Game Pricing

[JohnNephew]

Inverting the Issue

You know what's crazy? The cheap games that are out there already. Look at this auction on eBay, for example. That's $46.80 in D20 adventures we've published (one of which is even out of print), at full retail. The current winning bid is $8.50...less than the suggested retail price of any of the four individual adventures. (These are all brand new copies.)

One way to look at the question of pricing is, how much would prices have to come down to get people to buy more?

R.X. Diem, you have some strong opinions, so let me ask you -- are you bidding on this auction? If not, why not? At what price would you feel impelled to buy these products, if not 80% off? Do you already own them? If so, how much did you pay?

 

[Archer]

At $40 for the epic level handbook, I think we are reaching the limit of expense for books. How many people would pay $50?

I think most instant adventure pamplets were overpriced for what you got at $2.49.

Many PDFs are overpriced at $5.

I'd never spend more than $25 for a 3rd party publisher's book unless I was VERY familiar with its contents. The problem is 3rd party publisher books are extremely difficult to find in a store.

I nearly never buy anything unless it is 30% off and somethings I won't buy until they are 50-60% off.

 

[R.X.DIEM]

Re: Inverting the Issue

R.X. Diem, you have some strong opinions, so let me ask you -- are you bidding on this auction? If not, why not? At what price would you feel impelled to buy these products, if not 80% off? Do you already own them? If so, how much did you pay?

It's a steal, Ill give you that. Good stuff too. I do own a couple of them but not all. I'm sad to see someone letting go of their DnD stuff but it gives others an opportunity to experience these at a remarkable price. And no I'll pass on bidding. I just got "CoC" new and signed from Ebay for $27.50.Another steal. It's a great book. Also "Tribes of the Heartless waste" still shrink wrapped for $9.95. But I am looking For "SPYCRAFT" on Ebay . Wish me luck!

 

[drothgery]

To sum up, my overall point is this: if we shouldn't care about low-income gamers (and I understand completely about games being a luxury and how capitalism works; I'm an ardent capitalist), then why should we care about low-income game designers? If we won't cut the low-income gamers slack, why should we cut the designers slack? I'm mainly reacting against the attitude that some gamers have that not only should game companies raise prices, but that they'll have unswerving support for doing so.

I'm not trying to offend anyone, really.

The main problem with the current set up, where game designers make very little money, is that few people can afford to keep working as designers for very long. This leads to a lot of turnover, and a lot of companies being formed and going out of business in a short peroid (basically going from 'wouldn't this be cool' to 'we're not making any money'), making it hard to know where to turn to for high-quality material.

I don't care if there's a lot of turnover at Burger King, because one random teanager can make a Whopper just as well as another, for the most part. But creative group projects are hard to do well with a lot of turnover, whether you're writing code or designing a new RPG setting.

 

[R.X.DIEM]

At $40 for the epic level handbook, I think we are reaching the limit of expense for books. How many people would pay $50?

Archer, Some of these people say that the skies the limit, and their willing to pay what ever the sticker says! Their world frightens and confuses me. Oh yea, ELH, Amazon.com, just under 28 bucks. Happy hunting.

 

[drothgery]

At $40 for the epic level handbook, I think we are reaching the limit of expense for books. How many people would pay $50?

Well, for a high quality, long hardcover that I'm sure I'll use, I'd pay $50, which means it could list for $60; I buy almost everything from Amazon. That's what a good, new console game costs, and console games are about the most direct competion for tabletop RPGs in my budget.

 

[JohnNephew]

Re: Re: Inverting the Issue

Wish me luck!

I do wish you luck! (Spycraft is really cool, so I hope you find it at your price.)

OK, here's my opinion -- the system is working just fine, and it will work fine with retail prices that are higher, maybe even 50% or more higher. The guy selling those books on eBay isn't someone getting out of the game -- it looks like a retailer, selling at a loss (or else he bought from someone selling at a loss). Either way, it demonstrates that sharp customers will be able to find their stuff on the cheap, the same way that you are. It may take a little effort, but if the price matters to you the effort is worth it. (I'm certainly this way in finding computer parts and the like.)

