Report To The Stakeholders

[Steve Jackson]

And it's live. This will be announced tonight (edit: maybe tomorrow night), but forumites can see it first.

http://www.sjgames.com/general/stakeholders/

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Failures
Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game

This is sad, but since Phil signaled early on that cost overruns were threatening its viability, I can't say that I'm terribly surprised. It's nice that POD through Amazon seems to justify itself and I'm looking forward to Car Wars, but not as much as I'm disappointed by the lack of a strong GURPS revival despite SJ Games giving it their best shot.

[Ronnke]

Thanks for the report. :)

Yay! Four GURPS titles in the Top 40. Haven't seen that for a while. :)

[Ballistica]

Good to hear you guys are keeping your head above the water. Licensing out Munchkin to other companies (USAopoly etc) was a great idea and surely brings in a bit of revenue, they seem quite popular.

[philreed]

Originally Posted by Ballistica

Good to hear you guys are keeping your head above the water. Licensing out Munchkin to other companies (USAopoly etc) was a great idea and surely brings in a bit of revenue, they seem quite popular.

Thanks. And there's also this that was announced today:

https://idwgames.com/idw-games-annou...d-nickelodeon/

[philreed]

Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company

It's nice that POD through Amazon seems to justify itself . . .

And more on the way. The team posted the planned releases here:


http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/ondemand/

[Captain Joy]

Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company

This is sad, but since Phil signaled early on that cost overruns were threatening its viability, I can't say that I'm terribly surprised. …I'm disappointed by the lack of a strong GURPS revival despite SJ Games giving it their best shot.

Yes, DFRPG being #6 in “Dollar Volume” yet listed as a failure is perplexing. My guess is #6 in “Dollar Volume” <> #6 “money maker”?

[philreed]

Originally Posted by Captain Joy

Yes, DFRPG being #6 in “Dollar Volume” yet listed as a failure is perplexing. My guess is #6 in “Dollar Volume” <> #6 “money maker”?

Dollar volume does not equal profit. Please note, the dollar volume ranking is revenue only. A project that makes a million dollars would be our number one for the year, but if it cost two million dollars to produce . . . (Numbers not for reals or even close to real.)

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by Owen Smith

When you say the current market is more a periodicals business I'm not sure what that means. If the word "periodicals" means what I think it means, you're saying monthly or weekly magazines are selling better than games. But that makes no sense, so I suspect I've misunderstood.

It means that products have a very short shelf life. Sales drop off quickly over time. Publishers, therefore, must plan to produce new products on a regular basis to keep up with the market and not pay much attention to old ones. This is similar to (not the same as) the magazine business, where no publisher in July would expect to see many people buying June's products, let alone January's.

[rknop]

The paragraph on DFRPG doesn't make sense. First there's:

We have now sold the majority of what we printed. This should instantly slide the game into the "highlights" category . . . and it would be there if not for being so very late....

So, yes, there's all the problems we heard about from last year's report tothe stakeholders, which means that the good sales don't make up for the costs. Fine. I can understand that. But, the statement here is that without all the problems getting it to press, the sales rate would have made DFRPG a highlight. But, then:

it's a great thing that we cut our planned print run by 30% or we would be stuck with copies for years to come.

This is directly inconsistent. Is most of the print run selling out within a few months (or half a year) of the game being released an indication of good sales, or not? If it really should have moved it to the highlights, then why would having 30% more to sell be a drag? Wouldn't the indications be that the game has promise, and more would sell?

I can't help but suspect that DFRPG was predetermined to be a failure before it was released, and that no rate of sales could have saved it.