JohnNephew
First Post
Thorin Stoutfoot said:
[...John is furiously scribbling notes...]
Game Pricing
- Thread starter Ace
- Start date
[...John is furiously scribbling notes...]
Thorin Stoutfoot
First Post
More ideas for high value products...
Ok, I'll admit that you wouldn't have to do everything on my wish-list to pry a large amount of money off my wallet. (Plus, I expect that at a $100 price-point, I'd be able to get it from Amazon for $66, which is still less than a console video game, for a year of playing pleasure)
To my mind, at that kind of price point, the DM should have to do NO work to get the game to a playable form. Ok, maybe punching counters out of a counter page would be acceptable.
I'm currently working on putting together a handouts folder for my Masks campaign, and just the cutting, photocopying, and pasting and making props is going to take a significant amount of time.
Other cool ideas: how about a soundtrack to go with the campaign/adventure? Themes to go with each location, as well as NPC themes, of course. Maybe even downloadable videos to play for your group. (I'm toying with the idea of using some excerpts from "Baraka" the movie for some cults in the CoC game) I've seen some pretty cool Flash movies done on this site, and I'd love to see say, an on-line app where you could type in character names, and maybe upload a few character portraits (or pick for your PCs), and auto-generate a flash movie customized just for your campaign, for every "chapter" in it, you could do one of those --- it wouldn't cost that much, but it could add a lot of "wow" to the playing experience.
For me, campaign settings, supplements, etc, don't get to the real meat, which is the actual adventuring/playing. Those types of product wouldn't ever get a lot of money out of me, because I still have to put in additional work. But something that saved me all the work of doing a campaign would be exceedingly valuable.
Ok, I'll admit that you wouldn't have to do everything on my wish-list to pry a large amount of money off my wallet. (Plus, I expect that at a $100 price-point, I'd be able to get it from Amazon for $66, which is still less than a console video game, for a year of playing pleasure)
To my mind, at that kind of price point, the DM should have to do NO work to get the game to a playable form. Ok, maybe punching counters out of a counter page would be acceptable.
I'm currently working on putting together a handouts folder for my Masks campaign, and just the cutting, photocopying, and pasting and making props is going to take a significant amount of time.
Other cool ideas: how about a soundtrack to go with the campaign/adventure? Themes to go with each location, as well as NPC themes, of course. Maybe even downloadable videos to play for your group. (I'm toying with the idea of using some excerpts from "Baraka" the movie for some cults in the CoC game) I've seen some pretty cool Flash movies done on this site, and I'd love to see say, an on-line app where you could type in character names, and maybe upload a few character portraits (or pick for your PCs), and auto-generate a flash movie customized just for your campaign, for every "chapter" in it, you could do one of those --- it wouldn't cost that much, but it could add a lot of "wow" to the playing experience.
For me, campaign settings, supplements, etc, don't get to the real meat, which is the actual adventuring/playing. Those types of product wouldn't ever get a lot of money out of me, because I still have to put in additional work. But something that saved me all the work of doing a campaign would be exceedingly valuable.
Thorin Stoutfoot
First Post
More ideas for high value products...
[ duplicate post ]
[ duplicate post ]
Last edited:
mhensley
First Post
kenjib said:
WOTC is in a position to do this far better than any other game company in history. Being owned by Hasbro, they should have D&D in all the toy stores and department stores. Hasbro could easily make stores stock anything they want to push because of their position as the biggest toy company in the world. But do you see D&D in toy stores? No! Do you see any of the new Avalon Hill (another of Hasbro's victims) games in toy stores? No! The sad truth is that hobby games don't make enough money to matter to Hasbro and so they don't even try to market them.
The It's Man
Explorer
mhensley said:
I would love to have the chance to buy RPG stuff in my own town (where there are toy stores but not one game store), but I would hate to see what happens to the game stores if WotC would do such a thing. You never know, maybe WotC has some heart for those shops instead of a disinterest in marketing hobby games - just a thought.
mhensley,
Excellent point about WotC's positioning to expand the market. I wonder if they've tried to pursue this aggressively already. Indications are there but the products that they've released in this vein (Diablo II and the adventure game for example) just didn't have the right focus, which is why I think they fell through the cracks. They didn't go far enough toward making the games appeal to the mainstream in my opinion.
