d20 bubble bust?- High Prices, too many books

[Emirikol]

Me, I'm just bitter about my tax bracket.

Heh, heh. I pay a higher percent as an American than _any_ Canadian or Aussie. I probably need to go back for another 9 years of college and get that bracket back under control

jh

 

[The Sigil]

Frankly, I haven't seen the shelves of my game store crammed with titles from "fanboys." Seems to me it is the "fanboys" who release only infrequently, and then often only after critical acclaim from the PDF crowd. I'd love to hear to short list of PRINT titles from "upstarts" that folks think are causing the glut. I think that's a load of elitist crap, myself. Cause I just don't see it.
...
No, I've seen shelves packed to bursting with "shovelware" (I love that term) from bigger publishers who seemingly will publish anything just to keep their status as a "big dog"-- cutting corners on art, illustration, editing, graphic design, cover design, and yes, game design.

And here is where I disagree with Ryan. I think for some companies, part of the business plan entails shoveling so much product that the retailers don't know any better. "This company seems to have a lot of product. Everything they do must be good."

The guys who release one product in a 3 month cycle are not causing "glut." Ten products per month per company-- that causes a glut.

It would be a wonderful world if every retailer had as much knowledge about d20 releases as the average ENworld visitor. That's step one to the solution.

Customers who consistently reward companies who publish crap are not without blame either. How many products that are just average are you going to buy before you start witholding your dollars and demanding 4 and 5 star products? Nobody is holding companies to a higher standard, and as long as crap sells, crap is what you'll get.

I love Wulf.

I have to agree... I'm not a print publisher, but from where I sit as a gamer, my FLGS isn't getting flooded with crap from 25 different publishers. It's getting flooded with crap from a few "big" publishers.

I am a PDF publisher, and from where I sit, the PDF market has already been more or less overwhelmed (in terms of number of products released) thanks to the "bit o' book" philosophy. I understand that there are some customers who like that they can buy only the tiny bit that they need and at a very low price... but in terms of virtual shelfspace, the overflow is causing the signal-to-noise ratio to all but disappear. I love PDFs, but I've found that I'm purchasing far fewer of those these days, because I don't want a 5-page buck for a buck. I want a large sourcebook (and am willing to pay $5-10 for it) with completely developed ideas, not just idea "seeds."

It's why even though it probably costs me sales, I stubbornly refuse to put out my own PDFs until I feel they're good and ready. I never feel like they're quite "finished" or "perfect," but I get to a point where I feel, "it's ready for the outside world to see." And I am going to continue to put out fully-developed books because I think that's the right way to do business. And if I'm wrong, and "bit-o-book" is the way to go... well, it's not like I've bet my house on it.

These days, I have a (very) short list of companies whose products I will even consider in print... and I don't buy all of their stuff either. I still anxiously await each release from Bad Axe Games, Green Ronin, and Fantasy Flight Games because I feel their stuff is the highest-quality stuff out there. That doesn't mean I buy everything from them, but if I want a sourcebook about X, I'll check theirs first. Bastion Press and Mystic Eye Games also get a look, and if Mongoose releases something on a topic of interest to me, I'll look at it - though it's been a while since I've purchased from them. My *only* WotC purchase in the last couple of years has been Unearthed Arcana. (I normally purchase Malhavoc stuff in PDF, not print, which is why they're not on this list).

*shrugs* I try to put out stuff that I firmly believe is quality. I try to buy stuff that I feel is quality. I have to have faith that the "invisible hand" will indeed sort things out... and I hope that as it does, the stuff I put out is in fact quality, and that my beliefs aren't misguided.

Which reminds me, I'm hoping to do a lot more releasing this summer... not because I'm trying to "shovel" stuff, but because a lot of products that have been worked on simultaneously are getting finished simultaneously too. But you have my word that I will never put something out just to "shovel" - which is why I'll never give you a firm release date on a product until that date is "yesterday."

--The Sigil

 

[I'm A Banana]

Also, think about the price of the Revision.

A lot of gamers, even now, feel kind of burned by 3.5, financial-wise. That was over $100 that they didn't expect to spend on their hobby that they felt they had to. They're being *really* careful what they're picking up now -- anything with the word "revised" on it is going to suffer because people got the impression that this stuff was already available. Even if it is 50% new material, it's still 50% retread, and people got their fill of that from the Core Books, and now the splatbooks that are revising everything in 3.0.

They're also watching out for new stuff coming in, quite suspiciously. They don't want to get 'burned' by shelling out over $100 for 50 extra pages of stuff they could've come up with on their own. They want new and innovative and pretty. You've either got to have a *darn* good selling point, or make sure your book is big and thick and in full color to pique interest. You can't just put out "1,001 Magical Rings" anymore -- people have no need or desire to get it, except maybe in PDF form. You can't be narrowly focused -- you have to be broad, and you have to be good. Otherwise, suck it, another $10 for something I've seen half of before? Pheh.

