[WFRP] Hogshead Closes Doors

[Desdichado]

Although I'm not a writer, I think James Wallis is right with the following statement:Although he stresses the payment aspect, it's not a good practice for the consumers, either. I can see the games company's interest behind this: By establishing a certain trademark they want to get a source of steady income. But often the quality of such lines varies widely depending on who actually wrote the specific issue. I know that I love the style of certain authors and despise that of others - but even EN world doesn't have the ability to list the products by author. And there's rarely a comment on style in the reviews . I think something has to be done about this!

For me it's a bit more complicated. I can't think of a writer that I universally like everything that they did, for instance. Monte Cook, for example, gets tons of respect around here, but there's just as much of his stuff that I really don't like as there is stuff I like. Bruce Cordell wrote the Psionics Handbook which I didn't much like, but is co-credited with authoring Manual of the Planes which I still think is the single best product in the Wizards' library.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Oddly enough, I've often had that impression reading your posts about 1e vs. 3e...

You may have a point. But I've quit bashing it, I still don't love the system but the players like it so I'll run it for a while.

 

[Desdichado]

You may have a point. But I've quit bashing it, I still don't love the system but the players like it so I'll run it for a while.

Y'know, after I posted that, I considered that even with the smiley, that sounded quite snarky. I really respect your response -- if it were me, I'd probably post some surly and insulting reply to what I said previously.

 

[Thorin Stoutfoot]

You may have a point. But I've quit bashing it, I still don't love the system but the players like it so I'll run it for a while.

That's the point, isn't it? It doesn't matter what you like (as a DM or as a publisher), it's what your audience likes. As an entertainer (and DMs and RPG publishers are in the entertainment business), producing what the audience likes is a big part of your success.

You can be successful in the low volume niches, but what that means is that you need to raise prices so that the volume is made up by extracting more money per customer.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

That's the point, isn't it? It doesn't matter what you like (as a DM or as a publisher), it's what your audience likes. As an entertainer (and DMs and RPG publishers are in the entertainment business), producing what the audience likes is a big part of your success.

You can be successful in the low volume niches, but what that means is that you need to raise prices so that the volume is made up by extracting more money per customer.

It very much matters what I as a Dm like. If I couldn't find some good things about D20 I wouldn't run it. Why would I if I am not having fun? It's not the only system I want to play. GURPS is a system I'm itching to run a game with.

You produce what you want to and as to how much you are going to compromise your vision to meet the market is based on your morals. To be honest I don't have much respect for those who are willing to just churn out whatever the market wants, they just keep going for what's hot. In music I really despise this attitude. The market is mostly comprised of morons as it is. Why do I want products that only cater to the LCD?

 

[Thorin Stoutfoot]

e this attitude. The market is mostly comprised of morons as it is. Why do I want products that only cater to the LCD?

Because they're the ones paying your bills?

I'm not being facetious here. It's one thing to be a starving artist, but becoming successful means you're selling out? I don't think so. I don't think Monte Cook has sold out, any more than James Wallis did. But R. Sean Borgstorm works in Silicon Valley, so the money involved in RPGs don't matter very much to her. Monte Cook does his RPG work as a full time job. They both found ways to make what they want to do work for them.

I'm saying that if your tastes in what you do runs towards the "niche" side, maybe you shouldn't do RPGs as a full time job, unless you're very lucky.

 

[JohnNephew]

John: Whats your point? That there is a difference between short-term and long-term market conditions?

You had written, "If you want sales your product better be GOOD." and "he's just not buying YOUR crap anymore when there is better stuff out there." I was trying to illustrate how, in this kind of market, having good product, and even having good product that the gamer is buying, may have little bearing on the survival or profitability of a company.

In fact, a company that produces garbage but is ruthlessly efficient at collecting bills -- even as much of their product sits unsold on store shelves or is consigned to dumpsters -- may survive, while a another whose products are snatched up and beloved by gamers may go bankrupt.

No company will create barriers, i've never heard such a ludicrious proposition. The barriers EXIST, cost and profit, and others, they just haven't hit this changing market yet. (maybe i didn't entirely understand what you were trying to say though...)?

