12-10-2015, 06:33 AM | #731 | |
Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: Scotland
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Re: Report To The Stakeholders
Quote:
(Non-British Europeans, there's a thought. I'd expect sales of GURPS Discworld in the Netherlands to be pretty good.) There's certainly enough US/Canadian fans to justify the existence of the North American Discworld Convention, bi-annually since 2009. And I hear a fair amount of American accents at the UK DiscCon as well. I believe Sir Terry said somewhere that US sales were very respectable, once his American publishers stopped burying the books in the garden and started actually trying to get them into bookshops. I'm also reminded of the Douglas Adams quote about the American success of HHGG: "One is told at every level of the entertainment industry that the American audience does not like or understand English humour. We are told that at every level except that of the audience who, as far as I can see, love it." And Hitchhikers always struck me as a lot more inherently British than Discworld. |
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12-12-2015, 03:05 AM | #732 | |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: Report To The Stakeholders
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- They did not renew the GURPS Traveller license - They can't afford to print most books or keep them in print in an age where the size and lavishness of printed RPG books is increasing - They don't think they could launch GURPS Discworld or GURPS Mars Attacks today and make a profit. We have comments from staff members claiming that sales of RPG products are down across the industry, and Google Trends data which is consistent with that claim. And we have a number of comments by staff members that they will preside over this shrinkage and try to reverse it, but if it continues eventually they will have to stop publishing new material. That is irrelevant for players (who can just buy the books used or as PDFs or borrow the GM's copy) but would be too bad for the clever people who write for SJG.
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"It is easier to banish a habit of thought than a piece of knowledge." H. Beam Piper This forum got less aggravating when I started using the ignore feature |
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12-12-2015, 02:06 PM | #733 |
Untitled
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: between keyboard and chair
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Re: Report To The Stakeholders
The GURPS Traveller Line Editor has suffered from poor health recently; that may be a contributing factor in this specific case.
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Rob Kelk Every man has a right to his own opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts. Bernard Baruch, Deming (New Mexico) Headlight, 6 January 1950 No longer reading these forums regularly. |
12-12-2015, 03:16 PM | #734 |
Join Date: Oct 2014
Location: St. Louis, Missouri
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Re: Report To The Stakeholders
I know many of you are rabid GURPS fans, but almost the entirety of the conversation for the last month has been nothing but how GURPS is "dying"; nearly eight full pages of forum. You'd think it was all SJG made. In reality, it's a niche of a niche of a niche.
They have said they will continue to support the game, they have been supporting the game, so I don't think the sky is falling just yet. |
12-12-2015, 03:44 PM | #735 |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: Report To The Stakeholders
Indeed, I can imagine scenarios where that decision had nothing to do with GURPS or SJG. But the shrinking and closing-down of GURPS Traveller is still suggestive.
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"It is easier to banish a habit of thought than a piece of knowledge." H. Beam Piper This forum got less aggravating when I started using the ignore feature |
12-12-2015, 09:04 PM | #736 |
Banned
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: https://t.me/pump_upp
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Re: Report To The Stakeholders
Good lord. I wrote the first post in this thread 10 years ago. 10 years older and no wiser.
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12-13-2015, 03:34 AM | #737 |
I do stuff and things.
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Report To The Stakeholders
Could we send Discworld and Mars Attacks to print right now? Absolutely. Our cash flow can handle the printing/shipping costs, and proceeding with those books today would in no way damage our operations.
Sending those books to print today -- without a sales and marketing plan in place that results in higher than (currently) expected sales -- would cause long term damage to GURPS. You're only as good as your latest release, and putting these two out there today would result in lower than needed sales and impact the next GURPS title released through distribution channels. I believe many here are thinking short-term when it comes to these two titles. We must explore all of the options: increased marketing efforts in an attempt to grow monthly GURPS sales, carefully consider crowdfunding for one or both of the books, raise distributor and retailer awareness of the titles' strength. As a company, we aren't ones to rush. When it comes to actions that could have far-reaching effects on GURPS -- the only game the company has actively supported (new expansions every single year!) for close to three decades -- we're going to be even more cautious and thorough than usual.
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12-13-2015, 07:50 AM | #738 |
Icelandic - Approach With Caution
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Reykjavķk, Iceland
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Re: Report To The Stakeholders
Why isn't there a sales and marketing plan that results in higher sales in place for those books? The books can hardly have come as a surprise to the company, the writing and playtesting etc. takes time. Did the scene shift dramatically some time during that process?
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12-13-2015, 08:16 AM | #739 | |
I do stuff and things.
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Report To The Stakeholders
Quote:
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Battlegrip.com, my blog about toys. |
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12-13-2015, 10:32 AM | #740 | |
Untitled
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: between keyboard and chair
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Re: Report To The Stakeholders
Quote:
Consider that we In Nomine fans were promised status updates "every few months" - seventy-one months ago, and we've heard nothing official since then. In contrast, GURPS has a monthly magazine (which Munchkin does not) and other monthly new releases. I'd love it if In Nomine was "struggling" the way GURPS is.
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Rob Kelk Every man has a right to his own opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts. Bernard Baruch, Deming (New Mexico) Headlight, 6 January 1950 No longer reading these forums regularly. |
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