, and they all give mutual bonuses to their Hide on Shelves Camouflage Roll.

2) Is the title of the game in the top 3" of the cover? Can the title be read at 6 feet? Is it in some font that's damned hard to read?

3) Underneath the title, in that top 3", does it tell you What The Game Is About?

4) If you put it on the shelf like a book, can anyone read the spine? Does the spine stand out?

5) Is there a place on the cover with the stock number and where a retailer can put a price sticker?

6) Is the cover art interesting?

7) What does the back of the cover say? Does it make the game sound fun?

8) Is it a wierd size (tm)?

Now, that's what the distributor buyer is going to want to know.

The distributor sales reps are going to want to know the following:

"What's it like?"

"Which stores do I sell this to?"

"If it takes off, when is the next supplement due out?"

"What kind of advertising support is there for this?"

To everyone else in the industry but your game's rabid fans, your game is a book or box that came out with 800 books or boxes. What makes it worth the store's while to try to sell your game rather than everyone else's?

I'll give an example of how I'd pitch Jake's most excellent Riddle of Steel:

"What's it like?" "George Martin's Song of Ice and Fire as an RPG"

"Who do I sell it to?" "Anyone who buys Fantasy Flight Games' Song of Ice and Fire products.

"When is the next one coming out?" "Next supplement is due in..." (I don't have an answer to this.)

"Is there any support?" "Yes, Jake's loyal fan base is willing to run demo games at conventions and game stores. The combat engine makes a good 15 minute demo that people can try between MageClix Dark Age rounds."

(No, I don't know if Jake has a demo team...but if he does, he should use it.)

Remember, most retail clerks are fan boys who love their favorite games and work for the ability to get the store discount. They cannot and will not take the time to learn YOUR game well enough to cater to the two guys who want it. You have to do that work for them and give them enough info to fit on one side of an index card that links your game to something they already know.

We're on the declining side of a FRPG glut and on an RPG glut in general. d20 is cresting and the d20 market is cannibalizing itself. In essence, it's a smaller version of the CCG collapse. There are two major fantasy franchises out there with licensed product (LoTR and Harry Potter), and one minor (Song of Ice and Fire), all trying to catch the same boom. (Wizards has as much as admitted that they timed relaunched D&D 3e to exploit the Peter Jackson LoTR movies...).

The industry went through a similar cycle 5 years ago with SF titles (Trek, B5, Wars), and smothered that in a glut of new product. Then after the peak in 2000, no new ones came out (and I'm trying to fill that void with my product line next year).

After this tidal wave crashes, and the tide recedes, there will be a short lived market for "Fantasy, but not d20". It's not a huge market; you won't make 20k unit figures. But 2-4K is possible, and getting your fan base started on your products is doable. My guess is that the d20 Fantasy market is going to flush itself down the toilet this summer, and d20 will recede back to the old TSR settings (or the WoTC house setting), and by spring of 2005, the "Fantasy, but not d20" will have a chance again. (This means you should gear for Christmas of 2004, which means press dates of mid September 2004).

Hello,

Moderator comment: Adam, tongue-in-cheek replies aren't recommended here. The internet medium doesn't convey them well, especially not with smilies, which do not work. Please try to say what you mean, and let that be that.

Adastra, those are all excellent observations. They add up to exactly the reasons that distribution and retail act as a selective process on available games which has nothing whatsoever to do with the game book's quality and usability for play.

And that, in turn, is why publishing through the three-tier system is largely a matter of X convinces Y, Y convinces Z, and Z convinces X of something, all without any input whatsoever from the end-user customer.

That customer's input is silent because sales of a role-playing game (by which I mean the core book, indicating new users) over the long run are simply not monitored by anyone at the retail level, barring maybe a handful of stores.

The time it takes for a given game to be used, and used long enough for its quality to influence another person to buy it, clocks in at least six months, sometimes considerably longer. By that time, the retailer has flushed it - it "didn't sell," not in the 2-4 week period that he looked at his books for last month's order and decided what to order next time.

Without SKU monitoring - again, practiced by maybe a handful of retail game stores - even the repeated sales of a given game will go unnoticed by the store owner, as long as his worried attention is focused on whatever he sunk money into in the last order-period.

Under these circumstances, a publisher has two choices.

