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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RyanD" data-source="post: 2415896" data-attributes="member: 3312">To be clear:  This is not my argument.My argument (and this applies to all hobby games) is that games that are played more often than other games in the same category are inherently more valuable to the players than games that are played less, by fewer people.  This value is often an indicator (sometimes the only indicator) of relative "quality" (a term I hate to use in gaming because it is essentially useless barring a reasonably widespread definition.  But I'll use it in this post because most of those people who read it will interpret my use of the word in the way I intend it to be understood).There are no "poor quality" games that have large player networks.  They just don't exist.  You can't induce people to keep playing a "bad game" when "good game" options are available.  (In fact, if you read my recent posts here and on Mearls' blog, you'll see that I'm advocating from the position that D&D (and D20) have a lot of room for improvement - I'm not at all suggesting they're perfected products).The hobby gaming industry does not reward "poor games" with continuous, long term sales.  It does, however, ruthlessly weed out "poor games".  Such product lines do not generate sales over any significant amount of time, regardless of external factors like brand, availability, clever marketing, etc.Nobody can give me an example of a "bad quality" game that suceeded over time (let us say a minimum of 12 months) because it was backed by great marketing or a fantastically popular license.Some might make the argument that I'm arguing the point in reverse:  If I define a "good game" as one with long term sales & a large player network, then regardless of the intrinsic quality of a game, it will fit my defintion of "good".  My response to that criticism is that there are observable, neutral tests that can be applied to a game to determine its fitness (or lack thereof), reasonable, common sense things that most game designers and industry professionals (and many players) intuitively grasp, which can be used to separate games into broad categories of "good" and "bad", regardless of the specific individual's definitions of those words.  And there are no games that would be identified as "bad" that demonstrate long term success vs. "good" competition.  None.That's what makes hobby gaming different from fashion, food, and pop culture, and why using arguments about the relationship between financial success and quality in those markets is an unfair, and misleading argument when discussing that relationship in the hobby gaming market.In order to generate long term sales (what I call "evergreen" sales), a game must attract and keep a sizable network of active players.  Those networks form because the people in them are willing to invest time, money, and attention to an entertainment pursuit.  With so many competing ways to spend that time, money and attention, only "great games" are able to survive and thrive over the long term.Thus, "sales" are not an DETERMINATOR of "quality".  Sales are, over an extended period of time, an INDICATOR of quality - they represent a series of decisions made independently by a large number of people that the game is worth investment of limited resources - that it is, in fact, "better" in the opinion of the players, with both intrinsic and external factors fully valued than its competition.The issue of not using D20 (or any other game system) is not necessarily an issue of instrinsic "quality".  Sure, the Warhammer RPG (or any other RPG) may be mechanically sound, interesting, and fun to play.  However, if the "cost" to potential players to engage with that game is high enough (compared to the option to learn and play a game similar to one they already know), then the actual value to those players - regardless of intrinsic features of the new game - may be less than the "similar game" option - and thus that game will not generate as many sales or as large a long term player network as it might otherwise have done.The question each publisher has to ask themselves when they create an RPG in the post-OGL/D20 world is this:  Is my game so much better than an OGL/D20 option that I want to force my customers & players to pay a tax to play that game, and will those people perceive the value I'm offering and voluntarily submit to that taxation?My opinion is that for most games, that answer is usually "no".  Which is not the same thing as saying "Ryan says no other games should be published" or "Ryan thinks D20 is the only viable game" or even "Ryan thinks all RPGs should be D20".  It would be fair to say that my opinion is that "RPGs that feature parties of characters who band together and seek challenges and be rewarded with increased power, sold through the traditional hobby gaming market, and designed to be played by hobby gaming players, will sell better and be more popular if they are OGL/D20 games than if they are not."</blockquote>

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