What causes new editions?

[Dannyalcatraz]

I could be bunnies.

Yes, you could be...several, I'm sure.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

What causes new editions?

Greedy record producers willing to exploit talented young kids.

New Edition - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Mercule]

1) Economics

2) Really cool ideas in game design that may or may not fit within the boundaries of the current edition's design

3) Accretions of errata and revisions that virtually dictate the release of at least a cleaned up version of the rules.

4) Economics

5) Economics

Pretty much.

There's a huge element of "it depends", too.

Some games don't change much, other than the accumulation of "standard" house rules that are made official or similar tweaks. I'm thinking most of the Hero editions, GURPS (from what I've heard), 1e -> 2e, with oWoD Revised and 3e -> 3.5e being arguable but generally in that spirit. For favored games, these often end up coming out about the time enthusiasts have worn through the binding on their originals and are welcome (to varying degrees).

Other games are new systems for an old genre and crib the name. Top Secret, 3e, and 4e all work here. The motivation might be a tired, poorly performing product or a change in ownership/development team. It can be totally well intentioned (as 3e certainly was) or just corporate crap.

Regardless, finances always play a role in decisions made by people making games as their livelihood. Sometimes the economics are second place. Sometimes they're first.

 

[MerricB]

D&D is also in a rather unusual spot when it comes to new editions: it is just so massively huge, and holds enough of the attention of new people that it actually needs to react to the changing needs of its players.

The gaming options of today are not the same as they were 30 years ago. It's exceedingly rare that a game can maintain its market position unchanged. (How Monopoly does it is related to how badly educated the population is with regards to boardgames - although I wouldn't be surprised if over the coming decades, it begins to lose significant market share with the rise of Carcassonne, Settlers of Catan and other modern boardgames).

This is not to say that economics, money and a host of other factors figure into new editions - of course they do!

We must remember that the art of designing RPGs is still pretty much in its infancy. How long has Chess been around? We think of that as a "stable" game, but it most likely didn't look like that when it was first designed...

Cheers!

 

[El Mahdi]

We must remember that the art of designing RPGs is still pretty much in its infancy. How long has Chess been around? We think of that as a "stable" game, but it most likely didn't look like that when it was first designed...

Cheers!

And can you just imagine the Chess edition wars of antiquity? I remember the flame wars between old school and new school over the en passant mechanic! Took centuries for the ill will to fade.

 

[nightwyrm]

We must remember that the art of designing RPGs is still pretty much in its infancy. How long has Chess been around? We think of that as a "stable" game, but it most likely didn't look like that when it was first designed...

Since we're talking about chess, let's have a wiki link History of Chess

Interesting factoid: the Queen was originally much less powerful and only able to move 1 square diagonally. I bet if there were internet back in those day, ppl would be complaining that changes made to the Queen made it totally OP.

 

[nightwyrm]

And can you just imagine the Chess edition wars of antiquity? I remember the flame wars between old school and new school over the en passant mechanic! Took centuries for the ill will to fade.

I'd imagine that if some king was pissed off enough at the changes, he'd actually start a real war.

 

[El Mahdi]

Since we're talking about chess, let's have a wiki link History of Chess

Interesting factoid: the Queen was originally much less powerful and only able to move 1 square diagonally. I bet if there were internet back in those day, ppl would be complaining that changes made to the Queen made it totally OP.

Yeah man! The Queens movement is totally Broken!

 

[Vigilance]

Business.

Revise. Reset. Resell.

 

[Gog]

Of course, chess has evolved over centuries, checkers has lots of regional variations (that I had no clue about until I saw a wiki article on checkers), poker has a bazillion forms and the form-of-the-day varies over time (cf., Texas Hold 'Em), and the folks that own Monopoly release new versions all the dang time nowadays (did you want Simpsons Monopoly, or Star Wars, or the soap opera version, or the Euro version, or the cheap version, or the in-an-expensive-wooden box version, or...), and even Scrabble gets new versions, thanks to technology. I can't tell you how many versions of Sorry! I've seen.

We own; 3 battleship, 3 sorry, 5 clue, 6 monopoly, 3 Life and heavens knows what else.

MY 5 yo loves Clue Jr.