Dancey resigns as GAMA Treasurer

[Grazzt]

The most I can see him being punished is paying a fine and MAYBE community service.

And probably not even that.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Interesting in that in the discussions for revamping the Origins Awards, we have been discussing the use of smaller panels made of professionals from the industry associated with a given award category, retailers and distributors.

Thus, the final nominations would be selected by those who have a good idea of the standards of quality associated with products in that category.

That one knocked me out of my chair laughing.

Retailers and distributors are among the least informed segments of this industry. If sales figures are a BAD indicator of quality, then I don't know why you would want to hand over judgement to a group of folks whose involvement with any given product RARELY gets past the balance sheet.

I would describe the average retailer (and certainly distributor) as indifferent, at best, to the details of most of their products (and thus any non-sales-related measure of quality).


Wulf

 

[PJ-Mason]

On Dancy-

So far this is still all a "he said/she said" mess to me. When the whole thing comes out in the open, then i'll see. Assuming i ever care enough to research it myself. What i know for sure about Ryan Dancy is that he did one really great thing for D&D and gaming in general. Does this new fiasco cost him points? Yep. But then, he has some points to burn.


On Sales factoring into awards-

I think its appropriate for sales to figure in, as long as it doesn't affect the final result more than any of the other factors involved. Sure advertising has its effects, but so does word of mouth by locals who either like or hate a book. M&M was popular because most everyone who got it, loved it, and then told everyone else about it. Like i did. I think that had every bit to do with M&M's success as any marketing schemes GR was using. To exclude the average gamer's say in the matter then makes the matter of no interest to the average gamer. But then, most of these awards seem more like popularity contests among publishers anyway.

On Awards-

Don't need them, don't want them, couldn't afford them if i did. I trust my own judgement, my gamer-friend's judgements, and to a lesser extent my local gaming community (those i can walk up to and talk about a game with). A couple online reviewers also have my trust (or at least i understand their review-style to the point where i can understand how they reflect on my own personal tastes). Beyond that i don't care what others think. I certaintly don't care what the gaming industry and their "hangers on" thinks about their own products.

On Gama-

I've always heard about them but never really cared. I never even noticed they ran Origins until i saw it mentioned recently. i've done some research in the last couple days and I think that all this Dancy fiasco really did was alert a lot of people about Gama and its quagmire of gamer politics, in-fighting, personal wars....basically all the stuff i left behind when i graduated high school. Harsh? Maybe. But i call them like i see them.

I'll also add that Dancy is a pretty smart cookie. He wouldn't fess up to something he didn't have to, unless he thought it made good sense.
Could be this was all a calculated attempt to drive Gama to its death bed. Lets wait and see if anyone attempts to create their own Gama-like organization sometime in the near future and if they have any direct or indirect relation to Dancy.

Personally, i like to see a rules provision in any "Award committee" set up that prohibits any product related to one of the committee members own gaming company (or freelancer) from being nominated. Then we'd see how many would still be interested in the job. Without that, i wouldn't trust ANYONES involvement in the process. I don't care who they are, or how good a rep they have.

 

[Rasyr]

That one knocked me out of my chair laughing.

Retailers and distributors are among the least informed segments of this industry. If sales figures are a BAD indicator of quality, then I don't know why you would want to hand over judgement to a group of folks whose involvement with any given product RARELY gets past the balance sheet.

I would describe the average retailer (and certainly distributor) as indifferent, at best, to the details of most of their products (and thus any non-sales-related measure of quality).

The "average" retailer or distributor would not be on the panels. Those on the panels, if this suggestion ends up getting adopted, would be those who are members of GAMA and who attend the various seminars that those divisions of GAMA put on for their members, to make sure that they are more specifically informed about products and such.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

The "average" retailer or distributor would not be on the panels. Those on the panels, if this suggestion ends up getting adopted, would be those who are members of GAMA and who attend the various seminars that those divisions of GAMA put on for their members, to make sure that they are more specifically informed about products and such.

I'm not convinced that solves the appearance of self-serving, incestuous, self-appointed impropriety.


