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Elfgames posted:No it's also the fans. Let's not blame the victim. 
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Aug 8, 2015 20:15
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So, tell me about printing games and why it seems all of them are printed in China. I know that if you're manufacturing electronics or computer stuff, doing assembly in Southeast Asia is a no brainer, because they have huge factories with a flexible workforce and all the component suppliers nearby. Is that the same story with printing? There are a zillion printers out there that can scale up to crazy high output, so it's worth waiting for the stuff to cross the ocean on the slowboat?
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Aug 10, 2015 04:51
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Generally RPGs that print in China are doing offset runs (print a bunch at once, usually 1,000 copies or more) instead of print on demand. They are also doing full color interior pages, instead of black and white. If you want that, the best price are Chinese printing companies and that includes shipping pallets of books on a ship and paying custom fees. If you're doing a black and white book with less than 1000 copies, it's fine to use a local printing company or POD company like Createspace. Get quotes from multiple companies though and ask for sample books to check their printing quality.
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Aug 10, 2015 04:59
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Simon Rogers is doing a series of articles over at ENWorld about eBooks vs. Print from a business perspective. Not too much there yet, but there are some interesting things about Bits and Mortar and the numbers on Bundles of Holding.
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Aug 21, 2015 16:47
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DTRPG/One Book Shelf implemented an actual content policy after somebody published a game supplement about a rape tournament. IMO it's a pretty reasonable and measured policy, but of course the poo poo-parade shows up to make it about themselves and how this is going to lead to them being censored because the world is out to get them.
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Sep 3, 2015 06:43
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While a lot of the complaints are the gut reaction of nerds whenever someone menaces to take their toys away, I have to admit that the way they implemented this worries me a little. It works like this: if a product is signaled as having offensive content, it is momentarily taken off the site so someone at DTRPG can check it out and decide if it really is offensive (their policy for what qualifies as offensive is "we'll know it when we see it", which I guess can work). Problem is, an organized group with a grudge against a particular game or company could very well signal the products they don't like as offensive and have them taken off the site, damaging the sales. If they time it right it could do some serious damage; I have already heard talk of people doing this with every single product to show off their disapproval of this new policy.
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Sep 3, 2015 08:42
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Wouldn't the takedown still require human intervention?
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Sep 3, 2015 08:50
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gradenko_2000 posted:Wouldn't the takedown still require human intervention? The permanent takedown, yes, but it will be momentarily removed from the site until someone checks it out.
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Sep 3, 2015 09:01
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Well, first, titles won't come down unless a person checking on complaints think they have merit. They're not crazy enough to turn the report button into an auto-suspension. Second, I fear that this isn't going to be enough, or instead will just be a shield against the inevitable next time. Wieck has gone to some trouble mollifying people that, no, he didn't really want to do even this much. He pulls out the "but you're supposed to fight them", which is half horseshit if you skim the adventure hooks, and also it's loving d20 no crap what could possibly be different about this book hmmm. He's still wringing his hands about slippery slopes, and if that's the case it's hard to imagine what will actually get shuffled off the servers short of Literally Mein Kampf: OGL compatible edition.
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Sep 3, 2015 09:15
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paradoxGentleman posted:The permanent takedown, yes, but it will be momentarily removed from the site until someone checks it out. Nope. quote:If a reported title looks questionable, then we will suspend it from sale while we review its content internally, and we will speak with its publisher to determine the fate of the title on our marketplace. Our default will be to suspend titles rather than our prior default of letting titles stay public.
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Sep 3, 2015 09:17
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E: Literally what Plague of Hats just said. ^^
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Sep 3, 2015 09:19
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Whoops, I must have misunderstood. Sorry about that. If that is the case, than I suppose Plague of Hats is right: it really is a really limited sort of thing. paradoxGentleman fucked around with this message at 09:37 on Sep 3, 2015 |
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Sep 3, 2015 09:21
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A lot of the complainers seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of how freedom of speech works. Yeah, if some guy wants to make and publish "tournament of rapists", they're certainly free to do so...but DriveThru is under no obligation to host it on their site. People are mistaking "freedom of speech" for "freedom from criticism" and some kind of weird obligation for any platform to enable their speech. On a very tiny other hand, though, I do wish the official policy was a bit more specific than "we'll know it when we see it". Some basic guidelines would not be amiss there. But i do applaud the CEO for taking personal responsibility.