1. Make use of the cognitive confusion and make as much money through front-ordering as possible. Befuddle the retailers at GAMA with flashy promo, reassure the distributors with the very features you've described, adastra, and do so in such a way that all these people begin repeating the same catch-phrases to one another. Properly-seeded repetition, in a big-enough group, looks like independent corroboration to an individual member of that group. Also, if you can, spot and hop onto whatever the current fad-sensation may currently be among the customers.

2. Largely ignore the three-tier system, or use it to a limited extent as long as the expenses involved are outweighed by the profits. (This is what I do - I make a small amount through the three-tier, to the extent that I keep a nice contact with a few stores and keep the distributors' tiny space reserved for Adept press full. But that's it.)

I hopped onto this thread to make a larger point, however. It is this: "Industry" is best understood as a commercial situation in which people besides the manufacturer are able to profit. That would mean, say, the illustrators, at the production end; or, say, a retailer at the sales end.

What "industry" actually exists for role-playing? Bluntly, we are in a situation in which the term barely applies at all. Distributors profit because they can off-load titles onto retailers in bulk, while paying rather small amounts (and usually late, I might add) to manufacturers. Publishers can profit again by producing in bulk, in a kind of fire-and-forget fashion. Retailers eat it, routinely - the books do not flow straight into customers' hands, based on use and enjoyment of the books.

RPGs aren't like comics and CDs. You don't open it and enjoy it, on the spot. Publishers like White Wolf and many others try to produce books which are, for the most part, like these other products. The games aren't meant to be played, but to be purchased and owned, like gear. If you keep pumping out (a) supplements and (b) new titles, then you can sort of make RPG publishing more like comics or music-album or magazine publishing.

This tactic works to a limited extent and for a limited time, mainly because the consumer base keeps feeding in new generations of naive purchasers, each of which gets burned in its turn and then decides to do something worthwhile with its time. It's awfully hard on the retailers in particular, and for a while, since distribution held retailers' debt through returnability, that could be staved off ... until distribution recently felt the long-term pinch such that now only one national distributor (Alliance) functions in the U.S.

So, "industry"? I don't see an industry. I see a stumbling, failing, and confused set of debt and delusion. The so-called big publishing companies are sustained mainly through external feeds - in some cases investors (who should be checking their ROI's about now, and those who've done so have pulled the plugs already), and in some cases personal inheritances or bleed-offs from some other career. Looking at the games most represented on the stores' shelves, I see no evidence at all that customers' use of the games provides enough profit for the publishers to continue publishing them.

The only real RPG industry I see is composed of small publishers who:

a) self-publish, meaning the author controls the company,
b) pay the people who work for them on time (e.g. artists, printers)
c) conduct promotion directly to end-use customers and also deal with those customers' rare hassles directly
d) set up mutually profitable arrangements with the few retailers who are committed to moving those particular books
e) provide a venue for customers to interact with the publisher and with one another

It's smaller, yes. But it's broader, and it's reliable.

Best,
Ron

Ron wrote:

Adastra, those are all excellent observations. They add up to exactly the reasons that distribution and retail act as a selective process on available games which has nothing whatsoever to do with the game book's quality and usability for play.

(warning: bit of a ramble follows)

Whoa. Someone forgot to send me the bloody memo.

As an RPG consumer, I've still been buying "backlist" style -- I tend to buy about one corebook a year, plus a supplement if it looks like I would have a specific use for it (In the last five years I have purchased Sorcerer, Nobilis, Godlike, Little Fears, Heavy Gear and Riddle of Steel, so that's about right.) I often wait a couple of years before purchasing a game (Universalis and MLWM are on this list right now, along with Exalted and some other stuff), just to make sure that it isn't an impulse buy.

My friends think that I'm a bit of a spendthrift (they tend to only buy games that I have bought and liked), and I think that they reflect the vast majority of RPG buyers. We are all still used to "backlist" style publishing, and our style of play supports that much better than this "frontlist" business.

I imagine part of the reason that there is a giant crash right now in the "industry" is that the corporations are expecting people to buy frontlist style (sales of corebook only exist to sell supplements) whilst most gamers play "backlist" style (use the corebook and drift it to the point where you like it.) No wonder publishers are so screwed. Damn.

Come to think of it, I think that supplements might interfere with the natural drift process of RPG play... But that's a post for a different forum.

In short -- I suddenly realize why everyone says the sky is falling. Thanks for posting the article.

yrs--
--Ben

Hi there,

This is a very interesting discussion.

Ken, I greatly appreciate your comments. However, I need a litttttle clarification about this:

For the current, and forseeable industry, beyond making your game not suck (and if you're making a game that sucks, your playtesters will tell you this), quality doesn't matter.

