Game Pricing

[Hard8Staff]

The really thick-headed/dense ones stick around longer for more abuse (9 for us!). Praise from gamers keeps us coming back for more abuse.
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Mr Kenzer

I wouldn`t take a bet you get weeded out as long as you hold your Quality Standard like Kok and Geneavue.
BTW when ist KoKPG in Germany?
Are you again at the GAME Essen this year?

I count Penumbra titles in the excellent category, along with the Kenzer products.

Now I KNOW you guys are just saying that stuff to keep me coming back to the fwell of financuial punishment. Damnit all! I feel like a superhero that's given away his weakness.

Well, John N. has already said about everything I could on this subject as a publisher. John, when you rule the world, buy us, I'd love to work for you!

sword-dancer: KoKPG should be there any day! Right now the plan is that I'll be in attendance at the massive ESSEN faire (and for those of us stateside, I DO mean massive. Think MUCH bigger than GenCon).

Chris A. : fish white butt? LOL!! Why don't you stop beating around the bush and tell us what you really think??

Seriously, though, Mr. Space-Crime is right. Most of us publishers would perish without retailers -- including the RPG branch of WOTC, IMHO. Perhaps only GW would survive largely intact. Cutting out retailers would place us right where we were in 1976: monochrome covers and poorly-edited 16 page products with lousy art (or PDF downloads that were very hit or miss).

G'Night all and Be Excellent to One Another!

David Kenzer

PS And I didn't even mention Mystara!

 

[ConcreteBuddha]

I've been thinking this subject over, I took a couple of days to get my thoughts collected and I think I'm ready to make a point here:


RPGs are books.


Now this is a crucial point, IMO.

I agree that with an average roleplaying book ($20) you can eke out many hours of leisure enjoyment. Compared to a movie ($8 for 2 hours) or a video game ($50 for 50 hours), it seems like a roleplaying book is a wiser investment.

However, when a consumer picks up a book, any book, from a "normal" bookstore (Waldenbooks, Barnes and Noble), they are "used" to paying $5 to $30 for a book.

This is the perceived Value inherent in the medium. This is what defines the basis of whether someone will spend money on the medium.

It doesn't matter if the book took 100 years to write or if the quality is above par or how many authors contributed or what have you. All of this stuff is a modifier, while the physical representation of the product is what defines how much a consumer is reasonably willing to pay for said product.

Let's look an example of another book: Moby Dick. Someone is reasonably going to pay anywhere from $5 (cheap paperback) to $30 (collector's hardback) for this book. And that is quality literature that took someone years to write.

When a person is walking through an average bookstore, and all of the other books are on the $5-$30 price scale, if that consumer picks up a roleplaying book, and the price tag says $50, their gut feeling is going to balk at paying that because the price is outside the norm of the medium .

Therefore, IMHO, RPGs are not going to reasonably increase in price until the medium (book) generally increases in price.
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Are there things that retailers and publishers could do to "fix" this problem? Yes. They could:

1) Separate each book into multiple trash-romance-style, "mini" books. A lot of publishers already do this and it doesn't work for reasons that another poster already pointed out. (I think it was John Nephew, but don't quote me on this.)

2) Combine the roleplaying books with another medium and sell them at a higher value. As in boxed sets, miniatures, computer programs, etc...

3) Change to or create an alternative medium for RPGs. This is by far the most drastic, but not necessarily unrealistic.

I was thinking that a better medium for RPGs would be a laminated hard copy of rules and statistics in a 3 ring binder that is specifically marketed towards actual gameplay. It would come with erasable pens and an eraser. The supplements (MM, class books, etc...), would all be laminated with holes punched in them for easy addition to the binder. The binding would not break, you could spill stuff on it and it would clean, you could mark up the rules...

And the best part about this is: it is a new medium. A publisher could call it and price it at whatever would sell and the consumer would not have the "book prejudice" that plagues current RPG manufacturers.

If this is not a new idea, then please tell me why it is not functional. (Because I'd really like to see the PHB in a laminated, indexed, easy to follow, no mess, markable medium. I'd pay $60 for that.)

