Anybody who thinks that these price hikes are horribadawfullybig obviously never was a regular customer of anything by Games Workshop ;-)
True. But I also don't buy their products anymore either. Unless Paizo plans on an 18 month turnover time in their total fanbase, I'd hope they don't plan on further emulating GW.
Do you really think Paizo is going to give a more elaborate answer than 'our costs are rising'? They're not going to go into detail about which costs, precisely, have risen and by how much, exactly.I would very much like to know why this change is happening. I look forward to seeing that blog post.Is inflation really that much of a mystery?The answer to that is: Yes (and I'm an accountant).
There are, actually, many reasons for inflation. "Inflation" itself is not an answer - what specifically is behind the inflation, for Paizo, is an answer.
(Your response was strange... and a little thoughtless.)
*shrug* Beats me if they will.
I was just responding to the nonsensical comment of "Is inflation really that much of a mystery?"
What you just said above is something different. Stay on target.
Wait, is the Pathfinder Tales getting a price increase? I did not see that anywhere else...
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Wait, is the Pathfinder Tales getting a price increase? I did not see that anywhere else...
It's getting several changes.
Starting with Lord of Runes:
- Pathfinder Tales will be produced by Tor under license, rather than directly by Paizo, Inc.
- The book format will be trade-paperback size instead of mass-market paperback size
- The books will cost $14.99 instead of $9.99
- The subscription benefits are changing: instead of a free ePub and PDF, subscribers get 30% off the new cover price.
- Electronic copies now cost $9.99 instead of $6.99, and will no longer be available directly from Paizo. However, they will be available from more major online retailers, like the Kindle and Nook stores.
You can see more info in this thread.
Wait, is the Pathfinder Tales getting a price increase? I did not see that anywhere else...
Hmm, well for me, I KNOW I haven't gotten a raise that is comparable to the price increases in regards to the past two years.
I believe I still can afford the subscriptions though (at least at the current prices), butI am pondering the future.
for the APs a $2 rise in price ever 2 years (that's about $2 a year, isn't it?) would mean in 4-5 years that could be 29.99 for an AP part.
That could be what breaks it for me.
Whether they call it inflation or not, if my pay doesn't keep up with what they are increasing the prices by, it makes it so I have to take considerable thought into whether I should continue a subscription or not.
I've been known to blow a couple hundred on internet orders, so it may seem ironic, but I've been trying to cut back on my spending and save more (for the future, financial advisors seem to be all about that currently).
Perhaps it's because I view the APs more like a magazine type subscription per month (just like a mag, you get it each month and it has different articles along with the main adventure)....but it's starting to get more on the pricier side.
I'm probably all in at least for now, but looking at the future, if these increases continue like this on this same route, at a higher pace than what my pay increases are, I'm not sure it would be a great thing for me to remain.
At least for me, but that's only because my money is limited. I think I can still afford my subscriptions CURRENTLY, but I'm a tad worried about the future if this is any indication of a trend.
I wonder if talent costs are a sigificant part of this.
One of the ironies of helping people make it in a field like this is they can then charge more for their work for you (as the work is more in demand).
Considering the number of freelance Paizo uses I would not be surprised if that plays in some.
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A perk that I would like would be having hi-res images of maps for the adventure paths/modules. Maybe subscribers get them as a bonus. I like how Wotc has allowed the artist for 5E to sell the hi-res versions of the maps for their adventures. For someone who runs most of his games online having hi-res maps are important to me.
I wonder if talent costs are a sigificant part of this.
One of the ironies of helping people make it in a field like this is they can then charge more for their work for you (as the work is more in demand).
Actually, adding more people to the labor pool doesn't increase demand; it increases supply, pushing down the equilibrium price (i.e. salary) of game designers.
While I'm sure the cost of labor in RPG design is very significant, my guess is that this particular change is largely driven by increased printing costs.
I run all my games online and any higher res for the maps would make it unplayable. The files are already plenty big enough that it takes players and me too long to download.
I can't imagine why they couldn't continue to offer a low res version. Or you could make one yourself before uploading the map to your VTT of choice. Throwing away data is easy, after all.
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Once again, the message boards have been food for thought.
On Production Costs, Media, and Unqualified Soothsaying
Here is my contribution to the pot luck, to use a strained metaphor.
Hmm, well for me, I KNOW I haven't gotten a raise that is comparable to the price increases in regards to the past two years.
Is that a fair comparison, though? Over several years the Player Companion line went up from $9.99 to $14.99, a 50% increase -- but the Player Companion line isn't a significant fraction of your total expenses.
If house payment/rent + utilities + car payment/gas/maintenance + food + insurance + savings + cable/other entertainment + Player's Companion used to be $2,000/month (a very low estimate) and is now $2,005/month, the overall increase -- for that single subscription line -- is only one-quarter of one percent.
