2 hours ago, Dave69 said:GAMA is just way for game company staff to go hangout with their buddies in Vegas.
Interesting rant but you are significantly misinformed in regards to GAMA and how businesses work. I have been to GAMA, in a previous life, when I used to manage a FLGS. While there is a bit of truth in what you say about hanging with buddies in the evenings, it is first and foremost a trade show. Games stores and distributors can get hands on product, just like car, gun, or electronics trade shows. When I went, Magic the Gathering had just been announced as being "in development". Shortly before the show, our store ordered a few boxes of decks and booster of this unknown trading card game. We had the opportunity of play demos of the game at GAMA and immediately ordered dozens of cases of each, which was about a x100 increase in our initial order (it wasn't enough). GAMA gives retailers and distributors the ability to do more then judge a product buy is cover or from a short blurb in a press release.
As far as Amazon goes, the vast majority those that shop on Amazon are "normal" (aka banal) people. RPG's sales are insignificant through them compared to hands-on at the FLGS.Its one thing to buy a clock or a book from Amazon but for many gamers, its the ability to get hands on that counts. This gives the opportunity to judge quality and content of a product first hand. This is especially true if deciding to invest in major supplemental book, let alone an unknown rule system. The majority of gamers, D&D players, and roleplayers buy from their FLGS not just so these stores stay in business but because they can see the product for themselves. Game publishers are a business and, regardless of how much they love the industry and their games, will do what sells the most games. If Amazon gives them the vast majority of sales, then that will be their focus and GAMA will fade away. The reason that GAMA has been persisting for well beyond 30 years it because it is a successful method of getting their products sold.
Regarding Star Wars books that are still "on the boat". At least one of their books had a shipping incident and the initial print run was lost. This really set back their time line. This was not intentional and cost them dearly.
All companies, gaming and otherwise, are in the business to take your money and leave you with product (or services). They are not going to purposefully screw their customers (yes, a very few exceptions exist) because that means they will sell less product. Sometimes in order to maximize sales, they will stagger releases on new items. This is the same reason that film studios move release dates. If they flood the market with too much product, their customer won't be able to buy everything which affects their bottom line. This does not warrant wild, unfounded speculation and unsupported assumptions on your part. Ultimately, Paizo and others are not giving B.S. answers. They are giving you as accurate information as they can. Its unfortunate that products don't come out as fast as we would like but that's the nature of the gaming beast.
. I remember thinking it was a rip off Oriental Adventures but when I saw it wasn’t based on D&D, I realized it had the potential of being a fun, playable game. It turned out to be very much so (not counting that D&D travesty that came out later).
. The average production time (without major snafus) for a Star Wars RPG book is right around 136 days, and that's for books that are much smaller than
Terrinoth
and have to go through third-party approvals for just about everything. It hasn't even been 100 days yet, for crying out loud
?
. But Detective Scales McDragonpants is not too far off from the things they normally do
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