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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Shaman" data-source="post: 2732526" data-attributes="member: 26473">Yes, I think you are missing something:Small correction here - I actually purchased two WotC books - I forgot that Sandstorm was a 2005 release and not 2004.I can't speak for anyone else of course, but nowhere have I said that it's not a valid model, if your concern is selling more widgets than anyone else.But I'm not a Hasbro shareholder, so I don't really care if Wizards of the Coasts is moving more units of product per quarter than the next five RPG publishers combined - what I care about as a consumer is a product than enhances my gaming experience and good value for my dollar.There's a strange undercurrent that I pick up from some posters that goes something like the old Charlie Wilson quote about General Motors: "What's good for Wizards of the Coast is good for gamers!" I don't understand this idea that if WotC is successful (and there's little question that they are), that somehow that inherently translates into better gaming for everyone. The only way I can even come close to wrapping my head around this is to consider that (1) Wizards of the Coast 'shapes' the marketplace, as GVDammerung phrased it, so the success of the smaller publishers is hitched to WotC's star, for better or worse, or (2) the fact that Wizards of the Coast is churning out its fifty-one flavors of vanilla is what creates the opportunity for the more novel third party publishers to stand out, like rubies displayed on a bit of vanilla-white satin.I'm not entirely convinced that either of these examples are true; I think one could make the case that WotC helps to stagnate the market by its business practices (e.g., release of 3.5) and its corporate competitive advantages (i.e., what would the RPG market look like if it was big enough to attract the attention of Mattel, bringing its resources to one of WotC's competitors? would we see more innovation from Wizards of the Coast then?). I honestly don't know enough about it to say for sure without access to a whole lot of proprietary business data, so unfortunately I can only speculate with the rest of the bunch.What I do know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is that the gaming books produced by Wizards of the Coast rarely excite me, so my consumer dollar goes elsewhere. (And in that I cannot be disputed! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> )</blockquote>

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