So the only valid comparison involves taking all your regular expenses, figuring out by what percentage they've increased over the past few years, and then compare that to the percentage by which the cost of game products has increased, and to your increases in income, if any.
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Unfortunately as a public sector worker here in the UK where a new Conservative government has just been elected I am getting poorer all the time. I'll have to cut at least one sub. Oh well, with a sense of perspective that is not what I call hardship.
I wouldn't expect things to get better. Stateside conservative ideology pretty much views public sector employees as being welfare recipients. :-(
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Unfortunately as a public sector worker here in the UK where a new Conservative government has just been elected I am getting poorer all the time. I'll have to cut at least one sub. Oh well, with a sense of perspective that is not what I call hardship.I wouldn't expect things to get better. Stateside conservative ideology pretty much views public sector employees as being welfare recipients. :-(
I don't know about in the UK - but in the US public sector workers make considerably more than their private sector equivilents. (Not going to weigh in on the merits of them here - though before anyone bites my head off - I mostly disagree with both parties.)
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I don't know about in the UK - but in the US public sector workers make considerably more than their private sector equivilents. (Not going to weigh in on the merits of them here - though before anyone bites my head off - I mostly disagree with both parties.)Unfortunately as a public sector worker here in the UK where a new Conservative government has just been elected I am getting poorer all the time. I'll have to cut at least one sub. Oh well, with a sense of perspective that is not what I call hardship.I wouldn't expect things to get better. Stateside conservative ideology pretty much views public sector employees as being welfare recipients. :-(
In most US states, salaries for public sector employees are lower than for equivalent private sector employees. The fact that many public sector employees have good insurance programs and true pensions, as opposed to 401(k)s, helps to even out the overall effects, but in many states, even taking that into account doesn't put public sector employees "considerably" ahead of equivalent employees in the private sector.
TL;DR: Lower wages, better benefits, overall effect varies considerably among states, but on average is not a huge advantage.
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In most US states, salaries for public sector employees are lower than for equivalent private sector employees. The fact that many public sector employees have good insurance programs and true pensions, as opposed to 401(k)s, helps to even out the overall effects, but in many states, even taking that into account doesn't put public sector employees "considerably" ahead of equivalent employees in the private sector.TL;DR: Lower wages, better benefits, overall effect varies considerably among states, but on average is not a huge advantage.
*Shrug* - it's hard to make a perfect apples to apples comparison. Per the CBO study in 2012 - http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/01-30-FedPay_0.pdf - Federal workers make more & have better benefits both up to a Bachelor's degree worth of education vs private workers, and their total compensation is higher for all but those with doctorates. People with doctorates have a somewhat higher total compensation in the private sector.
Though of course - that doesn't take into account how secure gov jobs are.
(And frankly - I'm a bit dubious of the CBO #s - they have every reason to make it look like the public workers make less comparitively than they actually do.)
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In most US states, salaries for public sector employees are lower than for equivalent private sector employees. The fact that many public sector employees have good insurance programs and true pensions, as opposed to 401(k)s, helps to even out the overall effects, but in many states, even taking that into account doesn't put public sector employees "considerably" ahead of equivalent employees in the private sector.TL;DR: Lower wages, better benefits, overall effect varies considerably among states, but on average is not a huge advantage.
*Shrug* - it's hard to make a perfect apples to apples comparison. Per the CBO study in 2012 - http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/01-30-FedPay_0.pdf - Federal workers make more & have better benefits both up to a Bachelor's degree worth of education vs private workers, and their total compensation is higher for all but those with doctorates. People with doctorates have a somewhat higher total compensation in the private sector.
Though of course - that doesn't take into account how secure gov jobs are.
(And frankly - I'm a bit dubious of the CBO #s - they have every reason to make it look like the public workers make less comparitively than they actually do.)
I was thinking more of state and local government employees than federal employees. The study I found came from a center-right think tank, so I'd expect it to be a bit biased in the opposite direction, if anything.
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If selling ad space on the inside covers and a few splash pages at the end instead of in-house ads brings the end-user cost down, I'm in favor of it.
I've always been mystified by the resistance to ads. They never bothered me, personally.
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I think there's something in the legalities that says if a product contains advertisements it's no longer a book and subject to some different rules and taxes. Can't remember where I heard that, though.
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Oh no, don't misunderstand. I'm on board with your assessment, but my example was to address to the assertion that advertising changes a book's designation, and that it has been done. Take of that what you will.
But my derision of Palladium Books was better summed up by a brilliant man who hit the proverbial nail on the head with his diatribe on the matter.
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If selling ad space on the inside covers and a few splash pages at the end instead of in-house ads brings the end-user cost down, I'm in favor of it.
I've always been mystified by the resistance to ads. They never bothered me, personally.
