Dancey resigns as GAMA Treasurer

[Nisarg]

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.

That still doesn't explain this sudden wierd inclusion Rasyr. You've been railing on about how the awards should not be about sales and evil capitalism, and yet you'd want your panel to have people (distributors and retailers) that are almost EXCLUSIVELY interested in the sales end of the industry? How does that even make sense?

Nisarg

 

[herald]

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

And tell me how many FLGS can afford to be a part of an organization that would be able to do that?
And how many FLGS can afford to send someone to Origins. How many can afford to spend time belonging Gama. How many can feel like they have an actual voice? How many have been nickel and dimed to death by Walmart.com?

Why would any FLGS ever want to have anything to do with Gama. How could they thin that any publication from Gama wasn't anything but a shill. To many vendors Gama doesn't mean anything.

 

[The Sigil]

In fact, most D20 products occupy the cheap seats of .pdf and POD.

Not a good comparison. The Open Game License allows companies - or fans - to create the material that occupies those cheap seats. If White Wolf opened up its "Storyteller" system under a similar license, do you think there wouldn't be a flood of cheap "Storyteller" PDFs, too? We both know there would be, and then there would be a large number of "Storyteller" PDFs in the cheap seats.

Compare WW to WotC, the "owner" of d20, and you yourself mentioned sales are comparable. But you'd rather compare one company (WW) to a multitude of companies, and pick the smallest examples to denigrate d20 as a whole. Let's stick to comparing apples to apples.

Again, if the "Storyteller" system were under an OGL-type license, you'd see Storyteller products right next to d20 ones in the "cheap seats," so saying that there are d20 products in the cheap seats is somewhat disingenuous. Somebody will be there, the OGL just makes it easier for small companies to do d20 rather than come up with a new system whole cloth (i.e., to use an existing system without fear of getting sued).

/rant

Finally, I really don't have any opinions one way or the other about Dancey except one... I am incredibly glad he managed to get the OGL to pass muster among the suits, as it puts D&D into a place where it can never be fully killed. If (worst case scenario) someone with a whole lot of cash were to buy up WW, decide they hated the products, and just shut down the company and litigate anyone who came up with anything compatible with the Storyteller system, that would be the end of WW's stuff. The OGL ensures that there can always be SOMEONE out there supporting D&D. That, to me, is worth of admiration. Not the person, but the act.

--The Sigil

 

[Umbran]

To be fair, Umbran, your example is a bit of a red herring.

To be accurate, I think it classifies better as an absurd argument - taking an example from way out on the fringe to prove a point of logic: that influence does not really equate to quality.

If you prefer examples that are easier to handle and are closer to home...

The influence of the TV show Survivor cannot be ignored. It has impacted the shape of the television landscape for years. It has "sales" out the wazoo. I dare anyone to argue that it is "quality" programming with a straight face. I double dog dare them to make the argument and not get laughed at

Hemingway - by all measures an influential author, but his books really aren't all that good to read. How is that "quality"? Or, if you'd like me to bring up one even closer to the genre: Laurell K Hamilton. She's got solid sales these days. She's got influence. But her books are horrible, stilted, cliched tripe.

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 reject your assertion. Just because sales are the only measure that has natural quantifiers does not mean it is the only measure. I in return assert that a measure that is as dependant (or arguably more dependant) on other factors than the one you actually want to explore is a useless measure. "Influence" and sales are simply too laden with other concerns to reasonably measure quality.

If you really want to reject subjectivity - any scientist will tell you that there are two ways to approach objectivity. One is to use a measure that is as objective as possible. The other is to use a carefully selected measure that is known to be subjective, but to take the measurements many times so that individual subjective components get averaged out.

The Nebula Awards and the Hugo Awards have for decades reliably pointed consumers of science fiction literature towards the best of the craft. Not that you'll like every story that wins an award, but the vast majority of those that win are really quality products. However subjective they may be, they work pretty darned well. Subjectivity is not leprosy, to be avoided at all costs.

