Quote:
Originally Posted by Refplace
Hard copy is suffering for just about all content [...] Its regrettable for those who like hard copy
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Exactly.
I don't
empathize with fans of hardcopy; living in a smallish apartment as I do, and with massive hard drives being cheaper than square footage and small enough to take up negligible space, I prefer media and packaging that don't have me stumbling over books, magazines, boxes, cassettes, discs, etc. I do
sympathize, though; I just learned that my favorite shampoo was discontinued, and it seems the local liquor commission no longer carries a couple of essential cocktail ingredients, which with their monopoly means I can never again buy them. It's no fun when that sort of thing happens. But the reasons are always economic: production or shipping costs too much, demand is too low, margins are too thin. Part of adult life is accepting that money makes the world go round.
In any event, it isn't as if we've reneged on our promise to work toward POD and reexamine it periodically. We've
already gone from "POD isn't viable at this time" to
GURPS On Demand. If the latter looks like it can be expanded to a wider range of products at some future date – perhaps because it becomes cheaper for us or allows us to submit our PDFs "as is" instead of requiring us to totally rebuild them – you can be sure there will be another shift. Another part of adult life is learning to wait for the things you want.
Playing games is fun, but creating them isn't fun and games. We have to deal with unfavorable economics, convoluted requirements, and frustrating delays. It's important to keep that in sight. Too often people think that because games are an amusing pastime, those of us who produce them are a bunch of Peter Pan types who get to do whatever we want instead of working at real jobs. But the reality is a lot of 12-hour workdays, overdue contractors, and spin control.