Hey Ken,

If there is a literary or media property that's reasonably close to the feel of your game, send a letter off to the publisher and try to talk to someone about licensing. The most disposable fantasy novel ever written will reach more potential customers for your game than any amount of marketing polish you put on your game.

I don't want to derail this thread, so just a link: Greg Costikyan disagrees.

Paul

Your game meets the minimum requirements to sell if the mechanics don't interfere with the portrayal of the genre chosen. They don't even have to SUPPORT it terribly well -- they just have to not interfere with it.

Sorcerer, from what I've seen, beautifully matches mechanics and genre. TROS matches mechanics, genre, and mind-numbing amounts of research into something that's incredible. (TROS was written by a guy who seems to have read my mind, and then done it better than I could have myself.)

Both are, for the genre chosen, roughly two to three orders of magnitude better than D&D. That quality difference doesn't matter to the commercial retailer. He wants to know why it will sell better than an equal amount of money and shelf space devoted to D&D.

Making them what they are is, from a purely time in/money back perspective, is wasted effort. If they took 2-3 years to write (which looks to be the case), and the "6 month draft, with typo fixes" would have sold just as well, from a commercial perspective, in the time it took to write Sorcerer, you could have done 5 other products and probably made about 3-4x the money.

My question to you:

What do you tell a distributor to make them pick up Sorcerer, or TROS?

Who do they sell it to?

What existing, defined, customer bases that patronize game stores would it sell to?

Why should they carry it (from their perspective, not yours) when the same amount of money in d20 products has a much more stable rate of return to the retailer?

====

Here are the answers for my game.

"You pick up AV:T because there hasn't been a new spaceship combat game on the market since 1999 or so, and three of the old standards have left the market. It's a boardgame, which are selling better now, and are an underserved market niche."

"The stores you sell it to are the ones that used to carry B5Wars, or Star Fleet Battles while they were available. If you have any stores that carry Traveller stuff in any of its incarnations, you can pitch them on this. If you have stores that carry GURPS: Transhuman Space, it doesn't have a space combat engine, and they have as much said that this is what they're recommending to their customers."

"The people who buy grown up wargames will probably want this. The people who buy space games in general will buy this. With in store demos, the people who play MechWarrior: Dark Age might buy this. We have people who can come to demo the game all over the country."

"You should carry it because it's a big enough product that'll return on change up like a hardback book. Same price, same profit when it sells. You should buy it because there is nothing currently on the market in its genre, and you should carry it because the kind of science fiction authors these customers read have written blurbs for the box."

===

In terms of licensing, I respectfully disagree with Greg Costikyan. He is comparing apples to pomegranates, and is talking about the video game industry to boot, and mentions that most of the licenses out there that suck are ones where the parent company is ramming the IP down the game company's throat.

You want to do both licensed and unlicensed products. Your licensed products will sell more copies faster; they'll get your company name and identity out there.

Most novels that go direct to paperback are printed in about 50,000 to 100,000 unit printings (and sometimes more). Something that sold well in hardcover usually gets a quarter-million copy print run. The author gets about 30 cents for each paperback book that's sold, and gets paid an advance against royalties.

From my own experience, I'd guess that about 1% of those readers play RPGs. I'd guess that somewhere around 3-10% never play RPGs, but would buy anything related to their favorite fantasy setting.

So, we'll call it 2% as a split. If the author is getting a 100k copy print run, that's 2000 customers who will likely buy your game that wouldn't otherwise.

Most game companies going the commercial distro route do 2,000 to 3,000 copy print runs. A minor licensed product could justify a 5,000 copy print run and still make more money per book due to reduced printing costs, even after paying the royalty.

I personally think the really BIG licenses have priced themselves out of the market at this point. (I know the B5 license cost 30k/year in licensing fees, plus a truly exorbitant percentage of MSRP. When the show went off the air, it stopped being cost effective to pay the license fee.) For that, I blame the electronic gaming industry, which is rapidly mainstreaming itself into the Hollywood Blockbuster mentality.

contracycle wrote: ... whereas it would NOT be viable today to still be reading the same novel you bought at the same time, battered or otherwise.

Hi Ken,

If I'm not mistaken, you're referring to success as being picked up by distributors and, in their warehouses, being routinely available to retailers' orders. I was able to achieve this goal a while ago, and whenever Alliance or whoever runs out, they order some more. I'm in the "re-order when it's empty" category in a number of stores, and don't expect to branch out from there very much. So it's a little hard to imagine pitching myself to these fellows again; I did it once, when times were a little different, and the thought of doing so now is fairly alien.

