Chinese Government Burns Cthulhu RPG Print Run

Dannyalcatraz · Mar 29, 2019

Umbran said:
You see, I already have more games than I am going to make serious use of in my lifetime. But, my disposable income is not infinite. I might pay $30 for an occasional supplement that I won't really use. But as the price rises even a bit, the chance of my purchasing it drops very, very quickly. I suspect tthat, in general, most gaming materials are already priced about at the top of what the market will bear.

(snip )

In the end, most of us ar enot wealthy enough to purchase for altruistic reasons. If it does not fit our personal needs and budgets, it isn't gonna happen.

All true, but enlightened self interest isn’t about altruism. It’s about helping yourself by helping others.

Nobody has done - nor is anyone likely ever to do- research on how important physical game stores are to the overall health of the hobby. While a given publisher or retail outlet may know what their numbers tell them, that data isn’t being cross referenced. It may well be that for the hobby to sustain itself as a viable commercial market segment, there needs to be a certain critical mass of physical locations in which RPGs, CCGs and genre boardgames are sold and/or played publicly.

Simply put, if people want game stores or stores that sell gaming products within driving distance of where they live, they have to spend $$$ in those stores. Personally, I spend @70% of my gaming dollars locally.

It absolutely is a tradeoff. I don’t buy as many games as I used to. And I don’t have a whole bunch of stuff from small indie publishers. But my FLGS’ are still relatively healthy. And that means I can go in and buy stuff, ask other gamers about stuff they e bought, and- if need be- put in the occasional special order.

I’ve seen the flip side of this in person. One of my other major hobbies is playing guitar. For years, I bought most of my stuff locally. But as my tastes and *ahem* “needs” changed, I bought more stuff online- @80% or more of my guitar related expenditures, now. As a result of that behavior becoming more the norm, local music stores are contracting the breadth & depth of their offerings, with many of them disappearing entirely. It’s not uncommon for such stores to have huge brand overlaps.

Sadras · Mar 29, 2019

Sepulchrave II said:
Suggesting that prior periods of Chinese history or alternate timelines might provide a better reality than the current communist utopia is counterrevolutionary poison.

Thanks for the answer.
Damn, I would never have thought of that.

MNblockhead · Mar 29, 2019

I'm not buying that FLGS are critical to the hobby. Helpful, sure, and I'm glad to have them. But less expensive printing, lower retail prices, and cheap or free printing help more people sell and buy more gaming material. I think YouTube and streaming have more to do with the resurgence of the hobby than FLGS's.

I support FLGSs that are worth supporting. I don't feel the need to support them just because they exist. I'm not going to cry over a lost FLGS any more than I did over the loss of the local video-rental store.

In the 80s game stores were just specialized retailers and hobby shops for the most part. Walden Books was probably more important to D&D than the gaming stories. I didn't go to gaming stores until I got into Warhammer 40,000 K and needed all the expensive miniatures and special paints, brushes, and terrain. I found other gamers either through school and friends or from postings in gaming magazines and newsletters, or flyers posted at the local library.

25 years later, I got back into gaming and I found folks to play with through Meetup.com.

Don't get me wrong, I love the two FLGSs I visit and I've spent a lot of money at both of them. But if they disappeared, it would not prevent me from gaming or enjoying my hobby. It would be more akin to losing a restaurant I like.

Sadras · Mar 29, 2019

MNblockhead said:
Don't get me wrong, I love the two FLGSs I visit and I've spent a lot of money at both of them. But if they disappeared, it would not prevent me from gaming or enjoying my hobby. It would be more akin to losing a restaurant I like.

Hmmm, the major difference being that FLGS are significantly fewer than restaurants. I'm certain we could improve on this comparison.

Dannyalcatraz · Mar 29, 2019

I support FLGSs that are worth supporting. I don't feel the need to support them just because they exist. I'm not going to cry over a lost FLGS any more than I did over the loss of the local video-rental store.

I did not mean to imply that anyone should support a bad store just because it’s a local hobby store. That’s a waste of money.

Even when I was a kid in Manhattan, KS during the early 80s, I’d do without instead of buying things I didn’t need when the local stores’ inventories stagnated. Instead, I’d buy the latest Dragon and save the bulk of my $$$ and wait until the family took a trip to the bigger cities in the state, and buy at the good stores there. Just guessing, after the first few months living there, I’d have to say 90% of my gaming money was spent in Kansas City and Topeka, with a smattering in Lawrence and Wichita.

GreyLord · Mar 29, 2019

From what little I've read (and it's not much) some say that the offending material was actually about China. The book itself had some material that dealt with areas of China and hence, China objected to it.

This brings up a question which was QUICKLY quashed earlier in the thread. The way it was presented was probably not how I would have voiced it or stated it by any means, but I think it was a valid question about censorship and what we will or will not approve of.

