Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 6758891" data-attributes="member: 8461">I think this is the pot calling the kettle black.No, it doesn't. Kickstarter doesn't "sell" anything. You can help to finance the creation of something, but it is not and never has been a sales venue. That's self-evident because you can't go and buy a copy of Primeval Thule there right now. Further, at the time you made that pledge you had no ability to go and pick up the book from anywhere else, so that drive was not competing with local retailers to get you to buy the book from them.As for the idea that "I picked up product X from Kickstarter, and so I don't need product Y from my FLGS," that's a canard. Even if they are targeted at the same niche, the competition between retailers is not fixed around different products that happen to fulfill that niche, but rather is targeted over who gets the dollars to buy the same product. Saying that two campaign settings are competing for dollars is a flimsy argument at best; many, if not most, gamers have more than one copy of a book that deals with topic/theme X, because they see them as supplementing each other, rather than obviating each other. If a Kickstarted product isn't going into a game store, then it's by definition not directly competing with that store. Saying that "but means they won't buy a very similar book from the game store" is a reason that doesn't hold up to scrutiny, because that only holds true if you presume that that same gamer will never want to buy any books that fulfill that same niche. If they decide that they want an "official" 5E release to complement, or try instead of, the third-party campaign they got, that level of reasoning works just as well, even if they go back six months later and buy the book from their FLGS.That's on top of the boatload of assumptions that have already been made in the above scenario, including that the Kickstarter successfully funded, that the person in question heard about it and pledged before it closed, that they selected a backer option to get a copy of the finished product, that it was created and delivered in a timely manner, etc.No, it's not. If those minis aren't going to be sold through a local game store, then there's no competition, because the store was never going to get that business. If those minis are going to be sold in a store, then it's still not competition, because the Kickstarter is directly funding the creation of material that the store can then sell, to their overall benefit.Unless Kickstarter has a way to keep ordering finished products after the funding has closed, then those "ways to keep buying" consist of "getting them through actual retailers."Correction: claiming that there is direct competition is not at all accurate.The competition is only ever indirect. Backing a Reaper Kickstarter might get you a bonus, but that's not taking away money from the retailer for those same products.You'd be wrong, in that case.Quite right, since neither Kickstarter nor iPods are a direct threat to an FLGS' business.The issue at hand is that these are two separate issues that have become conflated. WotC doesn't use Kickstarters for whatever reason they don't use Kickstarters. WotC also acts in ways to prop up FLGS sales. Saying that the two are connected is a theory that has nothing other than flimsy speculation behind it.</blockquote>

Verification