Another RPG company with financial difficulties

[blakk]

HAILS to all! May yer women always be happy to see yah and may your kids all know who yah are!



I’m an uber noob, new to DnD and new to these forums. I love what eyebeans had to say.

In regards to the last comment” not enough new gamers" I can comment cause I happen to be one.



i have found that in DnD gamers beget gamers. The problems i personally faced was the PHB. I read over it and it plain old did not make sense to me. Now i had really good friends who patiently explained things to me as we went along, but i ask you. Why is the main book that a noob at this game gonna have to read, not designed for the noob reader?

There should be an unber noob section with progressive flow charts, and an advanced part for the old vets. Personally if feel like the pen and paper industry is designed around the Old vets and doesn’t cater to guys like me. also, im like in my 30's and have NEVER in all my life any recollection of ANY add or marketing for DnD.

the Pen n paper industry relies to heavily on word of mouth and the veteran players.

Hence its decline. I mean when is the last time you put any effort into getting someone at work playing?

The lord of the rings trilogy was the greatest opportunity to get people playing this game. And it came and it went. I hear that they are doing the hobbit. The hobbit. Most possibly the foundation that started it all.

My point is a market that is not marketed is a dead market.



Which brings me to the next part of my noob experience.

The dnd game store. I finally went to a game store to pick up a book (again i only knew where it was because my vet friends told me). I walked in and well, was overwhelmed. I was under the impression that there was only dnd. Boom i saw what seemed to me every pen and paper game known to man. and guess what? the guys behind the counter just kept spewing stats to each other. I asked then for info on dnd and classic battle tech. the pointed to the corner and was like "Over there". so I left. too bad there isn’t a place on the web that reviews gaming stores as well as gaming stuff.

Personally i think that publishers are going to have to go online to sell their stuff. I would rather pay for a good download and print it later (at work =D ) than go thru the hassle of dealing with the game store clique

 

[JohnNephew]

The biggest problem right now IS the distributors and the distribution system. When a FLGS buys a game book to sell, it pays upfront. When a distributor buys a game book to sell to retailers, it pays for the book 30-90 days later (IF they pay on time).

Whoa, somebody has lousy terms with their distributors. Lousy for the publisher, that is.

Our terms are Net 30, with an extra discount for customers who postmark payment within 10 days of the invoice date, or prepay (usually by credit card). Distributors who haven't been with us a long time don't get terms at all -- prepayment is required. Probably 90% of our sales are thus paid for within two weeks of us shipping the goods.

Book trade distributors often demand 90-day terms, as well as returnability. But you can also give them a smaller discount, to make up for it...and my own view is that the book trade should be an add-on to a core hobby market presence. (In other words, gravy sales, so it won't kill you if most of the games are returned...and you won't be choking waiting for those slow-to-arrive checks.)

Some distributors are chronically slow to pay. They suffer compared to their competition, because they always miss that rapid payment bonus discount. Sometimes a distributor pays late and still deducts the rapid payment discount. Then they have to be politely informed of their error. Rarely does one have to go so far as to threaten to cut them off, require prepayment, etc. (But I've done that. For years I had the biggest distributor in the biz on COD terms because of such shenanigans. Under new management they became much better.)

My experience, for whatever it's worth...

-John Nephew
President, Atlas Games

 

[Ace]

The plain and simple fact is that there are relatively few people who enjoy combining improvisational theatre with double-entry accounting.
.

I think this is going to be my new .sig on the gamers boards if you don't mind --

As for the rest I snipped -- every world is solid --

This is a PPCOC (pretty poor pay clean out of cash) industry -- I doubt Phil Reed (who sold 13K+ units at Ronin Arts) made take home of more than 30K from that project -- about what wait staff or a CSR makes in some parts of California -- and he is among the elite in gaming

The industry will support a few full time freelancers in a good year and most of em aren't good years

 

[Rasyr]

Whoa, somebody has lousy terms with their distributors. Lousy for the publisher, that is.

umm.. I was generalizing.

Our terms are Net 30, with an extra discount for customers who postmark payment within 10 days of the invoice date, or prepay (usually by credit card). Distributors who haven't been with us a long time don't get terms at all -- prepayment is required. Probably 90% of our sales are thus paid for within two weeks of us shipping the goods.

This is nearly identical to the terms we use. Then again, we don't rely on the distributors either. They make up about 3% of our sales (though, distributor orders for us has been slowly climbing over the last year).

Rarely does one have to go so far as to threaten to cut them off, require prepayment, etc. (But I've done that. For years I had the biggest distributor in the biz on COD terms because of such shenanigans. Under new management they became much better.)

Heh...good for you!

