• Welcome to the new COTI server. We've moved the Citizens to a new server. Please let us know in the COTI Website issue forum if you find any problems.
  • We, the systems administration staff, apologize for this unexpected outage of the boards. We have resolved the root cause of the problem and there should be no further disruptions.

The problem with Steve Jackson Games

Robert,

Don't confuse the pricing of volume-produced material with that of the small print runs of gaming products. Yes, there are considerable mark-ups for the kinds of products you mention, but they enjoy economies of scale in both material procurement and production that simply don't apply in the gaming world. And printing has become phenomenally more expenisve in recent years.

The only people getting rich in this arena work for Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro, and a few in the collectible card game niche. There are others who make money in the gaming world, but I doubt it's anywhere near what you might expect.

- John
 
Let's give a reasonable example:

http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/columns/free13oct05.html seems to be a fairly sensible discussion of RPG costs from the perspective of the writer. A few more issues, though:

Let's assume that SJG is offering royalties of 10% of SRP, and is making 40% of the cost, as described in that article. That means the writer is getting $4/book, and SJG is getting $12. However, SJG is probably then paying out $5-10 per book for printing; full color hardback printing is not cheap. Toss in another dollar per book for various handling issues. Figure SJG wants to make a bit of money on the process as well. That doesn't leave an awful lot for editing. Figure editing budget of maybe $2 per book.

Assume 3,000 copies, which is pretty good. That gives an editing budget of $6,000. We'll assume an editor is poorly paid, so that might permit one editor for 3 months.
 
Originally posted by kafka47:
LKW, I guess, if you share those mega-plotlines, you would have to kill everyone on this board, eh?
Click to expand...
Some of the plotlines have been revealed in GT products, and some in the TNS newsbriefs available (free of charge) on the SJG website.

So no one needs to be killed . . .
 
On the topic of this post, the only problem I ever saw with SJG was that one of the mods, who's name isn't worth the breath required to say, used to antagonize and drive off a lot of useful productive posters who made good, intelligent, thought provoking posts that were often popular.

JCD, Sean451 and a few others were his victims, but he's really been reigned in lately.
 
Originally posted by Roger Smith, Negotiator.:
On the topic of this post, the only problem I ever saw with SJG was that one of the mods, who's name isn't worth the breath required to say, used to antagonize and drive off a lot of useful productive posters who made good, intelligent, thought provoking posts that were often popular.
Click to expand...
Hm. That's not exactly an unbiased description of the situation.
 
Originally posted by Bill Cameron:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
There's something very familiar about his writing style... ;)
Click to expand...
Sigg,

You picked that up too? ;)


Have fun,
Bill </font>[/QUOTE]I didn't want to say anything and am hoping we're wrong.

Sadly that nagging feeling will probably limit my interaction on threads started by yourself Roger Smith, Negotiator, not that I have a lot of input on matters GURPS anyway. Normally I'd be offering a hearty "Welcome Aboard" without reservation but in this case I have some, and you can thank J.C.D. for that. Still I do hope you make a valuable addition to CotI and that one day I can remove all reservations from my welcome.
 
Originally posted by far-trader:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Bill Cameron:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
There's something very familiar about his writing style... ;)
Click to expand...
Sigg,

You picked that up too? ;)


Have fun,
Bill </font>[/QUOTE]I didn't want to say anything and am hoping we're wrong.

Sadly that nagging feeling will probably limit my interaction on threads started by yourself Roger Smith, Negotiator, not that I have a lot of input on matters GURPS anyway. Normally I'd be offering a hearty "Welcome Aboard" without reservation but in this case I have some, and you can thank J.C.D. for that. Still I do hope you make a valuable addition to CotI and that one day I can remove all reservations from my welcome. </font>[/QUOTE]Please feel free to limit your interactions on any thread I start as much as you want to.
 
Originally posted by Roger Smith, Negotiator.:Please feel free to limit your interactions on any thread I start as much as you want to.
Click to expand...
Well, Dan, that pretty much settles it for me.

All the hallmarks are there; the usual "Nasty SJG mods chased intelligent people with thought provoking ideas away" refrain, the self congratulatory "JCD and Sean451 are swell guys" blather, and now the "Stay away from my threads" whingeing.

Welcome back, JCD! You may have fashioned new 'Groucho' disguise, but you still have the same old attitude.


