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Message: <blockquote data-quote="spacecrime.com" data-source="post: 171589" data-attributes="member: 753">IMHO, professional presentation is like porn. You know it when you see it.No, I don't think that's what bottom-middle-top is about at all. What you're describing is the difference between lousy product and good product. But as James Ernest proved, cheap doesn't have to mean bad.Look at cars. Kias and Accents and Corollas are cheap, but they're perfectly decent little cars. They aren't fast or fancy, they don't come with exciting features, but they get you where you want to go. The more expensive cars are just as good at getting you where you want to go, but they've got more features and frills. You can drive them faster on lonely mountain roads, there's leather seats and Onstar, you can fit 8 friends and their surfboards and turn the car into a pickup -- whatever. Not everyone buys expensive cars -- but a lot of people do, and the profit from expensive cars keeps a lot of companies that also make inexpensive cars in business. All this despite the fact that if you just want to get from here to there, you can do it in a Kia just as easily as in a Porsche.If cars were like the gaming model you describe above, the low-end car would be missing a wheel, the steering would be crooked, and headlights would be extra. That's a nightmare, and it's a testament to the immature state of the game business that the gaming equivalent of three-wheeled cars are put on the road every year. It's a good thing bad RPGs don't get people killed, because there are some real lemons out there.So. What's in a low-end game? Well, we can start by looking at what's in the one really successful low-end game company in the business: Cheapass. Cheapass is cheap, but it's always professional. What they make is functional and looks good, even though it uses inexpensive materials and black-and-white design.Good low-end products need to be playable with a minimum of effort and expense. They need to use standardized parts to minimize time and money spent on manufacturing. They need to be easy for first-time buyers to use -- and unless the company has found a profitable niche selling only low-end product, the product needs to build brand fondness  so that the customer can eventually be upgraded to higher-margin products.Corollas and other first cars do that. Cheapass does that (though they don't really do high-end products.) SJG's new Car Wars might do that; it's too early to tell. Mage Knight and Magic and possibly GW do that very well, not least because CCGs and minis games are self-scaling products. Entry is cheap, quality is high, and you've got lots of incentive to upgrade.I don't think there is a true professional low-end product in gaming today. The D&D intro kits might be, but after observing sales patterns for a couple of years now I'm skeptical. They're great training tools for kids who are already going to get into full D&D, but I don't think they're complete enough in themselves. The PHB seems to be a better entry into D&D than the intro kit is, but that may because of the network of players surrounding it teaches the game. (As Ryan D has pointed out every once in a while, the player network is a big benefit of D&D.)I'd characterize most of the professional products being produced today as mid-range products. They do the job, each product has some unique features, but they don't include luxury options that make the experience complete. I actually don't think leather-bound products are high-end. To go back to the car model, buying a leather Call of Cthulhu or a leather Vampire is more like getting a mid-range car with the sporty options than getting an expensive car. A true high-end/premium product has got to do more than just gussy up the mid-range product a little. I love Ryan's "adventure with everything including miniatures" idea, and I think there are more features to offere beyond a gussied up physical product. For instance, a true high-end RPG might support regular adventure or supplement downloads, a campaign advice hotline, or a free monthly fan magazine for the game. Or let's get a little wild: how about an exclusive club at the local game store -- with free pizza and beer every week? Or an annual convention in Vegas with free room and board? Those are just the first random ideas that popped into my head. The point is that "real" industries make a lot of money by identifying big spenders and sparing no expense to make them feel good. That might be possible in gaming -- we don't know because we only think we've tried.cheers,</blockquote>

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