At least, I know that's how a lot of people I talk to are feeling about it. They gladly ate up everything before they baught the first thing that they thought wasn't worth it. Most people have passed that cusp, they've shelled out for stuff they didn't need and didn't want and don't really use and they shelled out too much for it. They're going to make darn sure that their future product purchases are worth it.

As far as Elements of Magic Revised, I think it's a multi-pronged attack: (1) the fact that it's "revised" turns off many potential purchasers, (2) EoM has always been an attractive, versatile, point-based spellcasting system; now that we have a good Psionics system, people feel they have less of a need for it, and (3) it sounds like they've heard it before. There's probably a lot of other reasons for this, but I think Elements of Magic suffered most from these. It wasn't a fault with EoM, it was just a very cautious market who wasn't going to jump into Revised, especially when they already shelled out $30 for Revised Psionics, which covers a lot of the same ground in a campaign's needs (e.g.: a more flexible, point-based magic system).

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Educating the masses about D20 System products has been one of the (possibly unspoken) missions of the site. We need a well-educated mass of players to vote intelligently in the ENnies for one thing.

I often fall into the trap of thinking the ENworld is representative of the buying public. It's not. Granted, if I could sell one product to every ENworld member, I'd be among the most successful publishers out there. Heck, if I could sell just 1 copy to a 3000-member exclusive subset of the ENworld market base, I'd be more successful than most publishers in the current market.

So, how do we get retailers to read reviews or become more educated about this stuff? What incentive can we (EN World) offer them other than the immediate promise of better sales (which we can't truly offer them)? Where do retailers generally get their information from, anyway?

Well... I'm bound to step on some toes here...

In my experience, game store owners come in two camps.

One camp is the "Gamer Who Wants to Own a Game Store." Who's this guy? He's very opinionated, for starters. He's also probably not the best businessman in the world. He may even be a little lazy. I reckon he's likely to gravitate towards his own favorite publishers, do "ok" in his business ("ok" defined in most cases as losing money only very slowly), and have no real incentive to increase his knowledge of the market offerings. He might buy everything and throw it in a box-- as he never bothers to take stock of his stock, a publisher will be lucky if he actually reorders. If you ask him about "Product X" he will, at best, pretend to have heard of it and tell you that it's out of stock.

In the other camp we have the "Game Store Opportunists." They are businessmen. They don't game. (They sell a boatload lot of Today's Popular Collectible Trading Card Game.) They don't have a lot of store space for roleplaying. They may not even WANT roleplayers in their store for fear of scaring away mothers or taking space away from the kids. They're also just too busy to bother educating themselves about RPGs, which may not be perceived as a high-volume, high-margin offering. They won't stock stuff from smaller publishers, no matter how well acclaimed, because they don't have time to pick and choose from buyer's catalogs. They may take what their distributor recommends and no more. If you ask him about "Product X" he will stare at you like you just asked for a lightly toasted weasel on a bun.

Well, I misspoke. There's three camps-- cause there's always Games Plus Mt. Prospect. They do game store RIGHT.


Wulf

 

[RangerWickett]

As far as Elements of Magic Revised, I think it's a multi-pronged attack: (1) the fact that it's "revised" turns off many potential purchasers, (2) EoM has always been an attractive, versatile, point-based spellcasting system; now that we have a good Psionics system, people feel they have less of a need for it, and (3) it sounds like they've heard it before. There's probably a lot of other reasons for this, but I think Elements of Magic suffered most from these. It wasn't a fault with EoM, it was just a very cautious market who wasn't going to jump into Revised, especially when they already shelled out $30 for Revised Psionics, which covers a lot of the same ground in a campaign's needs (e.g.: a more flexible, point-based magic system).

*grin* But, you see, we're more flexible than the XPH. That is a slight strike against us because it requires more creation on your part.

I do realize now we should've had a better name. Ah well. *grin* Hopefully the folks who have it will tell others that it's good. Informed buyers will help us all prosper.

 

[jgbrowning]

As a "small publisher" who some would apparently like to choke off, I agree.

Frankly, I haven't seen the shelves of my game store crammed with titles from "fanboys." Seems to me it is the "fanboys" who release only infrequently, and then often only after critical acclaim from the PDF crowd. I'd love to hear to short list of PRINT titles from "upstarts" that folks think are causing the glut. I think that's a load of elitist crap, myself. Cause I just don't see it.

And I'd like to note that under the "3-6 products printed and ready to distribute" barrier, we wouldn't have Magical Medieval Society, we wouldn't have Redhurst Academy, we wouldn't have Lords of the Night, and we wouldn't have most of Monte's stuff. Monte started with one PDF and found an audience.

Thanks Wulf. I agree. The hardest part for me is making sure my distributors actualy have my product in stock. I've gone in and out of stock probably 20+ times with just one distributor with MMS:WE because they continue to order a minimal order as opposed to ordering a reasonable amount. There's really nothing like running out, gettting a re-stock order, just to get another order two days later.

