D&D 5E I just don't see why they even bothered with the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide.

[Alzrius]

[MENTION=8461]Alzrius[/MENTION] - I think you're missing what's being said. If a Kickstarter product is not being distributed to retailers, then it is no different, really, than something like Drive-Thru RPG.

That's not correct. Kickstarter is not only not like DriveThruRPG, it's fundamentally unable to be like it. If a product isn't being distributed to stores, then that particular product isn't one that's being competed over between vendors in the first place.

It's a competing channel for RPG dollars. It's a zero sum game. If someone is buying their material through kick-starters, then they have that much less money to buy a product at a retailer.

This is a meaningless distinction, because by that logic absolutely everything that's discretionary spending is in competition with what products are being sold at a retailer. That's rather pointless, since by that market everything from ice cream cones to movie tickets to hair gel is competing for "RPG dollars." If you look at it that way, then there's no point in singling Kickstarter out as some sort of specific threat to retailers above and beyond anything else.

Kickstarter isn't particularly retailer friendly since many kickstarters are not meant for retail sales. The kickstarter projects sell direct to the customer, quite often, and completely bypass retailers.

Which is why they're not competing with those retailers. What's competing with retailers are other retailers who sell the same products. If there's a product at venue X that you can't get at venue Y, then that's not a competition over who can better sell that particular product; vendor Y was never going to get the business for that particular book.

That's not particularly retailer friendly. Which is the point that's being made here. It's a competing channel.

It has never been a competing channel. Just go and try and order a book off Kickstarter after the funding period for it has closed and that should be self-evident.

 

[Jester David]

I've seen this sentiment come up a few times when folks are discussing Kickstarter. That certain companies (and/or certain projects) don't *need* to use Kickstarter, that they are somehow being disingenuous with their customers and unfairly competing with brick-and-mortar retailers by doing so.

You're making a value assumption on my post. I love kickstarter and agree with what you say. I just imagine some companies, like Reaper minis, probably didn't need to do Bones 2 let alone Bones 3 and could just trust the audience to buy the minis if they hyped their release. Kickstarter wasn't needed.
But doing so gave people who wants to buy more a better deal, which is awesome. And I like having more minis and faster.
It's just worth admitting that those sales might have come at the expense of some traditional retail sales. It's not unfair, its just life and sometimes life has consequences.
Like Amazon really. The convenience and better price outweighs the costs to other businesses... Sometimes.

But markets and businesses change all the time. That's life. My FLGS just went under and the Canadian exchange rate was as much to blame as anything.

That said, if a company that *can* afford to publish without Kickstarter and is focused on supporting stores decides to eschew Kickstarter for the desire not to competition with buisnesses, that makes sense and I support that decision. Kickstarter is just another alternative, another option.


As for WotC... They have no shipping department to handle mass distribution and don't take money directly. Financials are handled through Hasbro accounting. They'd be a terrible company to handle a kickstarter. Too many people trying to coordinate and partners hire to handle duties. It'd be terrible.

 

[Alzrius]

Um... yes. Game store do compete with every other business for disposable income, some directly and some indirectly.

In which case, there's no point in talking about Kickstarter when you could just as easily be talking about McDonald's.

However, Kickstarter is a more problematic competitor than other businesses for a few reasons.

None of these reasons are particularly salient, as shown below.

First, because it's the manufacturer dealing with the customer, the price is better. Significantly so. There's a high incentive to back the Kickstarter in terms of value than wait and get something from the store.

You're stating this as a categorical truth, when in fact it's a supposition that is highly suspect. I suppose some Kickstarters might have backer rewards for a copy of the finished product that are better than what the retail price would be, but more often than not this isn't the case. The books will typically cost exactly what they would anywhere else.

Second is the convenience factor. You back a Kickstarter at home or on your phone and it comes to your house. You don't need to break your schedule to accommodate a visit to the store.

There's also the inconvenience factor of needing to wait until the funding period is closed, the product created, the backer kits sorted, and the product finally arriving at your house. I've had Kickstarter materials arrive years - literally, years - after I pledged to them, when I could have gotten them down at the store in fifteen minutes.

