Work really interferes with fun

After a hectic week followed by a vacation in Hangzhou, I am ready to get back to blogging. I actually feel very guilty if I do not blog for a couple of days, and I meant to write some stuff up on Monday, but I just did not get there. Last week I was hosting a summit with all our regional partners, and it just chewed up any time I had.

Over the weekend my family went to Hangzhou which is a beautiful city located about 3 hours south of Shanghai. The city is centered around West Lake which is a good sized lake. Once it was the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty, before the Mongols came and then the capital was relocated to Beijing. It is rumored that Marco Polo visited the city and called it the finest city in the world. Without a doubt, the area around West Lake is very stunning. Wikipedia has a good article on the city, and can be found here.

Now that I am back, I will start posting again on a regular basis.

Marketing Management 101

What a mess.

Apparently I have been living under a rock for the past 12 hours or so, because I just received an email from Paizo telling me that Wizards is halting their sales of PDF’s, and that I should buy them now otherwise forget it. Of course by the time I saw that, it was a done deal. In the mean time, every blogger has already posted their commentary on the subject, and Enworld is shutting down posts on the subject that are already almost 20 pages long of folks complaining about it. I definitely feel late to the party on this one.

So I get the piracy thing. I really do. In this digital age, it is something that we have to deal with. The music industry learned that the hard way. Fans want to get their products through digital media, and through the internet is a prime way to do this. However, I do have some commentary on this.

1) It seems to me that the biggest issue is piracy on the new stuff. I am not convinced that Wizards is losing a lot of sales on the older product to PDF piracy. With this in mind, if Wizards is really concerned about piracy on PHB 2, they should delay the PDF releases until the hard cover books have been in circulation for a year or so. This is similar to what publishers do with hard covers and soft covers. The soft covers hit the street about a year after the hard covers. Let’s face it, the big sales spike is within the first 6 months of a product release then drops off significantly.

2) By eliminating ways for paying customer to buy PDFs, I think this has the opposite effect. I have no data to support this claim, but I am going to go out on a limb on this one.

3) Based on what I have seen so far, it feels like an inside job or more likely that Wizards has a problem with one of their printers illegally distributing their products before the release date. It seems like this would be a straight forward process to verify.

I also saw mentioned that Wizards wants to support the local game stores and that means limiting the availability of PDF files in order to keep sales of the books high. Again, I get this, and I think that if Wizards just delayed publishing PDF files until for a year, this could help out the smaller brick and mortar stores. However, I think it is online retailers like Amazon that is really hurting the FLGS, as they can sell it for 20-30% off the cover, and the FLGS cannot match discounts like that.

This brings me to my next point of the older material that is not in print any more. Again, I am going to go out on a limb and say that since Wizards is not selling or supporting the older products, and that the FLGSs probably do not have this stuff on their shelves, the only way to get this stuff is through PDF. Now Wizards is not doing anything to promote the older stuff, as they want everyone to move to 4th ed, so the sales potential on the older material is really just a drop in the bucket, and I suspect that piracy on the older material is very small.

My last comment on all this, is that this is a public relation nightmare for WotC. Clearly this is going to be seen in a bad light. The suddenness of it strikes me rather oddly. They shutdown everything rather quickly, and it feels a bit like a knee jerk reaction, regardless of whether or not this is indeed true. If this was a planned move, it feels like they should have immediately launched a counter marketing plan to put this in some sort of positive spin on the situation. Instead, it looks like things are getting wildly out of control. This cannot be good for business. I am not sure what’s going on over at Wizards.

This may sound strange, but even though I am not a fan of 4th ed, I do hope Wizards is successful at least on some level. Wizards is the big gorilla on the street, and I believe that it is actually in the best interest of the hobby to have a strong lead player in the market. I do believe that the current situation is not good, and it is leading to fragmentation of the fan base, which I think is bad for the hobby. The hobby is rather small to begin with, and anything that causes it to splinter off, will ultimately make the fan base even smaller, which makes it harder for companies and game stores to stay in business. Having a couple of big players in the market supporting a game system is just good for everyone, in terms of keeping interest high in the hobby, and allows the local game store to survive. The FLGS needs big brands to keep a good customer base. Without the big brand, their sales will drop off also. Just as a mall needs anchor stores, our hobby needs anchor brands. When I see fans say that they will not support Wizards, I see this as a slow death spiral to our hobby. This is a bad sign.

Now I do agree that there will be independent game designers that will publish, and that there will be diversity in choices. The retro movement is surviving on this at the moment, but I do not think this is a recipe for long term growth in the hobby. This is one of the reasons that I am rooting for Paizo. Potentially Paizo can keep some of the fan base together, as they have emerged as a strong player in the market.

So to wrap this up, I think Wizards has a mess on their hands. Yes I do believe that Wizards will pull PDF’s to their own stores to control distribution. However, this heavy handed tactic will not win favor with the fan base, and it will take a bit of work to get that good will built back up again.

