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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jim Butler" data-source="post: 1248954" data-attributes="member: 1461">Along these lines, there are two kinds of game products.The first kind of game product is written by someone who's really wanting to tell a story. It's the novelette-in-a-game-book syndrome. The product has a few game mechanics elements, but it's primarily written to entertain. The second is the story-as-a-backdrop products. These products provide the shell of a story and focus instead on the game elements over the plot elements. More and more, Wizards has been striving for this sort of content in its products (crunchy bits over fiction). It's a tough balance.Like everything else in the games business, though, there are people who like one and detest the other. Publishers must walk the fine line of providing what the fans want so they can sell that product and make new ones. And each of you vote by buying a product en masse (or choosing not to). All of the glory and praise in the world doesn't do a publisher any good* if you only sell a book to one out of six gamers at the table.This really seems to come to light when you look at brand new rules systems. Some gamers *love* a new rules system, but those gamers seem to represent about 10% or so of the marketplace (with a vast majority of other gamers embracing the rules systems they love). This 10% is also highly transitory (since they'll be looking for the next new set of rules shortly after finding the set just release).So, there's at least the ramblings on how one publisher thinks... ;-)* Yes, praise is nice. But printers, designers, editors, layout people, and others expect cash for their efforts. And the only reliable way to get cash is to produce best-selling books that gamers rush out to buy.</blockquote>

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