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Post by juce734 on Apr 5, 2014 1:41:24 GMT
Can you imagine where Palladium Books would be today if they always met their deadlines and never broke any promises? What would they look like today if that was the case?
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Post by Jaymz on Apr 5, 2014 2:13:34 GMT
Still number 2 instead of not registering in the top 10 at all.
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Post by juce734 on Apr 5, 2014 2:27:28 GMT
Still number 2 instead of not registering in the top 10 at all. I feel like they would be respected in the industry and there wouldn't be as much of a bad reputation. Most the people I know who left Palladium is because the failure to deliver on release dates. Me personally I've almost left completely but great people have kept me around. This forum has given me the urge to pull out my Palladium books for the first time in about a year. Maybe I will do some video reviews on my YouTube channel for some of their books. |
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Post by Jaymz on Apr 5, 2014 2:37:56 GMT
Go for it. Be sure to post links here and on the facebook group *thumbs up*
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Post by MacrossMike on Apr 5, 2014 3:57:20 GMT
Can you imagine where Palladium Books would be today if they always met their deadlines and never broke any promises? What would they look like today if that was the case? Sure I can. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the answer is "Not much different from what they are now." Even if they always met their deadlines and never broke their promises they'd still be a small business with an out-of-touch staff led by a micromanaging editor, pushing their old, badly outdated game system through a collection of so-so original IP and a small assortment of licenses nobody has cared about in thirty years, untidily presented in a downright antiquated, plain jane, two-column black-and-white format on regular printer paper with a poorly laminated soft cover like some nutjob's vanity press manifesto. In short, there's a LOT more wrong with Palladium's creative process, business practices, and presentation than just a failure to keep to their overly-optimistic release schedules or a tendency to break promises. Palladium Books is a company in dire, dire need of a business consultant to revamp pretty much every aspect of how the place is run. Still number 2 instead of not registering in the top 10 at all. I feel like they would be respected in the industry and there wouldn't be as much of a bad reputation. Most the people I know who left Palladium is because the failure to deliver on release dates. Me personally I've almost left completely but great people have kept me around. This forum has given me the urge to pull out my Palladium books for the first time in about a year. Maybe I will do some video reviews on my YouTube channel for some of their books. Eh... no, just being able to meet the deadlines they set for themselves isn't going to get them any respect. If they wanted to be viewed with respect in the industry, they'd have to actually demonstrate that they understand what they're doing and can be successful doing it. That means, just for starters: - Updating and simplifying their game system to improve playability and adapt to changes in the industry.
- Hiring someone who actually knows how to lay out a book for easy reference and visual appeal.
- Going to a quality three-color process on glossy paper for all of their future releases, probably with optional hardcover.
- Bringing in better artists to produce higher-quality color art for the books instead of their usual inconsistent and frequently off-model black-and-white art or resorting to tracing thirty year old line art and signing it as if they'd drawn it.
- Assigning writers to game lines based on licensed IP that actually understand that a licensed game is supposed to reflect the contents of the IP in question, as a change from their usual practice of not even making an effort to get into the freaking ballpark.
- Obtaining licenses to some third-party IP that's actually popular and successful, instead of hanging their hopes on a title that flopped and was forgotten a quarter century ago and hasn't produced a damn thing since.
- Hiring a PR guy to keep Kevin from actually interacting with customers, since he has a bad case of foot-in-mouth syndrome.
Basically, if they want respect they have to actually act like a first-class operation. |
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Post by writersblock on Apr 5, 2014 19:26:37 GMT
Gotta say, MacrossMike pretty much wrote my response to the question for me.
There is SO much MORE wrong with PB than just its inability to meet release dates.
In addition to that, there is so much more to the playability of a game than more material. Heck, I have been in an AD&D 2nd Ed (pre D20) game since the early 90's that is still ongoing and has never used any of the fabricated worlds...
PB has issues that have issues. Meeting its release dates would not change 99.9 % of their problems. If anything, it would highlight them.
