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Message: <blockquote data-quote="woodelf" data-source="post: 1464382" data-attributes="member: 10201">A diverse market is less susceptible to bad things happening, a large market is neither more nor less. I misspoke--it's not the total size of the market that matters, it's the portion of it that one player could affect. When CCGs imploded [implosion: drastic reduction in size, often violent in nature], they took a lot of the market with them because they were such a huge %age of the market, specifically for a lot of retailers. Yes, this was partly because the retailers were unwise, and put so much of their money into CCGs. But it was also partly because the market was CCG-focused. WotC currently makes up something like 43% of the total RPG market, if Ken Hite's figures are reasonable. And D20 System stuff makes up perhaps 2/3rds of the market. What if WotC went belly-up, and took D&D with it? I fear that the other 25% of the market that's making D20 System stuff might very well go with it. Now, ignoring mechanism for the moment, what would happen if 2/5ths or 2/3rds of the market suddenly went away? It'd kill tons of retailers, and probably a couple of distributors, along with it. That's what i mean by implosion: a rapid drastic shrinking of the market. For whatever reason. And the more one player dominates the market, the easier it is for that to happen: in the current market, it only takes the public becoming disinterested in one system to eliminate on the order of half the market. Now, it is true that this isn't likely to happen--the very fact that D&D is so popular argues against it. Maybe. It's precisely that behavior (ultra-popular suddenly becoming unsellable) that occurred with CCGs. And it's the definitive behavior of a fad (which i don't *think* D&D is, but i have to be a little suspicious when a market with a relatively stable size (influx roughly matching departure) suddenly balloons hugely in a very short period of time--is it really growing the market, or is it just a fad-like behavior?).I'm sorry, but the semi-hard data i have, i'm not sure i'm supposed to share it, because it came from a membership organization. I'll re-iterate the summary: for a lot of producers (and i've heard SSS, among others, mention it), the shelflife of a product has gotten steadily, drastically, shorter in the last 4 years. And it's considerably shorter for D20 System products than others, even today: every D20 System producer i've heard from has said that, for most supplements (core gamebooks are different), typical product life is 90days--you see 90+% of sales within the first three months, heavily weighted towards the 1st month. GoO mentioned that their product life has "fallen" to less than a year (in a thread lamenting that the BESM Fantasy Bestiary was going to PDF not much more than a year after it was released).Then there's the fact that WotC both saw much higher than expected initial sales of the D&D3E PH, and a quicker drop-off than expected (by about a third, apparently, since they released D&D3.5E after only about 2/3rds of the projected time). [This is according to members of the original D&D3E design team--Monte Cook, IIRC, and maybe others, but my Google-fu is weak, and i'm not finding the specific reference at the moment.]You don't trust me? Fine, how about Ken Hite:True, he doesn't give precise numbers--but he's privy to a lot more actual numbers than i am, and *he* thinks that the market is accellerating, and in a way that is more bad than good.You're right. I shouldn't have said that. Just ignore that part. I wasn't trying to invalidate your data, i was trying to point out that the behavior of one small D20 publisher is probably not very indicative. Moreover, i really don't see how it "counters" the behavior of WotC as an indicator. And, while my Google-fu isn't currently locating the 1st-hand sources to prove that WotC accellerated the revision schedule, you'll note that Hite also cites it as fact.It may be a "standard" approach to sales, but it's an abominable one. It shows no respect for the consumer, or for your workers. You're trading on the consumer's good will by foisting off stuff on them that even you don't believe is quality, and you're wasting your workers' efforts on stuff that won't sell. Instead, you should be doing yoru very best to only put out the very best that you can. You don't just say "oh well, there'll be some bombs", you work to make sure there are no bombs. And don't tell me it's not possible: look at a company like Atlas that, as near as i can tell, has yet to release a poor product, and nonetheless maintains a reasonably-brisk release schedule. It is possible to do.You're absolutely right. That's exactly why i'll buy Atlas products sight-unseen on preorder, and why i won't buy a WotC product until i've read the whole thing cover-to-cover to make sure it's worth it (and i won't bother with the latter unless i hear good word-of-mouth or read a positive review). But, if what i hear from RPG producers is accurate, RPG sales differ from movies in one significant way: the shelf life and total sales are apparently not appreciably different for good and bad products. Think what movies would be like if a "good" movie lasted 4 weekends and a "bad" one lasted 3, and, moreover, opening weekend accounted for more than half of the good movie's sales, and opening weekend sales for good and bad movies were about the same. What would be the incentive to make good films, assuming it takes more effort and/or money to make a good film? Really, all you'd need to do is make the occasional good film, just enough so that people don't write off the studio entirely, and you're doing fine.</blockquote>

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