My stance is for free speech in all it's ways and means unless it is overly vulgar. That means that yes...even I have a point where I may approve censorship. What point is it where we approve censorship?

When a nation deems a book to be writing about them in such a way that they find distasteful, dislikeable, or not in approval with their national standards, are they allowed to censor?

My gut instinct would be...we should allow free speech!!

Enworld obviously has some rules in this regards though, not everything here is free speech. There are written rules (which we have read) and unwritten rules.

Part of what was written may have been a reference to prior posts earlier this year (which I'll posts links to) where reactions were mixed.

Some condemned the censorship (just like MANY have condemned it here), but...shockingly enough, some seemed to express the exact OPPOSITE of what they seem to say here. They APPROVED of censorship, or even aggressively attacking a company that published something that offended a certain nation or group.

The biggest difference has NOTHING to do with whether it is right or wrong to censor against a company, but whether or not the material censored went against their own personal code of morality or ideas.

If it is okay to censor as per our OWN morality (and as I said, I probably would draw the line at overly aggressive vulgarity in products I support at least, though I have NO desire to stop anyone from printing such if they want and I feel that is their right...I just do not want to read it), why is it suddenly BAD for a NATION to censor as per THEIR OWN morality.

For example, take these threads from the recent past of ENWORLD...

http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?5831-News-Digest-White-Wolf-Dissolved-MORE-New-D-D-Releases-Announced-RPG-Now-Closing-(kinda)-and-more!

http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?5813-Big-Changes-At-White-Wolf-Following-Controversy

Here we discussed a controversy in regards to White Wolf. Many felt it was the correct action for them to be dissolved or face problems (much worse than what the kickstarter even suffered, at least thus far from what I've read in this thread) simply due to what they published.

Some felt the same they do about censorship in China, but many felt differently. They felt that because of the material WW deserved this type of action and the resulting ideas of censorship that would have followed.

The argument may be that one censorship comes from a community while the other comes from a government, but a government is a collective representation of the people that it governs. As such, China probably did not censor simply out of spite, but due to some very real negative connotations it had pertaining to the material being printed and it's representation of Chinese values.

I do NOT feel that makes it right, but I am typically against censorship in general, even when it pertains to ideas I dislike tremendously.

The question then, is when is censorship right? When should it be approved and when do YOU approve of it?

Is it simply based on your morality or is it based on something else?

For example, if a nation objects to how it is portrayed in some material is it appropriate for that nation to try to shut down a company, for it's people to complain, and that nation to censor that product?

Or is how a nation feels irrelevant, and instead should be based upon some personal morality, some greater worldwide morality, or something else?

If we approve of censorship...when SHOULD we approve of it?

It is obvious that there are many who approve of censorship on the site, even if not in this particular instance with China. To me, it seems in a way more of a piling on because it offends our personal morality rather than a specific stance on free press (though, I note, there are those who feel this way and have this same slant in all threads concerning this type of activity).

In some ways, censorship is absolutely necessary. Enworld I think is a better place because it censors some things and leaves out others.

ON the otherhand, the very essence of this thread is about a Nation (china) basically censoring something and burning books to do it.

It is an inherent risk of doing business in China, and I suppose should be a wakeup call to any who did not realize that it is a risk at this point.

GreyLord · Mar 29, 2019

Dannyalcatraz said:
All true, but enlightened self interest isn’t about altruism. It’s about helping yourself by helping others.

Nobody has done - nor is anyone likely ever to do- research on how important physical game stores are to the overall health of the hobby. While a given publisher or retail outlet may know what their numbers tell them, that data isn’t being cross referenced. It may well be that for the hobby to sustain itself as a viable commercial market segment, there needs to be a certain critical mass of physical locations in which RPGs, CCGs and genre boardgames are sold and/or played publicly.

Simply put, if people want game stores or stores that sell gaming products within driving distance of where they live, they have to spend $$$ in those stores. Personally, I spend @70% of my gaming dollars locally.

It absolutely is a tradeoff. I don’t buy as many games as I used to. And I don’t have a whole bunch of stuff from small indie publishers. But my FLGS’ are still relatively healthy. And that means I can go in and buy stuff, ask other gamers about stuff they e bought, and- if need be- put in the occasional special order.

I’ve seen the flip side of this in person. One of my other major hobbies is playing guitar. For years, I bought most of my stuff locally. But as my tastes and *ahem* “needs” changed, I bought more stuff online- @80% or more of my guitar related expenditures, now. As a result of that behavior becoming more the norm, local music stores are contracting the breadth & depth of their offerings, with many of them disappearing entirely. It’s not uncommon for such stores to have huge brand overlaps.

I agree with much of what you've written.

The current style of the day supports more products printed in China for mass produced retail, but I think the trend for companies to do this has made much of the Western World dependent on a nation where the values of the West are not much valued.

