Dragon and Dungeon as PDF?

[DethStryke]

But I'm not sure that's a fair comparison.

It is one part of the larger arguement that includes cost, price and market realities. Since everyone else made the points for the other parts, I did not repeat them.

An e-book is a lot different then a game book or a game aid... You're not just reading it for the sake of reading it. You're using the things in them, sometimes to a great degree.

The major sticking point is simply reading text, not the use of content or reference there-of. It is easier on the eyes and more comfortable for people to read from a physically printed source. That has been proven scientifically.

...But with game material, I'm using the material within. I'm referencing it in adventures, and using it while at my computer.

This is the strongest reasoning presented FOR PDFs that I've seen, but the previous points above outweigh this (potential?) benefit. In the end, the company making the product in question needs a positive profit at the end of the day. If that need cannot be met, then any customer benefit, potential or otherwise, is moot and useless.

I can't tell you how many books sit on my shelves at home because they're too heavy to cart around to be used where and when I write adventures, or I just don't have the ability to take them with me...

I suggest working out with a strong set of upper-body strength excercises!

And it saves me a ton of time when to use a monster or trap, or spell, or effect, all I have to do is cut and paste...

As Umbran pointed out as well, this is actually a con in the eyes of developers in regards to protection of rights. While it is true that using these things in your home game is fair use, as you are not making money from it, these things can be abused which ruin it for everyone.

 

[Scribble]

As to your point about message boards...it is an interesting question.

To post on a message board (and I include myself here) puts you on a level of engagement far beyond the marketplace as a whole. While this may be mitigated a little by the fact that 'geek' culture seems to be online in higher percentages than society as a whole -- believe me, ENworld is still far from represetnative (though still heck of a place to hang out).*

Maybe? As I said I'm not expert. But do you read WIRED magazine per chance? If you do, there's an article in there about the internet chaging the way the world sees media. I'm not so sure the "typical" gamer isn't online on one message board or another. Maybe not THIS one, but somewhere online... Maybe it's time to rethink the idea of the typical person?

Again I'm not an expert just wondering.

It is one part of the larger arguement that includes cost, price and market realities. Since everyone else made the points for the other parts, I did not repeat them

The major sticking point is simply reading text, not the use of content or reference there-of. It is easier on the eyes and more comfortable for people to read from a physically printed source. That has been proven scientifically.

I'm not arguing that at all. I agree reading from a book is much easier on the eyes then a pdf. Which is why I said I'd never want reading books to go the way of PDF (at this point. When electronic paper is perfected???)

My point about it not being fair is because you can't discount the value of a PDF based upon reading books because gaming books also have the added function of utility that reading books just don't have. I think the benefits of the utility of PDFs will outweigh the eye strain...

This is the strongest reasoning presented FOR PDFs that I've seen, but the previous points above outweigh this (potential?) benefit. In the end, the company making the product in question needs a positive profit at the end of the day. If that need cannot be met, then any customer benefit, potential or otherwise, is moot and useless.

And I agree a company DOES need a positive profit. I'm simply arguing that PAIZO could make more profit by adding the option of PDF. With PDF as an option I believe more people would be willing to subscribe. Case in point, myself, and the over seas gamer! And I think these added buyers would offset the switch.

Other companies seem to do it just fine, so it's not an untested method...

And again I'm not arguing that the market should instantly switch over. I'm simply saying that I think PAIZO would benefit from the added option of a PDF version.

Especially with something as modular as their magazine!

As Umbran pointed out as well, this is actually a con in the eyes of developers in regards to protection of rights. While it is true that using these things in your home game is fair use, as you are not making money from it, these things can be abused which ruin it for everyone.

True, I know some designers fear PDFs for this reason. Which is the main reason I think we haven't seen a PDF version rather then it will split the market. But I don't think it's as big a problem as they fear. People who want to pirate things will no matter what form the media is published in.

I know several people who stopped pirating MP3s with the dawning of Itunes, simply because it was much easier to buy the song then it was to track down a pirate copy. There are still pirates, but Itunes wasn't the isntant industry deathray (dethstryke? ) the labels argued it would be...

I suggest working out with a strong set of upper-body strength excercises!

Hrmmm maybe I'll just ignore encumbrance instead.

 

[DethStryke]

And I agree a company DOES need a positive profit. I'm simply arguing that PAIZO could make more profit by adding the option of PDF. With PDF as an option I believe more people would be willing to subscribe. Case in point, myself, and the over seas gamer! And I think these added buyers would offset the switch.

Other companies seem to do it just fine, so it's not an untested method...

And again I'm not arguing that the market should instantly switch over. I'm simply saying that I think PAIZO would benefit from the added option of a PDF version.

Especially with something as modular as their magazine!

By that token, one could also argue that article by article could be made available, like tracks of music rather than the entire album. That may be a more realistic avenue than the entire magazine, especially if you include full pages of advertisements included in the documents.

The problem of content protection remains, but the real question that makes or breaks this whole concept is not "who would buy them that isn't purchasing the magazine already?" but rather, "If PDFs were available at the same time as the magazine, who would purchase them at a lower price INSTEAD of the print version?" The answer to this question can only really be answered by doing, and by then the venture is probably already loosing money like a sieve. The print version is proven to be a reliablly profitable product; anything presented has to add to, increase or at least do as well as that "known".

This of course assumes that no one will purchase a PDF of a magazine at the SAME price of the print version. International customers would, potentially, since shipping would be saved, but anyone who picks them up at the store or has a subscription (for which they receive a discount from stand price anyway) would not. All the more details that muck up the bottom line and move this from a clear-cut reason yes or no to a murky area brimming with possibilities that may or may not be fiscal mirages.

