SteveC said:
I just wanted to make a comment here if I may. I think that this "three month window/life cycle" mentality for products is one of the real problems behind the gaming industry at the moment. I don't think the sky is falling or anything like that, but the notion of having to move on to the next product after such a short time has really hurt businesses.
There is actually a term for this mentality. It is called the Frontlist Syndrome. Now, I am by no means an expert on it, and actually just barely understand it myself. But in short, it is simply the fact that this short life cycle mentality feeds on itself. It is also a large contributor to that death spiral thing that Mearls and Dancey have mentioned (though neither bothered to include it in their explanations).
Unfortunately, once a company gets into the Frontlist Syndome, it is very very hard to pull yourself out of.
SteveC said:
What I mean by this is that if you are concerned about only keeping a product on the shelf for a very short time, it tends to have a shorter development cycle and things like formatting and editting are taken as less important. Once you have a reputation for making throw-away products, your company is not going to get my business any more.
Yup, like I mention above, it feeds off itself, and the company often ends up either putting out a ton of product every month just to keep afloat or slowly going under.
The Frontlist Syndrome has been around for a long long time. CCGs made it a lot more noticable and prevalent.Also, the OGL made this a lot, lot worse as well.Suddenly there were hundreds of companies putting out products every single month, and then moving on to the next thing, trying to get it out before somebody else used the same concept. There was a lot of paralell development going on for many concepts and themes, and this actually hurt the industry more than it helped (especially since almost nobody was using anybody else's OGC, but developing their own instead).
Then you have distributors... Distributors often tend to encourage the Frontlist Syndrome because it means less older stock on their shelves, and thus they have less to push and can concentrate on the "new" stuff rather than an increasing amount of backstock.
Then came the fulfillment houses like Wizard's Attic and Osseum. Both were loved by distributors because that meant even less overhead for them, as the fulfillment houses were acting as backstock wharehouses and this thus increased the profits for the distributors. Both of these fulfillment houses have since died, Wizard Attic taking a number of companies with it, and Osseum hurting a large number of companies (some more than others, though I don't think that any actually died from it). The fulfillment house model just isn't a very solid one overall. Of course, part of Osseum's troubles came from being involved with book-trade distributors (will explain a little about that at the bottom).
SteveC said:
When it comes to gaming product, I buy a fair amount: both as PDF and print. Unless I know the author or the company has a stellar track record, I'm going to wait at least a month or two before I buy something. With some companies, this means I'm not going to buy the product at all. I know a lot of company reps have come in and said that the three month window is a fact of life, but I wonder if it's not a self-fufilling prophesy.
It is not quite a fact of life for those that follow the current 3 teir business model in the industry, but close to it. The distributors actually have a much greater impact on what you can find in your local game store than the actual companies do. Personally, I do not think that this is a good thing, but it also something that is hard to break out of. I know that there are a lot of stores who don't carry ICE products. Why? Because they only deal with one distributor (the largest), who also happens to refuse to carry our products (because of a personal grudge by one VP - even though his regional wharehouses have asked them to carry us). Nothing we can do about that, other than to encourage our fans to print out a copy of our distributor list and take it to those stores..
Oops, slight ramble... back on topic now...
SteveC said:
All I know is that the companies I tend to buy product from tend to keep their products in the store and to have core game lines that I can direct my players to, while the ones that I don't buy, don't. As an example from this very thread, I can buy Arcana Evolved, Arcana Unearthed and HARP at my game store at the moment. That tells me both Rasyr and Monte are keeping product in the store, which means I can introduce new players to their systems...which means they can get new players to buy more of their products...
Well, that wouldn't be me keeping our product in stores... hehe... That would be my boss. And that is because he isn't following the older 3 teir business model.
He simply changed the way that we deal with our distributors. Rather than them ordering when they run out, we do more of a consignment type of thing. We setup a "floorplan" with them, and send them the product. Each month, they send us a report of what they have sold, along with payment for sold product (according to whatever terms the boss has worked out with them). We then refill that floorplan. The boss has this setup with almost all (if not all) of our domestic distributors, and is working on similar deals with our foreign ones.
SteveC said:
File that into the "for what it's worth file."
Same with my post.
Book-trade distributors - These are the distributors that deal with book stores such as Barnes & Noble, Waldenbooks, Amazon, etc. They work a little bit differently than normal distributors. The biggest difference being that they require a return policy. They order books, and pay on pre-arranged terms just like other distributors, however, they also require that companies that they purchase from accept returns as well. And guess what. Come around the end of the year, they are going to be returning books because the less they have on their shelves for the year end inventory reports, the better their accounting looks. Unfortunately, since they are returning products that they have already paid for, this means a refund to them, which can really screw up the accounting and cash flows of the companies to whom books have been returned. Only the largest companies can really afford to eat these costs.
While I do not know for certain, it is a good bet that this return policy was a factor in what happened to Osseum.
