Ok, so here's the thing.

Games which have high production values consistently outsell games that do not.  Hardback outsells softback, colour outsells black and white, glossy paper outsells standard paper.

I know many here care about none of those things, nor do I, but games with those qualities sell better than games without them which is why more and more games that are released are released in glossy full colour hardback.

Also, many gamers judge value by width, they complain if a book seems thin and are happier if it is full of pages.  Naturally, that leads to padding, wide margins, fluff and game fiction.  This isn't as marked as the preference for gloss, a thin  hardback with full colour still tends to outsell a fat softback, but it is a factor.

Notice what's missing from those factors?  What it's like in play.

The truth is, most games being bought don't actually see much play.  They're bought by collectors, they're bought by people who like reading game books, they're bought by people who plan to play them but don't actually manage to because their group says no or their group only plays something else or for whatever reason.

Most game purchases don't get played, and it shows because what drives game purchases is unrelated to play.  Glossy paper, hardback, full colour art, the only one of those that makes any difference at the table is that a hardback may be easier to lie down flat, but frankly that ain't up there as key stuff in play.

Robust rules, well written rules, clear and reliable rules, none of that really helps shift units.  What shifts units is cosmetic stuff.

Why?  Because the gaming industry is set up to feed a consumerist desire to accumulate stuff, to buy product, to acquire and through acquiring announce one's identity as a gamer.  What the gaming industry is not about so much is actually giving people good tools to use to play games?

Why not?  Because that's actually bad for business.  Give people a fairly shitty ruleset which is not really complete but which with a dozen supplements looks great on your shelves and might then be fairly complete and you have a business plan.  Ask the guys behind WFRP 2e.  Note, I'm not saying here there's some terrible conspiracy, rather that the market produces what the market rewards and the market rewards stuff other than good rulesets that make for fun play.


Give people a robust ruleset that allows years of fun gaming and you have one sale with no followup.

Giving people good games is not as profitable as giving them kind of ok games with great production values.  Hence we have an industry that produces not so great games that require a shitload of supplements.

The main exceptions, people like Flyingmice or loathed as he may be here Vincent Baker, are guys who are not part of the main industry and who are doing their own thing.  Hobbyists who sell stuff but who write that stuff because they think it will be cool, and who care more about content than they do about cosmetics.  I consider hobbyist here to be a compliment, Flying Mice and Vince produce the games they want to make, and make them as good as they can.  That effort makes for better games, but it doesn't shift units nearly as much as less focus on solid rules and more on glossy production values would.

The hobby does not require the industry, indeed I would go further and say the industry is not good for the hobby.  The industry produces the supplement treadmill and designs games for those who buy most, the collectors.  The guys actually playing need far fewer books than the guys buying to read or to line shelves, so the games are made for the collectors rather than for gamers.

What's the answer?  Fucked if I know, but a recession might help a touch.  That and remembering that we are not here to support an industry, we are hobbyists and our hobby is gaming, the industry is not there to service us, it's there to service a quite different hobby that likes to buy and read game books as a primary source of fun.

Quote from: BalbinusThe hobby does not require the industry, indeed I would go further and say the industry is not good for the hobby.  The industry produces the supplement treadmill and designs games for those who buy most, the collectors.  The guys actually playing need far fewer books than the guys buying to read or to line shelves, so the games are made for the collectors rather than for gamers.

What's the answer?  Fucked if I know, but a recession might help a touch.  That and remembering that we are not here to support an industry, we are hobbyists and our hobby is gaming, the industry is not there to service us, it's there to service a quite different hobby that likes to buy and read game books as a primary source of fun.

Well, I see what you were saying about the industry (and was leaning towards suggesting just that until I read that paragraph), it's easy to underestimate to role of the industry in helping establish and connect a player base.

But it's not irreplacable. I'm becoming more and more connected with extended gaming communities that are in gaming to game more than to collect. I think some well organized community groups could eventualy supplant the industry as the prime means of keeping "externalities" and shared experiences alive.

Well said, with the caveat that I think WFRP 2e is excellent (though I can see where it could be considered incomplete in a few areas).

I probably wouldn't be in the hobby now if there wasn't a industry. My very first experience with role-playing was with Fighting Fantasy books in the local library - that wouldn't have been there if they were from a small-press company without a real ISBN. The first time I read about real role-playing was in a video game mag - that wouldn't have been writing about it if it wasn't a commercial phenomenom back then. (These were the golden 90s where the German RPG mag Wunderwelten was even available on normal book stores and so on, not just in gaming stores.) And how I formed my first group? Over a notice on the pinboard of the FLGS - that could only exist because there was really money in evil consumerist game lines like D&D, Shadowrun and TDE.
OK, we have nowadays the internet where you can read about role-playing, buy RPG books and find groups, but I doubt that sites visited by non-gamers would report about role-playing if there wasn't a WotC.