 

[Nisarg]

Hemingway - by all measures an influential author, but his books really aren't all that good to read. How is that "quality"? .

Thank you for playing, and thank you for giving the perfect example of how "quality" is a totally subjective concept.

Hemmingway is considered by many to be both influential and of high quality, there are a lot of university professors, not to mention millions of fans, whose definition of "good" and "quality" are obviously very different from yours.

Nisarg

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

The influence of the TV show Survivor cannot be ignored. It has impacted the shape of the television landscape for years. It has "sales" out the wazoo. I dare anyone to argue that it is "quality" programming with a straight face. I double dog dare them to make the argument and not get laughed at

Heck, I'd argue it. Survivor was masterfully conceived. As a form of entertainment, based on its ability to draw viewers (no matter how contrived the drama), its quality cannot be denied. It performs admirably. It outperforms.

You seem to be suggesting that mere entertainment-- even in an industry that is 100% entertainment based such as television or RPGs-- is not a measure of quality.

You could argue that Hemingway's quality is predicated on the fact that literature aims beyond mere entertainment-- but that is only frequently, and obviously not universally, true of publishing.

I don't think that sales figures are necessarily a good measure of RPG quality, but neither would I suggest that something that neither sells well, nor entertains well, has "quality" of any validity in this industry-- I don't care if Hemingway himself wrote it.

Wulf

 

[Desdichado]

The Nebula Awards and the Hugo Awards have for decades reliably pointed consumers of science fiction literature towards the best of the craft. Not that you'll like every story that wins an award, but the vast majority of those that win are really quality products. However subjective they may be, they work pretty darned well. Subjectivity is not leprosy, to be avoided at all costs.

Bah! Humbug! They do no such thing. Hugo and Nebula awards mean very little except as a pat on the back from your peers. They suffer from the same type of problem that the Origins awards do, but not as acutely because at least the population affected is larger than for games.

Heck, the Oscars are in the same boat. The only reason the Oscars matter is because they are extremely high profile and even Joe Blow Americans like to celebrity watch, and the Oscars are the best forum for that. Although Oscar buzz may stimulate some additional short term sales, they don't stand the test of time. There's no strong correllation between Oscar winners and movies that are later considered to be the true classics (although ColonelHardisson, if he were still around, would be better able to address that, having made a point of studying it). In the long run, the Oscars are meaningless.

The Origins awards, being relatively small potatoes, catering to a much more restricted audience, and lacking any strong dissemination method, such as the Oscars broadcast, can't help but he burdened by the same problems, only magnified to the point that the awards are largely pointless to consumers entirely.

 

[mearls]

Allowing the members of GAMA's retail division to select the award nominees makes tremendous sense. They're the only segment of the market that has experience with all of the varied game categories that make up the adventure game industry (CCGs, boardgames, minis, RPGs). Retailers would also have a greater opportunity to craft the award's public face, increasing gamer awareness. The retailers would pick the games that would make the final ballot that gamers would vote from.

More importantly, it would give companies the ability to directly interact with retailers. As part of the proposal I'm working on for the OAs, members of GAMA would have the opportunity to ship samples of their games to all of the retailer members of GAMA. This would provide small press companies, or those that have been unable to get Alliance to pick up their products, with a priceless opportunity to show off their product to retailers.

Finally, my proposed system would include a panel of game designers specifically charged with presenting a yearly list of large and small press products (5 each) that they consider notable for design and quality. These notable products would automatically be entered into the final voting, along with the games that the retailers nominate.

 

[The Sigil]

An interesting argument, Umbran. Here, though, is the reason I gave the theory that I did.

The purpose of existence for a role-playing publication is to aid role-players in enjoying themselves.

In order for a role-playing publication to aid role-players in enjoying themselves, it must be used by role-players; if it is not, it cannot be the cause of their enjoyment.

A "good" thing of any stripe is that which most accomplishes its purpose for existence.

