another rpg industry doomsday article (merged: all 3 "Mishler Rant" threads)

[seskis281]

Actually I have no problem with discussion - I just think it devolves into the personal too much - and I mean this on all sides.

I appreciate Erik's clarification today, because it explains alot, and everyone can get snarky and too defensive - we're all just human - same thing with James folks...

This all started on another board and another topic, when a suggestion that the reason any material must not sell is usually only because of bad editing. (This was asserted by one of my closest and dearest friends actually) This hit a nerve with James, I believe, because he's always meticulous about his own editing, and started the whole blog about his experience with the publishing side.

James' stuff, by the way, is always excellent IMHOP - but he is interested, as many of us are, in creative endeavors in niche markets - and it is easy to get defensive about the limitations and problems facing wanting to write and create to one's own vision or passion in the game. To Mike and Eric, it can sometimes feel like there's a constant drumbeat of "get with the times and join us are go away." I like C&C, not because I think either 3.5 or 4e or Pathfinder are bad - I played 3.0 for years - and I think all are well-designed games, but with different approaches and foci than my interest. I contribute now and have some adventures published in Crusader. TLG is a very small company, heh, so those of us who do this are getting very little (mostly company swag for me)....

Like Erik, there are things that can rub nerves the wrong way.... for me it's the idea that the only appropriate business model is the one followed by the big players, that niches are dismissible because they aren't playing on the same field as WotC or Paizo. Chris Pramas said Green Ronin's doing fine - I know Steve Chenault feels very good about where TLG and C&C are - despite the enormous blow of the Gygax IP withdrawal a year ago. Are these companies "successful"? Absolutely. If compared with 4e or Pathfinder? Apples and oranges. For TLG, if they garner several dozen new customers in a month and a couple of hundred a year, that's a "Boom" which will multiply profits (and I mean regular consumers who purchase multiple products - not just casual purchase of core rules). If that was the "growth" for Pathfinder, it would be disastrous - hence the different business model approaches.

I imagine part of James's frustrations come from his love of the Wilderlands, which is a niche but with more d20 devotees from Necro's releases, and C&C, which is another niche... he is also, as I said, meticulous and likes to "do it all" on his products... which can make for a frustrating endeavor - not to mention the pilling on people give because AGPs stuff is very simple saddle-stitched with very quality material but very minimalistic in comparison to other co's products. But if you read it, it's some of the best RPG writing around.... the 2007 GenCon "XXXI" was terrific. I do wonder how many who criticize have actually read his stuff...

I actually disagree with James's doom and gloom scenaio, and I know and like the guy enormously. I don't feel that either WotC or Paizo are headed for "doom," but I also doubt that things are as sustainably rosy as is sometimes presented. However, my hopes are that all these games are successful, for all the fans who love and play them. I have no animosity at all towards 4e or any other game....

When I first came back to gaming, I discovered the ask Gary thread here at ENWORLD - it was the 1st board I joined and his thread is what led me to C&C. At one point, I made a snarky comment about 3.5 I think, and Gary told me "each to his own - play what you like and have fun."

Guys, seriously - James writing a negative blog can't possibly have any impact on sales for WotC or Paizo or anyone else, really excepting his own pr.... if it could the situation would be worse than even he describes.

Can't have it both ways - if the RPG industry is that phenomenally healthy, then there really shouldn't be any fear of one little voice in the wilderness like this....

Just my thoughts. And I mean it when I say I hope all our games and endeavours are successful....

... by whatever standard we each measure our success!

 

[Cadfan]

I'm kind of surprised by the tack this thread has taken. James likes to throw down with the best of them, and provoke arguments and fights. He LOVES tossing out comments like, say, that anyone who doesn't actually roll dice for a character is somehow less of a true gamer.

Whatever he needs, it isn't other people defending him from harsh words. Dude loves himself a flamewar.

 

[CaptainChaos]

My point in that thread was that outside of WotC and White Wolf, there really aren't any fresh new major releases.

I don't think that's true. A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying and Dark Heresy are both recent major games. Coming up we've got a new Dr. Who game, Eclipse Phase, and the Dragon Age RPG. The latter is a team-up between Green Ronin and BioWare, which is pretty major IMO.

 

[seskis281]

I'm kind of surprised by the tack this thread has taken. James likes to throw down with the best of them, and provoke arguments and fights. He LOVES tossing out comments like, say, that anyone who doesn't actually roll dice for a character is somehow less of a true gamer.

Whatever he needs, it isn't other people defending him from harsh words. Dude loves himself a flamewar.

Actually you're probably right

I probably am jumping in on this myself because the dude is such a great guy personally, one of the best GMs I've every played with, and....

He got married this weekend. Congrats James!

 

[Erik Mona]

I should point out that, although The CasualOblivion and I don't always see eye to eye, I certainly understand what he is saying vis a vis Pathfinder and originality, and I don't take that as an insult or a slight at all.

--Erik

 

[GameDaddy]

What Mishler is truly ranting about is that its a bad time to be an unsuccessful, unestablished producer of RPG materials. He is ranting about the loss of the OGL boom, and the free pass to anybody who wanted to produce games it granted.

Ummm. no.

You can still produce and distribute games using the OGL. Many Independent RPG companies though are simply choosing to publish their games without using the OGL, and a few are sticking with the OGL. That market has fragmented, however plenty of new games are being published. A Song of Fire and Ice, Pathfinder, C&C, Old School Clones, Shard RPG, CoC, Dragon Age, and Fantasycraft to name but a few...

