[Tom H.]

I like GURPS and Role Playing Games, so some of the handwringing about their profitability in this thread is of particular interest to me.

Although this may be dangerous to say, I think GURPS and RPG's would be more profitable if they could be "sold" for the actual value they provide.

What I mean by this is that I spend way more time reading and using my favorite RPG materials compared to board and card games.

However, the up front price I pay to purchase the materials doesn't necessarily reflect how much I may value or use them in the future.

The critical point here is that based on value I would have payed hundreds of more dollars for some of my GURPS materials (and would have expected a partial refund on my Munchkin Deluxe ;-) sorry couldn't resist throwing that bomb in there.)

Ironically, I wouldn't have been willing to pay hundreds of dollars up front for those really valuable books because I couldn't predict their future value to me at the time of purchase.

There's a lot of talk here trying to justify priorities based on market data. My point is that our cold hard marketing numbers may be distortions, because they may not be addressing real value.

This is really a nuanced problem with the current state of commerce in general.

Of course, I'm sure this will continue to be addressed with technology in the future. For better or worse, our computers may monitor everything we do and send micro-payments second by second to the true beneficiaries of our "purchases."

Two current approaches to capturing this hidden value without standard "up front" marketing are (1) subscription based models and (2) overwhelming random collectible expansion packs (that usually wreck any semblance of the original self-sufficient introductory game.)