In fact, to answer your question (now that I think of it), I would do no such thing. I don't perceive the current three-tier situation as stable enough to support any degree of success for anyone except a fire-and-forget publisher. And those fellows, I don't think they enjoy the fruits of their tactics for more than a few months, maximum.

I think I'll expound (gasp, gasp -- one of my spells coming on -- quick, gran'chil'ren, fetch my pill!). My current advice to anyone about to publish a role-playing game is rather different from that advice I gave out two or three years ago.

Two or three years ago, here's what I told anyone who'd listen: After generating a loyal customer base with PDF sales and a good website presence, get layout, editing, and other production work done with helpful volunteers. Get a great cover and plan for hard-cover. Do not use print-on-demand; use a traditional printer. Pay all expenses out of money you can afford to lose (i.e. don't print on margin). Bid for printers and pick toward the low end, but always with the nicest and most promptly-responding people. Work out the right breakpoint for the number to print based on cost-per-copy and expectations to ship 500 or so at first orders (usually came out to 1200-1800 print runs). Get a fulfilment house involved (this advice included some specifics on the various options; deleted here for space considerations). Visit GAMA armed with your fulfilment house pal and have a pointed sit-down with ACD, Alliance, Centurion, and Elsevier, among others. Don't gas about your system and how many characters can do this or do that; these people don't know how to role-play and aren't interested. Don't take shit from anyone and emphasize, over and over, that you have secondary publications in the can and are not doing anything on margin. Show off your art and describe your target consumer base in detail. Meet retailers who seem to have their shit together and take their names; maintain contact with them as you get ready to ship. Also, sell direct and market aggressively on-line in the right places and ways (details omitted for space). Advertise in Games Quarterly and make damn sure you're in the distributors' catalogues just prior to the print run's appearance. Models: Obsidian, Sorcerer, The Riddle of Steel.

In your terms, here's what I said, back then:

"What do you tell a distributor to make them pick up Sorcerer?"

That it was already grossly profitable to me and would continue to be so. If they want a piece of that, then pick it up; if not, then don't. (I was pretty blunt with distributors, even the ones I like a lot as people.)

"Who do they sell it to?"

The stores I described to them were those hip college stores with a wide variety of titles, anime DVDs in the front, and Sandman statues on the counter. Also, stores in more isolated areas with clusters of older gamers.

"What existing, defined, customer bases that patronize game stores would it sell to?"

1. Comics and movie buffs who also role-play, especially the intellectual sorts who are looking for something meaty (name a few titles that correspond nicely). 2. The bitter, burned-out role-player who is just about to cease being your customer because the Champions-to-GURPS-to-Rolemaster-to-Vampire thing has run its course for them. [response: guffaws of recognition and then close attention when I describe the reaction of such role-players to Sorcerer]

"Why should they carry it (from their perspective, not yours) when the same amount of money in d20 products has a much more stable rate of return to the retailer?"

Actually, most retailers began these conversations with the question, "It's not d20, is it?" and upon receiving the answer, "Oh thank God." Only distributors asked such a question as you pose. For them, I laughed at their use of the word "stable," right in their faces. Rate of return for one month per title, sure. That's "stable" like Marvel Comics are "stable" - which means nothing at all in terms of three months at a time. Sorcerer reliably continues to sell for the retailer, month after month, year after year. I ask them which d20 products can hack that, and point out that Sorcerer and the ones they name (always the same ones) have a great deal in common. To the retailers who brought up these issues, I made it very clear that Sorcerer will not by itself bring in hordes of customers with their hands waving over their heads. I stated, "It carries its own weight without sweating; don't expect it to carry the weight of whatever you chose to deep-order last month."

But all of that is irrelevant, you see. Times have changed. Now? All different.

I'd say, don't do it at all. I have no confidence whatsoever that the retail game stores as we know them will even exist a year from now. Don't go into the stores at all, except on direct one-on-one deals with the actual retailers. Forget traditional distribution altogether. Instead, use print-on-demand (details omitted on how to find one and work out the right deal) and plan for 100-copy short runs at a time. Fulfill it yourself or by cooperating with a similar publisher. Again, begin with a solid PDF base and work to print from there. Maintain one hell of a website presence with a strong focus on recognizing and praising actual play.

