Here if something people that post on forums like this, and I'm guilty of it, don't get around to: There is nothing SJ Games can do to make GURPS a viable business anymore. Nothing. It doesn't matter what product they release. It is a niche in an extremely niche hobby. The RPG business isn't healthy. But, Lurtch! I hear you say, look at how well 5E is selling! Look at all of these Kickstarters!

The hobby does about $55 million in revenue annually. D&D accounts fore more than 90% of that spend. Every other product from every other company is fighting a few million bucks in actual revenue. If we go back to the 80's and to the mid 90's when the hobby was thriving, GURPS was successful as a business. Do you guys not remember that there was a time in the early to mid 90's that White Wolf, Palladium, SJ Games, and others all had viable business publishing RPGs and that these companies would sell hundreds of thousands of copies of the big books?

SJ Games has like 50 employees. There is a thing called opportunity cost. GURPS has had about one supplement a month published, for years, via PDF. They went with Dungeon Fantasy because fantasy gaming makes up almost every dollar spent in the hobby. They went for the big market. They made mistakes and delays that caused them not to be able to sell the box at the big summer cons a couple years ago. But, the hobby isn't healthy. It isn't.

You know how I know it isn't healthy? Because WoTC is trying to move out of the hobby as fast as they fucking can. They are spending a lot of money sponsoring these silly streaming programs because they want to get into the business of D&D being things with the D&D logo on it and not actually books. There is a big bubble around the streaming platforms and eSports and it's going to burst in the next few years. Activision slashed their eSports department because the RoI isn't there. WoTC is spending a lot of money trying to get into the eSports area because they are worried that the current teenagers aren't going to play Magic or D&D if it isn't streamed. We will see if they are right.

WoTC would rather sell toys, pre faded t-shirts at target, have their logo show up in front of a movie, tv shows, and anything and everything but be in the business of publishing RPGs. The hobby works as a business for garage publishers. It really doesn't work for anybody else that isn't working for WoTC.  That's why GURPS is failing. The 5E boom isn't spreading out to other publishers like booms in the past have.

If I worked for SJ Games I'd hug my audience tightly and do anything and everything I could to make them happy. I'd rather have 10,000 people that are willing to up their annual spend.

Well, I think the standing of D&D is not healthy for our hobby at all. Our hobby would be much healthier if it had 2 other household names, say, CoC and Apocalypse World - for 2 different genres and very different playstyles. I think other companies are benefitting less because this time around, D&D has brought in a substantial chunk of lifestyle fans who want to feel as nerdy as the guys in Big Bang Theory or Stranger Things. Playing other games doesn't add to their image, apparently. These people of course benefit from the watering down of fantasy role-playing by such things as removing circumstantial modifiers and replacing them with Advantage/Disadvantage.
That being said, I don't wish ill on WOTC and D&D. Instead, I wish the market would grow and none of it would go to either.

And while I agree with most of what you say, I have to take note of Chris Birch and the success story that is Modiphius (founded in 2012!). The difference between Modiphius and many other, less successful publishers from my vantage point is that it is run by a clever guy who understands business.

Quote from: Lurtch;1078420Here if something people that post on forums like this, and I'm guilty of it, don't get around to: There is nothing SJ Games can do to make GURPS a viable business anymore.

Fortunately for the GURPS game, Steve Jackson Games has a single owner to answer to: Steve Jackson.

And it helps that he is a gamer and wants to support GURPS.

It's also great that Phil gets out and talks to the fans.  We might not always agree with him but he's good enough to get out and do it.

And, as someone who's looked at and worked on doing a fan clone or a close alternative a few times I will tell you one thing about GURPS Fans.  Every last one has their own vision of what GURPS is, what it should be, how SJG should be supporting it, what would bring in new customers, and what's missing and needing to be done.  As a result I don't think GURPS could ever have a Cephus Engine or OGL.  And the OGL has certainly shown us the results of a proliferation of standards.  When I started writing Dark Passages there were three retro-clones: Castles and Crusades, OSRIC, and that really nice 1.5 that violated all kinds of IP, by the time I was done there were at least two dozen.

Quote from: Lurtch;1078418I worked for Backbone Entertainment. Kevin didn't put that in any contract. Nokia did because they fucking paid for the game!

Which was still a mistake on Kevin part. You don't sign a contract for a video game where the company who made it is the only one with access to the video game. It does not hide the fact that it was on a platform almost no one wanted. From what I read on the forums from those who work at PB. Your company was accepted not because it was the platform the fans wanted. You got the contract because your the first ones who approached PB to make a video game. t Which in hindsight PB should have never done because they have a video game which is not going anywhere because the company it was produced under made sure it only worked for the equally dead taco shaped video game system. Either way PB made a huge mistake as a company. One does not simply publish a video game simply because XYZ approached them first to do so.

Quote from: Lurtch;1078418I work in the video game industry. If Palladium could license Rifts for a video game they would. Video games are very, very expensive, and the Rifts brand has no real meaning anymore. If Palladium wanted to sell the brand they would find people willing to buy it.