The local market in many areas (book stores, toy stores) have been weakened tremendously because people do not buy locally anymore.

I was just commenting to a friend the other day about how I used to go to the malls in the 80s just to look around. They had all sorts of entertainment fun from Books to games to movies to music and much more.

Now, Malls have almost nothing.

Locally, these areas have died out in many places. You cannot just go to browse the grand variety of the local book store or the local gamestore. We are stuck having to go online where personal interaction is limited and the conventions of socialization outside our houses and homes take priority.

I prefer the ability to go and browse physically at a local location, or to buy a well built piece of furniture from a local merchant that you can go to if you have any problems and have a response rather quickly.

Those days seem to be dying. The only way they would return is if people started to support local companies again. That day may be long past.

Hussar · Mar 29, 2019

[MENTION=4348]GreyLord[/MENTION] - "When should we censor" is an excellent question. However, like all excellent questions, we do need to unpack it a bit before answering.

1. How do you define censorship? What was done to White Wolf, for example, was not censorship. No governments were involved. And, frankly, these were business decisions, not moral ones. People objected to the content, and voted with their wallets. For WW to not do anything would negatively hurt their profits going forward, so, action had to be taken to salvage their reputation.

However, that's not censorship. That's free market economics at work.

In this case though, it's clearly textbook censorship. A government is destroying works. This isn't a company trying to salvage their reputation, this is a government repressing what they feel are transgressive writings.

It will only really muddy the waters if we conflate the two things. A company removing something because of negative fan reaction is very, very different from a government destroying books.

2. Once we have a definition of censorship that we can agree on, at least for the sake of argument, then we can move forward and discuss where a line, if any, should be drawn.

However, as I said, the conflation of marketing decisions with censorship makes this conversation nearly impossible to have because no one is actually speaking the same language.

MGibster · Mar 29, 2019

GreyLord said:
When a nation deems a book to be writing about them in such a way that they find distasteful, dislikeable, or not in approval with their national standards, are they allowed to censor?

Free expression is a basic human right. Something that is distasteful or disliked does not mean it should be censored. Sure, the Chinese government is certainly allowed to do a great many things. This doesn't make it right.

Enworld obviously has some rules in this regards though, not everything here is free speech. There are written rules (which we have read) and unwritten rules.

En World lacks the power to censor me. If I break the rules and Morrus bans me from posting here none of my rights have been violated. I am free to spout my views on other forums.

Some condemned the censorship (just like MANY have condemned it here), but...shockingly enough, some seemed to express the exact OPPOSITE of what they seem to say here. They APPROVED of censorship, or even aggressively attacking a company that published something that offended a certain nation or group.

Freedom of association works both ways. As much as I disliked organizations like BADD attacking role playing games it was their right to do so and I would defend that right even as they attacked TSR for producing D&D.

Umbran · Mar 29, 2019

Immortal Sun said:
At the end of the day 100% of RPG purchases are luxury items. When you've already decided you're going to spend your disposable income on a luxury item, quibbling about the price isn't productive to the process.

Of course it is! Because "luxury item" does not mean "buyer does not consider the price and value". This becomes clear when we crank up the scaling - I may be quite willing to pay $30 for a luxury item, but not willing to pay $1000 for that item. I may be willing to buy a WotC adventure like Princes of the Apocalypse at $50, but not a "Beadle and Grimm's Silver Edition" version of the same adventure at $175. Price does matter, and if you don't accept that, you cannot understand the decisions of publishers.

If the choice is between RPG Book and food, it's food, hands down, every time. If the choice is between RPG Book A and RPG Game B, asking "can I afford that" is the wrong question.

You don't get to tell other people what questions they should ask themselves about their luxury purchases, dude. Maybe they aren't the right questions *for you*, and that's fine. But please show enough humility to accept that other people know better than you do what the right questions are for them, hm?

Middle class folks typically have some budget for luxury items. It often isn't all that big, and may not have a lot of ability to grow, so they are going to consider how much entertainment they get out of those dollars.

I have a friend who is an upper-level engineer, without college debt or a family. He has dollars to spare, and buys all kinds of stuff. I have a wife and a house, and two people's worth of college debt to manage - and notably less disposable income. Our buying patterns are different, and are both right for each of our needs.

I learn a new game about once a month in my store (because there's a guy who knows every game ever) because thats why i go there. To learn and play games.

That's great. For you. And if there are enough of you to be an entire market, then by all means the publishers should consider only your behavior patterns. But, I suspect that the FLGS-player market is not so large as to support publishers on their own. Other patterns of play need to be included in their plans, and thus their pricing and production decisions.

How many games we *learn* isn't the issue. It is how many game products we *buy*. I purchase a few new games a year. Never at my FLGS, which I visit perhaps once every couple of years. I don't have the time to go to the FLGS with any frequency, and if I did, I'd prefer to use it running games at home.