 

[drothgery]

I've been thinking this subject over, I took a couple of days to get my thoughts collected and I think I'm ready to make a point here:


RPGs are books.


Now this is a crucial point, IMO.

I agree that with an average roleplaying book ($20) you can eke out many hours of leisure enjoyment. Compared to a movie ($8 for 2 hours) or a video game ($50 for 50 hours), it seems like a roleplaying book is a wiser investment.

However, when a consumer picks up a book, any book, from a "normal" bookstore (Waldenbooks, Barnes and Noble), they are "used" to paying $5 to $30 for a book.

RPGs are books. But they aren't mass-market novels, which are usually much cheaper than other books.

Hardcover college texbooks were often over $60 and could top $80 when I was an undergrad, and that was only 3 years ago. It's not all that uncommon for a programming book to top $50 for a softcover. Management books much shorter than the FRCS will go for over $40 -- and will be paperbacks.

Heck, a new paperback novel usually has an $8 list price these days, whether it's a 300 page Pratchett or an 800 page Jordan.

 

[hong]

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.

Actually, I believe The Wick is now looking for a job. You could hire him.

"No, please, not D&D again! How about I run a nice game of Orkworld for a change? 7th Sea? Look, how about L5R?"

"Shut up and roll that d20, John."

 

[Numion]

Anyone who says $80 is outrageous for a book clearly hasn't attended university, and therefore probably isn't in the target audience of these 'top-shelf' RPG products in the first place.

(For example, a book on mathematical analysis, smaller than A4, 300 pages, NO pictures (no graphs, none. you'd have to see it to believe.) $55.)

 

[JohnNephew]

Here's some food for thought in the "RPGs are books" area. In many respects, they are most like textbooks. Doing them right requires a lot of careful technical editing (it certainly increases the value to you as a consumer if someone has been able to afford the time to double-check stats, right?), research, playtesting, illustration -- in short, it's a lot like the effort that goes into textbooks. And not a lot like publishing a simple fiction book, all text without any pictures or diagrams.

What do textbooks sell for these days? I know the RPG books I'm familiar with are generally selling for less than what I had to spend on most textbooks in college, more than a decade ago.

Browsing Amazon, here are some examples I come across:

An ESL textbook, 272 pages in roughly 9" x 7" format (smaller than the usual game book, but thicker than many game books too), list price $29. Since its thickness is less than half an inch, I'm assuming it's softcover and probably on fairly light paper.

A textbook on Estuarine Science, 416 pages (thicker than the typical RPG, let's admit), runs $30 for the softcover and twice as much, $60, for the hardcover. This one doesn't seem to have fancy color pictures, like say the FRCS.

How about a 432-page Introduction to Forensic Anthropology -- for $72?

Here's one a lot like the format of RPG books. It's near 8 1/2 x 11 in size, 282 pages, paperback -- pretty much the format of our Ars Magica game (which is 272 pp), in its softcover edition. But while Ars Magica is $30, the Forensic Anthropology Training Manual is $37. (They also sell more than us, on Amazon at least, if you compare the sales rankings -- 38,645 versus 170,385.)

Get up into the thick textbooks (600-1000 pages, say), and you're easily running in the $100-$200 range each. I think I like the 672-page Medical Entomology, with a list price of $260! And it's a paperback! (Although, oddly, the hardcover indicates the same price. There might be a data entry error there.)

My point is, if you compare RPGs to other small-press/specialty publications, they're pretty cheap, on average, especially when you're talking about the thicker RPG books. (I'd be interested to know how 64-page-and-under modules compare to smaller workbooks and similar things in the textbook market, if anyone has examples.)

 

[JohnNephew]

3) Change to or create an alternative medium for RPGs. This is by far the most drastic, but not necessarily unrealistic.

I was thinking that a better medium for RPGs would be a laminated hard copy of rules and statistics in a 3 ring binder that is specifically marketed towards actual gameplay. It would come with erasable pens and an eraser. The supplements (MM, class books, etc...), would all be laminated with holes punched in them for easy addition to the binder. The binding would not break, you could spill stuff on it and it would clean, you could mark up the rules...