 

[Mark]

My experience, for whatever it's worth...

Thanks.

 

[Andur]

Well its dirty little secret time...

Take the listed price of any published product, cut it in half, that is what the average retailer pays for it.

Take the listed price of any published product, multiply it times .3, that is what the average distributor pays for it.

Take the listed price of any published product, multiply times .1, that is what it cost the publisher to produce the product.

Is the above true all the time, no, but more often than not, even in the RPG world.

So basically all ICE or Herogames are doing is greatly increasing their revenues without a significant increase in their costs. Good business model, as long as they can keep the same customer base it should succeed.

 

[JohnNephew]

umm.. I was generalizing.

This is nearly identical to the terms we use. Then again, we don't rely on the distributors either. They make up about 3% of our sales (though, distributor orders for us has been slowly climbing over the last year).

Is it really generalizing if it's not the general circumstances? I.e., if your terms and my terms and pretty much everyone else are net 30 -- why say that 60 and 90 is generally the case?

Distributors just aren't that bad. In fact, they're pretty darn good. I admire the heck out of ICE forging a path largely without them -- I think it may be the most sensible path for an RPG publisher (as opposed to a more diversified game publisher) these days -- but I don't think we need to demonize them or exaggerate their faults (such as the occasional late payment, like you might see from any business -- I've been guilty of it myself when cash flow has been tight!).

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Take the listed price of any published product, cut it in half, that is what the average retailer pays for it.

I assumed 60% of cover price, or 40% off-- but if some distributors are giving 50% off, I wouldn't know.

Take the listed price of any published product, multiply it times .3, that is what the average distributor pays for it.

40% of cover price, or 60% off.

Take the listed price of any published product, multiply times .1, that is what it cost the publisher to produce the product.

Ideally...

If you go through a fulfillment house (as I do) you're also paying a percentage of your net for that, as well as shipping on top of that.

Returns and rising shipping costs are my demons.


Wulf

 

[maddman75]

The lack of advertising I find paticularly galling. Yeah, I know its expensive. But it can pay off. Why do people assume that even though ads sell cars, computer games, and dishwashing soap it won't sell roleplaying games. A couple of good ads that show what a good time an RPG can be could create tons of new gamers. Heck, *I* was made into a gamer by an ad. A one page comic in a comic book, I still remember it. A band of adventurers trying to get into an evil wizard's tower, and at the end they said that YOU had to figure out what happens next! That sounded like the coolest thing on earth to a brainy 12 year old. I bugged my mom until she took me to the next town over, where I spent some birthday money on a new PHB and Greyhawk Adventures. Then I tried to run a game with a friend. It was weak, had no idea what I was doing, and it was the most fun either of us ever had. It wasn't too long before we met a couple of brothers that played too, and our group was born.

I turn 30 next month, and I still game with these guys on a regular basis. We've collectively put thousands into the gaming industry, paticularly D&D. Mostly me, as I have always been the one to branch into new settings, new games, and compulsively buying tons of suppliments. All from that one ad. They don't need to convert a huge number, because gamers make other gamers.

Looking back, I can see even then that the system was horribly put together for someone just picking it up and learning it. There was no real indication of what I needed to run. The PHB said it had all you needed to play, but I didn't even understand the concept of running the game. As I recall it was some time later before I actually got dice - this was at a mall bookstore, no FLGS in that area.

I paticularly think that rural areas are a huge untapped potential area for new gamers. I grew up in such an area, and there is simply nothing to do. DUring the summer we gamed every day. What else were we going to do? You're fifteen, you have no car, no job, and there's nothing to go and do - not even an arcade or anything. Gaming filled that void.

 

[DeadlyUematsu]

That's frickin' brilliant.

I think the single biggest barrier to new players joining the game is the complexity of character generation. If D&D was sold as a game where you take on one of, say, forty pre-defined characters, but then also gave you the tools to develop or tweak characters on your own, I think it would be a lot less intimidating to non-players.

But the first half of the PHB (at least the Abilities, Classes, Skills, Feats and Equipment sections) all looks like stuff you need to know before you start play, which is nonsense.

My evidence is anecdotal, but I have introduced maybe twenty or so people to gaming in just the last few years. All of them have loved the game and asked for repeat sessions. None of them had to do any chargen at all -- I created their characters for them, sometimes based on a quick discussion of what they'd like, but more often just by arbitrarily assigning characters to players. A couple have since transitioned to actually wanting to learn the rules and develop their characters themselves, but the vast majority are more than happy to just play characters without worrying about HOW anything happens.

Is what I've found.

This is very true. Most of the people I play with IRL do not give a lick about character creation. Which suits me just fine (although thier ideas can get a little silly).