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Sep 3, 2015 11:15
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I think that, setting aside the cynicism of "Wieck isn't going to pull the trigger all that often short of PathFATAL since his mealy-mouthed non-apology makes it sound like he didn't even really think taking down TOR was necessary in the first place", a big part of why DTRPG's new policy is structured the way it is, is because they don't really have the resources to proactively curate their storefront. They're not going to wait until a product has been reviewed before putting it up because they don't have the staff necessary to handle that kind of workload, and they're not going to hire more staff because it probably isn't all that worth it. So instead they're putting it all on one guy who already works for DTRPG anyway (and is in fact the CEO) so there's no increase in labor costs, and they're only going to make a product reportable after it's already up on the store so they won't need to actively gatekeep, and the decision to have a product taken down or not is still via human intervention. As far as I'm concerned all that really happened is that DTRPG effectively put in some web controls and buttons so that they can take a product down from a store so that the next time something like happens they don't have to endure a 48-72 hour "news cycle".
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Sep 3, 2015 11:41
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Wieck was okay with "Tournament of Rapists" so don't expect him to do poo poo.
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Sep 3, 2015 11:56
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With something like this "we'll know when we see it" is probably the best standard. It's still MPAA levels of arbitrary, but nerds and creeps will game any specific guidelines and criteria they're given. Clear, immutable guidelines is what leads to green-lighting six hundred year old dragons polymorphed into "sexy" children and hentai tentacle rapes. It was allowed on the grounds that "that character only looks like a little girl, and that's technically not a penis going up her butt." MPAA style evaluation is also notoriously hosed up, but evaluating things on a case-by-case basis is generally better than blanket policy. And despite their obligatory protests, the industry shitlords are going to end up loving this. They get to put "BANNED BY DRIVETHRU!" on covers, cash in on free publicity, and then sell "uncut" versions direct to customers without a middleman. Until now, they've only had random social media posters to persecute their poor artists' creative souls; this is an actual The Man to keep them down.
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Sep 3, 2015 12:19
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gradenko_2000 posted:I think that, setting aside the cynicism of "Wieck isn't going to pull the trigger all that often short of PathFATAL since his mealy-mouthed non-apology makes it sound like he didn't even really think taking down TOR was necessary in the first place", a big part of why DTRPG's new policy is structured the way it is, is because they don't really have the resources to proactively curate their storefront. EDIT: Huh... So thanks to Chris Field's again its is shown DTRPG has no ability to really change content that is clearly mislabeled in any timely manner. MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 14:42 on Sep 3, 2015 |
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Sep 3, 2015 14:10
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Meanwhile...Lisa Stevens posted:Ryan Dancey needed to resign from the company for personal reasons. We were very sad that he needed to leave us, but supported his decision because it is in the best interests of Ryan’s life outside Goblinworks. In Ryan’s absence, the board of directors has appointed me Acting CEO. Hands up, who's shocked? They've also laid off pretty much everyone (but five'll get you ten that Dancey's got a golden parachute) except a core team of like three people, and are looking for a new publisher to help them out.
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Sep 3, 2015 15:14
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So that's how the 5th Edition OGL is going to be formed
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Sep 3, 2015 15:22
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I'm sorry, I have difficulty keeping all these names straight. Who is Ryan Dancey again?
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Sep 3, 2015 15:41
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paradoxGentleman posted:I'm sorry, I have difficulty keeping all these names straight. Who is Ryan Dancey again? whisperer of nerdsong, an epic-level charismatic hero who ululates the perfect harmonics to get nerds to believe anything. Currently (and basically has always been) using his powers to grift idiots.
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Sep 3, 2015 15:55
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Everblight posted:whisperer of nerdsong
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Sep 3, 2015 15:58
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paradoxGentleman posted:I'm sorry, I have difficulty keeping all these names straight. Who is Ryan Dancey again? Most famously, he is responsible for the OGL, and thus the d20 boom and bust and Pathfinder eating a bunch of D&D's pie; he was behind the "$60 monocle on your character that does nothing and no one ever sees" in EVE online that was so dumb it hurt subscription numbers and the company CEO publicly apologized for it. And, now, he fooled a bunch of people into thinking a half-assed startup with a few million dollars at most could create a WoW-killer, which is now predictably collapsing. Before all this, he held a position of authority in GAMA where he used his position to snoop private emails. Who could've possibly seen this coming!?!?
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Sep 3, 2015 16:00
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Plague of Hats posted:Most famously, he is responsible for the OGL, and thus the d20 boom and bust and Pathfinder eating a bunch of D&D's pie; Wrap it up, 4failures! The OGL is an efficient property rights strategy in network industries where standards wars are a crucial stake!
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Sep 3, 2015 16:04
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He should see if Games Workshop have any job openings. Help them revamp 40K/30K. Age of Sigmar could have been one of his projects anyway - at one point the rumours had Rolling Thunder-style releases.
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Sep 3, 2015 16:04
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He's also the self-described "Steve Jobs of MMO Marketing". I'm pretty sure someone around here wrote a Pathfinder MMO version of the "Monorail" song. Please tell me someone still has it.