Wulf

 

[herald]

That one knocked me out of my chair laughing.

Retailers and distributors are among the least informed segments of this industry. If sales figures are a BAD indicator of quality, then I don't know why you would want to hand over judgement to a group of folks whose involvement with any given product RARELY gets past the balance sheet.

I would describe the average retailer (and certainly distributor) as indifferent, at best, to the details of most of their products (and thus any non-sales-related measure of quality).


Wulf

And why would they, they have nothing to gain. And no one realy listens to them. Some noises are made to placate them. But rarely does anyone really pay attention to them.

 

[buzz]

Tha amusing thing here is that, of course, a sales-based award would feature lots and lots of White Wolf PRODUCT...

:shudders:

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

And why would they, they have nothing to gain. And no one realy listens to them. Some noises are made to placate them. But rarely does anyone really pay attention to them.

Why would the owner of a business have a vested interest in developing a working knowledge of the products he is trying to sell?

Gee, you got me there.

You're right, utterly pointless. Far better to just order every damn thing off the new releases list and hope that your reorder of This Month's Hot Card Game can pay for all that shelf space you're wasting on products you know nothing about.

And if a customer asks you about a product, for God's sake don't tell him you don't know, don't tell him you'll find out, just tell him anything to get him to leave your store. "It's out of print..." is a dependable stand-by.


Wulf

 

[Umbran]

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."

It can be so defined, yes. But it remains to be seen if that is a useful or desireable definition.

Perhaps the most influential event to ever hit the American financial scene was the Great Depression. Should we call it the best thing to ever happen to American finance?

In order to figure out what measures of quality ought to be used, we need to figure out what the purpose of the awards are. If the purpose of the awards is for gaming businesses to recognize success among their number - to pat some of themselves on the back for a job well done, to say to themselves, "this is a good example of gaming business" then influence becomes a reasonable thing to look for. All the factors that bear on influence - product quality, marketing savvy, and the like - bear on being good in the business overall.

If the purpose of the award is to provide consumers with a list of products they might want to buy, then influence really isn't an issue. The consumer is interested in value to himself. He cares about the quality of binding and printing and editing and layout. The consumer cares about interesting ideas, and smooth, flavorful mechanics, etc. All these things may impact the products influence, but so do many other things the consumer doesn't care about. How influential the product was is pretty far down the list of consumer interest, compared with the factors that directly impact his own use and enjoyment of the product.

So, if the award is about how good a company is doing in the business, then go ahead and use influence. But don't expect consumers to give a hoot about the awards. If the award is about actual quality of product delivered to the consumer, look at the factors the consumer cares about directly.

 

[Desdichado]

To be fair, Umbran, your example is a bit of a red herring. A really bad product doesn't have the same effect on the RPG industry as the Great Depression does on the American financial scene. A product like Synnibar or F.A.T.A.L. may stir up a flamewar or two on rpg.net, and may even gain a perverse following of folks who want to be kinda campy (Chicago ENWorld Gameday and Synnibar?) but they don't impact the ability of any other product to sell. They just drop quietly off the shelves, and if they're truly bad, they enter a kind of bad games mythos, and that's about it. There's no way you can make any correlation between the release of F.A.T.A.L. and the sales of any other product, really. Influence in this industry by default is probably going to be good influence.

And to your point, it's true that the awards, if they want to mean anything, should look at factors that consumers care about directly. However, as I pointed out earlier, the only measurable standard by which to judge that is sales. Everything else is completely subjective.

I'm not really advocating that sales play a factor in the awards, though. I'm not sure that makes much difference. Frankly, I think the only consumers who are really interested in what wins Origins awards or not (and by that I mean a connected and informed subset of gamers) have probably lost a good deal of credibility for the awards in recent years due to some fishy selections. I'm not sure that the Origins awards can come up with a strategy that really undoes the damage, frankly, other than waiting it out.

Or, they can continue to not be about the consumer at all, like they mostly have been in the past. But if so, they can continue to expect that consumers are largely indifferent to them.