Being threatened by products you aren't interested in

[WayneLigon]

I don't see this much in any other area. I don't see people complaining that Random House is putting out a Tami Hoag and not putting more effort in getting George R. R. Martin to produce more.

You'll see it with individual authors, though. "George did The Hedge Knight! That's 200 pages he could have put towards the current SoF&I book!" "Author X did a book for New Character! He should have done another Old Character book!" Pratchett said that if he'd listened to the fans, he'd have wound up writing 18 books about Rincewind. So, it shows in a few other fields as well, where there is limited production from a single source. The same people that did City of Heroes are doing the Marvel Superhero MMRPG; I myself would much rather see them put the huge amount of man-hours that go into concept, game design, art, animation, core programming models, etc into CoH rather than a new game.

 

[takyris]

I don't see this much in any other area. I don't see people complaining that Random House is putting out a Tami Hoag and not putting more effort in getting George R. R. Martin to produce more. I don't see complaints that Sony is putting out Across the Universe and not putting enough into a new Spiderman movie.

You don't?

"Why is BioWare putting so much effort into making console games when they should be focusing on PC games?'

"Why does Random House put out so many media tie-in novels instead of novels set in original worlds?"

"Why does Justice League Unlimited have so many Black Canary-centric episodes and so few Flash-centric episodes?"

"Why did Fox broadcast the Colts-Texans game in my area instead of the Niners-Packers game?"

"Why is this year's Shakespeare Summer series focusing so heavily on the tragedies instead of the histories?"

I don't see it as unique to our particular sandbox.

 

[Mark CMG]

I'm pretty sure WotC's true "dream customer" doesn't bitch.

If your complaints steer toward projects currently in the pipeline or mesh with present design philosophy, it isn't bitching, it's constructive input.

 

[kenobi65]

Or the designated hitter!

Blasphemer!!!

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Blasphemer!!!

Hey! I specifically didn't mention which side of the fence I was on - I'm respecting the 'no politics or religion' rule!

 

[rgard]

I was involved in a few conversations recently and I noticed a trend that seems to be becoming more common in the hobby industry (at least from my vantage point). There seems to be a lot of hate thrown towards products that "aren't what you are looking for" from companies the person patronizes.

I saw it with WizKids. Whenever they put out a new product a lot of people who followed an old product complained because they weren't throwing those resources at their favored game line (Mechwarrior having a very strong presence of this - "They shouldn't put out Pirates of the Spanish Main, they should be focusing on Mechwarrior"). When WotC put out Eberron, I saw a number of people complaining about Eberron, not because of it's merits, but because WotC wasn't instead putting out more Forgotten Realms or other game line materials.

I don't see this much in any other area. I don't see people complaining that Random House is putting out a Tami Hoag and not putting more effort in getting George R. R. Martin to produce more. I don't see complaints that Sony is putting out Across the Universe and not putting enough into a new Spiderman movie.

Is it just me, or is this becoming more common?

Yes, it happens. Kinda silly in my estimation, but it does happen. The quality of the new product is more important to me than the setting. I can usually adapt most mainstream fantasy supplements to my D&D game. I've used GH and generic in FR campaigns. Maybe I'm not that intense of a FR fan, so I don't feel the need to only use FR stuff in the campaign.

Thanks,
Rich

 

[Bardsandsages]

I don't see this much in any other area. I don't see people complaining that Random House is putting out a Tami Hoag and not putting more effort in getting George R. R. Martin to produce more. I don't see complaints that Sony is putting out Across the Universe and not putting enough into a new Spiderman movie.

You just are looking in the wrong places. In writers' forums, writers whine all the time that publishers only accept "bestsellers" and works by already established writers. Talk to moviephiles, and they complain that the Oscars don't truely represent great movies, only Hollywood politics. Folks complain, because most folks rationalize under the premise that the way they think is the way others think, and they are incapable of accepting the notion that others can see things differently.

I love the hobby. But as a publisher the hobby is not a charity for every person's favorite orphaned setting either. You create products based on what people are actually buying. If product line X makes you 50% of your money, product line Y makes you 25%, and everything else covers the other 25%, where logically is the bulk of the production money suppose to go? It's not evil. It's not "corrupting the game." It's common sense.

But folks rationalize based on what they like, and assume others should like the same things. Therefore, the only thing that makes sense to them is that a publisher is deliberately ignoring a product line and trying to force something on the public, when the reality of the matter is that the publisher is moving in the direction of what the public wants.

 

[Ourph]

This thread is uninteresting to me and, therefore, I'm threatened by it. The whole thread should be locked and deleted (or it could just be moved to the Meta forum, same difference). The OP should be chased off the messageboard by a pitchfork and torch wielding cyber-mob.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

This thread is uninteresting to me and, therefore, I'm threatened by it. The whole thread should be locked and deleted (or it could just be moved to the Meta forum, same difference). The OP should be chased off the messageboard by a pitchfork and torch wielding cyber-mob.

This guy's bad-mouthing my favourite thread. I've been using post #50 all the time in my homebrew conversations, how can he not like it? I demand that he gets banned for at least 48 hours, and I will put him on my ignore list right now!

 

[philreed]

However, there is also a large risk inherent in licensing something out. The licensee might very well screw it up. Which 3rd party publishers would you trust to do, say, Planescape or Dark Sun? The ones that could likely do a good job have their plates pretty full as it is. The risk comes that you hand the license over to someone who does a hack job, poorly edited, full of mistakes and alienates the existing fan base. Now your IP is worth exactly zero because everyone blames you for letting some hack break your idea.

That's what an approval process is for. Any licensed product that is released _should_ go through an approval process during which time changes can be made.