Advertorials with no game content in Dragon

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Whoa whoa whoa. Who said it was an ad? Certainly no one from Paizo. It's a preview. An article. We were not paid to run it. In fact, it would be unethical for us to accept money to run an article, and we are not ones to violate ethics. If we are paid for something we will make it abundantly clear that it is an ad.

For exampel, we made Reality Simulations add the word "ad" to their advertisements when their ads started looking too much like comics. That was the ethical thing to do to prevent blurring the lines of ads and editorial. You may now lavish us with praise for making that decision.

I'm hurt our fans don't trust us enough to make the right choice. If something is an ad, we will mark it as an ad. If something is editorial content, we will treat it as editorial content. The FFXII piece is editorial content (apparently unpopular editorial content, but editorial content nonetheless). We paid a contributor to write it for us; we did not get paid to run it.

Hey, good call on the ad label. I appreciate your ethics, really!

Isn't it nice to get immediate feedback on your editorial content? Confusion over ads not withstanding.

Keep up the good work, guys. Your positive contributions far, far outweigh the few negative things I've commented on. We fans probably don't say it enough 'cause it's easier to complain about things we don't like than compliment things we do.

 

[takasi]

When it comes to non-D&D general fantasy gaming info Dragon can't compete with Knights of the Dinner Table, IMHO.

That FF article was a stinker. It's (almost) as bad as Wil Save.

 

[takasi]

Since we have some of the Paizo guys checking in, I thought I'd take this opportunity to say, once again, that it'd be fantastic if the downloads for Dungeon adventures included the NPC and monster stats. Just sayin,' is all...

Keep dreaming. They can't even get their art supplements out.

Heck, they can't even post TEXT ONLY conversion notes without whining over deadline-this and short-staff-that.

But they have all the time in the world to post on multiple message boards over the most asinine of topics.

 

[BOZ]

where did that come from?

 

[James Jacobs]

Keep dreaming. They can't even get their art supplements out.

Heck, they can't even post TEXT ONLY conversion notes without whining over deadline-this and short-staff-that.

But they have all the time in the world to post on multiple message boards over the most asinine of topics.

YAY! I like asinine topics!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

For the record, Paizo does not just publish every video game piece they can, whether in First Watch or in Silicon Sorcery. Years ago, when I was the PR stooge for a Major Videogame Development House, I pinged Dragon about doing an article about our Forthcoming Blockbuster Fantasy Game (you know its name), I got back ... stony silence. They just didn't think it would be a good fit, even though I thought there was likely a large crossover audience.

If they were purely mercenary and publishing anything that they thought would bring in eyeballs, I would have heard from them within seconds of making the offer.

Disagree with their judgement call on this one, but let's not make it into something sinister that it is not.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

asinine FTW!

 

[BOZ]

YAY! I like asinine topics!

they are sometimes more fun than serious/important ones.

 

[MKMcArtor]

I'm sorry if it seemed like I was lashing out at you.

We're cool.

Hm...I can't understand that at all. I ate those articles up.

Yeah, you know, I always liked those articles, too. But our market data says Silicon Sorcery is the least popular of our articles.

But did your market data just ask how people feel about video games, or did it ask how they felt about them in Dragon specifically? Because I have a very hard time believing that market research would come back with results saying that people hate Silicon Sorcery but love non-D&D video game articles in Dragon.

Yeah, I'm not sure exactly about the exact wording, to be honest, so I probably shouldn't comment on this directly. :\ I'll put Josh on the spot and see if he can answer your question.

As I said, it's the idea that "preview" articles like that could possibly be more popular than Silicon Sorcery is what I have a hard time believing.

Unfortunately, I don't know that our research data extended as far as what we might do, so I think we're trying out something new to see what our readers think. So far, at least among the messageboard communities, it seems our readers are neutral at best.

It's all a balancing act, ya know? To please our readers but to include enough stuff to attract ad buyers. If this current tactic turns out to be wildly unpopular with readers AND doesn't generate any additional ad sales, we'll probably move on to something else. But it takes some several months to accumulate the data we need, so you're probably going to see this sort of coverage for at least the next half year. Gird yourselves, my friends.

To reiterate, my opinion is that anything that covers video games, and is more than a page in length (total, so next month's two single-pages reviews of Twilight Princess and Pox Nora still count in this regard), should either be Silicon Sorcery, or not be in the magazine.

And hey, we appreciate your feedback. As you probably presumed from the sudden surge of Paizo peeps, we're watching this issue intently.

Partially. It's a step in the right direction, at least. Thanks.

No problem. I'm glad I could at least partially answer your questions.

 

[Gryffyn]

Frankly, I would rather have a 2-page preview of Final Fantasy XII than another 2 pages of feats, spells, core classes, or other crunch. The main reason I stopped buying Dragon was that it was overwhelmingly crunchy bits -- and Wizards already puts out hundreds upon hundreds of pages of crunch every month. The game reached overload on that years ago, and I'm sorry to see Paizo taken to task for devoting a measly two pages to a topic that isn't strictly D&D.