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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GVDammerung" data-source="post: 2755668" data-attributes="member: 33060">In other words - follow the market, don't try to lead the market? See what else is selling and do your version of it?  This is my pet peeve - derivative or predictable products that duplicate rather than innovate.  A company is far more likely to get my gaming dollar if they show me something I have never or only rarely seen before.  Another book on, e.g., the sea, new/variant races, old products updated to the latest rules, the Forgotten Realms (again!) etc. will not find space on my bookshelf.  I know others live for this stuff and I know this "conservatism" is not wholly responsible for any market doldrums but, at least for me, it is big. I respectfully disagree based on personal experience with gamers who play in published settings but not with the rules designed for those settings.  Thus, e.g., GURPS Forgotten Realms campaigns, Runequest Greyhawks games, Hero System Warhammer Games.  These different systems all compete for these gamers' dollars.  These different systems are all platforms for RPGs from among which gamers will choose which they prefer for their RPG experience.  They are then in competition.  On a larger scale, if a gamer wishes to play an RPG and has money to purchase and follow/support but a single system, all RPG systems are competing for that gamer's dollars.  I think you dismiss "the desire to play RPGs" too quickly.  Personal experience, again, but when I go into a game store with limited funds I must choose between Iron Kingdoms Libre Mechanus, Wotc's Heroes of Horror or Magic of Eberron, and Mongoose's Heretics of Tarantis.  All these and every other RPG I might buy are in competition for my gaming dollar.  I may, however, be unusual in playing broadly among RPG systems; I do not know."Best year ever" is not actionable without further details that Mr. Ryan is noted as having carefully avoided. See MerrickB quoted below.  "Best year ever" is devoid of a solid, quantifiable point or frame of reference and is thus puffery or spin, upon which no savy (or much less than savy) invester would rely.  I have no doubt Mr. Ryan is unquestionably _not_ lying.  Just as unquestionably, we have no idea what criteria he is referring to when he says "best year ever."  He could mean almost anything and be using almost any criteria; we simply do not know.  This does not mean his statement must be immediately discounted but it also does not mean his statement must be immediately accepted as synonymous with any particular rosy scenario.  Posters here are often asked for proof of their statements which they may not have beyond personal experience or observation.  It is then fair to ask the same of Mr. Ryan, who because of his position, does have the ability to "prove" his statement.  That he does not offer to backup "best year ever" with hard data is neither crime nor fault but it does render his statement unproven, unless by his mere position one must believe anything and everything he says, which would make for very short and much fewer threads.  Grains of salt are in order; season to taste.So, insistence/persistence equals truth?  If you say it often enough and loudly enough, it is true?  UGH!  That may be how you "win" an internet argument but it is hardly a marker of veracity - one way or the other, mind you.There is "no way" it cannot mean "increased sales?"  UGH!  Repetition does not signify any meaning beyond the four corners of the statement, which, as even you note, is devoid of specifics.  You are reading in with no basis upon which to do so other than mere repetition and an obvious jones for Wotc. And here we have the jones.  I'll credit your honesty and that information you can thereby cozen from Mr. Ryan or others at Wotc - but not much more.</blockquote>

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