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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 1689424" data-attributes="member: 2205">I'm sorry, Umbran, but your argument seems full of unprovable (and unlikely) assumptions that ultimately sinks it.  You hold out late era TSR as a company that wasn't sunk by poor sales, yet offer no concrete example of why it did sink.  You also state that the products were indeed poor, and it's common knowledge (although also an assumption, at the end of the day) that TSR's market share was being rabidly eaten away by the likes of White Wolf and others in the early/mid 90s.  You also ignore the statements made by WotC personnel about the demise of TSR based on their due dilligence done when they bought them.Granted, that analysis was mostly done by Dancey, and given the original topic of the thread, you may have reason to doubt his credibility.  But then, in place of his evidence, you quote Gary Gygax, who was not involved in TSR management at the time and has no reason to know if they were making golden parachute strategies, or if their product was what sank them.  In addition, as the ousted former head guy, he certainly has questionable credibility when expressing his opinion on the management strategies at TSR.I think it a fair assumption, based on industry professionals who were involved in the sale of TSR at the time, that TSR indeed sank itself due to product that was either poor in quality or at least poor in terms of meeting customer needs.And ultimately, that's what this whole discussion, tangents aside, has been about for the last several pages.  The Origins Awards have been notorious amongst those who pay attention to them as being a bit of a fake award in a way; it doesn't mean anything other than you were able to play the GAMA politics games very well.  I've already stated my doubts about using sales as a substitute, but certainly GAMA could do worse than to start with the big sellers when nominating games for awards; usually there's a reason they're big sellers, and despite the many claims to the contrary here, the external factors do not completely wash out the correllation between high sales and a good product.Also, you state (correctly) that free market economic theory doesn't play out in reality, citing a number of short term examples.  However, in the long run, typically free market economic theory does show itself.  Gamers may buy poor product not really knowing what it is, but after a while they won't continue to do so.  In the long run, market inefficiencies correct themselves.</blockquote>

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