General News Items

This week was a busy week for announcements and such. Enclosed is a quick summary of news worthy items:

1) WotC announces a new GSL.
2) Clark from Necromancer Games announces that he is working on a 4E Classic, and has set up a forum to discuss this on his boards.
3) Paizo announces two new licenses for their Pathfinder line. The first is a compatibility license and the second is a community use policy license.
4) Fight on! volume 4 is released
5) Monte Cook is announcing his new Dungeonaday web site which launches next week.
6) We are getting closer to the publish of The Anthology of Roleplaying Game Blogs, with most of the work being done by Jonathon Jacabs, over at The Core Mechanic. Catch up on the latest news here on the project.

While not everyone may be interested in all these items, I think anything that creates buzz for the hobby is a good thing. As weeks go, this one was a good one for our hobby.

Six is good!

Normally I just focus this blog on game stuff, but the Superbowl is a game..right? Its just a really big game.

Superbowl 43 wrap.

Steelers make it 6! Pretty amzing considering there are some teams that have not even made it to one. On my other blog, I have typed up a couple of notes on my Shanghai experience watching the Superbowl. It was a little different, but still a good time.

http://mrbaron-bps.livejournal.com/32050.html

Highlight videos.

Enjoy!

Year of the Ox

Happy Chinese New Year!

This should be an interesting week. The New Year festivities start tonight and last for the next several days. For those wondering, I have included some info from Wikipedia on the Year of the Ox.

The Ox ( 牛) is one of the 12-year cycle of animals which appear in the Chinese zodiac related to the Chinese calendar. The Year of the Ox is denoted by the earthly branch character . In the Vietnamese zodiac, the water buffalo occupies the position of the ox.

The Ox is the sign of prosperity through fortitude and hard work. This powerful sign is a born leader, being quite dependable and possessing an innate ability to achieve great things. As one might guess, such people are dependable, calm, and modest. Like their animal namesake, the Ox is unswervingly patient, tireless in their work, and capable of enduring any amount of hardship without complaint.

Ox people need peace and quiet to work through their ideas, and when they have set their mind on something it is hard for them to be convinced otherwise. An Ox person has a very logical mind and is extremely systematic in whatever they do, even without imagination. These people speak little but are extremely intelligent. When necessary, they are articulate and eloquent.

People born under the influence of the Ox are kind, caring souls, logical, positive, filled with common sense and with their feet firmly planted on the ground. Security is their main preoccupation in life, and they are prepared to toil long and hard in order to provide a warm, comfortable and stable nest for themselves and their families. Strong-minded, stubborn, individualistic, the majority are highly intelligent individuals who don't take kindly to being told what to do.

The Ox works hard, patiently, and methodically, with original intelligence and reflective thought. These people enjoy helping others. Behind this tenacious, laboring, and self-sacrificing exterior lies an active mind.

The Ox is not extravagant, and the thought of living off credit cards or being in debt makes them nervous. The possibility of taking a serious risk could cause the Ox sleepless nights.

Ox people are truthful and sincere, and the idea of wheeling and dealing in a competitive world is distasteful to them. They are rarely driven by the prospect of financial gain. These people are always welcome because of their honesty and patience. They have many friends, who appreciate the fact that the Ox people are wary of new trends, although every now and then they can be encouraged to try something new.

It is important to remember that the Ox people are sociable and relaxed when they feel secure, but occasionally a dark cloud looms over such people and they engage all the trials of the whole world and seek solutions for them.Also the Ox people are all caring and loving but at times when you mess with them they will tear out in anger.

Quick Update

I have arrived safe and sound in China, and it is Sunday night. Mostly likely Monday will be a work catch up day for me, and I will be back to posting on Tuesday.

Back to China!

As some of my readers may know, I am temporarily working in China for a year. I was back in the states for the holidays, and tomorrow I fly back to China for the final six months of my assignment. After this I will return to my old job back in the US. This is a relatively short assignment, as I have met folks that have been abroad for 4+ years.

With that in mind, I will probably not post for a couple of days as I will be tied up with traveling and getting back into the swing of being in China.

For next week I am hoping to finish up my series on the Paladin. My next post will be commentary on chivalry and I will be comparing it to modern day codes of conduct. In part 5, I will be wrapping up the series with commentary on how all this applies to playing the paladin in games, both from a DM perspective and from a player perspective.

News Flash!

Dolphins win over the hated Jets, and they are in the playoffs!

Woot!

Now back to our regularly scheduled programing :)

Pardon the interruption

I know I am in the middle of a lengthy discussion on paladins, and I will get back to that in a moment, but I do want to recognize the work of one of my fellow bloggers, Jonathan Jacobs, over at The Core Mechanic. He is working on a RPG Blogging Anthology to capture some of the more memorable blog posts of 2008. I personally think this is an awesome idea, and I am throwing my support behind him. I also want to recognize all the bloggers out there that take time to mention blogs of interest. As I have stated before, I spend a lot of time reading blogs between mtgs and such, and it seems that everyday I find another blog of interest. It is through the networking of blogging that we can share ideas and concerns, and I think that makes our community all the more tighter because of it. The other reason that I think this is a very important project for our community is that this is a way of capturing the information that we are publishing on an almost daily basis. There is an extraordinary amount of content that is being published, and if we do not take some time to attempt to capture it, this will become lost in the ether that is the internet

Now back to paladins!