My Life with Master does this; so does Universalis. So do a number of other games. Return on these games, so far, is stunningly high. I strongly suggest that the "quality" you are (rightly) saying is irrelevant to the middle tiers is top A#1 gold using this model instead.

Best,
Ron

Speaking as someone with extensive hobby retail experience, game stores tend to sell those products with which their employees are familiar. Exceptions are limited to brand-name products such as Warhammer, D&D and Yu-Gi-Oh (sorry, Magic is old news). AdAstra pointed out, quite correctly, that most game store employees are themselves players of games. My experience, however, contradicts his.

Demoing your spanking-new game to game store employees pays off in sales, as people can only consistently sell that which is familiar to them. You as author and publisher may only see a handful of customers at any single demo, but store employees will see all their regular clientele in a given period of time. Game evangelization is often most effective when aimed at the employee rather than the customer.

Games Workshop used this method for years, and the results seem fairly obvious. A game store employee is often the first person a customer will go to for opinions about a game. Online reviewers are not always granted the same degree of confidence that a customer reserves for employees of his or her friendly local game store (some people do not have such an establishment, I know, let alone an employee on whom they can rely).

Simply put, store employees make more contact with the game-playing public in an area than any publisher can reasonbly hope to garner. Word of mouth is still a very effective tool, if you lack an advertising budget of sufficient size to saturate the marketplace. Dedicated store owners and employees are fewer and farther between these days, sadly, but nothing ventured is nothing gamed... pun very much intentional. :)

Valamir wrote: Don't take this as a snarky challenge. But name them.

Better communication and coordination on multiple fronts, especially when working with multiple product lines and multiple products in the same stages of production at one time. Increased ability to move projects from person to person as need dictates. Easier handling of large amounts of large files [Some of the books I work on have 500+ 5MB images culled from over 1000, which is in turn culled from 50+ GB of movie footage] Easier training. Easier hardware/software upgrades. More comradery. Easier to get feedback on ideas, get proofing done, etc. Shared resources [printers, paper, etc.]

As I don't hold the pursestrings at GOO, I can't provide that information.

[Side note: BESM d20 Stingy Gamer Edition proofs came in today - should be in stores sometime early January, depending on the wackiness of holiday-season shipping.]

Best,
Adam

Let me start out by saying that I am in favor of distributed development for small companies. This is based on my 15 years of working in the IT industry as a consultant, in house IT, and contract freelancer and the two cost analysis we did on outsourcing/distributed software development (one at Unisys and one at HTI). So...

There are differences between software and publishing but the development process is surprisingly similar for a cost point of view. In our studies we found in house development was 2-3 times as productive in the terms of actual lines of debugged code submitted to source control of an equal period of time. This was averaged over (at Unisys) 12 4-person teams working from home and the same number from the office. Cost, as evabluated over a year, including lost days (due to sickness, other commitments of kids and such) came out to be about office work being 2-3 times as expensive as the office. This cost actually decreased if the home worker was closer to the office since the home worker would draw on supplies from the office.

My personal experience is that I can manage about six distributed teams from home at the same time before quality is seriously affected. At work it is more like 10-12. The study at HTI was more oriented on this aspect and what happened there was that wfound you could almost double the work accomplished with in office teams ofver home workers. This means you could do the same work with 1/2 the people at the office.

The point I would make is not the RPG Industry is "broke" (whatever that means) but that small companies doing a few projects serially can function quite happily and efficently in a distributed environment. Larger companies that have the revenue to handle the capital investment of an office can benefit from the cooperative nature of the office space. Large Companies can also benefit from distributed development, the benefits increase the more you need to call on non-local specialists. The reason usually comes back to workflow and document management in the sense of one release per year vs thirty.

This of course are only my observations and they do not represent the universe and all its glorious working. In other words, YMMV,

Bill

HinterWelt wrote: you could do the same work with 1/2 the people at the office.

Chris,
I want to emphasize that the two studies were carefully designed to take average. With individual interviews we conducted we almost always got the same answers as you goive along the lines of "I can be more productive because I work when I want". As I have said, I am a proponent of distributed development, simply because not every thing can be boiled down to the balance sheet. People who do that kind of thing often are very unhappy. That said, you will be equally unhappy if you ignore the balance sheet.

