A clever internet marketing campaign would not only be affordable but probably far more effective than print ads in this day and age.

Quote from: TristramEvans;512251A clever internet marketing campaign would not only be affordable but probably far more effective than print ads in this day and age.

I agree and I think the key is to spend money in a targeted way. Internet ads are affordable and you can target gamer forums (though they can become white noise). Lately I've been doing internet ads and everytime I have a new book we order 1000 double sided card stock flyers with the front and back image of the cover, then ship them to distributors (who put them in game and comic book stores). I was amazed at the response to the flyers. People emailed us right away asking when the book was coming out.

We've stayed away from print ads because they are so expensive and I think more people are online than reading gaming magazines (though knights of the dinner table is still affordable and i've been meaning to try out an ad).

In the casee of big companies like WOTC print ads are probably a good choice.

At this point I believe the entire staff behind CthulhuTech has their heads up their collective ass. Suggestions are resoundingly ignored, criticisms are dismissed (and apparently sometimes mocked in the boardroom), and every time they try to interact with the RPG community they show just how disconnected they are from it, and how clueless they are about RPGs in general.

So to say that I'd take their commentary about the RPG market with a grain of salt would be an understatement. The reason that CthulhuTech is failing is because of the bad decisions being made my its owners/creators. And like all bad business, they're ready to blame everything else except themselves.

That said, the market is still a tough one to succeed in, and one major reason is that all the sales channels for RPGs suck.

FLGS? Why would anyone go there unless they were already part of the community? Book stores? Closing by the minute, and even B&N which tries to maintain a good games section doesn't have an RPG category. The Internet? Most people still want physical books, and tablets are still not consistent or ubiquitous enough for eBooks to be as viable (but just wait till they are. You WILL see sales increase for interactive works like RPGs).

And to be honest even the channels that exist don't seem too eager to expand or adopt new business methods. For example, I want to be able to provide a customer a gift certificate code for a specific physical product so they can get it for free on the publisher's site. That way I can avoid the time/space consuming work of order fulfillment (win), and the POD printer gets a potential new customer in their network (win).

Guess how many publishers provide this service? Guess how many even intend to provide such service in the future? Guess how many are willing to work with you to provide this service? Guess how expensive it is to implement?

Yeah, the market is much smaller now, but a lot of people seem to be actively working against its success as well.

WTH is Cthulhutech?

Quote from: Ladybird;512116Did you actually read the post?

Yes, I actually read the post.

QuoteThere simply isn't enough money there for every product to be top-notch, especially as, previously, publishers could get away with releasing poorer material because the customers wouldn't find out about it until after they had bought it.

Saying "release better stuff and we'll buy it, not pirate it" is pointless, because the money generally isn't there any more to release better quality work.

That presumes that money = better quality work.

Which is utter bollocks. Just look at Wizards of the Coast.

Creating good, innovative, fun, interesting games does not require any money. People can do it for nothing on their computer in their spare time, while they work a day job. So what if it means production values will be lower? You don't buy games for production vales. You buy games to play them. (Case in point: Microscope, which I just downloaded the other week, and is fantastically good - although, I'll admit, not really technically an RPG. It looks like it was created on MS Word. There are no pretty pictures. It doesn't matter - it's great.)

I am absolutely sick to death of RPG designers whining about the fact that they can't do the thing they like best in the whole wide world and expect people to pay them vast sums for the privilege. Get off your arse and design a good game that people will want to play - the world doesn't owe you a living while you sit around on your Cthulutech laurels scratching your crotch.

Quote from: TristramEvans;512274WTH is Cthulhutech?

You don't wanna know. Trust me.

Given from what I read in the earlier posts here, and the original one, I think we can reach a bit of this conclusion:

Like the music and the movie market, RPG market needs to change. There are thousands of independent publishers everywhere now, and there are no "Big Publisher Corporations" that can't be challenged, if even by means of piracy. What the Internet made really hard to do, is to sell mediocre and bad products, since it's all too easy to just download or hear about their quality before you buy them. I'd say that perhaps a tactic of "Free Core Rules PDF, paid print & add - ons" should become more and more common. Days of TSR, WW and Chaosium being the Word of God are long past, and RPG companies should wake up - or form their bizarre notion of RIAA/MIAA.

Of course, another problem is what VS posted - that lately at least, a lot of RPGs are targeted at the crowd who already knows RPGs, so to speak, rather then try to open to other models. I honestly have too little idea about people who work in RPGs, but I'd wager a bit of a guess, that they should look for some really savvy business bastards. And I don't mean just the "profit whores" - that's what WotC tried to do with 4e, because they had to. It worked for a while, like usual, but it now starts to fall like a house made out of cards, so it seems. I mean people who will have some really great business plans, and be able to squeeze every little opportunity to sell their products. Look at the board games market - it's also a hobby, but it's about 10 - 20x bigger and growing then RPGs. Why? If only because it also aims at kids and family games. And I've played a lot of those games, and let me tell you - quite a lot of them are really good, even if you play them as adult in circle of adults.