The resistance is probably because selling ads requires people whose job is to sell ads, support those customers, and manage that task. I doubt selling a couple ads would have any effect. After all, magazines contain a lot of ads. Any ads would have to cover the cost of the person above before it would lower the price.
Also, ads suck. I wish they'd get rid of the in-house advertisements that are already included in the books.
-Skeld
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Oh no, don't misunderstand. I'm on board with your assessment, but my example was to address to the assertion that advertising changes a book's designation, and that it has been done. Take of that what you will.
But my derision of Palladium Books was better summed up by a brilliant man who hit the proverbial nail on the head with his diatribe on the matter.
That's probably a reference to the response Paizo has given when asked why they don't ship PF books via USPS media mail. If there are any ads in a book, it doesn't qualify for media mail.
-Skeld
If selling ad space on the inside covers and a few splash pages at the end instead of in-house ads brings the end-user cost down, I'm in favor of it.
I've always been mystified by the resistance to ads. They never bothered me, personally.
The resistance is probably because selling ads requires people whose job is to sell ads, support those customers, and manage that task. I doubt selling a couple ads would have any effect. After all, magazines contain a lot of ads. Any ads would have to cover the cost of the person above before it would lower the price.
Also, ads suck. I wish they'd get rid of the in-house advertisements that are already included in the books.
-Skeld
I agree. When it doubles as an order form (not at home, so I can't give examples) I'm kind of on board since it has a direct purpose. If it's referencing closely related products (e.g. APs referencing other volumes in the same AP or Carrion Crown advertising Rule of Fear) I'm on board, too. Anything less closely related is kind of weird once it has been in my collection for a few months, though, and it's subconsciously jarring for that reason.
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It raises awareness of other Paizo products: lots of customers buy their books at a FLGS or Amazon, and never come to Paizo.com. In house ads make sure those customers know about other things.
If selling ad space on the inside covers and a few splash pages at the end instead of in-house ads brings the end-user cost down, I'm in favor of it.
I've always been mystified by the resistance to ads. They never bothered me, personally.
Think about what you're saying.
Ads pay revenue to the media they're embedded in because the entity paying views them as profit-generating. For ads to be profit-generating, it means that their audience is purchasing the products advertised. Not every audience-member, not every product, but the reality is ads increase spending.
If you are looking to save money you should object to advertising because it WILL encourage you to spend money.
But wait... there's more! The cost of ads is embedded in the products they advertise. So the day you break down and buy the Tome of Whatever XLIV that you saw in a Paizo product, yes, you're going to get the actual book for your money, but you're also going to pay for the advertisement <publisher> had to pay Paizo. Which means you are in a very real way paying for the increase in Paizo's prices, at that time.
Ads are only "harmless" to those people who don't see them.
I wish they'd get rid of the in-house advertisements that are already included in the books.
To be fair, sometimes that comes from a page-count issue. When you print physical books, you've got signatures, which are groups of pages. Imagine you've got a signature of 16 pages, and when you look at the content that's been written, you can't quite squeeze it into 64 pages... you're three over. So you commit to a fifth signature of 16 more pages. You go back to page layout and make things less tight, undoing all the space-saving measures you undertook. You make a few illustrations bigger, and the same with maps. Next thing you know, you're up to 9 pages of your fifth signature. Now what? You've got 7 pages to fill. So you add a couple side-bars, and maybe some editorial content. Now you've got 5 pages to fill. Either you're commissioning more art (costs), more text (costs), or you're going to maybe see if someone will pay you peanuts for a few pages of art. Or you advertise your own products.
I really don't object to same-publisher adverts. Totally been there on the page-count conundrum with layout. Sometimes there just isn't a good way to lay things out to fit a fixed signature count.
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I wish they'd get rid of the in-house advertisements that are already included in the books.To be fair, sometimes that comes from a page-count issue. When you print physical books, you've got signatures, which are groups of pages. Imagine you've got a signature of 16 pages, and when you look at the content that's been written, you can't quite squeeze it into 64 pages... you're three over. So you commit to a fifth signature of 16 more pages. You go back to page layout and make things less tight, undoing all the space-saving measures you undertook. You make a few illustrations bigger, and the same with maps. Next thing you know, you're up to 9 pages of your fifth signature. Now what? You've got 7 pages to fill. So you add a couple side-bars, and maybe some editorial content. Now you've got 5 pages to fill. Either you're commissioning more art (costs), more text (costs), or you're going to maybe see if someone will pay you peanuts for a few pages of art. Or you advertise your own products.
I really don't object to same-publisher adverts. Totally been there on the page-count conundrum with layout. Sometimes there just isn't a good way to lay things out to fit a fixed signature count.
