The gatekeepers to 3PP of Pathfinder

I was reading this thread on Paizo and it got me kind of interested on seeing how many copies that said they were going to release product for Pathfinder but didn’t. I personally became interested and went over to the Compatibility License Registry to see how many people said they were going to start a 3PP for Pathfinder and did. Better yet how many were still in business.

I got 10% through the list and I stopped. 

I was kind of a wast of time because SO MANY people signed up but released only one product and ever worst most released nothing.  If you head over to RPGNow.com and select Rule System Pathfinder, here is the list of companies that came up for me:

Abandoned Arts, Alluria Publishing, Avalon Game Company, EN Publishing, Fire Mountain Games, Frog God Games, Jon Brazer Enterprises, Legendary Games, Little Red Goblin Games, 

LPJ Design, Necromancers of the Northwest, Open Design, Raging Swan Press, Rite Publishing and Super Genius Games.

As you can see 15 companies that RPGNow.com feels are the most important / influential in the area of Pathfinder products.  I find this very interesting in the concept of gatekeepers.  To make it on to the list of 15 publishers you have to work very hard to keep producing product on a regular basis that fans are interested in.  But the really interesting part is the number of people who WANT to or PLANNED to create something for Pathfinder. Many of these people/companies produced nothing. While even fewer produced just one product and decided for some reason not to do more.  When you think about it on a small scale all you need to do is do as much work and the “number 15” on the list and you could release them on that list.  I mean that it isn’t really that difficult.  Fifteen others are doing it, so why can’t you. So why don’t you or better yet, why haven’t you? Talk to you later…