Quote from: Rincewind1;512305You don't wanna know. Trust me.

Given from what I read in the earlier posts here, and the original one, I think we can reach a bit of this conclusion:

Like the music and the movie market, RPG market needs to change. There are thousands of independent publishers everywhere now, and there are no "Big Publisher Corporations" that can't be challenged, if even by means of piracy. What the Internet made really hard to do, is to sell mediocre and bad products, since it's all too easy to just download or hear about their quality before you buy them. I'd say that perhaps a tactic of "Free Core Rules PDF, paid print & add - ons" should become more and more common. Days of TSR, WW and Chaosium being the Word of God are long past, and RPG companies should wake up - or form their bizarre notion of RIAA/MIAA.

Of course, another problem is what VS posted - that lately at least, a lot of RPGs are targeted at the crowd who already knows RPGs, so to speak, rather then try to open to other models. I honestly have too little idea about people who work in RPGs, but I'd wager a bit of a guess, that they should look for some really savvy business bastards. And I don't mean just the "profit whores" - that's what WotC tried to do with 4e, because they had to. It worked for a while, like usual, but it now starts to fall like a house made out of cards, so it seems. I mean people who will have some really great business plans, and be able to squeeze every little opportunity to sell their products. Look at the board games market - it's also a hobby, but it's about 10 - 20x bigger and growing then RPGs. Why? If only because it also aims at kids and family games. And I've played a lot of those games, and let me tell you - quite a lot of them are really good, even if you play them as adult in circle of adults.

I agree. I think there's something of a circle jerk going on among RPG publishers. Cthulutech seems to be almost the classic pattern: release a product that only RPG geeks would want to buy, then try to turn it into a supplement farm, then whine when that model doesn't turn out to be profitable.

It's all so incestuous and self-entitled. It's almost as if some publishers think they have a God-given right to put out products and geeks will buy them. They haven't realised that the market is much more discerning than it was in the 80s, and there is far more variety; gamers don't want more of the same and don't need it because there is so much else on offer.

The Cthulutech guy's post reminds me a lot of James Mishler's famous rant, which RPG Pundit so effectively demolished.

Literacy might be a bit of a factor here in the UK - the first social-status quartile still do ok, but second & third quartiles seem to have suffered a lot under our wonderful state education system.  It was not great (understatement) 20 years ago, but it's really really bad now. And while the new Tory government lack Labour's visceral dedication to destroying the literacy of the bulk of the population, it's fair to say that the Tories are not exactly over-concerned about the eucation prospects of those in the bottom half of the income distribution.

That's the UK. The US is different though, everything I know about US education, and I have seen a bunch of statistics, indicates that there has not been a severe decline in the literacy of the white high school & college age population that is the main target market for tabletop RPGs.  Indeed the rise in the US's north-east-Asian population has arguably raised both literacy and the absolute size of the potential RPG market somewhat.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;512006Every year, the vocabulary and reading level of Western civilization continues to drop. The average adult in American society has a fifth grade reading level

My understanding was that IQ continues to rise every year.

By definition the average adult in American society has an adult reading level, and the average fifth-grader has a fifth-grade reading level. If they don't, then the names for the grades are wrong.

OK, presumably he means something like "the average adult in American society has the same reading level that a fifth-grader had in 1970" - but if you're complaining about other people's inarticulacy and you can't express your point clearly...

Yeah, but since when have RPGs EVER appealed to the "average" members of society?

RPGs are a hobby for the smart people. One of the reasons it will always be a very small hobby. "Average students" spend their free time playing sports and videogames and chasing girls. It takes a certain kind of person to say "hey, you know what I'd like to spend my Friday night doing? Pretend to be an elf fighting monsters!"

Quote from: TristramEvans;512586RPGs are a hobby for the smart people.

No it's not, and 4e proved that it can get to everyone, you jock hater.

Oh wait.

I don't hate jocks, I just had no interest joining in their homoerotic games.

Quote from: chaosvoyager;512270The reason that CthulhuTech is failing is because of the bad decisions being made my its owners/creators.

Being defrauded twice by your publishing partner may be a factor too. Though i guess you can chalk that up to bad decision made by its owners/creators I guess.

I googled this Cthulhutech and it appears to be...Cthulhu anime with mecha? Am I getting that right?

And someone expected that premise to be financially successful?

Quote from: TristramEvans;512590I don't hate jocks, I just had no interest joining in their homoerotic games.

Quote from: TristramEvans;512592I googled this Cthulhutech and it appears to be...Cthulhu anime with mecha? Am I getting that right?

And someone expected that premise to be financially successful?

It did work for Evangelion, though.