Have fun,
Bill
 
I'm still unconvinced either way Bill and hopeful what we have is a fresh new citizen who just started off on the wrong foot with the J.C.D. comment. I'm willing to hold off on leaping to conclusions (hi KG ;) ) thanks to my own recent attack of foot in mouth.

If you're interested in the reasons associating yourself with J.C.D. here is a bad move Roger this thread probably sums it up best:

Hasta la vista, baby.

Of course if you are he well you know all that so it would be a waste of time.
 
Originally posted by Roger Smith, Negotiator.:
Please feel free to limit your interactions on any thread I start as much as you want to.
Click to expand...
If you walk into a room full of people and say inflamatory things, and then expect others not to respond, then perhaps your expectation formation system needs adjustment.

In any event, you did not start this thread. Are you referring to other future possible threads you may start?

Please realize that this is a public forum, and if you start a thread, you really don't control what happens to it afterward.
 
Originally posted by RainOfSteel:


Please realize that this is a public forum, and if you start a thread, you really don't control what happens to it afterward.
Click to expand...
I know what you meant by this but I have to add that there is one control a thread starter has, which J.C.D. did resort to, and that's to delete the entire thread, good ideas and discussion and all. For no better reason than spite in his case.

I had all but gotten over that until Roger used his tag here again and I happened to stumble over it being interested in other citizen's replies.

Although I have doubts, Roger's continued similarity of posts (now he's on about grognards in another post, which he did start, and sounding a lot like J.C.D.) only raises doubts.

And while I wasn't even going to address this reply:

Originally posted by Roger Smith, Negotiator.:
Please feel free to limit your interactions on any thread I start as much as you want to.
Click to expand...
...because I may be reading too much into it, I really start to wonder if it doesn't deserve the acidly sarcastic relpy that lept into my mind when I read it. For now I'll pretend it is in all honesty sincerly and kindly meant, but yeah, I won't be contributing to any threads you start until you've proven yourself. A loss some will think, some others just don't know me, and one or two aren't worth my time.
 
Great Flipping Ghu! I havent' been keeping up with these forums for about six months, and there's still the same problem with trolls. Lovely.

As for SJG, nothing that's happened (or hasn't happened) has been a secret. Hell, they've been more upfront about what's going on than any company I can think of in ages. 4e became a much, much, much more complicated project than anyone expected. SJG lost a number of top people, especially editors, and a production logjam occurred. Books missed deadlines, books had to be reassigned, priorities changed. e23 (which has become the best e-commerce site I've seen from a game company and I have a slight professional familiarity with them...) took a number of resources as well. Shit happened, and they spent 2005 trying to catch up. Considering that POWERS came in slightly ahead of schedule, I'd say thing are picking up.

Has G:Traveller been a lower priority than other products? Yes. That's not a surprise...the company has limited resources, and Traveller is frankly a smaller market than others (in fact, I'm surprised we've seen as many RPG releases as we have given the much better cost/profit ratio that Munchkin has to have). I'm fairly certain that part of that was also waiting to see what was going to happen about the license.

Something I haven't seen anyone touch on yet is the lack of available authors for new product. Many of the authors with proven track records are either busy with other projects (several for SJG) or have gotten away from freelancing for awhile. Also, there are at least two major books that have to be completed before a possible 4e general Traveller book: Vehicles and Space. The latter's probably going to be later this year from various comments; I don't think anyone has a timeframe on Vehicles yet.

As for the PDFs, yes, I've wanted to see those too. Those aren't cheap or easily done, though. There's a definite amount of time (especially editorial) that has to go into those. Now, take a look at the e23 sales numbers for other OOP PDFs and figure out what the return is. _I_ wouldn't invest the effort in it at this time.
 
Originally posted by RainOfSteel:
MW Turnage,

You can use the Edit Post feature to delete one of your double posts.
Click to expand...
Thank you. You posted right as I noticed I'd done that and was about to ask that same question.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

P
Quality of Physical GURPS Traveller Books
Replies
9
Views
701
plazman30
P
Hairy Jim DeGriz
Traveller Index Project – Library
Replies
4
Views
1K
RogerMC
R
P
What appeals the most to you about Traveller?
2
Replies
27
Views
932
PulseStar
P
T
MGT Only: MgT1 - sources of ship weapons
Replies
4
Views
576
AnotherDilbert
A
M
2300AD News - Progress on the Invasion campaign
Replies
3
Views
628
MongooseMatt
M
Back
Top