This is an intriguing idea. Past experiments with different formats (e.g., the Monstrous Compendium as three-ring-binder) have typically gotten some resistance. However, if a person is making something truly more useful and functional, it may overcome that prejudice. My guess is that doing a 3-ring-binder with laminated pages would be very expensive, requiring a lot of manual collation and assembly. It would be an interesting thing to try, I'd do it on something that really made it useful. (I suspect that the book format, for many items, really is the best format for manufacturing cost and for keeping the price down.)

 

[SHARK]

Greetings!

Hello John! I believe that I can answer your question. Recently at my college bookstore I was just looking at some softcover workbooks for some different classes. As I said, they are softcover, 8 1/2x11 or larger, 200-300 pages, usually running about $35-60.00 new, $25-35.00 used. Of course, new, hardcover textbooks often run between $60-120.00, easy.

In a post earlier, I mentioned that most of the hardcover History, Philosophy, and Theology books that I purchase have dense text by experts in the field, color photos/drawings, and many color and black/white diagrams and maps, as appropriate. They usually have between 300-600 pages or so, and minimum price is $30. Many, obviously, are considerably more, like in the $40-100.00 range, depending on author, publisher, and subject material, as to to what degree of scholarship it is written. Usually, the more scholarly of content and focus, the more expensive it is. The somewhat less scholarly, easier to read and comprehend, it tends to be a bit cheaper in price. It is from being immersed in this particular environment that I have come to see that books for RPG's are comparitively less expensive to a significant degree.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

 

[ConcreteBuddha]

I would contend that "college textbooks" are not the same medium as "mainstream books."

Why?

1) College textbooks are not subject to market forces such as supply and demand. Publishers of college textbooks have a monopoly on the books that get used at that level. Students are forced to buy those books to pass the classes. Hence why the publishers can charge larger sums. If you put those exact same books in a Barnes and Noble, they would not and do not sell at those prices.

2) College textbooks are not leisure books. All of the books at a Barnes and Noble are leisure books. RPGs are leisure books. Hence why RPGs get "leisure book" prejudice instead of "this is a requirement so I can pass college" prejudice.

Yes, I attended college. Yes, I bought the books. But I still would balk at a $60 RPG book. Why? Leisure book prejudice.
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As per the laminated binder idea:

I know the monsterous manual did that in 2ed, and we had a copy, but it was bulky and cumbersome. I want a streamlined, sleek PHB and DMG binder with relevant rules in easy-to-use category dividers, alphabetized skill lists with two skill descriptions on a page, and alphabetized spell-lists in small print with four or more spell descriptions on a page.

In essence, make the SRD friendly, get rid of the art, make the binder snazzy, change the print size to fit the relevance of the material, print to the edge of the laminated page, and market it as the handiest RPG tool out there! Ease of use with no dog-eared, soda-stained, broken-binding books!

I understand that printing costs would skyrocket, but we are talking about the game-for-high-end-gamers here. Charge $99.99 for this. I would buy it.

(Damn, I should be in charge of marketing for WotC...)

 

[Eosin the Red]

I bought a PEARLS abbreviation guide to medicine (3*5 B&W - binder style) for $40.00.

My "pocket" guide to ICU nursing was $80.00.

Both of these are books that I have to update every 2-3 years.
We won't even talk about the semester I shelled out over $1,000 on nursing books.

I was much more satisfied shelling out $25 for Geuaneve (sp) by K&C. I didn't mind the $40.00++ that 5th ed Champions set me back. Never even looked at the price tags on the Wheel of Time game & supplement until after I was home.

If you put those exact same books in a Barnes and Noble, they would not and do not sell at those prices.

PS - I bought #2 at B&N.

Double Edit: The PEARL guide was on 32.00+ tax

I forgot to mention the Drug guides that run me 39.++ that have to be bought each year (unless I am really lazy).