Pathfinder 1E Pathfinder sales

[Dannager]

As an aside, I think it's completely awesome (no sarcasm) that two of you can have a discussion based entirely around using SAR experience as an analogue for the tabletop RPG industry. It's sort of surreal, but really cool all the same.

 

[Wayside]

Paizo uses Bookscan

Having worked in publishing and used BookScan extensively, I find this claim hilarious. BookScan is next to useless, especially for niche titles like RPGs.

 

[prosfilaes]

The only conservative value I can see is that the number of DDI subscribers equals the number of players.

I didn't say that, and I'm not really sure where you got it.

I said that. It's a little extreme, but a conservative value is not where you plug in your estimations; it's where you plug in numbers so extreme nobody could argue with them. When you claim that every group has at most one person on DDI, and that every other group has no one on DDI ... it may be correct, but it's not conservative.

 

[Mournblade94]

Canadian Coast Guard. Pleased to meet you as well.

I was in the Indo pacific based out of Okinawa Japan. Generally we were there for submarine emergency buoys, but we were also tracking the Russians out of Vladivostok, and North Korean shipping (what little of that there is).

As an aside, I think it's completely awesome (no sarcasm) that two of you can have a discussion based entirely around using SAR experience as an analogue for the tabletop RPG industry. It's sort of surreal, but really cool all the same.

RPG's are often about Search and Rescue. Well when not Breaking and Entering I suppose

 

[czak]

Having worked in publishing and used BookScan extensively, I find this claim hilarious. BookScan is next to useless, especially for niche titles like RPGs.

Could you expand on this for those of us not in the publishing business? The bookscan people claim they have point of sale coverage for the major book chains and (probably more germane to rpgs) Amazon, two of the areas that the ICV2 survey does not cover.

It would be really nice to see what a bookscan report looks like.


[edit] Rephrased:

Is bookscan useless because they don't do a good job of covering the book trade or is it useless because you feel rpg products aren't sold through the book trade at comparable volumes to the hobby trade?

[/edit]

 

[El Mahdi]

Nobody is convincing any of the participants, that's for certain. I'm contented to simply say my piece and be on with it; when I post in response to someone, it's not to sway their opinion but rather to provide a counterpoint to their argument that others will hopefully read along with the original post.

I appreciate that you acknowledge that I am consistent, however.

Okaaaaayyyy...

Yes you are consistent, and that is a good thing.

But as far as being content to say your piece and be on with it, you've said your piece in 178 posts of these two threads, and many more posts in many other similar threads (probably the majority of your 1,478 posts)...

So, what does it take for you to achieve contentment???


Just food for thought.

I was in the Indo pacific based out of Okinawa Japan. Generally we were there for submarine emergency buoys, but we were also tracking the Russians out of Vladivostok, and North Korean shipping (what little of that there is).

I was Air Force CSAR maintenance for the last 6 years I was active (retired now). Before that I was with AFSOC in Korea on 53's (31st SOS) for 4 years. We'd go TDY to Kadena quite a bit for training with our special ops group that was based there (353rd SOG - 130's and STS). I've seen your P-3's there quite often. Cool Birds.

 

[Mournblade94]

Okaaaaayyyy...

I was Air Force CSAR maintenance for the last 6 years I was active (retired now). Before that I was with AFSOC in Korea on 53's (31st SOS) for 4 years. We'd go TDY to Kadena quite a bit for training with our special ops group that was based there (353rd SOG - 130's and STS). I've seen your P-3's there quite often. Cool Birds.

Kadena Air Force Base holds some of the best memories I have had in gaming, and marine biology That place rules!

 

[BryonD]

As I noted in the post you quoted, I was generous in that I favored a high rate of DDI adoption (or, in the earlier instance, favored a high rate of community account creation). The higher the rate of DDI adoption, the lower the total number of D&D players. For instance, if there are 100,000 subscriptions and the rate of adoption is 10% of DMs, that means 1,000,000 DMs/groups (and, therefore, 5,000,000 - 6,000,000 players). If there are 100,000 subscriptions and the rate of adoption is 50% (the number I used), then there are 200,000 DMs/groups.

I understand that, but you are forgetting that the entire debate is founded on the presumption that DDI is significant. And, regardless of what changing the assumptions would do, it remains that yours were HIGHLY optimistic.

You yourself multiplied by five. I used six because the game is designed for six people (five players and a DM). I mean, at least my figure is based on something.

Wow.

You REALLY don't see the difference between me offering an intentionally crazy high number to make the point that even with that the total is low and you using an even crazier higher number to then compound with other wildly hopeful presumptions to try to demonstrate a high result? REALLY?

But heck, even if we use your number, we still get 1,000,000 players. So no problem.

I'm pretty convinced here that you are not even grasping the concept being expressed. Yeah, if we assume my intentionally stupid number designed to stack the deck against myself is suddenly not stupid and THEN we compound that number with two other wishful thinking factors, then yeah, the math says 1,000,0000. Of course, I once reviewed a technical report in which a guy calculated a concentration of a substance in water as being 1,300,000 parts per million. His MATH was right, but the factors he input were just plain stupid.

Not a day goes by that I hear that someone has decided to try 4e (or introduce their friends to it) for the first time. But, y'know, anecdotes.

LOL, ok, you gonna try to sell me a bridge now?

You can say anything you want, but just like to 1.3 million ppm guy, your conclusions just don't even pass the red face test. You don't need to look at distributers, or Amazon, or talk to shop owners to know that any more than I needed to check calculations to know that 1.3 million was not right.

I could claim that 4E is going bankrupt tomorrow. I'd be WAY wrong, but no more wrong than you are here.

But if you truly believe that 4E is doing that well, then good for you. Enjoy that.

 

[Wayside]

Could you expand on this for those of us not in the publishing business? The bookscan people claim they have point of sale coverage for the major book chains and (probably more germane to rpgs) Amazon, two of the areas that the ICV2 survey does not cover.

It would be really nice to see what a bookscan report looks like.


[edit] Rephrased:

Is bookscan useless because they don't do a good job of covering the book trade or is it useless because you feel rpg products aren't sold through the book trade at comparable volumes to the hobby trade?

[/edit]

BookScan's claims notwithstanding, we simply found that their numbers don't add up. It's hard to say exactly why. For reference, I worked at No Starch Press, a technical publisher distributed by O'Reilly Media, so we were similar to the big RPG publishers in that our titles were in all the major bookstores. Comparing our internal numbers to BookScan's showed huge fluctuations, and it wasn't just a case of "Oh, their numbers are 75% of ours across the board," which is what they claim. 25% wasn't uncommon, and that's not counting books sold through the Apple Store, since they're a unique case and BookScan is lucky if it tracks 10% there. But the issue isn't the raw percentages anyway; it's that sometimes BookScan would have numbers in line with their claims, and other times their numbers would be wildly off. The lack of consistency is what made it generally useless.

 

[czak]

Thanks for the follow up!