Books pricing themselves out of reach?

[KaosDevice]

As the age polls have confirmed, this is a hobby for the midle aged, or those rapidly approaching it.

That is just cruel..*sigh*...cruel. In my mind I'm still 17.

 

[Kaji]

And when that happens, everyone will be sitting around on these discussion boards crying about why Hasbro shut down the RPG division of WotC and no new commerical D&D material is being produced.

All other ethical considerations aside, file sharing works like a leech. One can put dozens of leeches on an elephant and it will survive. Put a handful of leeches on a mouse and you'll get a dead mouse. The music industry is an elephant. The role-playing industry is a mouse.

And I'll touch, again, on the the point there may be too many cheap people in this hobby. And given the anti-theft efforts that a lot of game stores have to use as well as file-sharing and photocopying, it's got plenty of people who want something for nothing, too.

Many many people do not share files. Some do. I'm pretty sure it's been observed frequently that folks who are busy stealing rpg content were not going to buy it anyway. Now, they're still wrong (IMHO) but there have always been questions of how much this hurts the sales of companies involved. I've had some free stuff given to me, and the overwhelming majority of it sits on a disk somewhere, not read or used. If I like something, I go buy a copy of it, and encourage my friends to do the same.

This looks like a mild hijack of the thread, so I'll go no further. I just don't agree with John on this issue. But I'd be happy to see numbers to substantiate either point of view.

 

[TerraDave]

That is just cruel..*sigh*...cruel. In my mind I'm still 17.

actually it is masochistic...maybe I should edit my post (and my wife says I am somewhere between 5-12 in my mind)

 

[John Morrow]

I have seriously cut back on my purchase of books and pdf's. (Which is good, I was a little out of control )

I think we're probably going to see people rely more on electronic publishing, direct sales over the Internet, discount retailers like Amazon, and print-on-demand publishing. This will remove a lot of the overhead caused by distribution and allow a larger slice of the retail cost to make it back to the publisher. Distribution is really the only place they can afford to cut costs. Even if price isn't the problem, I suspect that game companies will certainly give these other options a try. The big question, then, is how the hobby fares without specialty game stores.

As an analogy, the Macintosh software and peripheral market operates largely as a mail-order business to save money and lower costs. People stopped buying from stores and started buying from discount mail-order houses. While that certainly lowered costs and works, I don't think it helped Apple's market share any and the absence of Mac hardware and software in most computer stores led to the impression that Macs were dead.

 

[Afrodyte]

I think the comparison of many RPG products to video game consoles instead of video games is a pretty interesting and accurate parallel. I know that, in my case, RPG products are investments rather than an impulse purchases. For instance, I can afford a PS2, Game Cube, or an X Box, but I can't purchase all three at the same time. I'd probably have to weigh my options carefully even if I wanted to buy the others afterwards.

Even comparing RPGs to other books, the same thing applies. If I have $30 to spend, I can go to my local Barnes & Noble and leave with at least two books (granted, they'd be softcover books, but still). If I go to my FLGS, I'll probably get one book.

What I would like to see (which may never happen) is having several options for RPG products available: cheapskate, normal, and high-dollar. But please, release the cheapskate version first so that they would at least have value as a bonus PHB or for store credit. For instance, had I known about the Pocket PHB, I would not have paid for the 3.5 PHB since I could do without the pictures, glossy paper, and hardback. I also think that the same may be true for those willing and able to spend money for leather-bound versions of the core books. At the very least, it'd be interesting to see D20 publishers do some market research on it.

 

[Swiftbrook]

i paid $10 for my first phb. and $4.50 for G1. and $5 for Chainmail.

G1 ...8 pages + 2 inside covers ... $4.50 ... 45 cents per page
Heart of Nightfang Spire ... 32 pages + 2inside covers ... $9.95 ...29 cents per page

so page for page, Heart of Nightfang Spire is about half the cost ... 25 years later.

Complete Arcana ... 192 pages ...$29.95 ... 15.6 cents per page
1e DMG .... 232 pages .... $12 .... 5 cents per page


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That said, my price break is $20. I got hooked on the 'Complete' line with CW at 60% off at Amazon. Still didn't pay more than $20 each for the rest.

