Game Pricing

[RyanD]

Re: RPGs of the Rich and Famous

And what part of HOLLYWOOD are from!

I'm from Bothell, Washington; a blue-collar suburb of Seattle.

Have you not Followed the resent story line here over the past few weeks?

I've been following RPG sales trends for 7 years.

The proof is in the sales - people are paying more for RPG products and sales are going up, not going down. Conventional wisdom about pricing's relationship to sales is demonstrably wrong.

We're in Games Workshop's territory now - people are complaining, but they're still buying. That's a good thing, not a bad thing.

What the heck does top-shelf products mean?

At a minimum, to me, that means a product with an SRP of more than $100 that you'd die to own, fantasize about owning, are jealous of those who own, and will sacrifice other areas of your disposable income expenditures to get. (And after it's been proved to be a viable market at $100, I want to see it tested at $200, then $300, etc. until we find out where the ceiling really is.)

Shouldn't all of you publishers put out TOP-SHELF products to begin with!

Publishers produce what they think they can sell. Nobody (in the RPG market) has tried the "top shelf" strategy because they think that you, the customer, can't afford them.

Despite the fact that you, the highly committed hobby gaming customer, spend an average of $40 a month on RPG products, regularly buy $800 worth of Magic cards a year, and will spend roughly $2,500 in a lifetime of buying GW figures.

TCGs and miniatures games know that you've got the money and will spend it if given the chance. RPG publishers are just starting to wake up to that fact.

When is the last you bought a RPG retail?

I spend my $40/month happily. On my floor, awaiting my weekend's reading and analysis are Hero 5th and City of Freeport, both purchased at full retail from my local FLGS (which happens to be a WotC store, but that's purely coincidental). In fact, I continued to buy products at retail when I worked for WotC (though I got the employee discount) because I wanted to stay in touch with the retail experience of the business I was managing.

 

[R.X.DIEM]

Re: Re: RPGs of the Rich and Famous

At a minimum, to me, that means a product with an SRP of more than $100 that you'd die to own, fantasize about owning, are jealous of those who own, and will sacrifice other areas of your disposable income expenditures to get. (And after it's been proved to be a viable market at $100, I want to see it tested at $200, then $300, etc. until we find out where the ceiling really is.)

You're Messed up! Are you sure you never worked for Games(Greeds)workshop?

 

[jasper]

ot movies more $$$

....
You can see it in other luxury industries too. People complain about movie ticket prices, but total box office goes up, up, up each year, despite the heavy competition of DVD and first run cable stations....

Last time I heard attendance to movies has been almost flat for 3 years. however the seat price has increase.
I wish instead $$$$ millions a movie gross a weekend, the number of tickets sold would be given.
So some of grandfather classics would still be top box office
Remember Gone with the wind rake in 1 million over the first ten years of release since my father say the show cost 5 to 10 tens a ticket you firgure how much in today dollars it took in.

 

[Thorin Stoutfoot]

Money for luxury items

R.X. Diem, if you're truly worried about your wife and kids, then you shouldn't be spending money on gaming. I save about 40% of my gross income, and I don't buy what I don't need. But I applaud there being good products that will deliver what I need, and am willing to pay top dollar for them!

If you wish to buy every product out there, then of course products will never be cheap enough for you, but many of us don't reach for our wallets on impulse --- we only do so after careful consideration as to whether the product fills a need, as opposed to just satisfying a want. As such, higher prices don't really affect us --- I don't have a library of unused products, for instance, sitting on my shelf. Every item I buy has to justify its presence.

For those of you who don't have a lot of money, consider a subscription to Dungeon magazine. It is easily the best deal out there --- you can run entire campaigns out of it, and not buy anything else. With the new inclusion of the Polyhedron mini-games, you can play 5 different genres a year, and still not have to buy any product.

 

[Ashtal]

R.X. Diem - reign it in.

You can discuss and debate, but check the attitude at the door.

 

[Pramas]

Re: Pay for authors

Does no company/publisher add "commission" to an author's salary? If Monte, Skip, and Jonathan each had 50 cents for every DMG, PHB, and MM sold....

OK, not the best example since it's a WotC product.

But any "commission" or royalty--however small--would be a nice bonus for authors. And the "reward" scales up with sales.

Maybe companies already do this. I know one GURPS author, and every time I tell him I'm buying one of his books, he tells me he'll buy another french fry with the royalty.

Royalties are relatively rare in the RPG biz. I started freelance writing in 1993 and I've gotten royalties on exactly one book.

Green Ronin, however, does offer a royalties. Our basic structure is a royalty that kicks in after we've sold a certain number of books. Basically, if someone writes a great book that keeps selling, we want to reward them for that.

 

[trancejeremy]

What I'd like, is RPG companies to stop griping about RPGs priced too low, and start practicing what they preach. If they feel RPGs are too cheap, they should charge more.

Some, like Green Ronin, are charging more. Freeport is very high priced for it's size, but it apparently still selling very well. But most seem to gripe a lot.

 

[Storminator]

God I love this thread!

I am soooo encouraged now! A full time game designer makes 15-20K a year?!?!?

As soon as I pay off that student loan and my son moves out I'm hiring a full time, live-in game designer! I'll toss in a little extra and make him DM every Firday night!

Damn, that's gonna be so cool.

PS

 

[widderslainte]

I don't think you'll get too many arguments (around here) that game designers shouldn't be well paid. I think some of the disbelief surrounding salaries of people in the industry is because the people on these boards seem the value in their work. That being said, there are a lot of people in our society who should be paid more than they are (like teachers). Plenty of people make sacrifices to do work they love - actors, musicians, archaeologists , writers in other fields.

But there are plenty of crappy starving artists that don't deserve to be paid a decent salary for full-time work. I wish I could get back all the dollars I've spent on lousy RPG books and give it to the good writers. I would rather have some of prestige classes on these boards published than half of what I've seen in published books. I'm hoping the internet and promise of pdf sales will allow more people to get their work out.

 

[JohnNephew]

I'm here to tell you, that raising the price for your sourcebooks and adventures by a buck or two is not going to double those people's salaries.

Surprisingly, a modest price increase can dramatically alter the bottom line. I once ran a spreadsheet on a product and discovered that if I had increased the retail price by 25%, the profit from selling through the print run DOUBLED. So actually, in some cases, a $1 or $2 increase in the price of a product might make it possible to double the writer's fee and still make the same profit on the bottom line.

Thing is, as a publisher, it's traditionally been safer to pay the writer less and not risk the consumer backlash from a price increase. Besides, I always loved plain ramen when I was a freelancer! Freelancers these days, they all whine about wanting meat and veggies in their ramen once a week, and go on complaining about their rickets and scurvy. Luxury!