D&D 5E I just don't see why they even bothered with the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide.

[The Myopic Sniper]

I think that if you ever get to the point where a company like a Hasbro or a Disney starts offering major product launches on Kickstarter then Kickstarter has totally lost its instutional purpose and it will come entirely at the expense of small creators and studios for whom the site was originally designed. That way lies madness. I am surprised that Kickstarter fans would be pushing for major corporations to go this way.

 

[Dire Bare]

I think that if you ever get to the point where a company like a Hasbro or a Disney starts offering major product launches on Kickstarter then Kickstarter has totally lost its instutional purpose and it will come entirely at the expense of small creators and studios for whom the site was originally designed. That way lies madness. I am surprised that Kickstarter fans would be pushing for major corporations to go this way.

Has Kickstarter ever stated, "Our purpose is to cater to small startups?" I doubt that, but honestly don't know.

Disney is certainly a corporate behemoth, and unlikely to use Kickstarter. Although I don't think such a choice would cause Kickstarter's sky to fall, Chicken Little.

WotC is, of course, part of a larger company, and certainly isn't a small, nimble start-up. But I don't think WotC using Kickstarter would be weird, bad, or unfortunate in any way.

In my mind, Kickstarter's purpose is to provide a platform for crowd-funded projects that would be unlikely to get produced otherwise. This aligns well with small start-ups, but isn't exclusive to small start-ups. In my mind, there's no reason why a larger or more established company couldn't do a Kickstarter if the format matched their needs.

 

[Remathilis]

So, did we ever figure out why WotC kickstarted the SCAG?

 

[Mirtek]

- if those products had never been produced, he still would have had no sales, since it wouldn't have existed to sell it.

the key word here is "if" as companies use KS for product that would have been done anyway, KS just increases their profit margin

 

[Gareman]

If these products had never been produced, the alpha customers who buy games would have had money in their pockets for something else. That something else *may* have been at my store which would have resulted in sales for me. Before KS, a subset of those games would have been produced anyway and would have ended up on my shelves for me to sell. Then again, Fallout 4 is kicking my butt right now on the sales front, so there's no guarantee where that money would go.

Here's the reality though: We're in a game trade boom. CCGs are driving the creation of game stores and big profits for existing ones. Game stores are behaving like "real" businesses, which I haven't seen happened since I started over 10 years ago. We're also in a board game boom.

There are so many good board games from established companies that retailers can safely ignore risky bets. Kickstarter is the risky bet. Sure, there are some amazing games coming out on Kickstarter, but on average? Not so amazing. On average, they're average. I crunched the numbers a while back using BGG ratings of derived Kickstarter games. No better than average. That's board games.

RPGs have not been a significant part of most game store's sales in quite some time. I talk a lot about RPGs in my blog, but honestly? Like 5% of sales. I sell more FFG board games than I sell of all RPGs. So a Kickstarter for an RPG really only gets my attention if it's a) a 5E product, because I'm desperate for more of those, or b) a mainstream, usually second tier company that is using it rather than financing it themselves. Monte Cook Games got dropped recently in my store because of this. Anyway, so many great board games is why RPGs are getting ignored by the established game trade, which just means more KS and direct sales.

 

[DEFCON 1]

RPGs have not been a significant part of most game store's sales in quite some time. I talk a lot about RPGs in my blog, but honestly? Like 5% of sales. I sell more FFG board games than I sell of all RPGs. So a Kickstarter for an RPG really only gets my attention if it's a) a 5E product, because I'm desperate for more of those, or b) a mainstream, usually second tier company that is using it rather than financing it themselves. Monte Cook Games got dropped recently in my store because of this. Anyway, so many great board games is why RPGs are getting ignored by the established game trade, which just means more KS and direct sales.

Once again... another very strong argument as to why us RPG players and the game we love isn't nearly as important to the world at large as we keeping believing we are.

 

[Alzrius]

the key word here is "if" as companies use KS for product that would have been done anyway, KS just increases their profit margin

Sure, but that's a theoretical distinction, since we're comparing what might/could have happened to what actually did happen.

RPGs have not been a significant part of most game store's sales in quite some time. I talk a lot about RPGs in my blog, but honestly? Like 5% of sales. I sell more FFG board games than I sell of all RPGs.

I recently saw this in action. Last week, I went to a new game store in my hometown that had opened up about six weeks ago. When I walked in, there was one standing-rack of RPG books...and shelves and shelves of board and card games.

 

[Shasarak]

Once again... another very strong argument as to why us RPG players and the game we love isn't nearly as important to the world at large as we keeping believing we are.

On the contrary, this seems to confirm that we are indeed in the top 5% of the gaming population. =;0)

 

[EZrider]

Just popping by to express my mixed feelings on Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide.

I have never been well immersed in the FR lore so this aspect has been OKAY. I am very disappointed with the main map. It is poorly rendered and having it printed between two pages has half the major sites lost in the crease.

I would have like to see a book more akin to the Pathfinder: Inner Sea World Guide.

With the Inner Sea Guide we get 156 pages extra. Larger Area maps. A section dedicated to the factions of the region and lastly a huge full color Regional map that can be removed from the book. All for the price of $49.99

With the SCAG we get tiny area maps, very little info about the Factions of Faerun and the CRAPPIEST Regional map that is barely useable. All for the price of $39.95

I know i'd have gladly paid extra for those added features.
On the note of sales. As a worker in a FLGS/Comic shop, this book has not even received a sniff of interest from our customer base. We have sold over 20 rack copies of the PHB, over 15 Rack copies each of the MM and DMG but we have had 3 total rack copies of SCAG and the only sale has been to myself as a pre-order.

 

[EZrider]

You should just put a link to the Blog site down in your quotes section seeing as some of your links don't work.

By the way, i'll be perusing the site over the next few days.