Monte on Origins awards and ENnies

[GMSkarka]

Just wondering... in your experience, does that translate into more products = more money, or more products = the same money split more ways? I don't mean the sales spike for new stuff, but the "steady sales pattern".

At the risk of furthering this off-topic wandering, in my experience, it is absolutely a case of more products = more money.

 

[JoeGKushner]

You have a lot of good products. My favorite is Magical Mideval Society: India. OR IT WOULD BE IF YOU'D WRITE THE THING!!!!

Someone lock Joe back in the writing dungeon and chain him to the desk. He got loose again.

Heck, I'm hoping he has a sourcebook on Japan coming out that can be used tandum with Legends of the Samurai. Now that would rock.

Of course seeing the big old monster book in print is also something I'm looking forward to.

 

[SteveC]

...and, if I may add, one of the true strengths of the PDF side of the industry. The "three-month window/life cycle" thing just isn't a factor at all.

Adamant Entertainment still has steady sales of product that we released back in 2003, for example. Sure, there's a "new shiny toy" spike during the first couple of months, but unlike the print business, where sales plummet and often disappear entirely after that, the PDFs settle into a steady sales pattern, that, at least as far as we've seen so far, is perpetual.

Economic Stability = A Good Thing.

Gareth,
Yes, this makes a lot of sense. It's so easy to see a PDF that is part of a series and say "I should jump in and pick up the rest of the books in this series." RPG Now makes is trivial to do just that.

However, I see that real book publishing can't easily follow that same strategy if those earlier books have been off the shelves for over a year. I think the real challenge is to keep gaming books from becoming throw-away products. Once they become that, the "industry" is largely finished.

For me, the encouraging thing has been that the companies that have managed to keep their products in stores are the ones that are remaining successful, while the ones who have not have largely gone away. Now that might be a chicken and the egg kind of thing "only successful companies keep their product in stores" versus "having your product consistently in store makes you successful" but I know of several companies who said that the "three month throw-away model" is a good thing, and they are no longer much of a presence in the publishing world, so it would seem that that was not actually such a good idea.

I guess to pull it back to awards: if you have a short life span for your products, there's no award that's going to do you any good, so awards won't be of interest to you. If you have product I can buy a year after it's released (including as a PDF) then awards like the ENnies or the Origin awards can help you out.

--Steve

 

[GMSkarka]

For me, the encouraging thing has been that the companies that have managed to keep their products in stores are the ones that are remaining successful, while the ones who have not have largely gone away. Now that might be a chicken and the egg kind of thing "only successful companies keep their product in stores" versus "having your product consistently in store makes you successful" but I know of several companies who said that the "three month throw-away model" is a good thing, and they are no longer much of a presence in the publishing world, so it would seem that that was not actually such a good idea.

The problem is that the company itself has very little to do with whether or not they follow the three-month model....it's the distributors (mostly) and the retailers (partially) who are pushing that paradigm, and the companies are having to just deal with it. Basically, the CCG boom of the early 90s convinced distributors and retailers alike that hobby product could be sold in a front-list manner, which is, in many ways, antithetical to how RPGs and Wargames are sold (being viral product that grow through networks of people, therefore requiring shelf life).

The problem is that with that new distribution model, companies have to enter production with the front-list, three-month model in mind, because whether they plan for it or not, that is how their product will be treated.

Luckily, PDF doesn't have the same constraints, and, although the total market size is smaller than for print products, the money works out fairly well, because you're not having to deal with the standard 60%+ discount to distributors. Print publishers are selling to more people, but getting less than 40% of the money from their sales. PDF publishers are reaching fewer people, but getting to keep between 65-75% of the sale.

 

[Michael Morris]

Thanks for the details on how the new voting system works Michael - from a coding point of view - how much time is going into it?

50 hours so far...

 

[Conaill]

Any word on the discrepancy on how the second-place winners will be chosen?

 

[Crothian]

Any word on the discrepancy on how the second-place winners will be chosen?

What discrepancy?

 

[Conaill]

What discrepancy?

See my post on the previous page:

By the way, the voting specs posted earlier differ from the launch screen description in how the second place winners are determined! The voting specs suggest what I called "option 3" above: eliminate candidates until only two remain, The launch screen seems to suggest my "option 1": eliminate the #1 winner and redo the process.

These two approaches will likely give very different results for second place winners. Doing it the way the voting specs recommend will tend to give more variety in the winners, whereas the method suggested in the launch screen description will tend to give a #2 which is more similar to the #1.

A little example perhaps... Let's say the ballot only has three significant candidates: one great d20 product, one great White Wolf product, and one mediocre d20 product. Let's further assume there are more d20 players on EN World than White Wolf players, and that most players into d20 don't tend to play WW and vice versa. The #1 winner will be obvious in this case: it will be the excellent d20 product.

Now let's look at what would happen if we follow the voting specs to determine the #2 winner. We keep eliminating candidates until only two remain, so the last product eliminated will be the mediocre d20 product, because that one will receive the least #1 votes (because most d20 players will vote for the excellent product instead). Result: the excellent WW product wins 2nd place.

Now let's see what would happen if we follow the description on the launch screen. After we've found the #1 winner (the excellent d20 product), we eliminate this product and rerun the process again. Now we get a run-off between one mediocre d20 product and one excellent WW product. Since all those d20-only players now get to vote for the mediocre d20 product, that one will win 2nd place.

End result: the method described in the voting specs will tend to "spread out the happiness" by awarding the second prize to those voters who saw their favorite product lose out on the first prize. Personally, I think that is a GOOD thing. The method described on the launch screen will tend to give all the prizes to the largest voter faction - which I think is a BAD thing.

 

[francisca]

I

And cheat like Hell doling out 1's for stuff you hate and 10's for things you like. Sorry, but no.

I must be missing a subtlty here. How is giving stuff I hate a 1, and things I like, a 10 (assuming higher is better), cheating?

 

[BiggusGeekus]

I must be missing a subtlty here. How is giving stuff I hate a 1, and things I like, a 10 (assuming higher is better), cheating?

Because so very few products would really rate a "1", especially considering they at least got past the inital panel of judges.