Wow. I'm reminded once again why so many people outside our hobby have such a poor opinion of gamers.
I truly don't understand the need for people, in what should be a thread celebrating the success of a well loved company and a positive sign for the industry, to insult or belittle the people in question. Just once, what's wrong with all of us--4E-players, Pathfinder-players, whoever--just saying "Way to go, guys"? You don't need the numbers. You don't have any right to the numbers. And frankly, the numbers don't matter. If it's sold well enough for Paizo to proclaim it a success, then for all it matters to any of us, it's a success. And even as a die-hard "4on," I couldn't be happier for them.
I really, really don't get it.
I agree that I don't
need the numbers, and I certainly don't have a
right to the numbers. They do matter, though. For all it matters
to a company it's a success if a product sells out, but it means little to me without a good gauge of what it means in an objective sense.
So I suppose the reason I made the first post was to say that by touting a sold-out run, a company makes a claim to success, and what is implied is that the success is worth noting; lots of people bought this, and because they did, so should you!
On its face, this is a bad argument for a company to make, but it is worse when there are no numbers to back it up. Not only am I supposed to get on the bandwagon of game X, I'm supposed to do so based on someone's vague claim that there will be lots of people there with me.
Think about this in the context of the recording industry. Imagine if instead of "Band X sold Y copies of their new album this week," we got "Band X sold out of their initial run of their new album in the first week." Does this mean that lots of people like the band and/or the album? Will I be a social pariah if I say I like it? Who knows? And you might say "Who cares?", and you would be right; but that is really outside what the marketing strategy is intended to accomplish.
That's why I think the "25 000 unique downloads" claim for the Pathfinder beta was interesting in a way that this current news or similar news from any company isn't. That doesn't really make it much better, but at least I know the size of the bandwagon. In the beta's case, the download numbers did, as Mona claimed, somewhat justify pursuit of the Pathfinder game; there was indeed a good amount of interest, enough to indicate some good sales figures.
It's the marketing I'm interested in, and I thought it was on topic. The intent is not to insult or belittle
people for using this kind of marketing strategy; if I am, I suppose I'm slagging on every company that has ever used it. "Success" can be subjective, I just hate it when it's used to promote something that should require more objectivity.
I guess I disagreed about what the thread
should be, that's all. This is too much of a digression, though, and I'll start a new thread if I want to discuss this with other interested people. My cynicism in this thread stops here.
Like I said, great art.
