Why No One Should Expect SJG to Put Ogre into the Public Domain

The rights to games are assets. Even if a company doesn't use it, it still is an asset. To release it into the public domain or to sell when there is no interest will not make them a whole lot of money. If someone has a good idea, SJG might be open to a licensing agreement, or if someone has a lot of cash, I'm sure they could be convinced to sell.

There is also an economic cycle to board games. There is a significant difference between the cycles of board games, rpg games, and ccg games. With CCG's, a company can count on steady income, and the ability to put out expansions easily. The unit price on the product is low, which encourages a high purchase volume.

RPG's have a higher unit cost, and the associated lower purchase volume. RPG's can still plan to have many expansions for one game, leading to somewhat steady income.

Board games are have the highest unit cost, and the lowest volume. When a new board game is released, it usually makes 60%+ of its income in the first year it is sold. After that sales trickle off. Unlike a CCG, when a gamer has a copy of a board game, he doesn't need to purchase multiple copies of the same product. Thus if a game sells well, it leads to expansions. However, if 100 people purchase the basic game, that will be the limit to the number that buy the expansion. (though the number that buy the expansion is invariably less than those that bought the original) Due to attrition, the number of people that buy the future expansions is reduced with each one. Eventually this will not be profitable.

The solution is to take the product off the market for a period of time, or to "revise" a product. (these two work well when used together) When you re-release a product after it has been off the market for 2-3 years, you will be introducing the game to a new market. Games Workshop has got this system fine-tuned. Talisman is out-of-print right now, as is Man-o-war, but they will likely come back into print in the next few years, with all the marketing fanfare. They recently revived Blood Bowl, which had been oop for a few years.

TSR revised its AD&D product line recently. Most of this was just new packaging, but it made the product look different, so it caught consumer's eye. When they started printing 2nd edition products years ago, it offered them the opportunity to take existing information, add 50% new material, then sell the revised product. This effectively meant that people were repurchasing items they already owned, just repackaged and re-organized.

I'm still amused when I read the forward/preface to the 2nd ed. Players Handbook. They speak of the reasons for having a 2nd edition, one of which was a chance to re-organize. (At the time it was a large improvement, now it is worse than 1st edition) Another reason was the fact that there were nearly a dozen books that had rules in them. Now 2nd edition has over 2 dozen books of rules/option. It's the perfect excuse for them to issue a 3rd edition.

To sum it all up: Expect SJG to revitalize the Ogre line in a couple of years after people have forgotten about it.