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Post by MacrossMike on Apr 5, 2014 20:00:48 GMT
Gotta say, MacrossMike pretty much wrote my response to the question for me. My pleasure... this is twice as galling for me, being that I make my living helping companies improve their business practices. The way they run things is practically criminal, to the extent that I can practically guarantee most of them wouldn't last a month at any first-rate gaming company the way they behave. The way he treats his customers and the feedback they're giving him, I'd fire Kevin in a heartbeat were he one of my employees. Look at the discontent over Robotech RPG Tactics. Kevin is under relentless siege by upset fans who are complaining about the abysmally poor quality of the models, clumsy and exploit-filled rules, and the way he's blowing off all the concerns being raised about the handling of the game. Even if you overlook the fact that it's way behind schedule, there are still more problems with the game than words in the rule book. PB has issues that have issues. Meeting its release dates would not change 99.9 % of their problems. If anything, it would highlight them. Especially where the licensed IP-based games they're counting on to "save" Palladium Books are concerned... meeting their deadlines would just emphasize the way failures of research have left many books to be classified as "_______ in name only". Just look at Robotech 1E... it was SO wide of the mark that even Harmony Gold, a company that sets the bar so low it's a trip hazard in Satan's wine cellar, now finds all of those old books to be of such abhorrently poor quality that they've disowned them because of it, and made having an absolute editorial veto power on the contents a stipulation of renewing Palladium's license. Palladium's Macross II game missed the mark so hard that Big West and Studio Nue pretend it doesn't even exist. |
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Post by juce734 on Apr 6, 2014 3:55:05 GMT
Macross Mike you are completely right actually. You also have some great points about what they really should do to gain respectability again.
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Post by MacrossMike on Apr 6, 2014 4:12:51 GMT
Macross Mike you are completely right actually. You also have some great points about what they really should do to gain respectability again. Where it gets really tragic is that so much of it is almost painfully easy to do... there are probably hundreds of players who'd practically jam suggestions for simplifying and streamlining the system up their noses if they asked, any journalism major could do a better layout job, much better artists are a dime a dozen on DeviantArt and in Macross fan groups, and two excellent business management schools are within thirty minutes drive of their offices. For researchers on the Robotech licensed line, one of the best known groups of translators (mine) with one of the biggest private libraries of the original source material is also based within a half-hour's drive and has a vocal presence on their website. |
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Post by juce734 on Apr 6, 2014 4:20:29 GMT
Yeah very sad. I had offered once to do in store promos at every comic store I could find in the area back when I was single. I lived in Ann Arbor and only knew of 1 place that had anything by them nearby. That's only 20 minutes from their HQ. They don't have a presence in their own community which is really bad.
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Post by MacrossMike on Apr 6, 2014 15:52:33 GMT
Yeah very sad. I had offered once to do in store promos at every comic store I could find in the area back when I was single. I lived in Ann Arbor and only knew of 1 place that had anything by them nearby. That's only 20 minutes from their HQ. They don't have a presence in their own community which is really bad. It probably doesn't help that, in their "backyard" the dominant forms of non-video gaming are TCGs and tabletop miniatures games... this is Magic: the Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Warhammer 40,000 territory. Still, it's not a great reflection on them as a company when they've let things get so bad that they're often taken to task on their own site over the hyperbole they pepper their announcements with and their tendency to over-promise and under-deliver. It's also not exactly what you'd call a fantastic state of affairs when the owners of two of your biggest licenses respectively consider your game so wide of the mark that they variously dismiss your work as not a legitimate installment in their franchise or outright pretend your work doesn't freaking exist. If they want to last another 10 years, they have to either sell to someone who knows what they're doing or seriously rethink their business practices. (Part of me thinks I should wait for them to go bankrupt and buy them myself...) |
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Post by ninjabunny on Apr 6, 2014 20:00:57 GMT
Kevin will never sell his stuff he would let it for before someone else owned his ideas. Grated at least robotech (no I don't play it not a fan sorry) could go to another company.
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Post by MacrossMike on Apr 6, 2014 20:15:25 GMT
Kevin will never sell his stuff he would let it for before someone else owned his ideas. Grated at least robotech (no I don't play it not a fan sorry) could go to another company. Me, I'm not so sure he would have a choice if the company went under... he's screwed the pooch pretty hard in the past, and it wouldn't be much of a stretch from him to screw one pooch too many and end up having to liquidate his IP in bankruptcy to make ends meet. As far as Robotech goes... that's Harmony Gold's baby, so if Palladium goes under they can't sell the rights to that. Mind you, Harmony Gold would be out of luck if Palladium went under. They tried to shop around for licensees before renewing Palladium's license, and ended up back with Palladium because literally nobody else was willing to touch such a poison property. |
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Post by juce734 on Apr 7, 2014 1:20:25 GMT
Kevin will never sell his stuff he would let it for before someone else owned his ideas. Grated at least robotech (no I don't play it not a fan sorry) could go to another company. Me, I'm not so sure he would have a choice if the company went under... he's screwed the pooch pretty hard in the past, and it wouldn't be much of a stretch from him to screw one pooch too many and end up having to liquidate his IP in bankruptcy to make ends meet. As far as Robotech goes... that's Harmony Gold's baby, so if Palladium goes under they can't sell the rights to that. Mind you, Harmony Gold would be out of luck if Palladium went under. They tried to shop around for licensees before renewing Palladium's license, and ended up back with Palladium because literally nobody else was willing to touch such a poison property. I would love for someone new with a great mind for the business to get hold of Palladium's IP's. |
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