When the subject of randomized miniatures -- or randomized anything, really -- comes up (e.g. Dear Hasbro), almost everyone characterizes it as an evil marketing ploy to take people's money. Now, I have little interest in buying randomized miniatures -- they're not for me -- but I do have an interest in supply chain management, so I thought I'd cite what Charles Ryan had to say earlier on the subject:
How about carrying a few packs of popular themed miniatures?
Games Workshop sells non-randomized miniatures. How do they do it?
Guys, Merric's Law is dead-on. No matter how much you may want something different, the economics of the game business simply won't allow another model to succeed at D&D's level. (And by "succeed," I don't just mean "make money for WotC." I also mean "get minis into the hands of gamers who want them.")
Merric is right to point out that the development cost for prepainted plastic minis is very high, and it's prohibitive to make a mini that won't sell in quantity--or that might not sell in quantity.
But the real barrier isn't even production: it's distribution. Were minis non-randomized--or even released in tightly-themed sets--WotC would have to make guesses about which minis or sets would be popular, and which wouldn't. Then the distributors would have to make the same guesses when they place their orders. Then the retailers would have to do the same. Unless everyone guessed exactly right every time, the channel would become choked with slow-moving product. At best, the industry would have to factor the cost of that dead product into the price of the minis, increasing already-higher prices by 50%+. At worse, the system would grind to a halt, like it did after the CCG glut and the d20 glut and the 2nd-edition D&D glut, and people would go out of business and the minis would cease to be a viable product line.
And then there's the issue of what stores are prepared to carry. With WotC's randomized scheme, the D&D minis line consist of just 3 to 5 individual products per year. Easy on everyone. Compare that to Heroscape (35 or 40 products in 2 years) or Games Workshop (zillions of products). Any store can manage 3 to 5 products per year for a given line. But the more products you add, the less likely it is that a store will carry them all--or even enough of them to make the line viable. Someone pointed out that the 143 figures that Heroscape has released might be enough for D&D. Fine, but have you ever seen a store that carried all 143--or even most of them?
Randomization gets miniatures into our hands reliably and inexpensively. It may be inconvenient to go to the secondary market if you don't want to buy randomly--but it's a hell of a lot less inconvenient than the alternatives.
Guessing what inventory to carry and then carrying inventory that doesn't sell is very, very expensive for retail stores and distributors.Merric is right to point out that the development cost for prepainted plastic minis is very high, and it's prohibitive to make a mini that won't sell in quantity--or that might not sell in quantity.
But the real barrier isn't even production: it's distribution. Were minis non-randomized--or even released in tightly-themed sets--WotC would have to make guesses about which minis or sets would be popular, and which wouldn't. Then the distributors would have to make the same guesses when they place their orders. Then the retailers would have to do the same. Unless everyone guessed exactly right every time, the channel would become choked with slow-moving product. At best, the industry would have to factor the cost of that dead product into the price of the minis, increasing already-higher prices by 50%+. At worse, the system would grind to a halt, like it did after the CCG glut and the d20 glut and the 2nd-edition D&D glut, and people would go out of business and the minis would cease to be a viable product line.
And then there's the issue of what stores are prepared to carry. With WotC's randomized scheme, the D&D minis line consist of just 3 to 5 individual products per year. Easy on everyone. Compare that to Heroscape (35 or 40 products in 2 years) or Games Workshop (zillions of products). Any store can manage 3 to 5 products per year for a given line. But the more products you add, the less likely it is that a store will carry them all--or even enough of them to make the line viable. Someone pointed out that the 143 figures that Heroscape has released might be enough for D&D. Fine, but have you ever seen a store that carried all 143--or even most of them?
Randomization gets miniatures into our hands reliably and inexpensively. It may be inconvenient to go to the secondary market if you don't want to buy randomly--but it's a hell of a lot less inconvenient than the alternatives.
How about carrying a few packs of popular themed miniatures?
So most people on this thread seem to agree that in a nonrandom model, WotC probably wouldn't make very many obscure minis. And I'm not seeing many calls for WotC to individually package the valuable rares.
Many people do, however, seem to think WotC can and should create theme packs based around common minis, like orcs or skeletons. Although it's counter-intuitive, this is just as problematic as releasing rare minis individually.
A common such as an orc or skeleton, on its own, isn't particuarly valuable, as compared to a rare (say, a beholder). (And by "valuable," I mean both "worth more money" and "perceived as being a cool, desirable, boss-monster type at the gaming table.")
But a group of commons, together, really are comparable--as is evidenced by how many people here claim to want such groups. Take away the desire to collect a bunch of orcs, and you undermine the value of a randomized booster just as much as if you take away the desire to collect a single beholder.
And again, the problems that I outlined in my earlier post remain just as valid. How many of these common packs should WotC introduce? A pack of orcs? Skeletons? Adventurers? How about goblins? Kobolds?
Follow this path and WotC either has to: A) produce just one or two products, which would make a couple people on this thread happy but simply further piss off those guys who want nonrandom commons but didn't get the ones they want, or B) produce a handful--or a bunch--of products, and run into all the distribution problems I talked about before.