As much as I agree to Balbinus' criticism about badly crafted RPGs with 200 pages of purple prose, useless metaplot fluff between full-color hardcovers and supplement abonnements instead of full-blown tool kits to expand the game by yourself, as much I also have to say that there must be an industry to attract newcomers and give stability to the hobby. Otherwise, the hobby would dry out and die in the long run.

Actually, WFRP wasn't my best example, it's rather a good ruleset, I was thinking more of the approach with it though of having a slimmer main book than 1e and a ton of supplements, but it doesn't have a shitty ruleset and I could have made that clearer.

Quote from: SkyrockI probably wouldn't be in the hobby now if there wasn't a industry. My very first experience with role-playing was with Fighting Fantasy books in the local library - that wouldn't have been there if they were from a small-press company without a real ISBN. The first time I read about real role-playing was in a video game mag - that wouldn't have been writing about it if it wasn't a commercial phenomenom back then. (These were the golden 90s where the German RPG mag Wunderwelten was even available on normal book stores and so on, not just in gaming stores.) And how I formed my first group? Over a notice on the pinboard of the FLGS - that could only exist because there was really money in evil consumerist game lines like D&D, Shadowrun and TDE.
OK, we have nowadays the internet where you can read about role-playing, buy RPG books and find groups, but I doubt that sites visited by non-gamers would report about role-playing if there wasn't a WotC.

As much as I agree to Balbinus' criticism about badly crafted RPGs with 200 pages of purple prose, useless metaplot fluff between full-color hardcovers and supplement abonnements instead of full-blown tool kits to expand the game by yourself, as much I also have to say that there must be an industry to attract newcomers and give stability to the hobby. Otherwise, the hobby would dry out and die in the long run.

I take your point.

That said, I went to Salute this year, a London based wargaming con, and it was way bigger than the UK rpg events I've been too and that hobby looked very healthy.

Their industry died decades ago.

Now, I do admit the average player age was older, which supports your point, but they weren't all older so I suspect Caesar may be right in thinking that nowadays we may have ways of supporting the hobby that back in the day were not perhaps so available.

That and I'd query if the fighting fantasy books are really part of our hobby, I see them as like miniatures skirmish games, clearly related but not quite the same thing.  Happily, whether part of it or not, they're back on the shelves in Britain these days so mini-you's are hopefully buying them and will be new gamers in the future

I agree with what you've said for the most part Balbinus, so rather than repeat all the good stuff, I'll just point out a few experiences I've had that go against what you're saying.

Most products with below average production values don't have robust, well written, clear, or reliable rules. Surprisingly I've found you can judge a book by it's cover in this industry to some extent.

Still there are a great deal of exceptions, usually at the other end of the spectrum. Serenity had amazing layout, lots of great artwork and photos and a horribly written, unplayable ruleset.

From my experiences, a great layout doesn't guarantee a great game, but a poor layout is usually a good indicator of other flaws lurking.

Quote from: GoOrangeI agree with what you've said for the most part Balbinus, so rather than repeat all the good stuff, I'll just point out a few experiences I've had that go against what you're saying.

Most products with below average production values don't have robust, well written, clear, or reliable rules. Surprisingly I've found you can judge a book by it's cover in this industry to some extent.

Still there are a great deal of exceptions, usually at the other end of the spectrum. Serenity had amazing layout, lots of great artwork and photos and a horribly written, unplayable ruleset.

From my experiences, a great layout doesn't guarantee a great game, but a poor layout is usually a good indicator of other flaws lurking.

Fair point, shoddy layout often denotes a lack of care elsewhere.

Hm, so glossy games are produced for collectors, and shoddy games tend to be shoddy throughout.

Thank god for the outliers, some of which buck every trend mentioned above.  Most rpgs aren't that great IMO, but there are still your Spycrafts and Savage Worlds and hell DnD 3es out there which buck those trends.  But bucking aside, I still think they are real trends.

My argument is that most games will not be so great in part due to these factors, not that none are.

Balbinus, I have a few disagreements with what you are saying.

On the core, I agree with your analysis: A lot of books are bought to be read, not played.

