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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5753773" data-attributes="member: 4937">RPG publishing is an entertainment industry.  This might seem to be obvious, but its something that RPG publishers frequently forget.As an entertainment industry, it's subject to the same sort of economic laws that govern profitability in the entertainment industry. Given the relatively low popularity of RPG's, it may seem a stretch to compare what WotC does to what the NFL does or what MGM does but IMO they are much the same thing.Firing your veterens as an RPG publisher is about like a movie studio firing its big name stars as a cost cutting measure.  Sure, you can make movies without stars but you'll have a lot harder time selling them.  Likewise, if you are a managing an NFL team, you'll probably notice that 10 or so players make up a significant chunk of your total personnel budget.  But cutting all  the players making more than $300,000 a year from your team is not a recipe for increasing the teams profitability in the long run.The guys writting RPG's are artists.  It's art.  It's entertainment.   It requires talent.  Sure, there are lots of amateur DMs out there that have that same talent, but there aren't a lot of amateur DMs out there that have that talent, creativity, and ability AND the drive to turn what they create into a 50 hour a week grind done to professional standards for someones consumption other than themselves.  There are not that many guys in the country that can do the job, and like the fact that in the NFL the whole multi-million dollar organization is carried to profitability by a hand full of players that the casual fan knows the name of, its the handful of true artisans that make an RPG companies product worth buying.  Paizo is doing as well or better than WotC in the RPG industry despite huge disadvantages in brand recognition because its pretty darn obvious that that is where the talent has gone.   The system may not be perfect, but at least you aren't bored out of your mind reading the material.   WotC never made a bigger mistake in the 3rd edition era than when it decided that modules don't matter.D&D beat out its competitors in the early days because of modules.  D&D is still in many ways relying on its old modules for content.  Paizo is beating WotC because of modules.  CoC is an enduring classic because of modules.  Chill is still fondly remembered because of modules.  It's not easy to make money on modules.   But if you don't write great stories for your game system you never inspire new DMs to take it up, and without new DMs your game will ultimately wither and die. I guess there does get to be a point where it makes more sense to fire your over the hill veterans as opposed to your up and coming stars, but just who does WotC have in its stable that is an up and coming star?As for the larger issues that Grubb is addressing, I can't really expand upon my opinion in to much length in this forum because the discussion will get too political, but I'm inclined to believe that evolving social factors have rendered both the traditional corporation and the traditional employee union obselete and ineffectual.  I really think that some new social technology, evolving out of the idea of the 'employee owned company' (maybe the 'employee owned company meets the Heinleinian line marriage') is necessary to meet the long term interests of the stakeholders.  Both the union and the corporation seemed to have been pushed into a situation where they are 'eating their seed corn', the corporation because its shareholders are increasingly not stakeholders or even individuals and the union for a variety of reasons revolving around maximizing the quality of life of its employees nearing retirement age (who also have the most power) at the expense of any and all long term corporate health.   In essence, its in the interest of both the tenured union employees (whose stake is continually decrease as they approach retirement) and the non-stake holding shareholders (who can always switch their investment once they realize a certain annual return) to 'eat the seed corn'.</blockquote>

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