I think the quibble here comes in defining "most accomplishes." Some people say that means that is does an excellent job on the "micro-scale" - i.e., it is an excellent product because it helps my group enjoy itself due to (a) good writing, (b) good rules, (c) good flavor text, (d) good art, (e) good other, (f) all of the above. This is what I think a lot of people want to mean when they say something is "quality" - it does a "good job" describing a game (or a setting, or whatever) that the person saying it is "quality" would like to play in - whether that is for setting, rules, elegance, simplicity, and so on. This is a valid definition of "most accomplishes" but is horribly subjective because it is almost impossible to get any two people to agree upon exactly what set of rules is best. (Hence, the great abundance of house rules, not to mention different RPG systems). Other people say that "most accomplishes" should be looked at on a "macro-scale" - i.e., it is an excellent product because lots of people are using it (even if my particular group isn't) and thus the total enjoyment it is responsible for is high. The problem, of course, is that role-playing is a "personal" endeavor, and most people like to think of their own way of gaming as The One True Way, and anyone using any other rules isn't having "as much" enjoyment as they might have if they gamed using the One True Way. Of course, he's over there looking at you thinking you'd have much more fun if you'd subscribe to his One True Way.

At the end of the day, even sales aren't the best indicator of what is actually being played - I've bought a lot of things I've never played. But it seems to be true that in order for a product to be played, and thus aid in providing enjoyment to gamers, on either a micro- or macro-scale, and thus serve its purpose for existence, and thus be a "good" product, it has to be bought first. And that's the bottom line.

"Micro-scale" judging of quality is in many ways useless because, as I mentioned, no two people think exactly alike. What I think is "the bomb" might be the exact opposite of what you like. Thus, we're left looking at "macro-scale" judging - i.e., not "what do I play" but "what are most people playing?" Sales do not perfectly reflect play, but a low-selling product can't have a high number of people playing it.

Again, my theory is simply: High product sales indicate a high quality product. High sales imply high rate of play. High rate of play implies high enjoyment among RPGers derived from the product. By my own definition, that is (macro-scale) quality, QED.

It's not perfect, because what I really want to say is "high rate of play indicates a high quality product." But since it's almost impossible to quantify rate of play and since rate of play is a function of rate of sales, I go to the measureable quantity - sales.

And again, this is not to say that a high quality product necessarily means high sales (especially when we talk about a "micro-scale" of quality). It also does not mean that low sales indicate low quality. It means exactly what it says.

I would posit, however, that "high rate of continued sale" (i.e., sales volume over time when removing the "spike" of sales in the first 30 days of release) is the best indicator of quality - it indicates that a product stands the test of time and continues to appeal to gamers. That means it works on a macro-scale - lots of people are using it, and on a micro-scale - continued sales imply that many people find it quality and are finding it by word of mouth.

There's no "perfect" definition of quality, but again, I'm trying to reconcile two definitions taht may or may not work together.

--The Sigil

 

[billd91]

Thank you for playing, and thank you for giving the perfect example of how "quality" is a totally subjective concept.

Hemmingway is considered by many to be both influential and of high quality, there are a lot of university professors, not to mention millions of fans, whose definition of "good" and "quality" are obviously very different from yours.

Nisarg

But there's nothing wrong with subjectivity. All you have to do for the awards is collectively agree as a nominating committee that something has enough quality to be included in a list of nominees. I think we have to jettison the notion that there has to be some kind of objective measurement of quality and accept that decisions involving subjective criteria are appropriate when such subjectivity is handled well and appropriately.
With respect to Hemmingway, his works have been judged as having quality by a broad and diverse group of critics, experts, and fans through entirely subjective methods, but by such a diverse group that there's no reason to expect any systematic bias underlying their opinions. Well, there may be Europeans who think he gets higher esteem from American fans simply because he's American, but that's probably not a major bias.
If the nominating process polls a sufficiently broad base, you weaken specific biases.