However, which lines are doing it on purpose and which lines aren't is very difficult to determine.

On the subject of margins, color and art... well, I like that. Color and art are already well-defended (and with good reason, because visual references are groovy) but margins still gets a bad reputation for no reason. Professional people who do layout for a living will tell you: Having a book that "breathes" = very fucking good.

I'm not talking about shitty layout that has ugly blank spaces all over the place. But I'll take a beautiful book over a crappy one.

The other thing to take into consideration is how much exactly, do all the little "extras" that annoy certain gamers really cost. Surprisingly sometimes, not much.

Publishers are offered deal. It's a small industry. They make mistakes, they also hit homeruns. My ex, a graphic designer/illustrator worked for a short while for a RPG company and offered the guy color illos for the same (ridiculous, I must add) price as b/w. She was unfortunately turned down on that offer because the rest of the project was already set for B/W but the point is, illos are not necessarly overkill on the budget, not even color. For an entire print run, you might barely feel the bite.

I am reminded of that story I read, probably in 98 or 99. It might have been from Dream Pod9 guys, I don't remember. They released a supplement. The last 30-something pages of that supplement were a sort of reprint/consolidation of rules found in the core book, as well as a new character sheet and some other little things. While appendix was very useful and avoided book-flipping, none of the material was new except arguably a new-look character sheet.

The publisher got angry emails about the "padding" of the last 30 pages and was accused of being a capitalist pig or some such insult.

What the angry customers "fighting for the little people" did not know was that the publisher, when going to the printer, had been offered a deal if he'd take a few extra pages. Which is not uncommon. The book was effectively costing the same price due to unusual circumstances. They jumped on the occasion and added material as relevant as possible. The MSRP remained the same.

Sometimes later, the publisher was faced with a similar situation and coldly refused.

"Let them flip through their fucking books".

Dude,

I think very few people intentionally release games that are not so good because they're focussing on other stuff.  Now that AEG are bust I can't think of anyone who actually intentionally releases malware to boost sales.

I'm not talking conspiracy here.

Rather I think that the market rewarding factors other than playability leads to games not being as robust as they otherwise could be, and that the fact that provided the gloss is there the books still sell in no way motivates companies to spend extra time on stuff like playtesting.

Re margins, I'm talking there about stuff like the old AEG games and also say the CoC Keeper's Companion second edition, where the margins were so large they actually made the text cramped.  I am not arguing for having unduly narrow margins which make it harder to read, rather for not having padded margins to increase pagecount because some lackwitted gamers value games by the page instead of by the quality of what's on the page.

Overall, the point with increased cost is that by having colour and hardback and all you can charge a fair bit more even if your costs are not so much greater, because gamers are willing to pay a fair bit more to have those features.  Gamers are not willing so much to pay more for playability.  I think this is because most gamers don't actually play much of what they buy, thus playability is less important to them than appearance.

I'm not arguing game books are overpriced, I'm arguing that the market to a large extent rewards factors other than playability.

Quote from: BalbinusRather I think that the market rewarding factors other than playability leads to games not being as robust as they otherwise could be, and that the fact that provided the gloss is there the books still sell in no way motivates companies to spend extra time on stuff like play-testing.

I guess I see playability as being directly linked, and even at times influenced by presentation. I like hard cover, because despite the fact that this is a game I don't have an endless cash reserve, which means I also want my products to last-I consider that an added value after 23 years of gaming.

I also see proper indexing, and cross-referencing as a sign of the games potential quality. I like playing D&D but one frustrating thing for me and my players is when we look up something in D&D, and it references something else-another book, another page, another concept, whatever-but doesn't include a fucking page number. I'm willing to over look this design flaw, which does at times affect our game play because of a number of factors. (We instituted a rule-no more than 45 seconds spent looking up a rule. If we can't find it, fuck it. I rule on the spot, and we look after the game. But on the plus side things like the Hypertext D20 SRD, and a billion players out there supporting any edition we'd like with essentially free stuff, we can over look that flaw.)

I don't know if I am supposed to like that sort of stuff, but I do. I like that I can get anything for D&D or Shadowrun online, and fro free. I also like the massive amount of user supported stuff that's out there-from Raygun's massively cool firearms page to Redblade they have revolutionized my games and saved us tons of time.

I'll trade cool concept for function at times-but I don't have some sort of generalized standard or rule.

And this isn't meant as an attack of anyones position, just a statement of my own. I think this is an interesting topic.