The thing is, the fact that the eBay pricing is so low suggests to me that almost no one who wants to buy the product flinches at the asking price. If a lot of people were holding off because the price was too high, they'd be bidding up the prices on eBay to something higher. I could be wrong, but that's how it looks to me, and it backs up my experience with trying different prices in other settings (including my own eBay selling a couple years ago, convention "bargain bins," and all that).

One of the things to remember, from the publisher's POV, is that losing some customers may be more than offset by the increased profit of a higher price. And with the many discount outlets available, from online discounters to eBay, the reality is that someone who isn't willing to pay full retail probably already knows how to get a book for a lot less anyhow. There has got to be a price that is too high, where too many buyers put it back on the shelf and walk away, but I'll bet most game titles right now are still pretty far away from it.

Well, anyhow, I've rambled on way too much on this topic. I must say that I appreciate the lively debate, though. It really helps me to sort out my own thinking and analysis of issues like this to hash it out with a lot of other minds (especially minds that aren't on the same side of the economic equation as I am!).

 

[ConcreteBuddha]

Okay, my hasty generalization about the Barnes and Noble = leisure books was bad, I agree. Let me attempt to clear up the definitions of leisure book and non-leisure book, as I am using them:

Leisure books are a want .

Non-leisure books are a need .

With this in mind, I'll alter my original statement: I believe that mainstream bookstores cater more towards leisure books than non-leisure books.

My reasoning? I only have the train of thought that:
1) Businesses have target consumers
2) Mainstream bookstores showcase fiction, story non-fiction and hobby books prevalently at the front of the store
3) These books are generally a "want" item and not a "need" item.
4) Therefore, mainstream bookstores tend to cater to the consumers of leisure books.

This is not to say that mainstream bookstores don't carry "need" books, but that they are not the primary function of those stores.

I also think the computer book/RPG book analogy is invalid because non-game, computer-software books are not leisure material. In general, people don't learn C++ or Java for the only reason that they want to, they do it because they are making an investment in a book which they believe will pay off someday ( and it may be a hobby). This investment is a "need". As in, "I need to learn OpenGL so I can get a job."

Same goes for college textbooks. I would also contend that reference materials tend to be "need" items. I don't believe that "wanting" a dictionary is normal behavior.

When people buy RPG textbooks, they do not expect to be making money, directly or indirectly, in the future with that specific RPG. They do not "need" an RPG book. Hence why people balk at the sticker shock.

Non-leisure items, on the other hand, can have a decidedly higher sticker shock because the consumer needs the item.
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As per the laminated folder idea: I am not a game publisher. I do not know how to make it work. I do not know if there is a market for this sort of thing. It is up to the person (people) in charge of researching the project to find out if the project is economically viable in the long term. I just know what product I want as a DM and a consumer.

(The Monstrous Manual in 2ed was not the same idea because each monster is only useful once a session, whereas the PHB and the DMG are constantly being referenced during gameplay. Also, the SRD can be condensed into smaller pages that make more use of space and the whole thing can have significantly less pages than the Monstrous Manual did. Just my opinion...)

Also, I do not want that specific example to cloud the general idea I made in my first post that alternative mediums are a possible way out of the "leisure book prejudice" for the RPG industry.

 

[Thorin Stoutfoot]

regarding computer books

Even those computer books aren't very profitable for the writer. You get about a $10,000 advance to write a 500 page book (I'm speaking from first hand experience). If you're any good at your day job at all (and good enough to write a worthy technical manual), you'll discover that the opportunity cost of book writing is turning down often profitable contract work or leisure. After successfully selling my book concept, I realized that I'd rather spend my free time doing other things than writing a computer book.

And certainly, given the competition in computer books, I'd say that the consumer gets plenty of choices, and nobody complains that they are too poor to afford the computer book of their choice.

The difference is the RPG publishers will frequently price so low as to drive themselves out of business, whereas computer book publishers are much less likely to do so. They're still not wildly profitable, but they don't suffer from the turn and churn of the RPG business.

 

[Nightfall]

You know Bov, I TOTALLY agree. These posts and the dialogue that's been produced IS much better if you don't read RXDiem's posts.