Third is the allure of Kickstarter exclusives and special edition products or accessories.

Which is not at all exclusive to Kickstarter. One can find special promotions anywhere. I suppose it might be nice to pay extra for a book to be pre-autographed, for example, but I can get that pretty easily if I'm at a convention where the authors are.

Not every company that starts a Kickstarter needs to. Many could have attempted standard distribution channels and a smaller print run. The Kickstarter allows for larger print runs and increased word-of-mouth. But expansion through stretch goals and similar backer rewards. It replaces and expands on the classic RPG publisher pre-order reliance.

No, it does not expand on nor replace pre-orders. A lot of people think of placing a Kickstarter pledge as being a pre-order, and I think that's one of the worst ways to look at it. Placing money down to fund the creation of something is not the same as placing an order ahead of time, for several reasons, the biggest one being that the book might not fund! This entire conversation has presumed that a Kickstarter will succeed, and that's not necessarily the case - I've pledge to RPG Kickstarters that didn't reach their goal.

There's also the issue that you can't order something from Kickstarter if the funding window has closed. As I noted in a previous post, go to any Kickstarter that's closed and try and order a copy of the book in question. You won't be able to. You have to go to an actual retailer for that.

Kickstarter is not and has never been a retail platform, and so it's not in competition with other retail platforms, unless you expand on "competition" to mean "anything that costs money."

 

[garnuk]

I'm afraid you are incorrect.

All the game stores in my area carry a small amount of D&D off in the corner somewhere. These shops do not rely on a single product to keep them in business.

The whole kickstarter thing threatening business is a myth and I will continue to say it unless you can provide some sort of evidence.

I'm curious how you differentiate a theory from a myth in this case.

 

[Hussar]

WotC seems to be relying on a lot of anecdotal feedback with their questionnaires. I guess they disagree.

Really? You get to write your own questions and answers on those questionnaires? You get to set the order of information? You then get to share your questions with other respondents so that they have to answer your questions?

Yes, there is usually a comments section on the questionnaires but, much of the data is gathered through the questions.

I mean, good grief, people are talking about how usual it is for players to play more than one edition, that it's very common, and in their own examples, only one out of five or six players is actually doing so.

This is Statistics 101.

 

[Hussar]

[MENTION=8461]Alzrius[/MENTION] - you are confusing direct with indirect competition. If McDonalds was selling D&D minis or D&D modules, they would be direct competition. Kickstarter isn't exactly direct competition, since, but, much closer than McDonalds.

Why is saying Kickstarter isn't particularly retailer friendly such an issue here? You have a separate channel creating and distributing gaming products that largely completely avoids retailers. It cuts retailers out of the loop. Like that mentioned Reaper Minis, which, right there, that's direct competition. Those minis would normally have been sold at retailers, but, now you have three lines that aren't.

Is it going to drive the FLGS out of business? Most likely not. Heck, a retailer, if they wanted to, could get in on a Kickstarter and then turn around and sell the products. I'd be surprised if retailers hadn't at least considered it. But, I imagine it's not something that's helping retailers very much and it is a kind of competition, even if it isn't 100% direct competition.

 

[Alzrius]

[MENTION=8461]Alzrius[/MENTION] - you are confusing direct with indirect competition. If McDonalds was selling D&D minis or D&D modules, they would be direct competition. Kickstarter isn't exactly direct competition, since, but, much closer than McDonalds.

You don't seem to realize that you're the one who has confused the issue by thinking that Kickstarter is at all "closer" to direct competition. In fact, that's not the case at all.

Why is saying Kickstarter isn't particularly retailer friendly such an issue here?

You're asking the wrong question here. It's more germane to ask why you have such an issue with pointing out that Kickstarter isn't unfriendly to retailers, at least no more than anything else that requires (discretionary) spending.

You have a separate channel creating and distributing gaming products that largely completely avoids retailers. It cuts retailers out of the loop. Like that mentioned Reaper Minis, which, right there, that's direct competition. Those minis would normally have been sold at retailers, but, now you have three lines that aren't.

