Starfinder Starfinder's Sutter Leaves Paizo; Butler Joins (In A Different Role)

I don't normally report on staff changes at RPG companies unless it's something major. I feel like a couple of Paizo staff updates are worth mentioning though. First, James Sutter, co-creator of Pathfinder, and creative director of Starfinder, is leaving Paizo to write full-time (although he says he will still freelance for Paizo). Don't worry - it's all amicable, as he reports in a blog post at Paizo's website. Secondly, I'm informed by Paizo staff that Paizo has hired TSR's Jim Butler, who helped spearhead Alternity, and ran Bastion Press in the early 2000s, as Vice President of Marketing and Licensing.

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[rknop]

Interestingly, I have yet to meet any Americans around here. Anecdotally, I've heard they exist.

Speaking as an American, I wouldn't believe the anecdotes. There's no way we actually exist.

 

[darjr]

well Starfinder is doing extremely well. 600 on Amazon's top selling books is no slouch!

 

[jameslsutter]

Honestly, folks, I was just ready for a change. Thirteen years is a long time for anyone to work in the same place these days. For me, I felt like, between Starfinder and Pathfinder, I'd done most of what I wanted to do in the RPG industry, and I wanted to put more of those 40+ hours a week toward writing novels and comics. I know I shocked a lot of my coworkers with the timing (Starfinder's one of the biggest hits the company's ever had, and I'm leaving right as the proverbial money truck is backing up to the loading dock), but when I decide to do something, I hate dallying, and I wouldn't want to stay Creative Director if my heart wasn't 100% in it. Starfinder is still my baby, and I want what's best for it. So it seemed best to go out on a high note, and this Gen Con was nothing if not a high note! I'm confident that Rob McCreary and the rest of the team will do great things with the game, and I hope to still get to write for it in the future!

—James Sutter

 

[Morrus]

[COM][/COM]

Honestly, folks, I was just ready for a change. Thirteen years is a long time for anyone to work in the same place these days.

Well, now you've just made me depressed.

 

[jameslsutter]

Hey, it's a little bit different when you own the place.

 

[doogx]

There often comes a point where you feel that you've given most (if not all) of what you can give to a project, no matter how much you love it. That's a good time to move on, and I agree that it's better to do so too early than too late.

Congrats on a great run, and all the best to you going forward.

 

[doogx]

Keep in mind that "shelf space at a couple local FLGS" isn't exactly solid data. Even if 5e is doing great, that could go either way for Paizo. On the one hand, they are competitors, so one can easily pull customers from the other. On the other hand, being the flagship brand in a niche industry, as D&D's sales boom, it lifts the entire industry up in bringing in more customers, not all of whom will stay with 5e. So 5e doing great could easily go either way, and the shelf space at a couple stores isn't going to inform us either way.

Besides the anecdata of the shelf space at my local stores runs counter to that with Paizo products still well stocked and selling.

Same here, my local FLGS devotes just as much shelf space to Pathfinder as it does to D&D. It means what it means, no more.

I started playing D&D and following the game industry in the late '70's, and it seems to me that we are living in rather unusual times, with two very strong fantasy RPG lines running so close to each other. D&D isn't the 500-pound gorilla anymore. Whether or not this will continue into the future remains to be seen, of course.

I think it's a healthy situation for the hobby and the game industry. Having two strong rules systems competing with each other (and in some cases, with people playing both) creates more discussion, more buzz among players and creates more ways to get new people interested in the hobby.

 

[jimtillman]

i know at dragoncon 5th and pathfinder had the same amount of space both large rooms
starfinder was also being run every 1.5 hours to demo it to players
and there was at least a couple of scheduled starfinder games also

 

[Steve W]

You can believe what you want. I base my information from working 20 years running 2 game stores.

With respect to your tremendous store experience, I think both you and rknop have made some over-generalized statements. To say it's "ALWAYS" been that way or that it didn't happen before 4e vs Pathfinder are not really accurate statements.

I was CEO of White Wolf through most of the 1990's and we were typically 2nd to TSR in rpg marketshare. The difference between White Wolf and TSR marketshare was more typically 2x or 3x, certainly not an order of magnitude (10x). White Wolf even surpassed TSR sales in retailer marketshare surveys (only briefly and when TSR was in such financial straits its new releases were constrained).

Edit: I accidentally said Wizards instead of TSR

 

[jimtillman]

Honestly, folks, I was just ready for a change. Thirteen years is a long time for anyone to work in the same place these days. For me, I felt like, between Starfinder and Pathfinder, I'd done most of what I wanted to do in the RPG industry, and I wanted to put more of those 40+ hours a week toward writing novels and comics. I know I shocked a lot of my coworkers with the timing (Starfinder's one of the biggest hits the company's ever had, and I'm leaving right as the proverbial money truck is backing up to the loading dock), but when I decide to do something, I hate dallying, and I wouldn't want to stay Creative Director if my heart wasn't 100% in it. Starfinder is still my baby, and I want what's best for it. So it seemed best to go out on a high note, and this Gen Con was nothing if not a high note! I'm confident that Rob McCreary and the rest of the team will do great things with the game, and I hope to still get to write for it in the future!

—James Sutter

i look forward to seeing your next endeavors.