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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mistwell" data-source="post: 8199721" data-attributes="member: 2525">I see no signs Paizo as a company is in trouble. Short essay coming up, sorry for the length.I do see signs that Pathfinder 2 is not selling as well as their likely expectations, as I think they expected it to do better than PF1 was doing before PF2 was announced, and it does not appear to be able to maintain those levels at least for physical copies of the books.I also am not sure that's necessarily the game's fault, as opposed to the marketing approach and Covid-19. I think Pathfinder as a game seems more tailored to be marketed through in-person play than 5e for growth in new players, and I think the pandemic damaged their ability to popularize PF2 with new players in the first year.I think 5e has more of a marketing budget for online advertising and sponsorship of things like Critical Role, and also had years to popularize it with fans in-person to get a foothold in the marketplace first. Paizo was relying on more fan-driven spread of the game through game stores and conventions. So when you shut down the later, you shut down a bigger source of Paizo's marketing of PF2. Which was even more critical for them than 5e right now, because it's so early in the edition's marketing cycle and they hadn't hit a critical mass number of fans who could really push it ahead on their own.So I suspect that's why we're seeing such a small growth in PF2's numbers. Shifting it to digital this early in the edition cycle, without a larger core of new fans brought in through game stores and conventions, probably threw a larger monkey wrench in their plans than expected.That would at least help explain the Amazon numbers we're seeing. They were not maintaining PF1 sales numbers on Amazon pre-pandemic, but it wasn't that far off. They were hitting around rank 3000, and that was about 1000 off from their prior PF1 numbers. But I think it was slowly gathering some steam and perhaps was headed back up to that 2000 mark prior to the pandemic (or maybe not, hard to tell). And then the pandemic seems to have really tanked their sales numbers on Amazon severely (while it might have slightly helped 5e at the same time). I assume some of that is a shift in Paizo's marketing to digital, with the humble bundle and then online marketing and direct sales.But that's also shutting down your best pathway to new players. It's a strategy focused on maintaining your existing PF1 and PF2 base of players primarily (with PF2 slowly cannibalizing PF1 players too). Their existing players can still recruit new players, but they also lose players over time, so I don't think this has been overall good for the growth of PF1 or PF2 this year. They kinda needed new players to see the game causally being played in a game store, or having a "safe" environment like a convention to try out a one-shot of PF2 to see if they like it, to market the new game in its first year.</blockquote>

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