thread on WotC D&D pricing strategies

[enrious]

Ryan Dancey, the new Sultan of Smack! At least for today. That was really a good one!

Yeah, that was great! Did anyone else envision Ryan holding a rolled-up newspaper?

 

[Henry]

Someone did make an interesting point regarding RPG product value over in the original thread, that being that buing an RPG product is actually kind of a gamble.

With a movie or a video game, you buy the product and you're virtually guaranteed instant entertainment. You use it or experience it, and there's basically no chance that you won't get some gratification from it.

I would say to that person, "I see - so you got instant gratification out of the Dungeons and Dragons Movie, then?" There are quite a few people who claim that they DID have to work to enjoy this movie. I beleive Piratecat's exact words were, "You couldn't PAY me to see that movie again."

The one problem with gratification by movies is that if it is a bad film, you have no control or input over making it better, whereas with an RPG, you have the majority of control over whether it succeeds or fails. Even a good DM might make FATAL work - with a few modifications.

I can certainly see the point that RPG's should be priced higher - though my pocketbook is glad they are not - and the fact that there are many talented people who work in RPG's who MUST have side jobs to support themselves proves this. But that is to me a separate issue. The entertainment value of an RPG versus a movie at a theater, or a movie on DVD, is to me without question higher. At a theater, this cost MUST BE PAID every time the movie is viewed; on DVD, very few people will watch a movie more than once in one sitting, and even these people will only watch said movie perhaps 10 to 15 times in their entire history of owning the thing - even movies that they enjoy to that extent.

The average gamer, even one who thinks no more about his game other than preparing his character sheet during the week for half an hour, will spend more time on his gaming, total, than anyone would with one DVD or VHS tape.

With regards to production costs, no one here will dispute that there is a dramatic difference in production costs between the two, despite that someone will spend about as much time producing one as the other - It takes WotC anywhere from 9 to 14 months to produce a gaming supplement, and this is about the average production time for a movie with a fairly large budget with larger named actors.

As for the small-press side of things - Rangerwickett, Morrus, how long did it take to produce Wild Spellcraft, cradle to grave? I would be willing to wager it was about as much time as a small independent film company puts into a very low-budget movie.

Value of an RPG? Even considering casual players, more value is had from RPG's than from a movie. Issues of individuality, prep time, etc. are not significant here - we are talking about Given proper usage of the product in question, RPG's produce a more significant value to a consumer dollar for dollar.

 

[mmadsen]

First here is a basic economic fact that most people have a hard time dealing with. The market value of a product has almost no relationship whatsoever to the cost of producing it.

Certainly people overestimate the importance of production costs -- a product's price isn't naturally "cost + 10%" or any such formula -- but there's most definitely a relationship between production costs and prices: prices are higher than production costs.

It won't. You could reduce the costs of putting on a professional baseball game to nothing and ticket prices will be unaffected.

Your example is quite unusual in that pro baseball has a monopoly and a fixed number of seats in the stands. If we remove those odd conditions, reducing costs to zero leads to lower prices and more fans in the stands.

Production costs describe the supply curve. Prices at equilibrium result from both supply and demand -- not just supply and not just demand.