grogmaster -> RE: The Good Health of the Wargaming Niche (4/29/2013 8:31:31 AM)
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ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins If by "forcing the market to be niche with high prices" you mean that after trying many different price levels and models early in our history we settled on the one that seemed to work best to keep us and our developers in business, then I might agree. Our philosophy is that the wargame market is better off with its developers in business rather than not. However, we can't force that on anyone. You can choose to purchase or not and whether to purchase when a title is on sale or not. If our model does not work, a competitor with a different model will eventually replace us. No, we agree. Your claim for high prices to "keep the developers in business" doesn't seem to be valid if, as it seems, the people who don't buy their (your) products because they are overpriced seem to be growing. The percentage of potential buyers who wont buy your products today is greater than the percentage who wouldn't have bought, 3 years ago. The percentage of potential buyers who will not buy your products seem to be growing by the day according to community input, forums and publication outcries. quote:
ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins If by "plumping out the most titles in the quickest amount of time" you mean sticking with games and developers that have been in progress for years, in an effort to get a highly anticipated game finished after other publishers would have given up, I might agree. If you meant that we were trying to give every promising developer that was interested in making wargames an actual chance at success even if other publishers would not, then I might agree. I think you'd have to be part of the internal process to see how much work and effort we put into these games from our side and how few of them would have seen the light of day or been in the shape they ended up in without the support of a similar publisher. Our developers do an incredible job and put their hearts into these games, but it's the partnership between us that really gives them the best chance to release within a reasonable timeframe and to meet customer expectations. We agree, you are sticking with developers that have released great titles (before you acquired them, more likely than not) in an attempt to squeeze all the fan support out of the game series as much as possible just to make a buck. Perhaps other publishers saw that these developers, that you speak of, have nothing new left in their tool boxes so they refuse to make deals with them? They also refuse to stoop to the low level of milking their fan basis to the last dime, the old grog customers with expectations only derived from previously released games, to only release games that show little improvement on these dinosaurs that were great back in the 90s? quote:
ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins If by "swallowing up competitors" you mean "keeping them from going out of business" then I might agree. If a good developer or publisher approaches us looking for a better solution, or we see one that's struggling, we'd rather give it our best shot using what we know to try to make them successful. That often works, but sometimes does not. If we see a great title and we'd like to publish it, we will certainly talk to those developers and give them an offer of what we can do. We agree, in that you approach other publishers when they are most vulnerable in an attempt to acquire their assets for the cheapest of prices and to overtake those who used to make the decisions in a survival of the fittest mentality; grabbing the rights to their titles, absorbing all their accounts receivable, monopolizing all distribution centers and placing their management in secondary and servant-like positions to those in charge at Slitherine--all for a buck. Please don't point out the fact that you are acquiring these businesses when they are most vulnerable in able to make business deals only and exclusively favorable to Slitherine. quote:
ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins You mentioned Close Combat. Here's a series that was approaching extinction. The only way you could even get a copy was to pay over $100 on E-Bay and the odds were it would not work with your current operating system. The owner of the brand was not doing anything with it and had no future plans. We negotiated on behalf of wargamers and paid to get that license. Even then, it was just opening the door a bit. We were allowed to work with the existing engine and update and remake the original releases. That's also what many in the community wanted, so we focused on that. It was only a year ago that we finally managed to buy the rights to Close Combat outright. Panthers in the Fog was the first result, but it's not our end goal. As you may know, the result of finally getting ownership meant that we immediately started work on a new 3D Close Combat engine. We've invested our money and time into that. We didn't want to keep the community waiting with no Close Combat releases while that was in progress though, so we also continued to work on the existing engine and updated it to create the first non-remake, Panthers in the Fog. We agree here as well. You acquired the rights to CC in order to milk every last dime of the die hard fans that have been following the series for the last several decades. For your benefit, please don't point this out either. Let's keep this a secret. You've done this to several successful game series by the way. But for some reason, by the time the series is owned by Slitherine Group, its quality diminishes significantly. Last Stand Arnhem and Panthers in the Fog were poor excuses for Close Combat successors. quote:
ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins We are not a monopoly, nor are we trying to harm the wargaming community. We're doing our best to do the opposite. I would argue that we've released and funded many landmark computer wargames that are the best of their kind, period and set the benchmark for their subject matter and likely will for years to come. We've given the best developers a home and many of them have done their best work here and most are still with us after 10+ years which speaks to their experience. We agree. You try to represent the wargaming niche. You don't represent the wargaming niche, for me and probably for many other wargamers. So please don't try to say you're the "good guys". That really upsets me. quote:
ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins As for the people above me on the totem pole, I'm one of the founders and one of the Directors of the company, of which there are five. Based on your previous replies, I assume you are referencing Iain. Iain is also a wargamer and works on these games because he personally enjoys them. His personal history includes competitive tournament tabletop wargaming as well as computer wargaming. He and his father, JD are a wargaming family. Again, I don't know where your assertions come from but as far as I can tell they are without basis. As far as I can tell, the CEO has no business behind a computer screen. Perhaps he should be refereeing a tabletop game? quote:
ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins Also, as far as I can tell RPS was not "sniffing out greed" but rather giving us their advice on what would work better as a pricing strategy to make even more money and attract more customers. We may disagree on some of the specifics, but advice like that is always appreciated if not always agreed with. We disagree here. Advice like this is not welcome and publications, like wargamer.com and armchairgeneral.com, are censored for saying otherwise. Are you questioning the fact that management vacationed on an exotic island last year? Please don't make me call you out on this one.
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