Eric Noah's Info

[Numion]

Easy. What the customer wants is good products for free. No viable company is going to give them that, so then the thinking goes - how can we extract the maximum amount of milk with the minimum amount of moo? Miniatures are an example of a business model designed to extract a large amount of such milk, without the customer's interests at heart. Built in redundancy is a tried and tested business model from games to operating systems to lightbulbs. Sell the handle cheap, then roll in profit from the blades is another. If you want a man's luxury money, market to his children and wife is another. Put the beer next to the diapers is yet another. There are countless other tricks.

I'm surprised that you've lived under capitalism so long and not noticed.

Capitalism is about maximizing profits (in case of milk it might be max milk - min moo). The part you quoted was in response to someone stating that the Hasbro "doesn't care about quality since they are a big corporation". Of course they do - but their caring is directly related to how much their customers care about quality.

In each case it's about what the customer wants. Nobody is going to buy stuff they don't want. The examples you give don't make people buy stuff they don't want - they're just different strategies to get people want or notice/then want stuff.

Some people want to buy minis in random packs :\

 

[Jupp]

How do you make money if you don't care about what the customer wants? Caring about customer wants and making money are not antithetical to each other, in fact they go hand in hand. I don't see how a company can be profitable without caring about customer wants. Now I might take issue with the way that WOTC/Hasbro has handled 3.0, 3.5, 3.75, etc., but I can't say that they don't care about what the customers want. They solicited a ridiculous amount of customer input for 3.x.

Perhaps that's a bit simplified, but: You do not have to care what the customer wants as much as you have to create a demand for something in the customers mind. It is pure marketing, nothing else. You could sell a mediocre or even crap product to a truckload of people if the marketing is able to create the demand, the "I wanna have that"-feeling in the customers brain. Most of those trading card games and miniature games are a good example for that (home trainers sold over TV shopping channels too ). And those products do not need as much workpower/time investment/money to create and maintain as RPGs, they just need good marketing

 

[Umbran]

WOTC/Hasbro made a decision a long time ago to write off a lot of RPG players.

Hr. You know, this seems to conflict with your later statement:

How many people like me are there, who knows and most likely who cares.

If you don't know how many of you exist, you can't really say they're writing off "a lot". The last market research data I've seen them release (back in 1999, iirc) suggested that the total RPG player population was somewhere between 2 and 3 million. That's not a big market.

Moreover, you make it sound as if they had any other choice in the matter - you can't please everybody, you know. No matter what they made, significant numbers of people would not have liked it. Tastes vary, and no one game is going to be good for everyone.

 

[Llaurenela]

Hr. You know, this seems to conflict with your later statement:



If you don't know how many of you exist, you can't really say they're writing off "a lot". The last market research data I've seen them release (back in 1999, iirc) suggested that the total RPG player population was somewhere between 2 and 3 million. That's not a big market.

Moreover, you make it sound as if they had any other choice in the matter - you can't please everybody, you know. No matter what they made, significant numbers of people would not have liked it. Tastes vary, and no one game is going to be good for everyone.

Again, they have made the decision not to release OD&D as a pdf file, they have made the decision not to reprint or let anyone else reprint OD&D and its supplements etc, and they have made the decision not to use on demand printing for those who want to buy older products or let anyone else sell them that way. That to me is writing off those who prefer the older products in a very emphatic way.

 

[dcas]

Again, they have made the decision not to release OD&D as a pdf file, they have made the decision not to reprint or let anyone else reprint OD&D and its supplements etc, and they have made the decision not to use on demand printing for those who want to buy older products or let anyone else sell them that way. That to me is writing off those who prefer the older products in a very emphatic way.

Either that, or they do not feel that they will be able to make a return on their investment. Maybe each of the things you described would be too expensive. Or maybe they don't want to be competing with their own products. I don't think it has anything to do with writing people off -- WOTC would be delighted to have old-schoolers as customers.

 

[dcas]

Perhaps that's a bit simplified, but: You do not have to care what the customer wants as much as you have to create a demand for something in the customers mind. It is pure marketing, nothing else.

I don't think you could create a demand for something without having some sort of insight into customer wants. If the customer doesn't want something, ultimately he won't buy it.

I don't believe in the "mindless automaton controlled by marketing" paradigm. I may not agree with what people want to buy, but that's another subject entirely.

 

[Grazzt]

Or maybe they don't want to be competing with their own products.

I believe, sir, you hit it right there.

 

[Umbran]

That to me is writing off those who prefer the older products in a very emphatic way.

Why? Those who prefer the older product will, by and large, already have the older products. Is a publisher "writing you off" just because they fail to keep copies of your favorite book in print?

Your phrasing, to me, implies that WotC has the resources to put into supporting older products, but chooses not to. I suggest to you that small publishers like WotC generally don't have spare resources around - WotC can't generally even manage to keep up with errata on their major line, which suggests they've got little leeway to put into older stuff. So, it may be less "written off" than "simply not feasible with our current resources".

 

[Llaurenela]

Why? Those who prefer the older product will, by and large, already have the older products. Is a publisher "writing you off" just because they fail to keep copies of your favorite book in print?

Your phrasing, to me, implies that WotC has the resources to put into supporting older products, but chooses not to. I suggest to you that small publishers like WotC generally don't have spare resources around - WotC can't generally even manage to keep up with errata on their major line, which suggests they've got little leeway to put into older stuff. So, it may be less "written off" than "simply not feasible with our current resources".

You are assuming that only those (some of those) who purchased the older products while they were in print would prefer them. I, on the other hand, think a lot of people might prefer the OOP stuff where they to have the opportunity to make the choice. Letting someone else sell pdfs and pay you a fee for doing it uses zero resources and brings in revenue, that is clearly "written off" instead of "simply not feasible with our current resources" when they don't allow the sale of OD&D. They could also easily license reprinting to someone else for a fee.

 

[Llaurenela]

I believe, sir, you hit it right there.

Since it is their product, they do own the OOP stuff the last time I checked, that is a non-arguement.