Everything you've stated here is incorrect. You do not have a separate channel for creating or distributing gaming products - the creation aspect is not "separate" because brick-and-mortar stores do not facilitate the creation of game products, they only sell them. Likewise, the distribution aspect is also not "separate," because Kickstarter is not a distributor. Most Kickstarters have reward pledges that do not include a copy of the final product, nor can you "order" a product from them after the funding period has closed.

The retailers, in other words, are not cut out of the loop because they were never in that loop to begin with. Kickstarter only allows for gathering the capital to create a product in the first place; if that product is one that will be distributed to FLGS's, then they're not losing out since otherwise that product that they're selling would never have been made in the first place. If the product is one that isn't given to FLGs's after it's funded, then it's not a question of competition, since sales for that book could never have happened at the FLGS anyway. (I suppose you could cite that as "indirect competition," but again, that means that Kickstarter is no more "retailer-unfriendly" than anything else.)

Is it going to drive the FLGS out of business? Most likely not.

Kickstarter is about as likely to drive FLGS's out of business as iPods are.

Heck, a retailer, if they wanted to, could get in on a Kickstarter and then turn around and sell the products. I'd be surprised if retailers hadn't at least considered it. But, I imagine it's not something that's helping retailers very much and it is a kind of competition, even if it isn't 100% direct competition.

It's not any more competition than anything else that's not a necessity and costs money. In that regard, talking about the impact that Kickstarter is having on local game stores makes no more sense than talking about the impact that Starbucks is having on local game stores.

 

[Hussar]

I think you're being a bit disingenuous here. For example, I backed the Primeval Thule Kickstarter. Cool, now I've got a nifty new setting and about five modules and other goodies. Why would I go out and buy the, for example, Sword Coast Adventurers Guide? It's not going to help my PT campaign. So, I would argue that it does create fairly direct competition. McDonald's doesn't create and sell anything that would possibly be found at an FLGS. Kickstarter most certainly does.

And since many Kickstarters aren't being sold in retail stores, people who fund Kickstarters may (and only may, I'm certainly no expert here) find themselves not needing to buy material from a retail store. Both a retail store and a Kickstarter are providing material for the same gamer. Not the same material, true, but, certainly competing material.

For example, the Reaper Kickstarter does not have an option for a "We like this company" pledge. If you pledge anything, you're going to be delivered something in the mail. So, this, right here, is a direct competitor to a retailer. And, note, even though the Kickstarter is over, there are ways to keep buying those minis. And there are Backer Slacker (is that the right term?) options as well for those who come after a Kickstarter is closed.

Claiming that there is no direct competition isn't really accurate. Sometimes the competition would be pretty indirect (simply competing products for the same game line), but, sometimes it's pretty direct. If I want to buy minis, I can back Reaper and completely ignore my FLGS.

I'd say that there is certainly some overlap here.

Now, again, is it going to drive FLGS' out of business? Nope, not even a little. But, the issue at hand, that originally spawned this tangent, was the idea that WOTC should do Kickstarters to produce more product. But, WotC has been absolutely adamant about supporting retailers. They're not interested in getting 1000 backers (which is about what PT got). They're interested in selling 100 thousand copies of a book. Kickstarter isn't going to work for that model.

 

[delericho]

They're not reading the market right, they're own surveys said that people wanted the setting books for they're favourite settings, but they're not bothering to put them out.

I hate to shake your faith in humanity, but: sometimes people lie.

More specifically, people saying in a survey that they'd absolutely, most certainly, 100% buy up copies of a new Birthright sourcebook doesn't, in fact, mean that that book would immediately sell 100k copies.

So WotC have started small, with one book for one setting. If that does indeed sell the number of copies they hope, we'll see more. If it turns out that the market for setting books is actually smaller than the surveys suggest, they'll have limited their losses. It's smart decision-making on their part.

 

[Alzrius]

I think you're being a bit disingenuous here.

I think this is the pot calling the kettle black.