If WotC produced, say, ten different common assortments over the next year, how many would your local store carry? If they ordered the wrong amount (or their distributor did, or WotC did), how much dead product would be introduced into the channel, to increase prices or run the risk of a glut? How much demand would there be here on the ENworld boards for WotC to make it 15 sets next year?
At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what your non-random products are. Even collections of commons have the capacity to screw up a system that currently delivers minis to us gamers very, very efficiently.
Unfortunately, those themed packs then eat into the value of the randomized packs.Many people do, however, seem to think WotC can and should create theme packs based around common minis, like orcs or skeletons. Although it's counter-intuitive, this is just as problematic as releasing rare minis individually.
A common such as an orc or skeleton, on its own, isn't particuarly valuable, as compared to a rare (say, a beholder). (And by "valuable," I mean both "worth more money" and "perceived as being a cool, desirable, boss-monster type at the gaming table.")
But a group of commons, together, really are comparable--as is evidenced by how many people here claim to want such groups. Take away the desire to collect a bunch of orcs, and you undermine the value of a randomized booster just as much as if you take away the desire to collect a single beholder.
And again, the problems that I outlined in my earlier post remain just as valid. How many of these common packs should WotC introduce? A pack of orcs? Skeletons? Adventurers? How about goblins? Kobolds?
Follow this path and WotC either has to: A) produce just one or two products, which would make a couple people on this thread happy but simply further piss off those guys who want nonrandom commons but didn't get the ones they want, or B) produce a handful--or a bunch--of products, and run into all the distribution problems I talked about before.
If WotC produced, say, ten different common assortments over the next year, how many would your local store carry? If they ordered the wrong amount (or their distributor did, or WotC did), how much dead product would be introduced into the channel, to increase prices or run the risk of a glut? How much demand would there be here on the ENworld boards for WotC to make it 15 sets next year?
At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what your non-random products are. Even collections of commons have the capacity to screw up a system that currently delivers minis to us gamers very, very efficiently.
Games Workshop sells non-randomized miniatures. How do they do it?
Games Workshop is an interesting example, but be careful not to confuse two different business phenomena at work here. GW is a market leader and innovator, in the same way that D&D is the RPG market leader and innovator. By that I mean that they both pioneered and grabbed an early, massive lead in their respective categories. (I don't mean that they're necessarily innovative today or throughout their lives.)
It's a truism of business--all business, not just games--that a market leader of this sort is virtually impossible to knock off, unless they blunder horribly or the marketplace changes dramatically and they don't react. Despite enormous ups and downs over the past 30 years, D&D remains the undisputed king of RPGs, in terms of sales, players, and brand recognition. No competitor has any real chance of changing that unless there's a massive shift in the marketplace that WotC ignores, or WotC otherwise completely screws up D&D (screws it up even worse than TSR did, because even that didn't topple D&D).
GW is in the same position with minis.
GW's market and brand position is such that it would take an enormous effort, and 10s of millions of dollars, for any company even to sidle up toward a close second place to them. Which, in turn, means that the marketplace really doesn't have room for another miniatures line based on the same nonrandom model.
This plays itself out in the LGS pretty obviously: retailers that devote enough shelf space to carry a full line of GW don't generally have enough resources to support a second large line of nonrandom minis.
So GW actually becomes a counter-argument: There's a powerful market leader that already dominates the non-random minis business. It would be suicidal for WotC to try to beat GW at their own game; they're much better off (and so are any gamers who want to have D&D miniatures) doing something very different and growing the market in a different direction.
[As an aside, it's arguable whether DDM has not affected GW, or that GW continues "to eat WotC for breakfast." Yes, GW is huge in the minis market--much bigger than WotC--but you might want to check their recent shareholders reports before citing them so vehemently. And comparing Privateer and Reaper to DDM is a little like comparing Spycraft to D&D.]
It's a truism of business--all business, not just games--that a market leader of this sort is virtually impossible to knock off, unless they blunder horribly or the marketplace changes dramatically and they don't react. Despite enormous ups and downs over the past 30 years, D&D remains the undisputed king of RPGs, in terms of sales, players, and brand recognition. No competitor has any real chance of changing that unless there's a massive shift in the marketplace that WotC ignores, or WotC otherwise completely screws up D&D (screws it up even worse than TSR did, because even that didn't topple D&D).
GW is in the same position with minis.
GW's market and brand position is such that it would take an enormous effort, and 10s of millions of dollars, for any company even to sidle up toward a close second place to them. Which, in turn, means that the marketplace really doesn't have room for another miniatures line based on the same nonrandom model.
This plays itself out in the LGS pretty obviously: retailers that devote enough shelf space to carry a full line of GW don't generally have enough resources to support a second large line of nonrandom minis.
So GW actually becomes a counter-argument: There's a powerful market leader that already dominates the non-random minis business. It would be suicidal for WotC to try to beat GW at their own game; they're much better off (and so are any gamers who want to have D&D miniatures) doing something very different and growing the market in a different direction.
[As an aside, it's arguable whether DDM has not affected GW, or that GW continues "to eat WotC for breakfast." Yes, GW is huge in the minis market--much bigger than WotC--but you might want to check their recent shareholders reports before citing them so vehemently. And comparing Privateer and Reaper to DDM is a little like comparing Spycraft to D&D.]
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