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<blockquote data-quote="billd91" data-source="post: 5532966" data-attributes="member: 3400">I think that's cart before the horse mentality. Why does a gamer get into the game publishing biz? To make tons of money? It's my understanding that's rare. They do it because they think they can turn their interests and passions into income-making enterprises.If it were just about making money or growing the bottom line, I'm sure they could find more effective ways of doing so than publishing games. But they choose to do so in the gaming realm and that says they want to do something more than just increase their profits. They want to do it in a particular way and with particular types of products.There certainly are businesspeople who do think to do just about anything they can in order to increase profits. It's how you get huge corporations like&nbsp; Philip Morris with tentacles in all sorts of non-tobacco-related industries. But companies on a smaller scale usually focus on a particular type of product or competency because that's what segment their directors want to serve. Acquiring TSR couldn't have been WotC's best way of increasing their profits. But I think it was seen as a great way to grow the company in a particular way, serving a particular set of customers, satisfying a particular set of their directors' passions, and picking up a particular mind share among consumers. While those might have also had the benefit of increasing their profits, I doubt that was the primary reason.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="billd91, post: 5532966, member: 3400"] I think that's cart before the horse mentality. Why does a gamer get into the game publishing biz? To make tons of money? It's my understanding that's rare. They do it because they think they can turn their interests and passions into income-making enterprises. If it were just about making money or growing the bottom line, I'm sure they could find more effective ways of doing so than publishing games. But they choose to do so in the gaming realm and that says they want to do something more than just increase their profits. They want to do it in a particular way and with particular types of products. There certainly are businesspeople who do think to do just about anything they can in order to increase profits. It's how you get huge corporations like Philip Morris with tentacles in all sorts of non-tobacco-related industries. But companies on a smaller scale usually focus on a particular type of product or competency because that's what segment their directors want to serve. Acquiring TSR couldn't have been WotC's best way of increasing their profits. But I think it was seen as a great way to grow the company in a particular way, serving a particular set of customers, satisfying a particular set of their directors' passions, and picking up a particular mind share among consumers. While those might have also had the benefit of increasing their profits, I doubt that was the primary reason. [/QUOTE]

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