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Rumor control: Lucca 4e seminar report inaccuracies
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<blockquote data-quote="BSF" data-source="post: 3883383" data-attributes="member: 13098"><p>The only thing that an authorized logo solves is laziness. Laziness on the part of retailers and laziness on the part of end customers. </p><p></p><p>In itself, that isn't a bad thing. That is what marketing is all about, after all. Companies with a strong brand want everybody in the channel to look at their product and associate it with quality and a product you *have to* buy right now! </p><p></p><p>The D20 logo no longer has an intrinsic value with part of the channel. Indeed, most of the channel doesn't place a lot of value on the D20 logo. As an end customer, the D20 logo is just a quick marker that means I *might* be interested in a product. But I will still need to look at the book itself with a critical eye to be sure it meets my needs, seems to be soundly designed, and will be something I am willing to spend money on. I am far more likely to spend some time assessing the book based on the writers, the publisher, and the actual content. I will spend time looking for the book based on reviews or interactions with people I know (like the EN World community). </p><p></p><p>But that is because I am not a lazy customer. I feel no moral obligation to support poorly run businesses (whether that is the LGS, a wonky publisher, the restaurant down the street, or whatever) so I look for well run businesses. </p><p></p><p>But that does not help excellent third party publishers bring in new customers! Every new customer needs a starting place. Years ago, that was the Friendly, Local Gaming Store. The FLGS is an endangered resource these days. I know they are out there, but I rarely see them myself. So how do excellent third party publishers get through the distribution channel so that a customer can see the product, feel the product, and buy the product? The D20 logo has been poisoned by a once bitten, twice shy mentality. WotC isn't planning to continue to license the logo out and I honestly can't blame them. At this point the D20 logo doesn't hurt established publishers and doesn't really help new publishers. </p><p></p><p>Established publishers have already proven themselves with great products and the D20 logo is just a mark on the book that lets customers know to pull it off the shelf. Well, and as Wulf points out, it lets you make a quick assessment on whether the product will be somewhat useful for your campaign - without any statement of quality. The point is that the people buying third party products from established publishers will probably keep doing it whether there is a D20 logo or not. </p><p></p><p>New publishers pop up and proudly put the D20 logo on their book only to have themselves shunned by the distribution channel. Their books never get in front of customers because they never make it to store shelves. These might be great products, or they might be crap, but nobody ever knows because they never even look at the product itself. They just think "another company I never heard of and they are just making a crappy D&D knock off product."</p><p></p><p>It is laziness from the channel. Everyone wanted the D20 logo to mean "buy me" from the get go. So they bought a bunch of D20 product which the customers soon weeded out as crap and left on the shelves. So the businesses looked at shelf feet of cash flow that wasn't flowing and decided that the D20 logo must mean "crappy, non-selling stuff." Then they started getting customers coming in and saying "where are your [insert publisher of choice here] products?" Then the businesses started paying slightly more attention and only bought stuff their customers were asking for. Or in some cases, they took the route that one of my LGSs apparently took. "We can special order that for you. We can get it within 2 weeks." Again, that means product is moving out of the distribution channel in 1's and 2's, so a distributor will stop stocking it. </p><p></p><p>It is a crappy situation. As customers we keep demanding a special logo that tells us that a product is both compatible and worth buying. How is WotC supposed to do that? Are they supposed to police the entire channel? That is a no-win prospect for them. What criteria should they use to determine quality? Content? Design stability? How much time should they devote to manage the business of everybody else rather than their own business? How much flak will they catch when they reject a product that somebody else thought was good? C'mon people, the way that works is if you go with a franchise model and WotC has the ability to yank your (expensive) franchise license. Wait, WotC does have that as an option. Do you want every third party publisher to have that as a hurdle to beginning to publish?</p><p></p><p>I don't want that, and neither do most of us. There is no value to WotC to demand a quality threshold. If they do that, the implication is that they are holding publishers to that threshold. As soon as one person disagrees, the house of cards is in danger. What if somebody wants to seek recourse through litigation? How much time and money will be tied up with WotC trying to defend their threshold requirements? That just hurts the hobby in general. </p><p></p><p>We either have a closed development team (there is no OGL and there are no compatible third party products) or we have an open development team and market pressures weed out the bad products. WotC appears to be moving more toward the latter. Yes, established companies do have an advantage. But they earned that advantage by establishing themselves as good companies to buy product from. The only thing I feel bad about are the good companies that got burned by the way the D20 market played out. Some of them had excellent products in the channel at the wrong time and they never got paid, so they had to close business - or at least severely curtail development. </p><p></p><p>I'm ranting aren't I? I apologize for that. But the simple fact is that there isn't a perfect solution. A lot of the options that are available to bigger markets aren't viable in our hobby market. Stop treating any endorsed logo as a mark of quality. Treat it as compatability and do the research/analysis on your own. If you are inclined, tell the buyers at your LGS what is good and what is bad. Good products will still be out there. Look for them and support the companies that produce things you like.