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Sep 3, 2015 16:35
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Apart from the Steve Jobs thing, was Dancey the one whose picture for one of the Kickstarter drives was initially leeched off of Wizards own website, or was that someone else?
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Sep 3, 2015 16:38
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Evil Mastermind posted:He's also the self-described "Steve Jobs of MMO Marketing" More seriously, Dancey's entire MMO resume pre-PFO was taking one of the few successful non-WoW MMOs (EVE Online) and almost running it into a ditch with his brilliant ideas. FMguru fucked around with this message at 17:15 on Sep 3, 2015 |
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Sep 3, 2015 16:53
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FMguru posted:Well, Jobs was thrown out of the company he founded by its Board of Directors... At the same time, it's impossible not to acknowledge Dancey has some real talent: Namely, he's forever escaped from these situations and latched on to another company to ruin while continuing to get work, like some kind of mischievous trickster imp.
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Sep 3, 2015 17:43
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Night10194 posted:At the same time, it's impossible not to acknowledge Dancey has some real talent: Namely, he's forever escaped from these situations and latched on to another company to ruin while continuing to get work, like some kind of mischievous trickster imp. 
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Sep 3, 2015 17:47
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Night10194 posted:At the same time, it's impossible not to acknowledge Dancey has some real talent: Namely, he's forever escaped from these situations and latched on to another company to ruin while continuing to get work, like some kind of mischievous trickster imp. Given his past history, it seems like he is really, really good at convincing senior management that they are somehow mysteriously leaving money on the table and they have nothing to lose by following Dancey's Guaranteed Sure-Fire Foolproof plan. It's a pretty clever bit because it starts with people who are financially sound (and therefore there is something to take right from day one) yet greedy enough to ignore the possible hazards.
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Sep 3, 2015 17:48
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Night10194 posted:At the same time, it's impossible not to acknowledge Dancey has some real talent: Namely, he's forever escaped from these situations and latched on to another company to ruin while continuing to get work, like some kind of mischievous trickster imp.
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Sep 3, 2015 17:51
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Evil Mastermind posted:He's also the self-described "Steve Jobs of MMO Marketing". I half wrote one earlier but couldn't decide if it should be "MMO" or "Middleware" because both scan and both are apt.
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Sep 3, 2015 17:59
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unseenlibrarian posted:I half wrote one earlier but couldn't decide if it should be "MMO" or "Middleware" because both scan and both are apt.
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Sep 3, 2015 18:01
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Perkins and Mearls have talked about an OGL for 5e, but I was just making a joke that Dancey is going to get in on it now that he's out of Paizo.
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Sep 3, 2015 18:05
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All his snake oil salesmanship aside, my all-time favorite Dancey moment is when he wrote a review of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e where he basically called it a clever d20-derivative.
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Sep 3, 2015 19:10
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Plague of Hats posted:Before all this, he held a position of authority in GAMA where he used his position to snoop private emails. It's somewhat worse than this: while he was part of a slate of people running for GAMA leadership, he figured out that the GAMA internal mailing lists were poorly protected and read the emails from the then current GAMA leadership. His slate won, but the news came out soon thereafter and he was forced to resign. However, to be scrupulously fair, he left CCP and EVE Online in November, 2010, and the monocle hit the new item store in June, 2011. And like any MMO anywhere has ever maintained a steady development course for six months without changing their minds about things.
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Sep 4, 2015 06:19
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Ratpick posted:All his snake oil salesmanship aside, my all-time favorite Dancey moment is when he wrote a review of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e where he basically called it a clever d20-derivative. I need to know how he arrived at this conclusion.
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Sep 4, 2015 07:19
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Night10194 posted:I need to know how he arrived at this conclusion. Found it through the Wayback Machine. Like, he doesn't actually bash it, but it's a really strange review because he's constantly comparing it to D&D 3e to the point of absurdity. (Spoiler: the way he arrives at that conclusion is because the founder of Green Ronin worked at WotC and worked on 3e before founding Green Ronin and also the combat system has some superficial similarities like cyclic initiative and an action economy of one full or two half-actions) Oh god, he also reviewed the Old World Bestiary this is great. quote:There are, unfortunately, a number of things missing from this book that would have improved it substantially. Some or all of this material may appear in the Game Master product already published for the line, but if so, that presence is not indicated in either the WFRP core book or the Old World Bestiary. Ratpick fucked around with this message at 07:40 on Sep 4, 2015 |
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Sep 4, 2015 07:35
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| # ? May 23, 2024 12:20 |
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Also, a healthy helping of "But really, why would you play any other game when you could be playing a d20-based game instead?"
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Sep 4, 2015 07:37
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