Failed promises

[d20Dwarf]

If Alias can do it, why not Spycraft?

Because Alias did it well!






J.J...*does the "call me" gesture*

 

[Belen]

Seriously, my beef in this thread has never been about personal comments, so don't sweep me up in GMS's discussion. I'm focused only on incorrect criticisms of the works themselves. I have no problem with legitimate criticisms...I think I've been more than willing to discuss problems with books I've worked on without getting offended. But that doesn't mean I'm going to always agree, or watch a product, any product, get bashed for irrational reasons.

I was just naming a few designers that I respected rather than associating you with anything said in this thread.

By the way, Midnight rocks hard! I own every book in that series and the setting only gets better over time.

 

[d20Dwarf]

I was just naming a few designers that I respected rather than associating you with anything said in this thread.

I know, I just wanted to cut it off before it happened.

Thanks for the compliments. FFG was really lucky to get a few hardcore fans that were also great, imaginative writers, to work on the later Midnight products. It's through their hard work that the setting has continued to grow.

 

[King of Old School]

Your position does not take into consideration what being a more than casual "fan" means. A fan follows their setting through good times and bad, like a baseball fan perhaps does as well, still buying tickets when you know you are out of the pennant race or were never in it.

Actually, his position is quite clear on the more-than-casual "fans" -- they're bad for the industry, because their willingness to buy crap sight unseen means that more crap is published than would otherwise be the case, and this crap services a market which is ever-shrinking by definition (since the crap drives away all but the hardcore). If there were fewer of these "fans" then products would have to sink or swim on merit. He's already expressed this position in this thread, and I agree with Eyebeams on it. I don't agree with his position on expectation though, and particularly where a legacy brand like GW is concerned (notwithstanding that I personally liked GWd20).

(Incidentally, such fans can in extreme cases be bad for professional sports as well; taking your baseball example, a team with a fanbase that will sell out the park and snap up merchandise regardless of on-field results encourages a non-competitive owner to deliberately lowball the on-field product because, hey, why pay big dollars for a good roster when you can make the same cash fielding a bunch of bums on the cheap? And yes, this does actually happen in the pro sports world and it's not good for the game(s).)

As for my personal "failed promise" product: WitchCraft, by Eden Studios. Not because it was so horrible, but because it was not nearly what all the glowing reviews and testimonies online suggested it was. An example of how researching a product before buying doesn't always work...

KoOS

 

[GMSkarka]

Shadowforce Archer. When you've crafted a fun, playable spy game, I fail to see why you would decide to make a third-grade "secret supernatural" setting the official baseline of the game.

That has to do with a sad fact of the business, I'm afraid.....genre products mixed with supernatural/fantasy elements always sell better than "straight" genre products, for some reason.

Look at the relative successes of:

Boot Hill (or any other straightforward western) vs. Deadlands
Sengoku (or Bushido or any other straightforward feudal Japan game) vs. L5R
Cyberpunk vs. Shadowrun

For whatever reason, if it mixes fantasy into the genre, it sells better. I suspect that was behind the AEG decision.

 

[GMSkarka]

Your experiences are, obviously, your own and I cannot pass judgment on them in any particular.
You assume, however, that your experiences are normative. That does not necessarily follow.

Unbelievable.

I....

Forget it. Never mind. You've got more than one person, who have worked many years, for many different publishers, telling you how things are, and you're still clinging to your view of "how things are" like a drowning man.

...and clothing your argument in as many Debate 101 phrases as you can doesn't change the fact that your position basically boils down to "Nuh-uh. Is NOT. LALALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!"

Your description is so strained to make your "point" that you make writing for a publisher sound like confinement within a Dickensian workhouse.

My description is not strained, at all, in fact. Do you work in this industry? Have you ever? I've done freelance work for a dozen or more publishers, worked on staff for one, and been the owner of two....and you? Do you even know how much a writer in this business makes?

You know what? Never mind. I have no desire to read a long convoluted post that re-iterates your woefully uninformed (no, wait: not informed, because I, and others, have tried to inform you, but you're just not listening...how about "willfully ignorant?") position.

We're done, I think.

I apologize to everyone else for dragging this thread even further off-topic.

 

[tonym]

...Besides which, you'd be hard pressed to defend "it's crap" or "YUCK!" or "abomination" as a reasonable criticism.

What GMSkarka said.

When a person calls a book an abomination, he is insulting the writer, IMO. After all, no writer would write an abomination on purpose. Saying a book is an abomination is much like saying the writer is a "miserable failure as a writer."

Calling a book crap is like he is calling the writer a "crap-maker," and that is also insulting, IMO.

Saying "Yuck!" to a book is like saying, "I didn't like it A LOT!" This doesn't seem to insult the writer....but it actually does. "Yuck!" is usally exclaimed by children whenever something distasteful is applied to their tongue. Therefore, saying "Yuck!" to a book is like calling the book "a brussel sprout in the mouth of a 4-year-old." Which is much like calling the writer a torturer of small children.

My 2 cp.

Tony M

 

[diaglo]

Therefore, saying "Yuck!" to a book is like calling the book "a brussel sprout in the mouth of a 4-year-old." Which is much like calling the writer a torturer of small children.

My 2 cp.

Tony M

i loved brussels sprouts as a 4-year-old. i love them still.

 

[Macbeth]

i loved brussels sprouts as a 4-year-old. i love them still.

Brussel Sprout AND OD&D? Wow. You are quite the strange fellow. (And I mean that in the best way possible)

 

[GMSkarka]

i loved brussels sprouts as a 4-year-old. i love them still.

Mutant.