Timewaster's Guide Archive
Games => Role-Playing Games => Topic started by: Slant on October 02, 2003, 04:13:30 PM
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There seems to be a new trend of big, hardcover game books (okay, maybe not such a new trend) costing a good sized wad of ca$h. Waaay, back when, they were costing 20-25 bucks. For the longest time they were in the 30 buck range. Now though, we are seeing the greatest price jump ever. The just-released Stargate rpg costs a whopping $50, and this, it seems, is going to be the trend. The soon-to-be-released Conan game will also be 50, as will several other upcoming releases.
Am I the only one who thinks that this is all getting just a little too crazy? Are therse games really worth THAT much? I enjoy gaming, but I can create my own systems and settings for free. I can remember back when you could buy a boxed set with EVERYTHING needed to set up and run a campaign for eight bucks! Is there really going to be a market for $50 games?
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I've been wondering that myself. They're expecting an AWFUL lot of pocket money from gamers. And yeah, you're getting more adults with jobs, but still, If you're going to charge that much, then I can only buy for my favorite game. And you're not going to make yours my favorite game if you make me purchase so many books at so high a price. I mean, full color is nice, but if it puts you into a collector's item range...
I paid less than $50 for a coffee table book at 300 pages from National Geographic of Astronomical photos. There are no "supplements" or repeat business they can count on from that sale. So what justifies a book with more conventional page size being that price when they can count on my repeat business? Is there that much demand? I guess I could believe it with certain merchandise based books, like Stargate, Star Trek, whatever, where there are fans who buy it even if they don't roleplay, but still... How do they expect to build a mass market?
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The problem lies in that they don't have a mass-market to begin with. They can't simply produce a product and expect people to come. They also can't bet on producing a low-cost products and having enough people to pay for it. The RPG demographics is actually fairly small compaired to other markets.
In printing, the more you print the cheaper is becomes to produce the product. However, this also means you need to be able to sell more products. RPG publisher can usely count on selling about 10,000 copies of any given book (being generous). This is considered small press. From what I've learned, the big presses won't accept an order for anything less than 100,000. Small press-publishing is more expensive that large press publising as far as the actual cost of the product.
And yes, RPG publishers are away that gamers have only so much money. There is also a surpising amount of competition for the gamer demographic. So they have to produce higher quality products, faster and cheaper. Course the production credo is that you can produce something that is either quality, cheap or fast. You can have two of these things but you can never have all three. Apparently, publishers are getting rid of the cheap part.
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Personally I would rather have quality and cheap. I don't mind waiting a few more months for a good product, as long as it doesn't cost as much as my car.
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yeah, I think "fast" is what most gamers would choose to skip on. But that's harder to justify in a business plan where you're trying to make more money. The better supported your product, the more people you attract to it. Publishing slower works against that.
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and I would argue that content quality hasn't gone up, product quality (bindings covers and the like) is on the whole better as is artwork, but mechanics are about the same.
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When I mean quality, game mechanics isn't a factor. That's not something that production is concerned about, that's R&D responsibility.