I wasn't sure how I felt about this for awhile. Given that Jason Hardy is both the sole point of contact for PR (Unless you expect freelancers to promote the product for free), and that he is also lead developer, I think his stance is rational based on time available. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure he's the only one who manages the Facebook page and other lines of communication for Shadowrun. However, a company that does not look at consumer feedback is doomed for failure.
If it was just Jason hardy and a bunch of freelancers, then the stance on focusing on making the next product good makes sense. My criticism there would be that it's better to slow down and spend more time on each product's quality rather than rushing them out the door as quickly as possible. Especially with tabletop RPGs, it's not like the core of your consumers are going anywhere if you don't do a complete system update every 5-6 years, and nobody can reasonably expect 2-3 splatbooks or more each year from indie press. However, comma, CGL doesn't really qualify as indie press. Shadowrun might be staffed like it, but CGL is not putting sufficient resources into it.
This makes sense as a from a short-term business perspective: the core of the consumer base isn't going anywhere. Create products that fit the minimum standards of that core base and distribute as quickly as possible for maximum profit. In the short term, it doesn't make sense to spend more money improving the quality of the book if it will not increase the number of sales. It's the double-edge of a niche consumer base: you're unlikely to lose a large amount of your base, but you're unlikely to gain a large amount of people, either.
There are two things that might've improved the quality of the book: more rounds of editing, and more playtesting. (Warning: Terrible math ahead. The short answer is that it doesn't make financial sense for CGL to improve the quality of SR in the short-term, and without any sort of creative or ambitious motivator, they won't take the risks to produce a better quality product and make more money in the long-term.)
A lot of the "change blindness" would require a developmental editor. Typos and grammatical errors can be fixed by any proofreader with a basic glossary of game terminology. I checked a few sites for rates on editors- I may be off, since most of them were for novel editors. I also ignored a lot of the per-page rates, since game books have bigger pages. Developmental editors were 2.5 to 9 cents/word and proofreaders were 1 to 2 cents/word. A quick word count on my copy of 6e puts us at about 202,000 words (Give or take some, I just C+V'ed my PDF copy into word for the word count, it might've grabbed page numbers). Ignoring the time factor, this puts us at about $5,050 to $18,180 for one pass from the developmental editor, and $2,020 to $4,040 for a pass from the proofreader. Just going by ebook sales, if they're making 65% profit off of their DTRPG number, then they'll get $13 per copy sold. Based on costs of shipping and markup, this is probably pretty close to what they make for their hard copies, but I'm unsure about that so I'm not going to speculate there.
So then the question is: Would another round of proofreading bring in another 155 - 310 sales? Would a round of developmental editing bring in another 388 - 1,398 sales? An editor at 9 cents/word seems on the high end for the TTRPG industry, but keep in mind that you will get what you pay for. A well-edited book would have alleviated a lot of the concerns people have with the edition, that's true. But there are other issues that editing wouldn't solve- namely, new game mechanics and weaknesses in those new mechanics.
This is where additional playtesting would come in. This is very much a time-based thing, and would have to be handled in-house by developers. Let's say that CGL an intern handle communication and any setup (Paid, hopefully- but likely at $7.25/hour), and also has Jason Hardy involved- it doesn't make sense to do playtesting if you don't have any decision makers involved whatsoever. For now, I'm not going to factor in Mr. Hardy's salary because he's also busy being lead developer, PR manager, and Facebook manager due to staffing issues with CGL. I'm going to assume playtesters are volunteers or perhaps unpaid interns that the paid intern lords over.
For good playtesting, you can't just send the quickstart rules and a survey. This worked with DND Next because it was an "open" playtest and they had a ton of playtesters. You can also bet they did some closed playtesting, too. For this playtesting, someone needs to observe and take notes. I'm assuming the best possible scenario where they're only looking at one table at a time, so that they don't miss things.
Each session is going to be maybe four hours, maybe shorter depending on what's being tested. This is maybe 30 minutes of setup/prep at the beginning, a 3 hour session (interspersed with pauses for questions/clarification as needed), and then 30 minutes discussion at the end. It's also 4 hours in my example because then I can say this intern does 2 of these per day, meaning 10 in a week. Ignoring any basic costs for renting space for the playtest (Or maybe have it over skype), this ends up costing CGL $290 for 10 playtests, or $29/playtest. 10 playtests also costs them a week of time, plus whatever time is needed to implement changes. Although this is likely inaccurate, let's say that each playtest comes up with, on average, 333 words that need to be rewritten. Why? Because CGL likely pays 3 cents/word and $10 is easy to add. This is likely an overestimate, but keep in mind the new words will also need to be proofed and edited. So the total cost of each playtest comes up to $39.