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="BSF, post: 3883383, member: 13098"] The only thing that an authorized logo solves is laziness. Laziness on the part of retailers and laziness on the part of end customers. In itself, that isn't a bad thing. That is what marketing is all about, after all. Companies with a strong brand want everybody in the channel to look at their product and associate it with quality and a product you *have to* buy right now! The D20 logo no longer has an intrinsic value with part of the channel. Indeed, most of the channel doesn't place a lot of value on the D20 logo. As an end customer, the D20 logo is just a quick marker that means I *might* be interested in a product. But I will still need to look at the book itself with a critical eye to be sure it meets my needs, seems to be soundly designed, and will be something I am willing to spend money on. I am far more likely to spend some time assessing the book based on the writers, the publisher, and the actual content. I will spend time looking for the book based on reviews or interactions with people I know (like the EN World community). But that is because I am not a lazy customer. I feel no moral obligation to support poorly run businesses (whether that is the LGS, a wonky publisher, the restaurant down the street, or whatever) so I look for well run businesses. But that does not help excellent third party publishers bring in new customers! Every new customer needs a starting place. Years ago, that was the Friendly, Local Gaming Store. The FLGS is an endangered resource these days. I know they are out there, but I rarely see them myself. So how do excellent third party publishers get through the distribution channel so that a customer can see the product, feel the product, and buy the product? The D20 logo has been poisoned by a once bitten, twice shy mentality. WotC isn't planning to continue to license the logo out and I honestly can't blame them. At this point the D20 logo doesn't hurt established publishers and doesn't really help new publishers. Established publishers have already proven themselves with great products and the D20 logo is just a mark on the book that lets customers know to pull it off the shelf. Well, and as Wulf points out, it lets you make a quick assessment on whether the product will be somewhat useful for your campaign - without any statement of quality. The point is that the people buying third party products from established publishers will probably keep doing it whether there is a D20 logo or not. New publishers pop up and proudly put the D20 logo on their book only to have themselves shunned by the distribution channel. Their books never get in front of customers because they never make it to store shelves. These might be great products, or they might be crap, but nobody ever knows because they never even look at the product itself. They just think "another company I never heard of and they are just making a crappy D&D knock off product." It is laziness from the channel. Everyone wanted the D20 logo to mean "buy me" from the get go. So they bought a bunch of D20 product which the customers soon weeded out as crap and left on the shelves. So the businesses looked at shelf feet of cash flow that wasn't flowing and decided that the D20 logo must mean "crappy, non-selling stuff." Then they started getting customers coming in and saying "where are your [insert publisher of choice here] products?" Then the businesses started paying slightly more attention and only bought stuff their customers were asking for. Or in some cases, they took the route that one of my LGSs apparently took. "We can special order that for you. We can get it within 2 weeks." Again, that means product is moving out of the distribution channel in 1's and 2's, so a distributor will stop stocking it. It is a crappy situation. As customers we keep demanding a special logo that tells us that a product is both compatible and worth buying. How is WotC supposed to do that? Are they supposed to police the entire channel? That is a no-win prospect for them. What criteria should they use to determine quality? Content? Design stability? How much time should they devote to manage the business of everybody else rather than their own business? How much flak will they catch when they reject a product that somebody else thought was good? C'mon people, the way that works is if you go with a franchise model and WotC has the ability to yank your (expensive) franchise license. Wait, WotC does have that as an option. Do you want every third party publisher to have that as a hurdle to beginning to publish? I don't want that, and neither do most of us. There is no value to WotC to demand a quality threshold. If they do that, the implication is that they are holding publishers to that threshold. As soon as one person disagrees, the house of cards is in danger. What if somebody wants to seek recourse through litigation? How much time and money will be tied up with WotC trying to defend their threshold requirements? That just hurts the hobby in general. We either have a closed development team (there is no OGL and there are no compatible third party products) or we have an open development team and market pressures weed out the bad products. WotC appears to be moving more toward the latter. Yes, established companies do have an advantage. But they earned that advantage by establishing themselves as good companies to buy product from. The only thing I feel bad about are the good companies that got burned by the way the D20 market played out. Some of them had excellent products in the channel at the wrong time and they never got paid, so they had to close business - or at least severely curtail development. I'm ranting aren't I? I apologize for that. But the simple fact is that there isn't a perfect solution. A lot of the options that are available to bigger markets aren't viable in our hobby market. Stop treating any endorsed logo as a mark of quality. Treat it as compatability and do the research/analysis on your own. If you are inclined, tell the buyers at your LGS what is good and what is bad. Good products will still be out there. Look for them and support the companies that produce things you like. [/QUOTE]
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