I'm sure they were approached to make a video game for the company. It's a kitchen sink setting where anything and everything can appear. It has robots, power armor and anything and else in between. Pure speculation on my part I would not be surprised if Kevin asked or wants to much to make his IP into a video game. As well from being on their forums fro a long time they expect interested parties go knocking at their door. Which is probably never going to happen as they are no longer as popular as they once were. The person in charge of marketing their IP should be out and about knocking on other companies. Yes it is expensive given the absolute incompetence with the Rifts board game and Robotech minis why would anyone want to work with PB on anything at this point.

Quote from: Lurtch;1078420There is nothing SJ Games can do to make GURPS a viable business anymore.

Now your talking out of your ass. SJGames and Hero Games could have tried to do more than market to just existing fans. The market trend or at least with fans is for less complexity and crunchiness. Both companies with the latest edition kept both in a market where enough fans are simply not interested in both anymore. At least not enough to spend money on it and voted against it with their wallets. Yes it is a risk and it would alienate older fans either way it seems the older fanbase is not large enough in number to make SJG and HG profitable. Now if rules light less complex rpgs just hit the market they have been around for years. Both companies went "fuck it were keeping everything in the rules mostly as is, changing little, and hope better production values sells our product". It fell flat with new and older dissatisfied fans. At least SJGames core books are a reasonable size. Hero Games looked to have learned NOTHING at all and came out with not one large core book but two.

Quote from: Lurtch;1078420WoTC would rather sell toys, pre faded t-shirts at target, have their logo show up in front of a movie, tv shows, and anything and everything but be in the business of publishing RPGs. The hobby works as a business for garage publishers. It really doesn't work for anybody else that isn't working for WoTC.  That's why GURPS is failing. The 5E boom isn't spreading out to other publishers like booms in the past have.

Quote from: Lurtch;1078420I don't think that is a sign of the end times for rpgs. Simply Wotc wanting to diversfy the product it publishes and carries. Even Palladium Books who is not as profitable as Wotc sells mugs, shirts and non-rpg items and they keep doing so because I'm assuming they sell. Now if they stop publishing rpg products completely then it would not be good for D&D or the hobby in general imo. I would do the same thing if I can market and sell it and it is profitable it gets sold.

Quote from: Lurtch;1078420WoTC would rather sell toys, pre faded t-shirts at target, have their logo show up in front of a movie, tv shows, and anything and everything but be in the business of publishing RPGs. The hobby works as a business for garage publishers. It really doesn't work for anybody else that isn't working for WoTC.  That's why GURPS is failing. The 5E boom isn't spreading out to other publishers like booms in the past have.

If the non-rpg items makes the money why not. I'm not the market for it yet why should they not tap into and sell non-rpg products especially if people want them. I no longer lay Rifts yet would not complain if I was gifted a Rifts Mug for my birthday or Christmas. To me anyway it's smart business and not putting all ones eggs in one basket. I get your point about the 5E boom and other publishers. It was the same with 3E was released. If their would have been no OGL those same publishers would not have benefited from 3E success. By virtues of many of those publishers rpgs not being as popular. At least with the OGL it gave them a chance to get a piece of the pie.

Quote from: Lurtch;1078420If I worked for SJ Games I'd hug my audience tightly and do anything and everything I could to make them happy. I'd rather have 10,000 people that are willing to up their annual spend.

An rpg company needs to thrive not merely survive imo. SJGames made the old fans happy yet even they seem no longer be enough to make Gurps popular. So the choice is to risk a new edition or cut back on publishing Gurps and it seems they are going for the second option. I can't blame them as a properly run company does not keep throwing money at a product that does not make them money.

Quote from: David Johansen;1078451It's also great that Phil gets out and talks to the fans.  We might not always agree with him but he's good enough to get out and do it.

Thank you. If there were more time, we would absolutely be talking more with everyone. Unfortunately, the business needs a lot of attention and we sometimes can't get to every discussion we would like to.

Quote from: Itachi;1078374Yep, the 1 second rounds made our games look more like a world of statues than any recognizable action scene we wanted to depict.

You do realize that in the d20 RPGs that the default move is 30 feet which is about six square and in GURPS the default move is 5 yards or 5 hexes. There is a difference just not as dramatic as folks are making it out to be.

The biggest issue is getting used to being doing one thing and one only only during your turn. Otherwise it is not glacial.

Quote from: philreed;1078463Thank you. If there were more time, we would absolutely be talking more with everyone. Unfortunately, the business needs a lot of attention and we sometimes can't get to every discussion we would like to.

Appreciate you taking the time to show up and chat.

Quote from: sureshot;1078452Which was still a mistake on Kevin part. You don't sign a contract for a video game where the company who made it is the only one with access to the video game. It does not hide the fact that it was on a platform almost no one wanted. From what I read on the forums from those who work at PB. Your company was accepted not because it was the platform the fans wanted. You got the contract because your the first ones who approached PB to make a video game. t Which in hindsight PB should have never done because they have a video game which is not going anywhere because the company it was produced under made sure it only worked for the equally dead taco shaped video game system. Either way PB made a huge mistake as a company. One does not simply publish a video game simply because XYZ approached them first to do so.



