Whisperfoot said:
I have yet to hear about a time when an indie film was up against a big budget movie and won. They aren't even shown in the same theaters. Granted, every once in a while a very well made Indie movie gains enough recognition, it sometimes gains popularity and gets widespread distribution, but that's pretty rare. Remember Memento? Great movie. I never saw that come to the local theater. Did you? What about Pi? There's a long list of great Indie movies that just never attained the same audience as even the most vapid waste of film Hollywood pumped out, like Alien Vs. Predator: Requiem.
Define '
won'. A problem with such a discussion is objectively making that call. Popularity doesn't equal quality, it's true...but popularity is one of the few objective measures we can apply. "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" didn't lead a single week it was in theaters...but it grossed $236 million (on a budget of $5 million) by the time it was done. By contrast, "The Scorpion King" which opened at #1 the same weekend and was out of the theaters in two months, grossed $90 million (on a $60 million budget).
One of the most profitable films of all time is "The Full Monty", a small $3.5 million picture that opened on 17 screens and went on to become massive, grossing $243 million internationally. How did it wide release? Word of mouth. That isn't to say that this has any bearing on the quality of the movie...."Remains of the Day" and "Shadowlands" both won lots of awards and nominations, for example, but only grossed about $30,000,000 each, domestically.
AvP:R, by contrast, has grossed rougly $30 million off of very little advertising. It's clear that it was a pure cash-in...and judging by what the budget probably was, it won't clear that much money, even with DVD sales. For a 'see what marketing can do' example, it's a poor choice. Memento was a success: it started on
11 screens. It expanded, based on positive reviews to over 500. While it didn't gross the same numbers as "Pearl Harbor" that same summer ($40 million versus $200 million), on a per screen basis it grossed a lot more...and after budgetary considerations, it was a rousing success where Pearl Harbor was a considerable disappointment. And DVD sales of Memento were very strong, based on the extremely positive word-of-mouth and publicity it had received previously. So the idea that well-received, critically-acclaimed movies with very little marketing cannot succeed or only succeed very rarely is patently false. Of course, the label 'indie' is often not an easy one to apply: Is Wes Anderon's "Rushmore" an indie movie? It was made by Walt Disney, albeit indirectly. "Sex, Lies and Videotape", the original Sundance Phenom? Made, indirectly, by Warner Brothers. And so on.
This leads us to the question of D&D. How do we quantify quality and success? Just as with films, there is no simple answer: the only metrics we have to measure are active players and book sales. The former is nebulous and hard to track, statistically. WotC is the only company that even makes the attempt, afaik. People are still playing OD&D, AD&D and 2e. They once were wildly successful, but now have no active support. The question of market sustainability obviously plays a factor as does the question of where WotC makes it's money.
Chris Pramas is being SMART. He doesn't have the rules to decide on their relative quality. He doesn't have the certainty that his customer base will want or need him to move to the new rules. He has a bottom line to maintain and slim margins, I'd guess. RPG publishing is a niche market, let's not forget...chalking $5000 in his budget to get exclusive early access to the rules in a hope to capitalize on early arrival for the 4e market is a gamble. He's wise to consider VERY CAREFULLY how to proceed. That's simply good business sense...a trait that the RPG industry has generally lacked for much of its history, frankly.
