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Should companies bother with RPGs?
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<blockquote data-quote="Greatwyrm" data-source="post: 2552502" data-attributes="member: 479"><p>I can see a number of reasons I wouldn't try that.</p><p></p><p>1. I think the price point on those books is awfully high for what the market usually supports. I don't know if you could sell them in sufficient numbers to make up for the sales you'd get from a higher volume of less expensive titles.</p><p></p><p>2. If you only put out two or three big ticket books in a year, you're in really bad shape if one of them flops. If you have a larger catalog of titles, you'll probably be in better shape to survive the occasional turkey than if you were relying on one title to provide a quarter's worth of revenue by itself.</p><p></p><p>3. --speculation-- It doesn't seem that games like traditional card games or board games sell as well as rpgs, unless you get a really big hit. I don't have hard figures, but I'd think the production cost on rpgs is usually smaller (as a percentage) than other types of games.</p><p></p><p>4. I wouldn't want to move too far from my core business. Nobody gets into rpgs to get rich. They do it because they want to write games. The ones that hang around long enough to have a discussion like this are probably good at it. They may not be as good at writing fiction, writing or supervising the production of a computer game, or other such ventures. I think I do okay writing my own stuff, but there's little chance I'd tackle anything like that. </p><p></p><p>Plus, it just takes away time from actually doing what you do best. I think Steve Jackson (GURPS) finally/recently hired a business manager for SJ Games, because he just didn't have time to actually make new games of his own any more. In a small operation (and even big game companies are pretty small) there may just not be time enough to devote to one or two big products and some alternate ones. I mean, how big is that Ptolus book Monte Cook's been working on and it's just about all he did for a year?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Greatwyrm, post: 2552502, member: 479"] I can see a number of reasons I wouldn't try that. 1. I think the price point on those books is awfully high for what the market usually supports. I don't know if you could sell them in sufficient numbers to make up for the sales you'd get from a higher volume of less expensive titles. 2. If you only put out two or three big ticket books in a year, you're in really bad shape if one of them flops. If you have a larger catalog of titles, you'll probably be in better shape to survive the occasional turkey than if you were relying on one title to provide a quarter's worth of revenue by itself. 3. --speculation-- It doesn't seem that games like traditional card games or board games sell as well as rpgs, unless you get a really big hit. I don't have hard figures, but I'd think the production cost on rpgs is usually smaller (as a percentage) than other types of games. 4. I wouldn't want to move too far from my core business. Nobody gets into rpgs to get rich. They do it because they want to write games. The ones that hang around long enough to have a discussion like this are probably good at it. They may not be as good at writing fiction, writing or supervising the production of a computer game, or other such ventures. I think I do okay writing my own stuff, but there's little chance I'd tackle anything like that. Plus, it just takes away time from actually doing what you do best. I think Steve Jackson (GURPS) finally/recently hired a business manager for SJ Games, because he just didn't have time to actually make new games of his own any more. In a small operation (and even big game companies are pretty small) there may just not be time enough to devote to one or two big products and some alternate ones. I mean, how big is that Ptolus book Monte Cook's been working on and it's just about all he did for a year? [/QUOTE]
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