Let's do this for 10 weeks- we get 100 playtests in, at a cost of $3,900. To recoup this, CGL must sell 300 copies, and delay release by 10 weeks. There are more efficient ways of playtesting, in a shorter amount of time, but I don't think the quality would improve unless you put more people on it or spend more time on the rewrite. Would 100 additional playtests improve the quality of the book enough so that 300 additional people would buy it?
Now, this number is even more uncertain than the editing one: I have no idea how CGL runs playtests, their effectiveness, overall cost per playtest, etc.
So, based on my shit-tier math we would need to spend $26,120 to fix the rules weaknesses, change blindness, typos, and other editing issues. This would require another 2,009 sales to break even. This is only a portion of their sales, but SR6We is currently sitting in the "platinum" tier (1,000 - 2,000 sales) on DTRPG. I don't have a way of finding SR 6We's total sales across all platforms, but I'm guessing it's at least 5,000 - 10,000 total. Either way, this would require a sizable increase in their customer base. So in the short-term, it's better to stick to the minimum basic requirements needed to maintain the core customer base.
HOWEVER, comma, there are long-term issues with only doing the minimum. Although it's unlikely that the core customer base for Shadowrun products will disappear completely, it's entirely possible that core consumers will stick to the editions they already have, go to older versions, or jump ship completely. If players stick to what they already have, then it's a loss for CGL. If they go to older versions, then if CGL controls those versions (IE, 5e), then CGL will not lose money, but it won't improve 6w's sales, either, and will hurt them in the long run... Nobody's going to purchase the 6w Rigger book if they don't have the 6e CRB. It's also possible that they're hard cover fans, and will buy used books on the cheap rather than get the print-on-demand stuff. And if they jump ship, CGL sees none of that. It's hard to get back a consumer base without significant improvements- dumpshock is very small at this point, but there's more than a few groups of SR players who stopped purchasing new editions after 4e, WAR! or 5e came out. It's true that CGL can't take credit for all of that, and that in other TTRPGs there are groups that still stick to the original systems put out in the 80s and 90s. But I think SR has a larger crowd doing this than most.
I don't think 6wE will cause CGL or the Shadowrun brand to fold, or close up shop. Even if it starts making less money, that just means CGL puts less money into it. It might revert back to Topps after 5-10 years of decline, until some other sucker tries to pick it up and make a new edition. But in the meantime, it means that the SR community will shrink, and there will be even more loss of freelancers, writers, and editors with a solid knowledge of the IP. SR 8e created by the Whatevername LLC will not be the same product.
But, I'm keeping up my optimism on the unpaid errata team producing more errata, which is doing the job that pays thousands of dollars for free.
And let's look at the other side of things: Let's say that CGL did drop 26 grand onto 6e. The delayed release may have hurt them a little on the marketing side, but I don't think it'd be too much. CPRed left people in anticipation of the core book, which won't be out for awhile, so there may be people looking to "get their fix" from a shadowrun game in the mean time. If, say, the editing, proofing, and playtesting got 6e to the quality/popularity of the CPRed QSR, it would've put them into Adamantine Tier (5000+). Maybe less if there were more FLGS purchases/CGL site purchases, etc. Either way, that's at least 3000 additional purchases, for a sum of 39k. That's a $13,000 net profit. That's also an additional 3000 potential customers for all the splatbooks, sourcebooks, adventure modules, and what have you.
But it is a risk- if all of that either didn't improve the quality (Or improved the quality but didn't improve popularity), then CGL would be 26k down the drain. Even if my numbers above were terribly off (10k? 50k?), it's a clear risk: will putting more effort into the quality of the product increase its customers?
I had a point here, relevant to the question of customer outreach. If we go back to our paid intern, and pay them $7.25 an hour to spend 10 hours/week addressing concerns (About an hour each day, just to get the important stuff and reach out to developers as needed), then it would cost them about $3,770 per year (They're a part-timer, so no health insurance or anything to worry about). The question here is: would having a dedicated PR/Customer outreach intern bring in at least 290 additional sales each year, either on 6e or another Shadowrun product?
To sum up: Once, I was at a Wendy's during the afternoon- it wasn't too busy, but it took about 20 minutes to get my order done. Why? Because there was only one employee there, managing both the drive-thru and the register. I don't blame the employee for the store being understaffed and the meal taking too long. I agree that it's too much to have the lead developer also be the primary PR for a large product. I don't think the solution is "Jason Hardy needs to get better at his job," I think it's "CGL needs to take risks and put more resources into the Shadowrun IP if they want to grow the brand." I don't have any clear answers for the financial/business questions, but I don't have the full picture of CGL's business, either. I just wanted to put things into perspective for why I think things are the way they are with the Shadowrun brand.
Also: Is it 6We or 6w? 6we?