What we found was, if the team working on a project had separate caompartmentalized tasks then productivity was impacted less but still effected. Strangely enough, without the developer being aware of it. This happens because of the little word I snuck in "Bug-Free" code. We found that working at the office had a higher level, and more thurough code reviews. If all you are doing is spewing out HTML it is still effected but more from design point of view. You could mitigate this somewhat by pushing the envelope on video conferencing, SWS software and fcused and shared data dumps but you start to incur serious software costs at this point. Your benefit begins to dwindle. I should say, th comapny's benefit begins to dwindle.

Also, I want to stress what no study can effectively communicate, worker satisfaction. Some people enjoy working from home and having family/pets/comforts of home around them. I happen to be one of them. Some people found the structure/facilities/comraderie/break from family of the office benefical to focusing their efforts. Impossible to quantify but very real in terms of retaining employees.

Feel free to ignore my ramblings,

Bill

One of the defintions of insanity is "doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result".

The d20 RPG publishers, in masse, are currently exhibiting this behavior pattern. Many of them are locked into a business model that requires them to publish a product each and every month, with a minimum assumed unit volume, in order to pay monthly expenses. Without a monthly release schedule, these companies will stop paying salaries, royalties, and rent when the tail end of their distributor invoices dry up in 60 to 90 days.

This business model is predicated on the idea that consumers want to buy something every month (in fact, it is predicated on consumers wanting to buy something weekly, but I digress). For several years, it was sufficient to just print anything reasonably centered on the fantasy / science fiction axis common to most hobby gamer's interest pattern, and that product would meet the minimum monthly unit volume required to sustain the business model.

Starting in the 4th quarter of 2002, this pattern of behavior broke. Buyers in large measure have stopped purchasing products unless those products are exceptional. Sales volumes of new product, on average, have been declining roughly 50% per quarter since then end of 2002. At the end of 2003, several publishers are reporting that they can no longer count on hitting their monthly minimum unit volumes. As a result, they are laying off staff, cutting future products (announced or not) and trying to retrench into a smaller cost basis so they can survive with a smaller unit volume.

In response to a discussion about this phenomenon in a private industry forum, I composed the gist of the message quoted by the original article as a way for publishers to reconsider the fundamental business model itself as opposed to bemoaning the "collapse" in RPG sales. Because fundamentally, I believe there has been a "collapse" because publishers keep trying to sell substandard product with substandard marketing to an increasingly interconnected community of increasingly savvy buyers. And the buyers, well, aren't buying.

Comes a product like Draconomicon, or AEG's Spycraft, or Fantasy Flight's Midnight, or Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed, and those customers get into the stores, open their wallets, and buy. Clearly, the consumers are still interested. And the consumers still have money to spend on RPG purchases. And the channel is still functioning well enough to get those products to the stores so those customers can make those purchases.

I am therefore compelled to conclude that the problem is not with the customers, the retail stores, the distributors, the licensing framework, the game systems, or competition from other entertainment options. I am compelled to conclude that the problem is that, on average, the products that are being produced aren't good enough to trigger the "buy" response.

My original concept, loosely quoted in the original article, was to suggest to publishers that they get off the treadmill, and stop trying to publish a product every month. That if they instead focused on producing just a few products each year, but crafted each product with care, attention to detail, and high production values, they would be able to sell substantially more units of that product then they would sell in aggregate of the "monthly treadmill" products they're currently making. And because there are economies of scale in RPG publishing, and they are attainable at reasonable unit volumes, following that kind of limited development schedule creates sizable pockatable profits as well as being a sustainable business model.

There are three reasonable reasons to ignore this advice. First, the publishers might think I'm a crackpot without any insight about how RPG publishing works, and thus conclude that I don't know what I'm talking about and my suggestions are meritless. Second, the publisher may be targeting a very small niche auidence for personal, artistic, or asthetic reasons, and the fact that such markets produce small unit volumes is an acknowledged problem that cannot be fixed. Third, the publisher may have spent themselves into a black hole of debt or continuing obligations, does not have access to free capital, and believes that without any realistic way to stop producing those monthly products and regroup for a higher quality, higher unit volume business model the company would bankrupt itself in the process.

In 2004, d20 companies will go out of business because their business models are broken. A lot of them will go out of business. Some will stop publishing paper products and go to PDF distribution. Some will soldier on racking up debt to freelancers, artists, and printers, delaying the reckoning while they hope for a wholesale industry return to high volume sales of low quality products. Some will decide to bid for a better business model, and my prediction is that they will be successful, and their success will provide a roadmap out of the current quagmire into a long term, sustainable design cycle.

Ryan