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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Monte At Home" data-source="post: 2716362" data-attributes="member: 1335">Heh. "TSR" and "study" are two words that don't go very well next to each other. I imagine this "study" went like this:Exec #1: Do you think that an author's name is important in sales?Exec #2: It better not be. If it did, we'd have to show those guys in the back some respect and give them raises.Exec #1: Ew. That'd be horrible.Exec #2: Darn straight. Exec #1: So we'll stick with the idea that the cover art is the only thing that matters in sales, and not the text.Exec #2: Text? Are we still putting text in those books?(He hunts for a book. Can't find one. He gets his secretary to get one for him. Rather than go back to the scary place where there are lots of D&D books, she hunts until she finds one in a conference room, under a potted plant, and gives it to the executive. He opens the book--the cover creaks and crackles, having never been opened.)Exec #2: Huh. Whatayaknow.Exec #1: Yeah, it's a lot of gobbledegook. All that +1 magic THOOCO stuff. Exec #2: But nobody looks at that crap.Exec #1: Right. Exec #2: Where'd my glass of champagne go?Exec #1: Here, let me open a new bottle.(clink of glasses)Exec #2: To evil!At least, that's what it would have been like while I was there. TSR didn't do studies. They didn't care what role playing game buyers liked or disliked. They didn't like role playing games. They didn't like role playing game authors. They sat in jaw-droppingly expensive office chairs in front of expensive hardwood desks and never came back to the dingy cubes where the real work was done. I'll defend a lot of TSR products, product lines and decisions and I'll point out a lot of half-truths and misconceptions about TSR*, but there were a lot of things screwed up there and the people in charge of D&D throughout the late 80s and early 90s were probably even worse than you've heard. I don't believe for a moment that TSR would spend money on such a study.*TSR did not, for example, attempt to Trademark the word "nazi."</blockquote>

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