Sure, companies create barriers (though perhaps we mean different things by the term). Some retailers have told me that they're starting to require an advance copy of a D20 book if it's from a new publisher; this is creating a barrier, where 18 months ago they would have ordered anything D20 sight-unseen. Some distributors are declining to carry small D20 publishers directly, insisting that they instead get a fulfillment house to carry them (and nothing requires the fulfillment houses to do so; they can throw up their own barriers of requiring a certain level of quality, or an investment in advertising, or whatever they like).

As time goes on, more of the middle men will set up more stringent hurdles for the explicit purpose of reducing the number of titles on the market. Up to a point, more titles are good; beyond a point, the added titles increase costs and risks while not increasing revenues. To protect themselves, the retailers and distributors will develop means of choosing some products over others (and those means will not necessarily be based on product quality).

You also write, "You scenario assumes something common to all markets up until, say, 3 years ago; Imperfect Information." If you are implying that there is perfect information in the market today (or coming very soon), I can only say that I find that preposterous, the economic equivalent of a perpetual motion machine. There may be more avenues for information, but the proliferation of titles degrades the value of those avenues, and even the greater number of information avenues adds friction to the system. People do not have infinite time to evaluate all of the options, let alone all of the opinions available on all of the options. With a proliferation of choices, it's not sufficient to study reviews of your choices; you have to study reviews of the reviewers, to determine which ones provide reviews that are of value to you. Information itself is a product that needs to be evaluated and judged, even if it is "free," because finding, receiving, processing the information is not instantaneous, and there are irreducible elements of subjectivity in all evaluations of "quality" for things like RPG products.

You say, "I won't be tempted to buy product 'B' after reading 5 bad reviews here (or elsewhere). I'll buy product 'A' after reading 15 good reviews." I'm not sure where you'll find those twenty reviews -- certainly not on ENWorld, which probably has more reviews than anywhere else. In the early days, there'd be a half dozen or more reviews of every D20 release. But today?

Just looking at Atlas Games, I see that we have 19 books that are in the database and are on the market. Here's how the number of reviews breaks down:

0 reviews: 1 book (the most recent)
1 reviews: 8 books
2 reviews: 1 book
3 reviews: 4 books
4 reveiws: 1 book
6 reviews: 1 book
8 reviews: 2 books
9 reviews: 1 book

Of the nine books released in 2002, only two have more than 1 review.

In any case, this talk about how perfect information on products is or isn't doesn't really bear on my original point, despite your claim that it invalidates it: Even if fans love your book and are buying it whenever and wherever they can, the way things work in the real world, you can still wind up going out of business.

I'm way ramblin too, and its early, but this is really a fascinating time to be living as an economist. Of course i'm excited

I'd have to agree with you there, even if I find myself far more on a pragmatist side of the debate than the idealist/theoretical side.

 

[dpmcalister]

I'm not going to comment on the various different points of view about James Wallis. What I will say is that he was always very approachable when I met him at conventions, and his support of Warhammer Fantasy Role Play was outstanding. (How many other people would pick up a game line that a major company had dropped because it was unable to make enough money?)

I will be sorry to see Warhammer disappear back into Games Workshop's back catalogue and can only hope that another company will pick it up soon.

In summary I have the following to say to James Wallis and everyone associated with Hogshead:

Thanks for the journey - it's been fun. Good luck for the future.

 

[hellbender]

Well exxxxx cccccuuuuuusssse HB
I had heard of war hammer just did not have the money to get into it.
But the stock remark was one that cause me to do a double take. I forget the comic who said but it was about the stupidest comment everheard. Ex “ … if it wasn’t for my horse. I would have not spent that year in college…” His stock comment was that.

Also any company NOW ,not back in second edition years, can’t produce product the gamers don’t want. Too many choices, too many qualities. So if the games he produce were so great how come his market share did not grow?

I think companies now can still produce product that gamers don't want. Nobilis is done for me, I wasn't crazy about a couple of Guardians products (Big Eyes, Small Mouth and Demon City Shinjuku) and am not interested in continuing support of the game. It wasn't Hogshead's quality, they produced top notch material, I believe it was that a game such as Nobilis is a fine wine in a market of beer drinkers. Not to everyone's taste.

As far as stupid comments and the stock market; there are none. The first stock sold was for a machine that turns chickens into sheep. And it has all been downhill from there.

hellbender

 

[Desdichado]

As far as stupid comments and the stock market; there are none. The first stock sold was for a machine that turns chickens into sheep. And it has all been downhill from there.

What?!?

For a real history of stocks and the stock market, go here: http://www.stockmarkettrivia.com/