Goodman rebuttal

Twowolves said:

In short, it was very interesting, but comparing it to Orcus' post, it's really apples and oranges.

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I agree.

I read Orcus post and was surprised that he was having trouble even with ToH. I really thought a banner product title from a big name would be a no-brainer. But I wasn't really surprised by the overall statements.

I read Joseph's comments and I was not surprised by anything.
Somewhat different perspectives that both fit with my personal expectations.

joethelawyer said:

I don't doubt his industry expertise, nor his business acumen. But he seemed to state his credentials and then his conclusions, with nothing objective to back it up in between.

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That's the conclusion I came to also. He goes straight from telling us what materials he's gathered, without saying what data they actually provide, and then gives us his interpretation of them.

His post was interesting, but if you break it down it reads like so:

Admin here. Portion of post removed. We don't allow "fixed it for you" posts here. Why did you think that a highly sarcastic, exceptionally insulting version of that would be okay? I don't care either way if you disagree or agree with him, but if it's on ENW it'll need to be politely and without personal attacks.

Edited.

jdrakeh said:

You seem to be taking his post entirely out of context on purpose, going so far as to ignore very specific parts of it. Mr. Goodman very specifically says that 4e is doing as well as D&D was from 1974 to 1981, 1983 to 2000, and from 2002 to 2008. Or, in other words, D&D 4e is doing as well as D&D ever has, with the exception of two. . . er. . . exceptional years.

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By what objective standard? Dollars in sales? Number of books sold? Amount of shelf space in stores? Stores that carry the book? Anecdotal evidence from contacts in gaming stores? Im still curious how he got hard objective concrete measurable benchmarks from the 70's and 80's for purposes of comparison.

Either way though, it's irrelevant how well they are doing as compared to back i n the day. What matters is how well they are doing as compared to how well Hasbro wants them to do. How well are they meeting their revenue goals for the year?

Alzrius said:

That's the conclusion I came to also. He goes straight from telling us what materials he's gathered, without saying what data they actually provide, and then gives us his interpretation of them.

His post was interesting, but if you break it down it reads like so:

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Hugh. I guess if you have an agenda to prove that 4e is crashing, 3pp is doomed, and X (Paizo, retroclones, Green Ronin) is the only salvation for D&D style RPGs, I could read it like that too.

joethelawyer said:

By what objective standard? Dollars in sales? Number of books sold? Amount of shelf space in stores? Stores that carry the book? Anecdotal evidence from contacts in gaming stores? Im still curious how he got hard objective concrete measurable benchmarks from the 70's and 80's for purposes of comparison.

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I'm curious about hard data, too. I'm just reiterrating what Mr. Goodman said, a great portion of which S'mon ignored in his attempts to get on with the doomsaying.

Alzrius said:

That's the conclusion I came to also. He goes straight from telling us what materials he's gathered, without saying what data they actually provide, and then gives us his interpretation of them.

His post was interesting, but if you break it down it reads like so:

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I haven't laughed so hard in months Enable your XP so I can give some to you, man.

"...created the month of May." LOL

joethelawyer said:

Im still curious how he got hard objective concrete measurable benchmarks from the 70's and 80's for purposes of comparison.

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He states very clearly in the post that he accessed sales figures included in court documents from various lawsuits TSR was involved in throughout the years. Whether those numbers are "hard, objective and concrete" is, I suppose, debatable. But presumably they're coming from the only entity that would know (TSR) and so are at least as reliable as anyone else's data.

DaveMage said:

Hopefully not.

I've heard nothing but positive things said about Joe in the past.

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To be clear, I was no way impugning Joseph's integrity. Indeed, of all the people I have dealt with in the RPG industry, he's one of the more professional.

DaveMage said:

Also, if 4E is doing as well as 3E was - why aren't more 3PPs jumping on board? Or is the price for them to jump on board providing things like spinner racks to game and hobby stores? In the early 3E era, product was enough. Now it seems that you need more than a product to get in stores, you have to actively nurture the relationship.

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Indeed, there was a period where pretty much anything could be published and put on a store shelf. This turns out to not be so desirable to retailers, as they end up with junk on the shelves they have to throw away to make room for stuff that will sell. Distributors don't like it because they end up with junk in the warehouses that the retailers don't want, so they have to throw it away to make room for stuff that is viable.

Either that, or pay money for years to store a bunch of Wilderness Survival Guides that aren't worth the paper they're printed on.

And speaking as a consumer, I'm glad I don't have to worry about typo-ridden poorly-indexed books with dithered graphics and doubled-spaced text being on the shelves when I'm looking for stuff to buy.

Yeah, it's nice to have the idea that anybody can dream up some awesome-killer RPG book and serve the world by putting it out there, but the reality is quite different in my experience.