Dancey resigns as GAMA Treasurer

[eyebeams]

Just to throw a thought in here WRT to the issue of sales.

Allow me to posit just for a moment that the "most excellent" or "best quality" (or whatever buzzword you like to use) gaming material can be defined simply... "that which has the greatest impact on the hobby of role-playing in general."

--The Sigil

That's super. That makes Everway one of the greatest games, because it had a significant impact on the hobby. By being a required additional purchase with Magic cards in the mid-90s, it helped drain revenues *and* reduce overall confidence in the hobby. Plus, of course, it had a high initial sales spike, to boot, because you had to buy it! Greatness!

Or alternately, your definition is just too vague.

 

[eyebeams]

Of course, one more thing worth noting is that game companies don't even sell games to the public first. They sell them to distributors. The flaws in this system mean that distributor trends can have a greater impact on sales that what people actually want. For instance, distributors went mad for D20 stuff for two years, but people weren't actually buying a a proprtional amount of it. Now that stores have stopped ordering as much stuff or have gone under by being loaded with stock they can't move, D20 has shrunk to a realistic proportion of sales.

In practical terms, this means that sales don't actually bear a direct relationship to consumer tastes, either. Sales after the first quarter/90 days might, but of course this data is difficult to acquire.

It would certainly be good to have an "evergreen award" for game books that keep selling. This would actually be practical and informative. But initial sales outside of the minority direct market are often a crapshoot when it comes to seeing how popular something actually is.

 

[Nisarg]

In fact, most D20 products occupy the cheap seats of .pdf and POD. Meanwhile, the evil, industry-destroying stuff I've written sells on a scale that it almost inconceivable to any company short of WotC, so it would get nominated all the time.

The downside of believing in public will is that sometimes games I don't personally like might get the award. I am willing to accept that, if the majority of people express enough support for those books, even though I don't personally care for them.

It seems, on the other hand, that my opposition is not so open to the will of the people. As in, not willing to care about the opinions of the very people they claim to represent.. I think you yourself had expressed some concerns about that very topic. I might be wrong, don't know.
I know Ryan Dancey feels that way, and his essay on TSR is a good example of what happens to companies that think they know what the public wants without asking.

Nisarg

 

[Nikchick]

I know Ryan Dancey feels that way, and his essay on TSR is a good example of what happens to companies that think they know what the public wants without asking.

Perhaps if Ryan Dancey had ASKED my opinion on either the Origins Awards or GAMA rather than deciding it was better to spend six months reading my e-mails without my permission, I'd give a rat's ass how he feels.

 

[mearls]

Of course, one more thing worth noting is that game companies don't even sell games to the public first. They sell them to distributors. The flaws in this system mean that distributor trends can have a greater impact on sales that what people actually want. For instance, distributors went mad for D20 stuff for two years, but people weren't actually buying a a proprtional amount of it. Now that stores have stopped ordering as much stuff or have gone under by being loaded with stock they can't move, D20 has shrunk to a realistic proportion of sales.

What's your source for this? It doesn't jive with the information I've collected or the numbers I've seen.

 

[eyebeams]

The downside of believing in public will is that sometimes games I don't personally like might get the award. I am willing to accept that, if the majority of people express enough support for those books, even though I don't personally care for them.

Actually, your argument was that almost nobody cares for them.

It seems, on the other hand, that my opposition is not so open to the will of the people. As in, not willing to care about the opinions of the very people they claim to represent.. I think you yourself had expressed some concerns about that very topic. I might be wrong, don't know.

The connection between sales and actual popularity is not what people assume it to be.

I know Ryan Dancey feels that way, and his essay on TSR is a good example of what happens to companies that think they know what the public wants without asking.

Ryan Dancey's essay is . . . highly subjective. he didn't check out TSR for WotC; he did it to see if Five Rings could afford it. TSR's chief flaws were related to terrible accounting practices and the wholesale strip-mining of the company by its owners. Rapport with gamers wouldn't have affected things like the massive amount of tax paid on misassessed warehouse items and the appropriation of funds to pay a licensing fee that enriched the owners for their Buck Rogers books at the expensse of their actual business.

Dragonlance game material was martginalized because it wasn't making much money any more; even WotC knows this, which is why they didn't bother with anything besides a one-off for that entire property. TSR failed because it was a floundering, inept behemoth. Knowing what gamers wanted wouldn't have helped it one whit because it would not have been capable of acting on that knowledge competently in the first place.

