Different needs. My post isn't directly about how the tabletop RPG business could grow. Paizo's doing fine for that in my opinion. Erik didn't read my post thoroughly to get that, so he's not even wrong.
companies staying away from rpg gamers
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Different needs. My post isn't directly about how the tabletop RPG business could grow. Paizo's doing fine for that in my opinion. Erik didn't read my post thoroughly to get that, so he's not even wrong.
Oh, absolutely!Depends upon the game and players, I guess.
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That's right. As the post says, I think most gamers are pretty cool. They're also pretty cloistered. It's wrong to interpret what I wrote as an attack on all gamers.
Alan Shutko
Explorer
The US Small Business Administration generally considers any business with fewer than 500 employees a small business.
Why does it matter? If you're targeting your product directly at gamers, it doesn't. It's great to be a small company, because the market is big enough to support your company and you'll be able to thrive.
If you're a larger company, you need to look for a larger market. Sounds like the unnamed company here had a product that could be useful to a bunch of people, including gamers. They decided that of all the possible people to target, gamers weren't worth the hassle of targeting.
Why does it matter? If you're targeting your product directly at gamers, it doesn't. It's great to be a small company, because the market is big enough to support your company and you'll be able to thrive.
If you're a larger company, you need to look for a larger market. Sounds like the unnamed company here had a product that could be useful to a bunch of people, including gamers. They decided that of all the possible people to target, gamers weren't worth the hassle of targeting.
Dire Bare
Legend
Well, wrong when starting an awesome RPG company! But maybe not so wrong for other types of projects.
I see the behavior he discusses online here at ENWorld (in this very thread), on Paizo's boards, on WotC's boards . . . it is not behavior that represents the entire RPG community, or even a majority of the RPG community, and it is not behavior that is unique to the RPG community . . .
But . . . in a relatively recent thread here on ENWorld we discussed basically the same issue, and many of us felt that this behavior wasn't so much typical of gamers but rather typical of people in general . . . but now, I'm not so sure personally.
The Ghost
Explorer
To be fair, your post could also be poorly written as there are a number of people in this thread who are/were confused about what point you were trying to make. [Edit] Communication is a two-way street.
So just what is it about, then? It's a bit rich to accuse people of "not reading your post thoroughly" given how vague it is. Erik read your post and concluded, quite reasonably, that you were saying any attempt to target the "gamer demographic" as a business plan is doomed to failure. That may not have been what you intended, but it's a fair interpretation of what you actually wrote.
Perhaps you could spell out for us just what Nice Things the gaming community is not getting, or is currently getting but will soon lose, because of the behavior of our more obnoxious element, and how they differ from the Nice Things that Paizo is successfully providing.
I already said that I don't think vocal communities like this are wholly representative of gamers. Draw your own conclusions from there.
Whatever.
What you see as me trying to buff up my "populist cred" (a load of BS so smelly it might come from the armpit of just the sort of gamer stereotype you and eyebeams are perpetuating) I see as you piling on the tired old cliche of "the customer is the problem" that I see parroted again and again by marginal RPG businessmen trying to explain their failures.
I'm just tired of it, basically. After having spent a weekend at PaizoCon surrounded 24/7 by hundreds of the most dedicated hard-core gamers I have ever met the whole article (and, frankly, your backing of it) just struck me as extraordinarily ungrateful to the people who pay your salaries.
Not all of the gamers at our con were paragons of personal hygiene or social skills, but then neither are all sportsfans, all trekkies, or all superfans of any kind in any industry.
I managed a sports memorabilia shop in one of the world's biggest shopping malls for about a year before joining the game industry, and that place was full of rude, opinionated, and just plain old jerky customers. I'd have to be a fool to tell those people "get the hell out of my store, I don't want your money, you are damaging to my business." More to the point, I would have been a giant douchebag to post a sign in front of the store that says "ATTN Sports Fans: You Losers Are Bad for Our Business, Bad for Sports, and Bad for Retailing," because it paints with such a broad brush that everyone walking into my store would think I was talking about them.
Basically, I think that's bull. It assumes that people OUTSIDE the community even pay attention to things like ENWorld and RPGNet, which is seldom the case. I can't think of a single book chain buyer, for example, who even knows what EN World is, or who I imagine has ever visited RPG.net.
Sure, RPG books get lifted out of bookstores, but that has more to do with the fact that they are largely aimed at teenagers and college age kids with incomes unable to match the asking prices for the books. I know a lot of buyers are a bit wary of RPGs for that reason, but I've never lost a sale because of it, and I don't think they equate their shrinkage problems with RPG fans being dicks online.
Why?
Why is it important or expected that a tiny niche hobby should be at "the center of roleplaying in all media"? A great tabletop RPG book might sell tens of thousands of copies, which would put a computer RPG company out of business immediately. The quoted section above is a bit like saying "I would really like the people who make models of boats in glass bottles to be at the center of all worldwide ship-building activity, sharing their insights, but it's not going to happen unless that center attracts."
No, it's not going to happen until that tiny niche hobby can bring numbers that mean anything to producers shipping product that sells orders of magnitude higher than even the best-selling RPG products. It has almost exactly nothing to do with who has been perma-banned on RPG.net because they said something mean about Exalted, who wore the same T-shirt three days in a row at Origins, or what some dude posted on his RPG blog.
Sorry to "disgust" you, Gareth, but I think you might need to turn down your Internet Indignation Meter a few clicks.
--Erik
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