11-23-2015, 08:43 PM | #611 | |
Ceci n'est pas une tag.
Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: Vancouver, WA (Portland Metro)
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Re: Report To The Stakeholders
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I chose the name "Pragmatic" because I felt that tribalism within gaming was hurting the hobby. Munchkin? I've played it. Not my thing. I like GURPS (though I'm more of a collector than a player). But I know that, if Steve Jackson Games ONLY did GURPS, they'd probably produce fewer and less varied product line. The gaming hobby isn't what it was 10 years ago. Even The Other Gaming System is only producing two or three hardcovers per year, and they're farming out most of their adventure modules to third-party partners. So when I look at the Munchkin products, a tear comes to my eyes. Bless those guys who buy all the Munchkin expansions and lines. Their dollars are building up a large enough pool of cash that SJ Games can make GURPS products in a wide variety of settings (relatively speaking).
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I'm a collector, not a gamer. =) |
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11-23-2015, 09:09 PM | #612 |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: New Orleans, LA
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Re: Report To The Stakeholders
If supporting Munchkin helps Gurps, I'd be behind that movement, but from what I read in the report it seems that Munchkin's success isn't translating into Gurps proliferation. I realize the type of role playing Gurps used to represent is out of vouge. I also think that Gurps could be great again if people could find out how simple it can be. My signature represents my disdain for competitive non-role playing games. To my view Munchkin represents what I hated most about role playing, therefore I feel it's presence, the way only someone with autism spectrum disorder (Aspergers) can. I really don't like it but it's keeping the lights on apparently so it's doing some good.
It's really the feeling I get when I read the report and knew there was nothing (other than buying the books and PDFs, which I do) that I could do. Sorry to offend P.K. that was uncalled for by me to quip at you. Just give us die hard early 80's Gurps fans a goal and I figure we will work hard to meet it. |
11-23-2015, 09:43 PM | #613 |
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: Report To The Stakeholders
A major issue with RPGs is that the price the market is willing to bear hasn't kept up with publication costs. If we must rely on the same-sized customer base that GURPS had in its early days – say, in the mid-1980s through mid-1990s – then we would have to charge ~$38.00 for the 128-page softbacks that used to cost $16.95. Nobody would pay that, so the obvious alternatives are attracting more customers willing to pay less (difficult in a market that's being bled away by other games media), lowering costs (PDFs do this nicely, but the hobby is conservative and too many gamers are wed to printed books), or just not publishing. Crowdfunding is yet another option, but one that's neither simple nor well-understood at this juncture; ultimately, it's unclear whether that wouldn't run into the "$38 for a softback" barrier, just from a different direction.
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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
11-24-2015, 01:20 AM | #614 | ||||
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: U.K.
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Re: Report To The Stakeholders
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-- Phil Masters My Home Page. My Self-Publications: On Warehouse 23 and On DriveThruRPG. |
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11-24-2015, 02:22 AM | #615 |
Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: Sydney
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Re: Report To The Stakeholders
There's the timeline where Powered by GURPS really took off thanks to SJ Games getting the right license at the right time and the stars aligning (something like GoT or Harry Potter). Ofcourse in that timeline we all sit around complaining that SJ Games book have all become supplements for that setting.
Last edited by lachimba; 11-24-2015 at 10:26 AM. |
11-24-2015, 02:33 AM | #616 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: U.K.
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Re: Report To The Stakeholders
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-- Phil Masters My Home Page. My Self-Publications: On Warehouse 23 and On DriveThruRPG. |
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11-24-2015, 03:37 AM | #617 | |
I do stuff and things.
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Report To The Stakeholders
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* Retailers are far more sensitive to Kickstarter today than they once were. I've chatted with enough retailers to know that many of them dramatically decrease their orders of games that appear on Kickstarter. Kickstarter affects the long-term health of those games in distribution . . . which leads to more Kickstarter projects . . . which harms the game's distribution sales. Yes, it's a cycle. * Overhead costs vary between companies depending on size, number of active product lines, and as many other variables as there are days in the year. What is successful for one company would be considered a failure for another company. * RPGs are a significant investment in energy that isn't always appreciated. And we know that amount of investment into a project has little to do with market demand for the project, meaning that it's easy to dig a hole that cannot be escaped.
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Battlegrip.com, my blog about toys. |
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11-24-2015, 03:43 AM | #618 | |
I do stuff and things.
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Report To The Stakeholders
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I stated a decade ago -- and believe even more today -- that the RPG market has shifted to an era when you need to be in the top two or three spots OR run a smaller and decentralized company that sidesteps some of the overhead costs of running a business. If we compare numbers of different categories in the hobby game market -- http://icv2.com/articles/markets/vie...bs-880-million -- we'll see that despite growth in the RPG segment (which is primarily attributed to the success of D&D, a success that hasn't carried over to many RPGs) we are talking about the smallest slice of the hobby market pie.
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Battlegrip.com, my blog about toys. |
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11-24-2015, 04:45 AM | #619 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: U.K.
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Re: Report To The Stakeholders
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But then, UK retailers have very rarely provided games tables, so there's less inclination over here to treat them as crucial to the hobby.
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-- Phil Masters My Home Page. My Self-Publications: On Warehouse 23 and On DriveThruRPG. |
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11-24-2015, 06:22 AM | #620 | |
I do stuff and things.
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Report To The Stakeholders
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Without the local game stores the entire industry would suffer.
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Battlegrip.com, my blog about toys. |
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