Predictions of the d20/gaming industry part 2

[Piratecat]

This is not the thread to have the "pirating books" discussion in, please. That way lies madness (and a thread hijack).

Thanks!

 

[King_Stannis]

This is not the thread to have the "pirating books" discussion in, please. That way lies madness (and a thread hijack).

Thanks!

i have to disagree with that, to a point, piratecat. i agree about not discussing the morals/pros and cons, but it is a legitimate part of the argument. let's face it, alot of d&d players are pretty computer savvy. there has to be a point in which consumers may turn to that alternative rather than pay such a high price.

some people have been pretty quick to point to GW as a possible example of a way to do business. but you can't download a metal miniature. you can certainly download a copy of just about every major rule/sourcebook out there right now, however. i wonder if this issue even is being considered with this price hike.

i also wonder if WotC set the pricing standard low to begin with by bringing all of the rulebooks out for $20 apiece. WotC were the only ones that probably could have sold them for that price (because of the economies of scale), but obviously other companies are going to look at that them as a barometer for selling their own products.

 

[Cergorach]

This is not the thread to have the "pirating books" discussion in, please. That way lies madness (and a thread hijack).

Thanks!

I have to agree with Piratcat on this one, i've been in to many of these discussions, and generally very little new is said/argued. They often turn very bitter, and possiby into a fireball throwing contest. Let's just say that the "pirating books" subject is a painfull one for publishers, they are aware of it.

Would a price increase mean that more people will download books for "free"? Probably... But no one knows how much, as a matter of fact, no one knows how much revenue is lost at the moment due to downloaded books.

Should the fact that more people will download the books affect publishers, not really, the people lost to the internet are probably the same that are lost to the books being to expensive.

 

[The Onion Knight]

Pirating books is such a bad idea. I certainly wouldn't want anyone to e-mail me with an internet address where you could do something like that.

 

[Cergorach]

Pirating books is such a bad idea. I certainly wouldn't want anyone to e-mail me with an internet address where you could do something like that.

Don't you think that remark is a bit inapropriate???

 

[Erik Mona]

It warms my heart that in a thread in which several game professionals have posted about not being able to meet rent or about being closer to bankruptcy than to profitability, a lot of glib fans are joking about stealing intellectual property.

That says a lot about the state of the industry right there.

--Erik

 

[Sigmund]

I think ya'all need to lighten up a little bit there.

I'll have to agree with Stannis here...in the context that the topic of pirated books was brought up, it's perfectly appropriate and relevant....even if nobody knows for sure how much money is lost currently, sticking our heads in the sand about it doesn't make it go away. If it really hurts the industry that much.....and is that bothersome to ya'all RPG bigwigs, then make more strenuous efforts to put a stop to it.

I can give you my point of view on this whole topic, and that is that I would flat out refuse to pay $50 for any role-playing book...or any entertainment book for that matter. If I wanted to keep spending outrageous sums of money on a hobby, I'd have stuck with photography. If ya'all think I'm just saying that, and that I'd "get used to the higher prices", then ya'all got another thing coming. Perhaps I'm the exception rather than the rule....I really couldn't say. I can only tell you where I'm comin from.

As it is now, I've only purchased the three "core" books, and one class book. Other members of my group have the other class books, so I'm not wastin the money. Especially since I went to the trouble of buying a good portion of the Alternity line, which was promptly dropped. Although I enjoy this hobby, it is very far down the list of priorities when it comes to spending money.

Of course, this is all from my POV and as I said, I may be alone here

 

[ColonelHardisson]

It warms my heart that in a thread in which several game professionals have posted about not being able to meet rent or about being closer to bankruptcy than to profitability, a lot of glib fans are joking about stealing intellectual property.

That says a lot about the state of the industry right there.

--Erik

I understand where you're coming from, but you know probably better than any of us here that such attitudes don't reflect gamers in general, or even gamers who frequent the net. So some people have decided to joke about it; that's to be expected with anything. Some may actually do it, which is wrong, but most of us don't. I think that when some of the pros decide to matter-of-factly talk about how prices should go up and how we gamers may complain but we'll keep buying the stuff anyway, such reactions should not only be expected, but are inevitable. You couldn't have expected people not to react in some way to such statements?

 

[Piratecat]

King Stannis, I don't want this to degenerate to the type of pirating discussion we had last week, especially when there's some exciting predictions and possibilities that we could learn about - assuming the thread isn't hijacked. There's nothing wrong with piracy threads per se, its just that this isn't one of them.

So, building on Ryan Dancy's previous statement: how does one go about recruiting and improving judges? Any ideas?

 

[Erik Mona]

Fair enough.

--Erik