I know several people who stopped pirating MP3s with the dawning of Itunes, simply because it was much easier to buy the song then it was to track down a pirate copy. There are still pirates, but Itunes wasn't the isntant industry deathray (dethstryke? ) the labels argued it would be...

I dislike making this parallel as the music industry is a prime example of what happens when the extreme of market profits is reached and greed overcomes the companies in power positions.

Hrmmm maybe I'll just ignore encumbrance instead.

Or just purchase a trained hireling/henchman! They're only a few copper a day!!

 

[Scribble]

By that token, one could also argue that article by article could be made available, like tracks of music rather than the entire album. That may be a more realistic avenue than the entire magazine, especially if you include full pages of advertisements included in the documents.

Hrmm that I can see as being the death of Dragon. Maybe offering the most popular articles? Though?

The problem of content protection remains, but the real question that makes or breaks this whole concept is not "who would buy them that isn't purchasing the magazine already?" but rather, "If PDFs were available at the same time as the magazine, who would purchase them at a lower price INSTEAD of the print version?" The answer to this question can only really be answered by doing, and by then the venture is probably already loosing money like a sieve. The print version is proven to be a reliablly profitable product; anything presented has to add to, increase or at least do as well as that "known".

This of course assumes that no one will purchase a PDF of a magazine at the SAME price of the print version. International customers would, potentially, since shipping would be saved, but anyone who picks them up at the store or has a subscription (for which they receive a discount from stand price anyway) would not. All the more details that muck up the bottom line and move this from a clear-cut reason yes or no to a murky area brimming with possibilities that may or may not be fiscal mirages.

I dissagree! I think a number of people would purchase it at the normal rate and only recieve the PDF due to ease of use.

Offer it at standard rate with possibly a discount only if you purchase a subscription to print and pdf, then maybe in the future if they are strong, start lowering the cost of the pdf version.

Like I said, a subscription to Dragon is not my top priority right now because they tend to unfortunately go unused do to inaccessability.

Hey I'd even be hype about say, the ability of a subscriber to select articles and have them sent as a single pdf (for a price of course.) Almost like a customizable best of! (pipe dream I know)

 

[sckeener]

Roll your own

I haven't done this for Dragon and Dungeon, yet, but you could roll your own.

I recently looked into rolling my own PDF copies of my gaming books. Here is the thread on Enworld.

For those that don't want to click on that link, I basically talked to 3 IP lawyers about how to do it. It all comes down to the receipt. You have to have the receipt to prove purchase. A scanned receipt is fine as long as it shows your name and the product. Basically you are making your own watermarked pdfs. One IP lawyer with 20 years in the software IP field told me a horror story about how you could have the original software CD, license #, have the software registered with the vendor, and you would still need to produce the receipt to prove ownership. Without the receipt it could be stolen.....

Scan in at 300dpi and then ocr down to 150dpi.

One nice thing about Paizo's pdfs is each issue has all the articles seperated.

 

[catsclaw227]

I posted a thread about this very thing not too long ago (my search is still disabled AARGH!) but James Jacobs at Paizo addresses this specific topic quite succinctly.

Maybe someone who can search can find threads started by me (catsclaw227) and you will see this one a few weeks ago.

 

[James Jacobs]

Just to confirm what's already been said: Our license with WotC stipulates that before we can put a magazine issue up as a PDF, we have to be sold out of the issue in question.

 

[Mercule]

Thanks, James.

When/if that changes, I'm on board for PDF. Whether it be PDF only or in addition, I'm game even if it means an extra buck or so a month.

 

[Umbran]

And is there much of a difference between gamer and gamers who post on message boards? I think we're in a transitional element, and the new gamers just are more accustomed to using the internet and computers as a resource. I think more and more you don't have to be a fanatic to be on a board related to your hobby...

I think the last released market research from WotC was 1999, and it claimed something like 3 million people played some RPG at least once a month. Menawhile, EN World has something like 40,000 registered users, but the number of really active users is far smaller.

Even if we assume no overlap, and add all the users of the major gaming boards together, we probably come up with message board types being what? 1% or less of the total gamer population? That 1% coming from a non-random sample, we should very strongly expect that we are not representative.

 

[kenobi65]

I think the last released market research from WotC was 1999, and it claimed something like 3 million people played some RPG at least once a month. Menawhile, EN World has something like 40,000 registered users, but the number of really active users is far smaller.

Even if we assume no overlap, and add all the users of the major gaming boards together, we probably come up with message board types being what? 1% or less of the total gamer population? That 1% coming from a non-random sample, we should very strongly expect that we are not representative.

Right. As Scribble postulated, are most gamers online? Quite possibly. However...are most gamers visiting online gaming sites / message boards? Probably not.

Being a market researcher by trade, I know the danger of relying on "mother-in-law" research...just because you and your circle of friends do something, does not mean that you're typical of the broader population, and to assume such can lead you to faulty conclusions.

Now that I've slammed mother-in-law research...I'll provide my own. I'm a member of 4 more-or-less discrete gaming groups (my wife is pretty much the only overlap, being in 3 of the 4). Across the four, there are probably 30+ players (one group is a fairly large, loose-knit group of gamers who play together online, in chat rooms). Of those 30+, every single one is online, in some capacity (doing e-mail, if nothing else). However, my experience has been that fewer than a half-dozen of those 30+ have any involvement with online gaming sites, like this one...and I'm probably the only one that does so with any regularity.

Also, I'll postulate that Scribble's belief that many people would pay the full price for a PDF version of Dragon / Dungeon may be mistaken. Reactions from people to other PDFs suggests to me that many buyers believe that PDFs should be less costly for the producer (no printing, no physical distribution)...and thus, they expect to be able to buy them at a discount, compared to the "dead-tree" version.