Report To The Stakeholders

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by philreed

As long as I am here I will continue to push to improve our profitability and sales.

Though I personally would prefer to see more brand new games coming out (I like Munchkin; I don't love it) and more GURPS, I really can't argue with years and years of ever-increasing sales and profits.

To put it another way, it's not SJ Games letting me down; it's all those pesky other people who don't share my exact tastes and therefore aren't creating a proper market for what I want. Cut that out, other people!

[Pragmatic]

Honestly, my only beef against Munchkin is, it's too large a portion of the cash flow of SJ Games. It frightens me that my favorite RPG publisher is so dependent on one source of cash flow.

In other words, I love SJ Games, and don't want it to go under.

I also realize that, compared to Munchkin, pretty much everything I like from SJ Games is pennies on the dollar. (Roughly, +/- an order of magnitude)

But I know that SJ Games also realizes this, so I don't have to tell you guys. You're diversifying all the time.

I love that they continue to push through GURPS, even though its profitability is so much less, because it's a labor of love.

But I'll continue to buy non-GURPS stuff. Munchkin, for my cousin. Zombie Dice. The Stars are Right, Revolution, etc.

And when the pipeline clears up, I'll spend a lot of money on the GURPS stuff that comes out of the pipeline! :-)

Okay, enough rambling. :-P

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by rickr

Interesting to see that "clear out the pipeline" isn't a priority this year.. does this mean that you've cleared it out already?

Nope it's still on the priority list, it's just the next project in the pipeline after Ogre is car wars, so Getting cars wars out is on the priority list, but after learning from Ogre they don't expected to clear more than that from the pipeline so the worded their priority to match expectation.

Though I'm saddened by the change of status for the POD.

[Tzeentch]

I too would like to see more GURPS and diversification, but I can't argue with success!

That said, it also is a bit alarming how the company has basically become Munchkin, Inc.

[Kromm]

I'd beg GURPS fans to consider and remember one thing: SJ Games could have cut GURPS and its staff – or at least sent us on an unpaid holiday – to reduce the drag on Munchkin and Ogre. Instead, the company paid us to stock the e23 queue with new items . . . while giving us the same vacation time and bonuses as other staff, no less. Hot sellers such as Munchkin paid for that. That's because the current hold on new GURPS releases is a temporary thing, and SJ Games is committed to lifting that hold once it frees up the human resources to do so. Wait and see!

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Owen Smith

I hear what you say and I am grateful that GURPS has not been dropped entirely. My concern is that the temporary hold on releases will free up, until Car Wars eats the company and GURPS releases are put on hold again.

They aren't going live with a Car Wars kickstarter until there is a game to go live with. That's still a long way off. Going by the traffic in the 6e forum they really are at a preliminary brainstorming phase. I wouldn't expect any disruption from that for some time.

Phil doesn't especially have anything directly to do with GURPS.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by Owen Smith

Car Wars will also be like that.

I'm inclined to think there's no certainty of that. First, we don't actually know that the response to the CW kickstarter will be anything like the one for Ogre. Second, and probably more importantly, the report signaled loudly and repeatedly that they recognize the problems they created for themselves by not planning for their nigh-unprecedented success, and they'll be smarter about it the next time around.

...which is not to say that there isn't a risk of the new CW turning into a repeat of Ogre (I almost said Ogre Mk. II there). After all, they still seem to be struggling to keep up with the year-upon-year success of Munchkin. However, they're clearly not going into the new Car Wars as blithely as one might say they go into Ogre. I'm waiting to see on that one.

And if CW does turn into another Ogre? I'm not sure that'd be such a bad thing. Phil has stated the hope that it'll turn into an ongoing product line. A wild success on the order of Ogre is, in that scenario, diversifying.

[Pragmatic]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

They aren't going live with a Car Wars kickstarter until there is a game to go live with. That's still a long way off. Going by the traffic in the 6e forum they really are at a preliminary brainstorming phase. I wouldn't expect any disruption from that for some time.

Phil doesn't especially have anything directly to do with GURPS.

To add to the above:

IIRC, the Ogre Kickstarter was "we've pretty much completed the game, but we'd like to make it LOOK nicer."

So all the money from the Kickstarter was for all the shiny! :-)

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Owen Smith

As a GURPS only customer of SJ Games the most recent thing I bought was GURPS Horror and that's far too long ago. I have the money to spend but the company produced nothing I'm interested in buying.

If you haven't bought any of the GURPS releases since Horror, it wasn't because they weren't GURPS. More GURPS releases doesn't mean that they will be books that YOU want.

[Andrew Hackard]

The discussion is drifting away from Steve's report. If you want to have a deeper discussion of the GURPS schedule or the (de)merits of specific books, please do so in the GURPS forum.

(Which is not to say that there's anything WRONG with that conversation, just that this is already a long thread...)