Full time game designers

[Valamir]

What I'm in the end saying here is this: Ralph, Walmart is not an RPG Designer and you know it,

Quite.  I was not holding up Walmart as an example to be used for RPG designers.  I was pointing out that "real" industries don't price their product based on concern for their competitors.  I could just as easily have said Proctor & Gamble doesn't give a rip about Johnson & Johnson's employees when determining how to set its prices.

This is why I said:  

"For me this sort of high lights the split personality of this business that can't seem to make up its mind whether its a real "industry" or a collection of close associates and grass roots hobbyists. "

On the one hand you have Pramas and GMS taking offense to suggestions that gaming isn't a real industry.  On the other hand you have Ryan D suggesting having consideration for another company's employees which is very clearly a "non industry" thing to do.  Hense the split personality.

For the record, I in no way support deep discount pricing in the hobby.  I'm the guy who's railed that RPG prices are too low, and I'm the guy who laid into Luke for selling himself short.  So I'm not defending such pricing.  Nor was that pricing in any way the motivation for Luke's price choice.

I don't even really disagree with Ryan's sentiment.  I think the hobby is at its best when there is a high degree of commaraderie and idea sharing across the board.  When companies view each others as assets rather than obstacles.  It should be kind of like the demolition derby circuit.  In the event you have a bunch of guys having a hell of a time smashing up cars and trying to win a trophy.  But out in the pits getting ready they're all sharing tools and helping each other bang their cars into shape for the next heat.

I highlighted his remarks precisely because it was a pretty clear example of "hobby" thinking rather than "industry" thinking; and I thought it worth drawing attention to.

The only thing he said that I firmly disagree with is the idea that its the full time commercial members of the industry who are responsible for maintaining "quality and utility" as he put it.  The hobby started grass roots, has become more commercial, but could just as easily survive and prosper on a grass roots level again.  Modern technology has come along way from the days of mimeograph rules and zip lock bags.  There is no profound difference in quality between commercial releases and small press releases by necessity...only by choice.

[John Kim]

Some more established industries are carefully constructed to prevent their trades being so devalued (doctors, actors and lawyers spring to mind).

*A quick aside* Actors? Unless we're talking SCREEN actors here, that doesn't quite fit. Its difficult to break into acting because there are so many actors out there. In fact, I'd actually link acting to whats going on in the RPG 'industry'.
...
FEW people actually make a living acting. Those who do do it through Hollywood. Stage actors typically work waiter/waitress jobs wherever they can. Ditto for RPG development- with the rare exception (I do believe there is a couple here), this is a spare time, wee hours of the night hobby for almost everyone else here.

I suspect Jack is talking about screen actors, and in any case I think you are agreeing with his general point.  It is completely true that the world is filled with people who will act essentially for free.  However, the acting guilds are organized precisely to try to discourage that.  For example, the screen actors guild's (SAG) position is that unless you hire entirely from the guild, then no SAG actor will work on your film.  They are hostile towards people acting for free, because that devalues their own work.  That said, most independent films can't afford SAG rates and go with non-guild actors who work essentially free ($50 a day, for example).  

I completely disagree that cooperative price-setting among members of an industry makes something "not an industry".  As Jack points out, discouraging free hobbyists is something that occurs in plenty of fields.  If the acting example doesn't work, think of how doctors may react to someone who freely gives out medical advice.  

I think the same dilemma faces us in RPGs.  While I have supported free RPGs via my http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/freerpgs/">Free RPG List, it does give me pause to think about the results for professional RPG designers.  In my own play, I typically play either a homebrew or a commercial RPG (like Champions, Ars Magica, Buffy, or James Bond).  Supporting and encouraging free RPGs is devaluing professional RPG design, to some degree.  

So what can we do to support professional RPG design:
1) Encourage budding designers to charge fair price for their games.  I think the Forge does a fair job of this, actually.
2) Encourage recognition of RPG designers, rather than industry brands.

