Fred Hicks of Evil Hat Productions has been following the recent discussion on RPG PDFs (see "Marcus King of Titan Games & Music on RPG PDFs" and "Jane Witt of The Keep on RPG PDFs") and would like to offer his perspective on the matter:

Retailers who have been writing in -- and getting a lot of exposure -- on your site seem to be reacting with fear about the topic of PDFs.  But PDFs aren't the enemy (though it certainly seems they're being made the scapegoat).

As a game publisher, I prefer to look at PDFs as an enhancement of our print products -- not as an alternative.  As a customer, I view the PDF version of a print product as the best possible index for the print product.  It's super-searchable and providing hand-out printouts from sections of the PDF to my customers is easy.

But that's in addition to the print product, not instead of.

It doesn't take a lot of effort to build a partnership between retailer and publisher around the value-add of PDFs.  In fact, my company has a policy -- if you buy the print version of one of our games in a retail store (and can show us proof of it), we'll give you the PDF version of that game for free.  We thoroughly believe that brick and mortar retailers deserve our support.  So we're giving it, and we're doing it with PDFs.

I've also worked with a retailer out in Oakland, California by the name of Endgame to go beyond that, piloting a program to allow customers to preorder our upcoming books in-store and get the PDF of that product (on a CD we've authorized the store to burn) right then and there.  The store locks in a future sale, and the customer walks away with some immediate gratification.  And with Catalyst Labs' latest announcement, I can see I'm not alone in my ideas.

Jane and Marcus have both written in recently with clear beliefs that PDFs are in competition with their products.  Setting aside the idea that the PDF version of a product is not the same product as its print version, there's still a real problem with that perspective.  In a tough economy and changing market place, retailers like Jane and Marcus need to be looking at PDFs and thinking about how they can adapt to incorporate them into their stores.  They need to take off the blindfold and see opportunity instead of fear.

When times get tough, the correct response is adaptation and change -- not hunkering down into a box and hoping the world outside goes away.  But so long as they continue to think inside the box, they'll never see how PDFs can be in cooperation with them.

And that's no way to survive.

The opinions expressed in this Talk Back article are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.