Every time getting my product is more difficult, in any way, that reduces the chance my product may even see shelf space. Their buying habits are not changing even with a proven track record, although for a small track.

No, I've seen shelves packed to bursting with "shovelware" (I love that term) from bigger publishers who seemingly will publish anything just to keep their status as a "big dog"-- cutting corners on art, illustration, editing, graphic design, cover design, and yes, game design.

And here is where I disagree with Ryan. I think for some companies, part of the business plan entails shoveling so much product that the retailers don't know any better. "This company seems to have a lot of product. Everything they do must be good."

The guys who release one product in a 3 month cycle are not causing "glut." Ten products per month per company-- that causes a glut.

Again, i have to agree. The glut isn't being caused by smaller publishers (the 3-6 people) but by those who release many products a month.

This isn't to complain about the industry. Like any industry If I'm going to do well I have to find my place and fill it well. I just don't think that blaming the smaller guy is an accurate portrayal of what's happening.

joe b.

 

[2WS-Steve]

I think it probably burst last year, that was when many of the smaller companies quit (Second World Simulations, Perpetrated Press, Guildhouse Games, several of the adventure companies, maybe Avalanche Press) and those that survived, drastically reduced their output (Mystic Eye games, even Bastion Press to an extent).

And some, like Chaosium and Pinnacle (and now FFG), seem to have dropped d20 in favor of their own systems. And others, like Mongoose, Green Ronin, and AEG, seem to be jumping off the d20 bandwagon into the OGL bandwagon, since they've built up their own brand name, they don't need the d20 logo so much.

I think trancejeremy's right--the d20 bubble burst last year and now we've got several companies that didn't exist maybe 5 years ago going strong.

Also, (as Ryan Dancey said) like markets usually do, it has found its own solution to the glut. Namely, the various tiers filtering out what gets onto the shelves. In a lot of cases this solution has worked well. You certainly won't see stuff like The Foundation: a World in Black and White on the shelves (and I bought an awful lot of other crap in amongst the gems back during the first year of d20) and I've seen the quality from all the surviving publishers go up, even the ones that already started out at high quality.

However, it also means that I need to go out and find an internet shop to pick up cutting edge, innovative stuff like Grim Tales, and the Lords of the Night series. and the fact that they're not getting wider distribution makes me worried that they'll stop being able to afford the time or money to put out such good material. But that's not new either--Aaron Allston is off writing Star Wars books and it seems like half the other designers are working on XBox games.

Third, and to complete the cycle I'm repeating Wulf this time, I don't see a stack of unsold copies of books from tiny publishers weighing down the shelves at my local gaming stores. In fact, except for that first year, what I typically saw was a need to rush to the store on release in order to get the one copy the store ordered before it sold out and the FLGS never restocked.

Anyway, I don't take offense at the way the market works. It's messy but it's what happens when you let individuals have this thing called liberty and run their own businesses. But I do take offense at these, frankly baseless, complaints leveled at the tiny publishers that they're the ones causing the glut and that they're the ones shoveling junk on the market.

 

[Psion]

Well... I'm bound to step on some toes here...

In my experience, game store owners come in two camps.

(...)

Well, I misspoke. There's three camps-- cause there's always Games Plus Mt. Prospect. They do game store RIGHT.

I'd say there's a 4th, because since I saw it back in the town I was raised in but not here, it can't be that uncommon.

The Gamer-but-not-RPGer who does RPGs on the side.

They know little or nothing about RPGs, and may even actually resent them. They play some other game and supporting it is their main stock-and-trade. In modern times this is usually Games Workshop or CCGs, though in my first FLGS, it was star fleet battles and ancients miniatures.

They may order what sells or what they customer asks for, but have little knowledge of the RPG market beyond what they see in the trade mag.

A close cousin might be the Comics-shop-owner-but-not-RPGer (I helped run the RPG side of one of these for a while.)

 

[der_kluge]

One of the things that I've noticed, is that game books tend to have a long shelf life.

I mean, I find people that still want to find old copies of things that went out of print a LONG time ago.

Take me for example (please!). I tend to only buy stuff that I have need for at the moment. Which, I suspect, makes me one of the hardest gamers to market to, because your Egypt setting book might be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but if I'm not running or playing in an Egypt-type setting, your book will have no interest to me.

I can't be alone in that segment.

So, while a book might sell a load of initial copies, a market for the product might continue to linger for a very long time afterwards.

My $0.02.

 

[EricNoah]

And that's a strength of PDF/print-on-demand -- it doesn't take much more to keep that Egypt PDF "on the electronic shelf" than it does to remove it, so why not keep it? Whereas brick-n-mortar shelf space is a valuable commodity - old stuff is literally a liability in many cases. If it's not "new" then it "didn't sell" and "needs to be pitched". Maybe there's a perception of "clutter" in the PDF world precisely because you don't rotate out stock like you do in a store.