Quote from: GoOrangeMost products with below average production values don't have robust, well written, clear, or reliable rules. Surprisingly I've found you can judge a book by it's cover in this industry to some extent.

...

From my experiences, a great layout doesn't guarantee a great game, but a poor layout is usually a good indicator of other flaws lurking.

QFT.

Seanchai

Quote from: BalbinusNotice what's missing from those factors?  What it's like in play.

I agree, but, personally, I feel how a game is perceived to play is highly variable.

Quote from: BalbinusWhat the gaming industry is not about so much is actually giving people good tools to use to play games?

In a sense, sure. But you could say that about a lot of industries.

Quote from: BalbinusGiving people good games is not as profitable as giving them kind of ok games with great production values.

If by "an okay game," you mean one that has room available for expansion - rules, modules, supplements, etc., then I agree. But I don't think folks in the industry intentionally try to get away with selling (what they believe to be) mediocre product.

Quote from: BalbinusThe hobby does not require the industry...

No. And yet, it's still here. So people must want it.

Quote from: BalbinusThe guys actually playing need far fewer books than the guys buying to read or to line shelves...

I don't know about that. I'm definitely a collector, but play pushes me to buy. For example, I recently increased my CoC collection by about a third. Why? We're playing CoC and I wanted books not to own, but to use. I do the same will most games, filling out my collection so that I'll have plenty of pre-written options in play.

Quote from: BalbinusFucked if I know, but a recession might help a touch.

We just went through one after 9/11 and it doesn't seem have to re-worked the industry along the lines you're talking about...

Seanchai

A couple of the more prominent game designers I've spoken to have said that their model for gamebook production and writing is magazines. And apart from the hard covers of rpgs, you'll see the similarities - glossy pages, colourful pictures predominantly of attractive young women, light writing put into more or less standalone articles, published at a rapid pace, meant to be read through casually, then put aside and forgotten.

One difference is that most magazines have a top level of administrators who are utterly indifferent to the content, a bottom level of writers who also don't care, and a mid-level of editors and frequent writers are really passionate about it. But with rpgs, because the whole organisation is smaller, except for Wizards (and even maybe not for them), both the top and bottom levels merge into that middle one, and almost all the people involved are really passionate about it.

When you view the rpg books not as rpg books, but as magazines, then a lot of the stuff makes sense.

Quote from: BalbinusDude,

I think very few people intentionally release games that are not so good because they're focussing on other stuff.  Now that AEG are bust I can't think of anyone who actually intentionally releases malware to boost sales.

Good call on AEG. And call it what you will (intentional or not), but Mongoose are royally incompetent and their business and success was built churning absolute crap. And they're still going under the same business model.

Quote from: BalbinusRather I think that the market rewarding factors other than playability leads to games not being as robust as they otherwise could be, and that the fact that provided the gloss is there the books still sell in no way motivates companies to spend extra time on stuff like playtesting.

I don't know if by robust you mean "detailed" or "well-oiled". In any case, let me offer my perspective. I think on both count, it could be said that this is lacking currently.

However, that was always the case. Correct me if I'm wrong, but your premise is that by concentrating on other considerations (presentation, fluff, whatever), games currently are lacking quality as far as ruleset.

My own experience, and it might not be yours, is that this was always the case. Most games are lacking. They always have been. And old ugly games where not as much consideration was given to presentation were as likely to be bad as the newer batch. On average, I can't say that games had more rules or better rules back then. All very subjective, but that's my take.

In my opinion (and this is very subjective), people who tend to think games were more solid back then are sometimes falling into one or more of the following traps:

1-They are using the games that stood the test of time as a frame of reference (examples: CoC as opposed to Fantasy Earth)

2-They're a little jaded because they've seen it all before and are a bit more demanding.

Our old products were as likely to be clunky, if not more, than recent designs. They were as likely to be crappy, to have rules that didn't make sense or the like. But we've long forgotten the crappier ones and we may sometimes be a little too much in awe of the classics.

This era will have its classic, just like every others, I think. And then, we will forget the current crap and remember the better lines.

Or maybe I'm just optimistic

Quote from: BalbinusI'm not arguing game books are overpriced, I'm arguing that the market to a large extent rewards factors other than playability.

True, true.

Unfortunately I am of the opinion that it is because many gamers, explicitly or implicitly, not only condone it but demand it. What has changed in the hobby is the DIY attitude we used to have. I'm not seeing as much of it as I used to. Maybe that's just nostalgia and me getting old, but it seems on average, gamers were more capable and even happy to fill the blanks.