For example, I backed the Primeval Thule Kickstarter. Cool, now I've got a nifty new setting and about five modules and other goodies. Why would I go out and buy the, for example, Sword Coast Adventurers Guide? It's not going to help my PT campaign. So, I would argue that it does create fairly direct competition. McDonald's doesn't create and sell anything that would possibly be found at an FLGS. Kickstarter most certainly does.

No, it doesn't. Kickstarter doesn't "sell" anything. You can help to finance the creation of something, but it is not and never has been a sales venue. That's self-evident because you can't go and buy a copy of Primeval Thule there right now. Further, at the time you made that pledge you had no ability to go and pick up the book from anywhere else, so that drive was not competing with local retailers to get you to buy the book from them.

As for the idea that "I picked up product X from Kickstarter, and so I don't need product Y from my FLGS," that's a canard. Even if they are targeted at the same niche, the competition between retailers is not fixed around different products that happen to fulfill that niche, but rather is targeted over who gets the dollars to buy the same product. Saying that two campaign settings are competing for dollars is a flimsy argument at best; many, if not most, gamers have more than one copy of a book that deals with topic/theme X, because they see them as supplementing each other, rather than obviating each other.

And since many Kickstarters aren't being sold in retail stores, people who fund Kickstarters may (and only may, I'm certainly no expert here) find themselves not needing to buy material from a retail store. Both a retail store and a Kickstarter are providing material for the same gamer. Not the same material, true, but, certainly competing material.

If a Kickstarted product isn't going into a game store, then it's by definition not directly competing with that store. Saying that "but means they won't buy a very similar book from the game store" is a reason that doesn't hold up to scrutiny, because that only holds true if you presume that that same gamer will never want to buy any books that fulfill that same niche. If they decide that they want an "official" 5E release to complement, or try instead of, the third-party campaign they got, that level of reasoning works just as well, even if they go back six months later and buy the book from their FLGS.

That's on top of the boatload of assumptions that have already been made in the above scenario, including that the Kickstarter successfully funded, that the person in question heard about it and pledged before it closed, that they selected a backer option to get a copy of the finished product, that it was created and delivered in a timely manner, etc.

For example, the Reaper Kickstarter does not have an option for a "We like this company" pledge. If you pledge anything, you're going to be delivered something in the mail. So, this, right here, is a direct competitor to a retailer.

No, it's not. If those minis aren't going to be sold through a local game store, then there's no competition, because the store was never going to get that business. If those minis are going to be sold in a store, then it's still not competition, because the Kickstarter is directly funding the creation of material that the store can then sell, to their overall benefit.

And, note, even though the Kickstarter is over, there are ways to keep buying those minis. And there are Backer Slacker (is that the right term?) options as well for those who come after a Kickstarter is closed.

Unless Kickstarter has a way to keep ordering finished products after the funding has closed, then those "ways to keep buying" consist of "getting them through actual retailers."

Claiming that there is no direct competition isn't really accurate.

Correction: claiming that there is direct competition is not at all accurate.

Sometimes the competition would be pretty indirect (simply competing products for the same game line), but, sometimes it's pretty direct. If I want to buy minis, I can back Reaper and completely ignore my FLGS.

The competition is only ever indirect. Backing a Reaper Kickstarter might get you a bonus, but that's not taking away money from the retailer for those same products.

I'd say that there is certainly some overlap here.

You'd be wrong, in that case.

Now, again, is it going to drive FLGS' out of business? Nope, not even a little.

Quite right, since neither Kickstarter nor iPods are a direct threat to an FLGS' business.

But, the issue at hand, that originally spawned this tangent, was the idea that WOTC should do Kickstarters to produce more product. But, WotC has been absolutely adamant about supporting retailers. They're not interested in getting 1000 backers (which is about what PT got). They're interested in selling 100 thousand copies of a book. Kickstarter isn't going to work for that model.

The issue at hand is that these are two separate issues that have become conflated. WotC doesn't use Kickstarters for whatever reason they don't use Kickstarters. WotC also acts in ways to prop up FLGS sales. Saying that the two are connected is a theory that has nothing other than flimsy speculation behind it.