Games
Don't read this Cracked LCD column until you read Grindhouse chief grinder Jim Bailey's blog about distribution at the Incursiongame.com website.
Jim's comments suggest some interesting things about the games business as it functions today. One is that the way distribution works as it stands does not work for small publishers- which, ironically, is a large percentage of the games manufacturing business. The other is that the current supply chain in the hobby market is faltering and that retail is on its way out. There's also a suggestion that the online deep discounters are one of the driving factors behind this system no longer working.
It's fascinating, behind-the-scenes stuff that Jim puts forward with the same candor and honesty he did in my interview with him. I think it's an important article, and I felt it was worth talking about and promoting in my column. I know a lot of folks into games don't give a flying fuck about how the business works and where it may be failing as long as they keep getting new toys to play with, but I care because I know there's a lot of good people like Jim who have a lot emotionally and financially invested in working in the games business and if the system isn't serving the folks who are putting out great games like INCURSION, then it needs to change. It really doesn't make any sense that in an industry where a top seller may be something that moves under 10,000 units that there is a middle man involved taking a big cut of the potential revenue and potentially driving up retail prices. Distributors make sense in larger businesses and industries...but I don't think they do in hobby gaming. They exist almost solely as a convenience for the retailer, but their presence has negative effects.
I think there are solutions, I don't believe this is one of those "I wish things were different" situations. This is one of those "let's get something done about this" situations. It wouldn't be easy to slough off the yoke that the big distributors like Alliance and ACD have put on the business and convincing retailers to buy direct from publishers and sell closer to MSRP would be pretty hard to do. But I think solutions like co-op distribution similar to what we've seen in the underground punk rock community or doing what Jim suggests (direct wholesale only to non-discounting retailers and consumer sales through a proprietary website) could go a long way to removing the middle man.
We won't see change overnight. But I think if folks like Jim start looking at alternatives and really taking advantage of how the Internet has changed how people learn about and come to desire products as well as purchase them, then we could see some positive change.
That just really struck me...Grindhouse sold more copies of INCURSION in two weeks through its website than it did in _four months_ of national distribution. Does that mean games retail is over? I don't know. I know that I haven't set foot in a game shop in almost three years, and I don't know a single person that has bought a game from an FLGS in recent memory.
Things to think about, if you really care about hobby gaming and the people who put their time and money on the line for us to have fun.