I just don't have that much to spend and bang for the buck is very important to me.

-Swiftbrook

 

[John Morrow]

I'm pretty sure it's been observed frequently that folks who are busy stealing rpg content were not going to buy it anyway.

I believe the claim was that if prices go any higher, they might cause people to jump ship and start downloading files, instead. Or were was the claim about downloading legitimate PDFs and not scanned books because they are cheaper? I appologize for the misunderstanding if they were talking about legitimate PDFs.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

It depends on what you compare rpg books with - other books or other forms of entertainment.

If the former, rpg books are an unusual size and are printed in small runs, so they will of course be more expensive than the average book.

If the latter, they are probably underpriced! Consider a PC or video game; in just about every instance you will get more mileage out of the book in terms of replay, and probably pay less. Even a decent tabletop game will set you back over $30; War of the Ring is $60 (and worth every penny). One ticket to a pro sporting event probably exceeds $50. And a movie for four, incuding snacks - one night of roleplaying, if you will - approaches $50 in large markets as well.

I have to disagree with (some of) this.

Both console and PC-style RPGs average about 30-40 hours of solid play for $30-40 US. I've put well over 200 hours into Xenogears and Might and Magic: World of Xeen, 300 into Final Fantasy 6. Turn-based strategy game Heroes of Might and Magic III probably cost my family less than $0.10 per hour, even though we've had to buy several copies.

Provided that you enjoy them, these games are likely to provide you with the most hours of entertainment per dollar.

A pen-n-paper RPG book, assuming it was vital to every hour of every session and that your sessions lasted 6 hours, would have to last you about 70 sessions to equal that value. I suppose a core book would qualify, but would a supplement? A campaign setting?

Even so, RPG books are probably one of the cheaper entertainment options. A novel, even if you read it twice and are a slow reader, will probably keep you entertained for about 18 hours tops - you can still get paperbacks for less, but hardcovers? Forget it.

At the show, movies are hideously expensive (probably worse than sporting events, see below). On DVD, however, they're now relatively cheap. You can get a 2 hour movie for under 10 dollars, and it's not out of the question that you'll watch it at least five times.

Sporting events are objectively the worst per-hour entertainment discussed, but there's a difference between sporting events and movies, books and electronic games - each one is unqiue and, although probably recorded somewhere, somewhat fleeting. You can't skip it and get the same experience a day later, or two days later, or a year later. This increases demand and thus cost.

 

[Mr. Lobo]

Remember that, as WotC even stated at that time, the $20 price on those books was a teaser price. They claimed that those were really $30 books, and they did an introductory discount for the first year or so to stimulate purchases. Now, did they spoil gamers into expecting full-color, hardcover books for under $30? Maybe.

Did they state that at the release of the books? If they did I totally missed it - and I worked at a WotC retail store at the time. There was no mention in our store circle of that strategy. Could be for a dang good reason like, "Don't let the customers know we're increasing the price on this later." I DO remember they stated it a little before they jacked up the price because of all the hubub surrounding it. I think I was not the only one "caught unaware".

I know for sure that I got spoiled and my later and current lack of purchases reflect this. My reasons for this may not be logical or rational and I'd be willing to bet that I am in the minority for both issues.

Actually, it had a MSRP of $39.95 (though you certainly may have gotten it for less). I remember buying it, and thinking, (a) that's expensive, but (b) that's a lot of book.

Thanks for the info! I must have gotten it at a slightly lower price (WotC employee discount). I certainly do not regret purchasing the FRCS in the least. However, looking back now, I'm very surprised I actually put out the money to buy it in the first place.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

And unlike a video game, which can become outdated or obsolete, my copy of Midnight won't (at least, not from a usability standpoint...from a game preference standpoint, perhaps...but that's another discussion).

I consider the advancement in pen-n-paper RPGs represented by the "bleeding edge" of d20 and the current edition of SilCore vs. AD&D and its competitors in 1993 vastly greater than the advancement in console RPGs represented by Xenosaga and Final Fantasy X vs. Final Fantasy VI and World of Xeen in 1993.

So that's by no means a universal principle.