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Sean Franco
United States
Hammond
Louisiana
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I've long been a fan of the concept of the P500 publishing system run over at GMT, but I never really bothered to do anything with it until recently. GMT gave out a promotional coupon on Facebook, so I finally joined their site to use it. I wound up with my own copy of Dominant Species at last, but I decided to actually look into some P500 games since I was there. Dominant Species: The Card Game was immediately added, as was Sun of York and Crown of Roses (my interest in the Wars of the Roses reawakened by my recent purchase of Richard III), as well as a few other games. And I'm just getting started with the P500. It satisfies my need to buy a whole lot of board games at once, while at the same time being kind to my wallet, since I'm not actually paying for a whole lot of board games at once. It's a very happy medium.
It makes me wonder what the business model of GMT is from inside the company, especially relative to their profits. On one hand, they make games that they know that people want to buy, because they won't even make it until enough people pledge to buy it. It means that there are very few secrets or surprises as far as design goes, but they're also hitting a rather niche aspect of an already niche market. There are other publishers putting out primarily content-first simulation wargames, but are there designers out there cackling to themselves as they steal designs?
Fantasy Flight does the complete opposite, virtually. They release very limited information in controlled previews designed to more whet the appetite more than to inform the consumer. Sometimes, they don't even reveal games in development until their imminent release. This model works for them, though; their BGG page describes them as being "the 5th largest publisher of boardgames in the world," so they're doing something right.
Right now, I feel myself being equally willing to buy games from these two companies, but really, why? I buy GMT games because I know I like the complete game I've looked over. I buy FFG games because I know they do bad-ass games, with crazy themes and settings that fascinate me. I can name designers in both companies that I look out for. I can name settings in both companies that I look out for. I can name mechanics and systems in both companies that I look out for. I am satisfied by both companies in the same ways.
But I still want to see more people use the P500 system. Using FFG as an example, since I've already lauded them as a company I already like, would another company do as well with the P500 system? FFG doesn't need it to support themselves, surely; when you're the fifth largest game publisher, your "critical failures" are still probably going to sell well enough to cover costs, something which the P500 was supposedly created to prevent. Regardless of this, does FFG deliver what I want? I certainly want what they often deliver, but that's a little different.
FFG engaging in a P500 system full-on would probably be a bad idea. Even when we see their rules PDFs ahead of time, we're not buy exclusively for game content. We're also buying quality boards, quality art, plastic minis, ten sheets of cardboard punch-outs, and five decks of oddly-sized cards. You can't cover all of that with a P500 system. GMT doesn't even finalize art until they decide they have enough pre-orders to publish.
What FFG could do (and I suspect a lot of people would support me here) is setup a P500-esque system for reprints. Their reprint schedule is seemingly haphazard, and probably based more on game-distributor and -store demands more than customer demands. A pre-order system would help address the voices of the consumer. We already know what the games would look like, what their bits are, and how they play. There would be no foundational development cost. We could just say which games we want to see again, and pledge to buy them.
Maybe I'm just not willing to drop $200 on a copy of Blue Moon at an online store, a game for which I've bought four expansion decks for in the time that I've not been able to purchase the base game because it's out of print. Or maybe FFG is just making enough money under their current business model that they don't need to change up their game. Maybe they loss the license from Kosmos for American printings (although this seems unlikely).
If movie studios used a P500-esque system to make films, would any film ever get made? Probably, but we'd all know the script. We'd all say it sucks before the movie came out. But we like FFG more than that.
Don't be scared, Fantasy Flight. We'll pre-order your reprints.
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