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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Azul" data-source="post: 2623127" data-attributes="member: 11779">Much as I hate to say it, those aren't very effective or useful metrics for the industry.  First, it is extremely hard to gather such information (and presumably therefore very expensive to gather such information... probably too expensive to do it often enough to measure change in a meaningful way).  Second, much of that information is not valuable because it has little or no connection to present/future sales and thus profits.  Industries are about making money... even the gaming industry.  A player who buys nothing more than a PHB *ever* could score very highly on those metrics... and provide a terrible revenue stream for every game company out there.The majority of players actually buy very little gaming stuff (a few player-specific books, some dice, a mini for their PCs).  Aside from those items, the bulk of sales come from GMs and hardcore "book-junkie" players....  the occasional guys with the ever-increasing gaming book collections.  There are tons of players out there still using 10-20 year old gaming material who would score wonderfully on your metrics and yet haven't bought anything from the industry in ages.  The industry wants metrics that tell it about its regular customers, and not every gamer (I'd even hazard to say well under half of all gamers) are *regular* customers in any sense of the word.If there were a way to cost-efficiently gather such information, your metics would be a good way to assess the health of the gaming hobby in general...  not the industry but rather the community as a whole.  It would allow you to measure how active the player community is and which games have created long-term, fan-bases.  It would tell you which games are enjoyed and have stayed enjoyable over time (as you keep collecting data).Sales do reflect some of this information (e.g. sales are likely to corelate with the size of the active player base, repeat sales will have some corelation with player satisfaction -- however, the the exactly relationships aren't linear... a regular bookaholic game buyer is worth several casual gamers to the industry, but those casual gamers as a group might account for more actual game playing).  However, sales figures don't tell you which books still see use a decade later and which books are collecting dust in a few months.  Once the item is sold, the industry may support it for a few years but as the game ages it falls off the industry's sales driven radar (for very good business reasons).  Discontinued games and old editions account for a serious chunk of the games played these days.While it is in the gaming industry's best interests to generally promote the hobby itself since it is the driving force behind their sales, the industry must be business savvy in its approach to keep alive.  That means that its focus and interests will sometimes be different from those of gamers in general.  Casual gamers, old-edition gamers, discontinued game players, core-rules only players and other infrequent buyers are important members of gaming groups but are peripheral to the main client base of the industry.  They guys who buy all the junk are who keeps the gaming companies afloat so obviously the industry is most interested in them.</blockquote>

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