I dunno but perhaps they would all be targetting different segments of the market and in the long run the gaming stores would benefit? Toy stores might carry a Shrek game or Dungeoncrawl adventure game (with rpg adverts therein
). As these fans get older and transition into the d20 market they switch to the gaming stores where they need to go to get the hardcore supplies. Thanks to the increased fanbase the game stores get more business. I see the risk though, yeah.
As a side note fifteen years ago I used to get my 1e AD&D books from Kaybee Toys. Why were they in toy stores way back then but not now?
Excellent point about WotC's positioning to expand the market. I wonder if they've tried to pursue this aggressively already. Indications are there but the products that they've released in this vein (Diablo II and the adventure game for example) just didn't have the right focus, which is why I think they fell through the cracks. They didn't go far enough toward making the games appeal to the mainstream in my opinion.
The It's Man said:
I dunno but perhaps they would all be targetting different segments of the market and in the long run the gaming stores would benefit? Toy stores might carry a Shrek game or Dungeoncrawl adventure game (with rpg adverts therein
). As these fans get older and transition into the d20 market they switch to the gaming stores where they need to go to get the hardcore supplies. Thanks to the increased fanbase the game stores get more business. I see the risk though, yeah.As a side note fifteen years ago I used to get my 1e AD&D books from Kaybee Toys. Why were they in toy stores way back then but not now?
WizarDru
Adventurer
kenjib said:
Because back in the day, there were no 'game stores' any more than there were 'comic book shops'. You bought RPGs in toy stores and hobby shops (usually next to the model railroad stuff) and comics in the drug store. The retail distribution market has metamorphasized so much in the last two decades, that such a model no longer holds any relation to what we have today.
drnuncheon
Explorer
King_Stannis said:
And if you knew that paying the higher price would let him keep writing A Song of Ice and Fire, instead of abandoning the series for a lucrative career managing the local pizza joint? Even if you weren't going to buy the book at the higher price, I don't think you can begrudge him wanting a living wage for his efforts.
You said "does anyone really care about the people who make product x or y when they buy it? of course not, so why should rpg's be any different. i think i used the 10 year old girl making shirts in some sweatshop in the far east. "
Let's face it, the sweatshop shirtmaker is interchangeable with any other sweatshop shirtmaker. It won't affect me any if that 10 year old girl quits and is replaced by another. George Martin isn't - his stuff is unique. So is the stuff put out by any individual game designer - they're not interchangeable. If one of them quits it will affect me in some small way.
So I'm willing to support the ones whose work I like by buying the stuff, even if it's at a higher price - because I want to keep seeing work from those people. The value of their work - and the encouragement to continue that work - is higher than the price currently put on it.
J
King_Stannis
Explorer
drnuncheon said:
fair enough...but let me throw a hypothetical at you. what if monte cook walked out of the rpg business. i have no figures to back it up, but i'd say that if anyone was successful in this biz it would probably be him. what if you are a huge monte fan. you buy his products, everyone buys his products. he is, we would term "a success".
now suppose, despite all of this support, monte stops making games one day because he is burnt out or he becomes a devotee of jack chick.
now you, i and just about everyone else have done everthing we could to make him as successful as anyone in the biz. but on a whim he quits. does monte then "owe" us anything? of course he doesn't. you can support someone all you want, and that's great. but just know that it's not a two way street. your loyalty could be spurned for reasons that have nothing to do with economics. and suppose by supporting him, you didn't support a young rpg writer at "company z", who really showed promise with an adventure he had written. but, in making an economic choice, you opted to support someone you were familiar with and someone you wanted to make "happy". young writer concludes that if you aren't already "a name", you might as well not even waist your time in this business. he quits and pursues a career in the computer industry. now the industry is short his talent, too, because you aren't making decisions of cost vs. value as a consumer. you are allowing your heart to make decisions for you.
to me, that is what happens when you don't judge each individual product on it's own merits. by blindly supporting a product because of its author - despite it's utility to you, someone else may get hurt (economically) by your decision.
i'm not saying your wrong for doing what you do in supporting your favorite rpg "personalities". occasionally, i do it myself. however, i think your wrong in assuming that it is as simple as:
a) you buy rpg designer "x"'s stuff
b) rpg designer is happy
c) rpg designer will continue making stuff as long as
you continue to buy it.
other variable enter into it.