 

[eyebeams]

What's your source for this? It doesn't jive with the information I've collected or the numbers I've seen.

Scuttlebutt here and there (I know, I know . . .). I also took the time to crosscheck high and low public estimates by Ken Hite and (where available) Ryan Dancey over the past 3 years. You end up with a plateau and a net decline. 2001-2002 are steady (well, there's a 5% drop, or so, but that's too small to count given the variability in the numbers), then 2003 divebombs about 20% (maybe a bit more; Hite seems to have been off in 2002, but opyimistic estimates go from 104 million to 75 million in the 3 year period; I'm being *more* optimistic than that). This is not so bad, since 3e sales in 2001 will probably artificially boost figures, but 2003 is certainly telling. Even 3.5 doesn't seem to slow this deflation. This is just RPGs.

My hypothesis is that 2002 was probably the year stores started to see that, say, Green Ronin and "Dude with a Ripped Copy of Pagemaker Games Co." ought not to be thought of as equals when it comes to stocking shelves and 2003 is the year that distributors, blind idiot gods that they are, started to actually figure this out.

D20 was not a failure by any stretch of the imagination, but looking longitudinally it seems to have made the general decline wavier, not necessarily smaller.

 

[mearls]

OK, the thing about game stores going under or being snowed in with exorbitant amounts of dead stock didn't quite match what I've seen. The dead stock is usually tied to specific game lines. My experience is that the trail of sales declines flowed from retailers, to distributors, back to the publishers. The first cut backs I saw came in early 2001. That's when retailers started cutting back the obvious terrible lines. I don't think things really pushed back up the chain until 2002. However, an exceptional product still can easily beat out sales numbers from the earliest days of d20.

The going out of business thing really caught my eye, since RPGs don't generally make up enough of a game store's revenue for anyone but an utterly insane retailer to drive himself out of business with RPGs.

My current impression of the market is that sales are in a state of flux. There is a very clear connection between reorders, continuing sales, and the general reaction I see to a product. There are a few cases where I see a product that gets lots of good reviews but relatively poor sales, but those are rare and usually tied to the nature of the product. For example, I'd believe that a book of NPCs could be a really good book but suffer from poor sales, but not a core RPG.

 

[eyebeams]

OK, the thing about game stores going under or being snowed in with exorbitant amounts of dead stock didn't quite match what I've seen. The dead stock is usually tied to specific game lines. My experience is that the trail of sales declines flowed from retailers, to distributors, back to the publishers. The first cut backs I saw came in early 2001. That's when retailers started cutting back the obvious terrible lines. I don't think things really pushed back up the chain until 2002. However, an exceptional product still can easily beat out sales numbers from the earliest days of d20.

The going out of business thing really caught my eye, since RPGs don't generally make up enough of a game store's revenue for anyone but an utterly insane retailer to drive himself out of business with RPGs.

My current impression of the market is that sales are in a state of flux. There is a very clear connection between reorders, continuing sales, and the general reaction I see to a product. There are a few cases where I see a product that gets lots of good reviews but relatively poor sales, but those are rare and usually tied to the nature of the product. For example, I'd believe that a book of NPCs could be a really good book but suffer from poor sales, but not a core RPG.

Well, I suspect a lot of stuff with game stores really have to do with the economics of keeping square-footage for RPGs. How much of a drop can a store take to be able to carry that dead space? How much cost is incurred in keeping the stock? This is something that would probably answer the question. Looking at a bunch of stores in my region, it looks like the successful ones either have almost no space set aside for RPGs in comparison to the rest of their stock (1-2 display racks in a mall, for example) or pay for variety by selling stock online or at conventions (one store I know of that devotes about 20% of its space to RPG -- and has a magnificent selection -- works this way).

Certainly there is a relationship between consumer satisfaction and success, but there's a wierd intermediary effect there too. I don't think you can always count on absolute sales. Certainly, products where it's harder to assess quality from the rack (NPC books, adventures) would be more prone to this, as would saturated areas (books on Orcs and such, character class guides). On the other side you have books with severe quality control issues (like Conan) that apparently do quite well. All in all, I think it's a complicated, bumpy ride that can't really be counted on to decide awards.

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

I'm someone who does not have much of an opinion on Ryan either way but I hardly see how what he has done will be worth prosecution. Yes, it is likelt illegal but I am not sure if it is worth the federal government's time to really go after him. The most I can see him being punished is paying a fine and MAYBE community service.