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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 5705900" data-attributes="member: 17106">Paizo has successfully utilized a subscription service by making it optional, for people who really want the "fluff" as well as the game itself. It's true that the company would not make money without its subscribers, but it's also true that if they had not done a free open playtest and a PRD of completed rules there would not have been much interest in their game to attract tose subscribers in the first place. People were drawn to that.D&D is rather different from the music industry and Itunes because the books are not the end product. D&D is something you do with friends; the books are merely a helpful aid to create the game. Sure without copyright Itunes would die out, but if anyone somehow copyrighted the "rules" we need to produce music ourselves that would not be tolerated by the public.I agree with that conclusion. However, I also think that most people who play those games are not subscribers, and I think the exclusivity of the DDI model (i.e. you need to pay something to get any version of the rules in any format) has alienated a lot of customers, which in business is generally bad. PF has a buy-in option for those who want it (like Hulu Plus), and their products are apparently good enough to attract enough subscribers to allow the rest of us to play frugally.I don't know what the rpg industry looked like in 1987-that was the year I turned 2. That said, again I agree that releasing a set of core books and then a series of ever more specific supplements is a problematic business model that is only going to get worse. I wouldn't pay $140 for an rpg book. I wouldn't even pay $30 anymore. I haven't in a while. I don't know that physical books are worth the money anymore. Does that mean that an rpg company should consider me and my OGL brethren as being irrelevant, or that they should be thinking about how to be competitive enough to convince me to spend money on their products?</blockquote>

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