RPG's as a whole are underpriced or only just comparablly priced compared to where they were twenty years ago... As adjusted for inflation.

RPG's have lost ground to the traditional fantasy & Sci-fi publishing Industries, to the Movie Industry, and is also a victim of the electronic age MMORPG's and the like.

Mr. Mishlers' observations on the general state of the economy are sobering, and just because gas is down to two-fifty or three dollars a gallon, that doesn't mean the economy is bouncing back. We are very much standing on the precipice of a potentially disasterous global economic fall. Very few people living in the U.S. today have experienced that.

 

[Vigilance]

It's really hard for me to take this guy seriously.

He says several things about the PDF market that are just flat wrong.

See, between Vigilance Press (my own imprint) and RPGObjects, I have seen the numbers at RPGNow continuously since 2002.

I wasn't the FIRST by any means, Monte, ENW and others were there before me, but I was really early.

In those days, almost every product was $5. If you wanted to add value to a product, you made it bigger!

But almost no one charged more than 5 bucks for anything.

Today, looking at the average price of the top 75 selling products at RPGNow, their average price is 9.40

So the price of the best sellers today is almost twice what it was 6 years ago.

That's the weirdest "race to zero" price war I've ever seen!

 

[thecasualoblivion]

Intelligent post on business stuff

The thing is that conditions are brutal right now. Its not the heyday of the OGL anymore. If you aren't a big name entity with a solid reputation, its hard to sell things. The reputation is often more important than the resources. People expecting things to be like they were in the past are bound to be disappointed.

I should point out that, although The CasualOblivion and I don't always see eye to eye, I certainly understand what he is saying vis a vis Pathfinder and originality, and I don't take that as an insult or a slight at all.

--Erik

I didn't mean it as an insult, though I said it in the aggressive style I tend to post with. I think Pathfinder will be a big success, and I wish Paizo well. I get cranky when I start hearing things from their sillier fans when they start putting Pathfinder on the pedestal of "Edition War Savior" more than anything. If I were to name a problem I did have, it would be the quibble that I don't find Pathfinder to me as much of a fix as was originally advertised when it was announced.

Ummm. no.

You can still produce and distribute games using the OGL. Many Independent RPG companies though are simply choosing to publish their games without using the OGL, and a few are sticking with the OGL. That market has fragmented, however plenty of new games are being published. A Song of Fire and Ice, Pathfinder, C&C, Old School Clones, Shard RPG, CoC, Dragon Age, and Fantasycraft to name but a few...

RPG's as a whole are underpriced or only just comparablly priced compared to where they were twenty years ago... As adjusted for inflation.

RPG's have lost ground to the traditional fantasy & Sci-fi publishing Industries, to the Movie Industry, and is also a victim of the electronic age MMORPG's and the like.

Point taken, but I after reading these sorts of threads for some time now I really get the sense for two main things. People who believe in the OGL tend to believe in it almost to the extent that it is a religion. Open gaming is a big shiny ideal after all. This level of believing in a cause can cause a loss of objectivity. The other thing is that people got starstruck by the big successes the OGL has had in the past, which have not been sustained. I see people thinking that the rough times right now are the aberration, instead of the boom.

Between believing in a righteous cause, and thinking that OGL-boom type success is possible and deserved in the current environment, I see a lot of people being very unrealistic.

 

[tenkar]

The OGL boom is long gone. Best we can hope for now is a GSL quickie

In any case, ranting about the current market won't change the realities of the market. If the marketer can't adjust he simply won't succeed.

 

[seskis281]

The thing is that conditions are brutal right now.

Yep - which was actually the gist, however he got there, of the original vent on the blog.

If you aren't a big name entity with a solid reputation, its hard to sell things. The reputation is often more important than the resources.

Absolutely - in all deference to Erik and Mike M., they have enormous advantages today that smaller publishers don't have. The one fallacy that does get me cranky, self-admittedly, is the "if it were good it would sell as well as D&D." There may be a lot of crap out there, but there's lots of good products that disappear in the back bins of LGSs.

though I said it in the aggressive style I tend to post with.

Ya know, I teach communications and communication theory, and my analysis of message boards, blogs, and forums is really moving toward the idea that "viral" theory is mostly a negative phenomenon. The truth is, most of us don't "know" each other outside the very specific text as we type it, and this often acts as accelerence on negativity. The next thing you know, people are at the "let's take it outside!" moment, but on boards there's no "outside" to go to lol. Just the recent events have had two people I know and have always thought "damn these guys should meet and would get along great" throwing down on other blogs lol....

Pathfinder will be a big success, and I wish Paizo well. I get cranky when I start hearing things from their sillier fans when they start putting Pathfinder on the pedestal of "Edition War Savior" more than anything. If I were to name a problem I did have, it would be the quibble that I don't find Pathfinder to me as much of a fix as was originally advertised when it was announced.

Agreed - always best to remember these are game systems, and when we talk about "problems" with x in "y system" it's not like we're talking about the problems of terrorism, climate, energy or economics in the macro sense. I've said it before and I'll say it again, it's really just a matter of individual taste.


In the end it probably wasn't anyone around here that really got my gander up, it was that one really virulent post linked at top of previous page where the guy was dumping on James with "you dip*@*t," "YOU M*$&$&THERF$&#&KER", "your piece-of- work" and then I saw later Ryan D.'s admonition to the op., saying more diplomatically that he had some major disagreements with the blog while supporting James as an individual...

That's really all I wanted to say myself in all this, and thanks to Ryan Dancey for saying it there.