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Originally Posted by Dammann
What are the good reasons he alludes to? Is it a matter of licensing costs?
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He notes a crossover "is unlikely for what I presume are a whole host of reasons," which is to say he assumes that there are reasons but doesn't know for sure. I agree with him, though. The problem, in brief, is that there's not likely enough benefit to justify the cost.
There are a couple of substantial costs involved here. One is the license. I've no idea what the cost of a license might be, but I imagine that cost eats up a lot of whatever additional revenue the licensed product might bring in. Then there's the cost of actually adapting it. Writing a setting is, frankly, easy. Writing stats is the part that takes work, particularly if you're working to SJ Games's specifications. Getting the stats right in
Mirror of the Fire Demon took vastly more of my time and that of the editorial staff than setting up the narrative framework, location descriptions, and so on. And then there's the opportunity cost. There's the question of whether or not Kromm or PK could be spending their time working on something more profitable than an adaptation; then there's the question of whether SJ or Phil, who'd be involved in negotiation over the license, could be working on something more profitable.
And what do you get for that effort? Quite possibly, not much. Or at least not enough. I recall someone at SJ Games noting that licenses generally
don't expand the customer base. That is, an adaptation of property X for game Y tends to appeal to people who are already fans of both X
and Y rather than bringing fans of X into game Y or get players of game Y interested in property X. Now, this is not to say that licenses are just plain money-losers. We wouldn't see the various Munchkin licensed products if they were. However, neither can we rely on licenses to suddenly make viable products that would not be otherwise. And there's reason to think that they
wouldn't be otherwise. Adventures and settings have historically simply not sold particularly well, certainly not as well as crunchy rulebooks. That's the GURPS audience. It's DIYers, not people who use canned material.
This is not to say that it's impossible for such a thing to work.
Could a line of GURPS-adapted settings and adventures with proven appeal to non-GURPS gamers do well? And, indeed, well enough to justify the increased costs? Maybe. But that doesn't look like it's the way to bet, and given that some of those costs are front-loaded in the license and SJ/Phil time, it's a bigger than average bet. In better times, maybe they'd give it a shot. In these sadly degraded days, it's probably too great a risk.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dammann
it seems to me like table top games have some room for growth
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One might be tempted to observe that that's putting a brave face on the fact that tabletop RPGs have been in a steady decline for years. They've got a lot more up to go than down.