I'm sure they were approached to make a video game for the company. It's a kitchen sink setting where anything and everything can appear. It has robots, power armor and anything and else in between. Pure speculation on my part I would not be surprised if Kevin asked or wants to much to make his IP into a video game. As well from being on their forums fro a long time they expect interested parties go knocking at their door. Which is probably never going to happen as they are no longer as popular as they once were. The person in charge of marketing their IP should be out and about knocking on other companies. Yes it is expensive given the absolute incompetence with the Rifts board game and Robotech minis why would anyone want to work with PB on anything at this point.

First, we never had a license. Nokia did. They spent millions of dollars developing the game and they did it because they spent tens of millions on the NGage project. Nokia was a huge fucking deal at the time. We were a work for hire house. We just did contract work for other companies. It had nothing to do with us.

The average cost of a console game that is a big property can be north of a hundred million dollars. That is more than all of the revenue of the RPGs published. Nobody knows who the fuck Palladium is except guys over 40. The reason Rifts isn't in damd is because the RPG hobby isn't healthy. The RPG industry is one company. 25 years ago it was in much better shape.

Robotech KS or Kevin being a weirdo have nothing to do with it. Licensed game development is pretty much an iPhone game thing. The publishers want to own their IP. Unless you're Star Wars the publishers would rather create an IP they own than license something from somebody else

Sureshot,

The market is for D&D. If SJ Games launched a "rules lite" 5E people would be unhappy. Do you post on the SJ Games forums? It has more posters than this forum does.

Quote from: philreed;1078463Thank you. If there were more time, we would absolutely be talking more with everyone. Unfortunately, the business needs a lot of attention and we sometimes can't get to every discussion we would like to.

Yeah thanks for posting. I'm glad you're just not on TBP. Any chance we will ever get a KS for more cardboard hero/monsters? Those are system agnostic and I think could be a big hit with gamers from all walks.

Quote from: Lurtch;1078487Sureshot,

The market is for D&D. If SJ Games launched a "rules lite" 5E people would be unhappy. Do you post on the SJ Games forums? It has more posters than this forum does.

It may have more fans true yet are those fans fans just lurking or buying more Gurps product. As it stands and according to SJGames Gurps at this time for them is less profitable. Are they going to end the line no. Is their going to be less of focus on it probably.  If a rules lite version of Gurps will flop as you suggest then what is your fix. The status quo is not doing much to help SJgames. It's the same old chestnut with Gurps and Hero System fans. Don't change anything at all because it might makes us unhappy yet not providing any solutions to the crisis at hand that both companies are facing. Yet somehow clicking their ruby red D20s together going " I wish I wish more people would play Gurps/Hero sysyetm" .

Quote from: philreed;1078463Thank you. If there were more time, we would absolutely be talking more with everyone. Unfortunately, the business needs a lot of attention and we sometimes can't get to every discussion we would like to.

Welcome to the site!.

A great as GURPS Lite is, for GURPS to be any lighter, the calculations for Basic Speed, Parry, Penetration, and Injury would all have to change.  Multiplication, Division, and Fractional values oh my, imagine the horror.  You'd probably have to scrap the rules for critical hits and critical failure too as they're sensitive to ratings.  You'd have to break down the stats to have the same values.  Skills at least would work with just a slightly different notation.  Stat +/- n rather than difficulties.  Cost 1, 2, 4, 8 12, 16.  The table just breaks people's minds.  I don't understand why but admittedly it isn't the simplest way to present the information.  People are afraid of tables, I'm a Rolemaster fan, so I don't get that fear at all, but I've observed it often enough to know it exists.

The thing is that there already is GURPS Ultralight but at a point things stop being GURPS and become say JAGS, CORPS, EABA, or any number of other close relatives.  I do think simpler points of entry would help but GURPS has a certain reputation that's hard to live down.  I do think that most licenses turn away at least as may people as they draw in, I expect I've said that many times before.  The reality is that the rpg market is supersaturated.  Everyone's written a game, writing a game, or thinking about writing a game.   It's why I opened a store instead of publishing my own work.  It's why I tend to get behind existing systems I like.  (much as the designers and publishers dread it)

It'd be nice if Transhuman Space or WWII had taken off better or Hellboy, Disc World, Myth, Vorkosigian, Prime Directive or any other in one book variants I might have missed.  It'd be nice if we could have a nice GURPS Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, or some other massive hit franchise but obviously it's out of reach at this point of time.  Personally I've never understood the appeal of being rigidly locked into a setting like that but again, I've seen the market power of it up close and personal.  People don't want something like Warhammer 40000, they want Warhammer 40000.

I mean it's all well and good to say, we need to create a massively popular hit setting but if people could just do that everyone would be doing it.  Throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks is expensive and time consuming and if history is any indicator it's usually the one the creator was less fond of and didn't want to get stuck doing for the rest of their life.