Palladium in Trouble

[Spriggan]

I think his stranglehold on the company is having the start of a big fall out.

Or it could be the only thing keeping the company a float.  It's really hard to say what the company did wrong from an outside view.  Sure it's easy to say "Convert to D20!", "Make your books fancy and expensive!" or "PDF for teh winz!".  But the RPG industry is small and unstable, plus none of us or business majors so who are we to tell people that have been doing fine for over 20 years that they screwed up when their in this situation due to thefts?

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

it wasnt all thefts Sprig, the Rifts Card Game years after the cardgame market collapsed and the Ngage deal were bad buisness descisions.

[Spriggan]

I'll give you those, to an extent.  The CCG was years ago and they did loose money on it, but the N-gage was just a loss of potential income they didn't invest much into it.  From what I understand if it wasn't for the thefts then the N-Gage flop wouldn't matter.

The Rifts VG was quite good from what I heard, which is sad, they should port that bad boy over to the DS.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

thats not quite the impression I got, I assume if Nokia lost "truckloads" of cash then Palladium probably did too. Heck I even remember ad copy about it and other stuff.

The lost productivity alone had to hurt.

[Spriggan]

I can see them loosing some money productivity wise, but I don't see how they would have invested any more money into it.  Usually how these things work is someone pays you to use your stuff then you sit back and wait for the royalties.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I don't think you can say that the Nokia deal lost them millions of dollars. It doesn't make sense.

Nokia says "We'll pay you so we can make a game on your product."
Kevin says, "ok!"
Nokia spends money developing the game for a lame system that everyone knows will go nowhere.
If anything, Kevin lost a few hours here and there clarifying a rule or looking at pretty graphics.

Can you honestly say that would collapse a company?

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Kevin "I must micromanage every project that centers around my IP" Simbeda... yes I can. Maybe not millions, but enough to damage the company when combined with the other factors. I never said it was the sole reason for them being in trouble but there is marketing, product tie ins, freebies, convention support, and much much more.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I don't think you're being reasonable when you make the Nokia deal to be such a determinate factor. If anything, I dislike Palladium more than you, but you're being a bit silly about it. ALl those things you mentioned that tie into the game? That's Nokia's pocketbook, not Kevin's.

Did you read the thread? They lost 7 figures to theft and fraud. Yet you're saying that doing all the normal things that a game company does it what screwed them. That doesn't make sense. Anything they've lost over a game deal (nokia, or card games or whatever) pales in comparison to that.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

I think your overreading my argument. Im not saying it was the only factor, just that I think Sprig made it much less of a factor than it probably was.

And yes I do think doing the things that a normal game company does started to put it out of buisness. Its done the same for lots of companies lately, and frankly KS backs me up on that blaming the slowing of the RPG market.

When other companies were retooling their lines to make them more competitive and streamlined Palladium kept to the same format. This isn't 1985 E, the major competition for RPGs out there isnt other RPG's its video games. While the video game deal was a good idea it fizzled. The video game model is exactly why d20 is so successful (well that and the huge amount of marketing) because characters in the game are more video game like advance faster and have a breakneck release schedule to deal with Gamer ADD.  

Once palladium books looked great ,and that was a big draw, but now, everyone has pretty much surpassed that, switched to better paper, hardcovers, better art and much much more. Now Palladium games undercompete because they aren't the slick new thing. Sure they sell consistantly to old players, but new players are snapping up D20, and a lot of slick small press games.
One thing I do know about gaming and publishing company is that one or two bad products and slumping sales can torpedo a company faster than you can say jimeny cricket. Thats what FASA and GDW had to deal with and they arent around today.
In this day and age, playing the same game in the publishing buisness isn't going to pay the bills, or at least it doesnt seem like it.

Now the embezzlement hurt, and hurt them badly, I wont deny that (and never did) but the embezzelment has kind of been old news (its at least a year old now even though it was only whispered about earlier) but like I said, this has been going on for a while. I was making the argument that the embezzlement wasnt the only cause of their financial situation.

I hope Palladium can pull itself away from the brink, I have fond memories of the Robotech game, but I do think that they need to start changing with the times or they wont be around much longer.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

The problem with your whole, argument, however, is that they were doing great until someone stoll over a million dollars from them. I don't see that the N-Gage is ANY sort of significant loss. It's a loss of expectation, sure, but not actual cash flow. It's not like the profit-margin on their books suddenly disappeared, or that people stopped buying. It's that they lost more than they had in the bank. It has almost nothing to do with business practices.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

I never got that they were doing great... I just got that it should have been a good year. And it should have... if like a dozen things had happend. In all fairness... I may be misreading the post but I dont think I am.

If the book trade had been better, if the movie hadnt stalled, if the MMOG had happened, if the nokia game had worked, if other deals hadnt fallen through, or been slow, if the RPG trade hadnt been in a slump and if they hadnt been stolen from.

Thats an awful lot of ifs. Some of the if's could have made a lot of cash, but it always sounded like Palladium counted on them a bit too much especially the movie which they have been talking about for years.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

"The irony is, we should be doing fine except for the treachery that has crippled us."

ie, even with those failures, they would be afloat except that they lost truckloads to a crook.

So, yeah, you read it wrong.

[Fellfrosch]

I tend to agree with e, that the video game was a relatively minor factor--but I know Siembieda well enough to predict that this huge financial emergency will scare him out of licensing deals for a long time. His mantra is "keep doing the same thing, and doing it well," and the video game venture represented a break from that philosophy. When he gets things under control and the time comes to knuckle under and get back to work, he's going to jettison everything that isn't a pure RPG. Ironically, this will probably mean that he'll resist other changes even more strongly, such as new business advisors, new copy editors, digital publishing, hardbacks, and full color.

I love Palladium, perhaps unreasonably so. I would hate to see them go under, and I would hate to see them lose control and quality. But I do believe that something needs to change, and the changes most likely to save them will be painful.

[Tage]

I don't really have an opinion on Palladium, except that I like what little I've seen from them, and I'd hate to see them go under.

I have no problem putting up a stickied banner on the front page for a while, if they have one available.

[Spriggan]

I'll make one today or tomorrow and send you a link if that works (I don't know if they have a banner for this).