Don't get me wrong, Anguish, I get why the adverts are there. I tolerate them as a part of Paizo doing Paizo's business. But, all things being equal, I'd rather have 2 pages of additional content than 2 pages of ads of any sort. :D
-Skeld
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If you are looking to save money you should object to advertising because it WILL encourage you to spend money.
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Ads are only "harmless" to those people who don't see them.
Or to people who have some modicum of self control.
And ads don't necessarily make people spend more $ as a whole - they simply make people spend $ on the advertised product instead of a competitor's product.
I mean - just because McDonald's has an ad for lunch doesn't mean that someone is going to eat lunch twice - just that they might eat it there instead of at Wendy's.
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Smaller production runs could also be a factor. Fixed costs are then spread across fewer printed copies.
Personally I'm buying fewer books now and making more selective purchases. Because my library of Pathfinder products is already so large, I don't have as much desire to add to it except for stuff that really, really grabs my interest.
I think this a problem for many collectible product lines (especially books which take time to read) that have been going strong for some 6 years or so.
This, more than anything, is why I only buy the core books and get just about everything else as a PDF. I'm almost done with my time here in FloriDUH and I don't plan on staying in one place for more than a couple of years at a time for a long time to come. So I'm downsizing my personal belongings. If I can't neatly pack it and then load it up into a small moving truck then I have too much junk and something has to go. I'm not giving up my instruments and gear nor my computer and I don't lug furniture around so there is very little left to get rid of. I basically have two bookshelves for RPGs and once they are full then something else must go.
I have infinite space on my computer for PDFs, though.SM
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I think that the best way to understand advertisement is to think of the last time that you saw something on the internet (or television or whatever) and thought to yourself, "oh hell yes, that thing must be mine". Maybe you internalize it as a passion that you have had beforehand, or rationalize it in that you would have sought such a thing out on your own, but in that case the advertisement has worked.
When you look at an advertisement and it does not interest you, the scenario above is playing out at some level of statistically significant success.
This may seem obvious to some, but it took me a lot of contemplation to understand this principle.
n my computer for PDFs, though.
You have an infinite space hard drive?!? Where do you get your computers... from Dr. Who? :)
But I agree, the shear volume of Paizo product at this point can be problematic. As someone also in the process of moving, I am experiencing this directly.
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When I tell folks about "my first computer" I mention that it had 32K of RAM, a 5 MB hard drive, cost $100,00 a month to run and filled a very large room. Of course, I didn't own it — it belonged to Cornell University. That was 1965 or so. :-)
My first personal computer was a "Black Apple" (Bell & Howell Apple II) which I bought so I could play Wizardry. 1981 or so.
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Ah, I remember fondly back to 2006...
Back when it cost me $3.50 a gallon to buy a gallon of premium...
Back when I could fork out $6.99 for a copy of Dungeon and get 100+ pages of pure (sans-ad) adventuring written by guys named Jacobs, Mona and Bulmahn.
Back when I could fork out $6.99 for a copy of Dragon and get 120+ pages of campaign setting and player option goodness written by those same fellows.
I just needed to save 4 gallons of gas to get my gaming-fu on.
Now for a monthly dose of campaign setting (23), adventure (25) and player option (15) goodness, I need to save $63 or a full tank of gas a month. :)
/endjackhandymoment
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Americans complaining about fuel prices...
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Back when I could fork out $6.99 for a copy of Dungeon and get 100+ pages of pure (sans-ad)
Not to rain on the nostalgia, but we had ads in Dungeon. LOTS of ads. As many as we could get, really—it's how we subsidized an otherwise atrocious business model (meaning the magazine business model in general). And we'd spend hours trying to figure out how to fit them all in, because some folks would buy the right to be in specific places in the issue.
One of the exciting parts of starting Pathfinder was knowing that we'd never again have to stick an ad page in the middle of an adventure. :P
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Also, for folks doing the math at home, it's important to remember that back in the Dungeon and Dragon days, we were mostly pretty poor. I taught night classes and frequently ate out of dumpsters during my early Paizo tenure, and not just because it was cool and bohemian (though it kinda was).
Nowadays, ten years later, I pretty much *never* eat out of dumpsters, and instead of 6 roommates in a falling-apart flophouse I have 7 roommates in an actually pretty nice house. MOVING ON UP, BABY!
Contributor
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Also, for folks doing the math at home, it's important to remember that back in the Dungeon and Dragon days, we were mostly pretty poor. I taught night classes and frequently ate out of dumpsters during my early Paizo tenure, and not just because it was cool and bohemian (though it kinda was).
Nowadays, ten years later, I pretty much *never* eat out of dumpsters, and instead of 6 roommates in a falling-apart flophouse I have 7 roommates in an actually pretty nice house. MOVING ON UP, BABY!
Which one was your, um, musical magnum opus written for? ^_^
