GURPS Magic started
shipping yesterday. That's the signal for me to place an order at
Warehouse 23. Now, W23 doesn't get the books for a few days like any
other store because all the books are shipped from a different
warehouse in Phoenix I believe to W23 in Austin. This is also an
opportunity to get a couple of things that are only at W23, this time
it is the Girl Genius card game.
Today SJG announced GURPS Character Assistant which is scheduled for
April. It's a PC product so I'm unlikely to buy it unless I get Virtual
PC. But I'm wondering how flexible it is. I tend to do stuff like
change point costs and handwave certain things on characters. I know
that the D&D character generator is not that flexible. I think SJG
can do better and it'll be nice to have better looking character
sheets. And it's only $20 (with no box).
On RPGnet there's a thread on a new online game store, DiscountRPG. The
give a bigger discount depending on the MSRP value of your order of
anywhere from 20% to 40% at $226+. Shipping costs are about double USPS
Media rate which is what Stiggybaby's uses. Which means that from $30
to $100 Stiggybaby's is the better value. After that it's better than
Stiggybaby's. Getting to the highest discount is a bit rough -- I did a
mock shopping run and could only find about $150 worth of things to buy.
Are discount stores good or bad for the hobby. That always seems to be
a question. It's the same sort of question that pops up in other retail
sectors with regards to Walmart and Barnes and Noble before Borders was
around. The answer is that it's definitely good for consumers in the
short term, about the same for manufacturers in the short term,
probably not good for most retailers in the short term.
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It's a complex question. If
the discount stores don't cannibalize on retail store sales then it's
ok because then they're increasing the audience. Of course that tends
to not happen because discount stores don't promote as heavily as a
group as retail stores. Sort of what happened with the Apple clone
market. Cloners weren't increasing the market base, they were
targetting the existing market base, so Apple stopped the licensing
program.
Actually some companies do it that way. WizKids before at least used to
crack down on stores that sold on the Internet. I think Games Workshop
does the same, or at least they had some weird rules that sellers had
to follow. But most companies don't try it because it's a lot of work
and it's not conclusively beneficial. I should note that WizKids also
cracked down on stores that sold unpackaged miniatures, although that I
understand since you're killing the brainless collecting market.
In general I think that retail stores have to compete on other things
than price. Just like in other retail sectors, you survive by providing
things that discount stores don't provide: better customer experience,
better selection on a specific category of items, more community
activities. It's the natural capitalistic tendencies -- people like to
spend less unless they feel some sort of loyalty to your store.
In the end, doing artificial things to prop up a failing sector is a
bad move. Getting people to spurn discount stores and buy from their
local FLGS is naive. You have to let the market economy decide who
survives and buyers should not be forced to spend more money just to
support someone else's cause. But that's just my opinion, however
incoherently it was given.
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