A Victory for $J Games
John Sullivan
Come on, GURPS can do anything AD&D can do better, so lets fire up an even
longer, even nastier, and even more confusing thread about putting Gurps
material on the net. Next time I log on, I want to see 814 messages here!
rah rah Gurps.
John "whimsy and irony don't mix" Sullivan
Fuller Too
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Me
were...@alliant.snu.ac.kr
: Come on, GURPS can do anything AD&D can do better, so lets fire up an even
: rah rah Gurps.
I am just plain grateful that SJG isn't T$R.
If T$R made GURPS, I probably would end up playing it, but then I'll have
to prepare several lawsuits...
But then again, I sometimes wonder that, if SJG had been a slight bit more
like T$R, SJG would have been a more financially sound company (not the one
that goes out of business because they lack $20,000, which SJG had come
close to being..) That means better supplements, better artwork(yeah...)
and more GURPS players!
I mean, what kind of company sells a million books in its home country,
translates its books in several different foreign languages, then still has
only the size of 16 employees???
Maybe SJG needs another management...
Sungil Kim
were...@alliant.snu.ac.kr
John Rudd
: John Sullivan (pp00...@interramp.com) wrote:
: : rah rah Gurps.
Which is how T$R got where they are. I don't think you could ever really
compare the quality of D&D to GURPS, but I think in the early 80's, the
comitment to their product was similar, and maybe even the quality too
(early editions of Car Wars were fun, but also rather cheaply put together).
At some point in the early/mid 80's, T$R came under new management that knew
it could make something out of this industry, by doing better marketing.
(I remember reading in Dragon magazine about the little employee bio's,
and one day they announced they had hired a new management person who
*shock-gasp-horror* was not a gamer, and was the only non-gamer in the
company.. but the trend continued toward publishing people and non-gamers)
Unfortunately, they decided marketing could be a substitute for product
quality. But my point is, it was the exact change of management from a
"product oriented company" to a "economically driven company" that you
hint at, that is why we all loathe the things T$R does today. Maybe SJG
could make the transition better.. but maybe they couldn't. I think I'd
rather not find out. (ofcourse, it's easy for me to say that when it's
not my pocket book. Steve Jackson may feel differently.)
(actually, T$R's shift more like "gamers who wrote and published" to
"publishers that happen to do games", but that occured because they
went from hiring and using people who were knowlegable about games,
to hiring people who were knowlegable about publishing. And I think
that is the solution to the problem.. but a solution that is worse
than the problem)
John
Sirilyan
president of SJG is a gamer - he plays, designs, and takes part in the
industry. I've never even *heard* the name of the president of T$R (<waits
for followup from WinningerR with the name> what, me have expectations?
*grin*).
Sure, Steve could promote the company to get its sales up. He could put out
40 supplements a year for GURPS Fantasy, and maybe even a similar number for
Space and Supers (I'd say Cyberpunk, but is there really a GURPS Cyberpunk
market?). But the problem is that it takes money to do this, and it's a
*big* risk. SJ's stated in the past that every 128-page book takes the same
amount of time and money to produce, and yet the adventure modules only sell
1/10th or so what a sourcebook does. INWO might change things (and I'd love
to see, for example, GURPS Phoenix Project expand on the world background
given in GURPS Psionics) but it's Steve's company, steve's pocketbook, and
most of all, Steve's games.
-Sirilyan "At least until my Men in Black get to Austin" @io.com.