Now, that said, there is a flip side to this.  By encouraging non-free RPGs, we reduce the flow of information which can slow down the speed of RPG design.  i.e. If the innovative new games cost money, then new designers won't see them as much and thus won't benefit from the ideas.  This could perhaps be dealt with some by encouraging a practice of passing out complimentary ("comp") copies of new RPGs around the design community -- perhaps through some sort of electronic setup.

[wakingjohn]

I don't think doctors are a legitimate example.  

Most doctors I know (maybe... 7 out of 10 I know from working in an office a while back doing transcription and some from chess clubs) do work often for free, and often aside from that do charity work for hospitals and universitys....  Granted this is no good sample of the pop, but I'd like to think it somewhat like this outside my circle.

Also using them as an example is bad because you are completely ignoring the existance of insurance companies in America, and say in countries like Canada, the government which both have effects on the market that are simply not in relation to what we are talking about at all.

I honestly believe any discouraging of free medical advice is due to conditions it is handed out and the fact thats its usually very suspect.  However, this I admit this is somewhat optimistic and likely due to knowing many doctors.  
***
That said, I agree that hobbiests or set pricing do not make something a non-industry.  I also agree that one would suspect that a hobbiest would not have time and resources enough to create something equal to someone doing it for a living due to many factors.  However I see many notable exceptions to this.  It might just be that some people have the talent to do what others can do for living in their spare time.
***
Another thing to note though is  that when something is lower priced people view it with suspect and are actually many times less likely to get it, and therefore have little negative effect on any competition.  I know I thought this about Burning Wheel until recently when I read a thread here about it that changed my mind (luckily) due to the authors devotion to it and the community support.  I think the average retailer would like to have the 'real deal' than 'a cheap knock off' and whether one realizes it or not, pricing things low help label it as a cheap knock of, regardless of its quality.  

The biggest point I feel is that someone doing it for a living is usually in a different market - online, convention, etc sales - where as the one doing it for fun doesn't usually get distribution..
**

I suppose, I think its just a matter of opinion based on your views of capitalism and socialism.  I personally believe that ideally, we should support those who want to do it as a living.  However, realistically, I'll have to support the capitalistic model and ay that to do it as a living you better be able to do it as a living on your own.

[ryand]

Umm, Ryan?  I'm not sure how relevant your last post is really.  Lumping small press with vanity press seems to be a completely inaccurate assumption.

Small, art, and vanity press endeavors have more in common with each other than they do with "commercial" releases.  Most notably, they usually have business models that are not designed to be self-sustaining.

The pricing of a small press title has less to do with profit not being critical, and more to do with a publication model that doesn't include alot of unnecessary expenses to make up for.

The product this thread was originally discussing had exactly this issue.  At its original price point, it was profitable if sold direct.  As soon as it moved into the distribution tier, its pricing structure became unprofitable.  It's production & development cost basis did not change (no "unnecessary costs" were added) - what changed was that in order to support wider distribution, someone else had to get paid for doing that new work.  And that meant that the cost in the model went up.

I think most people who think there are "unnecessary expenses" in the traditional RPG publishing model are mostly inaccurate.  RPG publishing is one of the most cost-efficient businesses I've ever worked with.  The return for each dollar invested in terms of talent & resources is tremendously high.

Many indie-games have a per unit profit margin that commercial games would envy.

Unlikely.

First, most "indie" game designers don't pay themselves a reasonalbe (or any) wage for the work they do, but any basic economic anlaysis will indicate that they are a "cost" even if they are a non-cash cost.  Opportunity costs are still costs, even if you don't put them in a bank.

Second, I think many people would be surprised at the average gross margin of most paper RPG products.  It is substantially higher than the average consumer on the street expects.  (See my earlier comments about the need to make more than a "break even" profit to operate publishing company effectively.)

Third, there is an economy of scale factor that many indie publishers are unaware of, because they've never produced enough volume to see those economies.  With the exception of PDF distribution, most small-vanity-art publishers have no idea how fast the per-unit production cost for an RPG drops with reasonable wide-distribution volumes.  Those economies of scale apply not only to production, but also to amortizing the costs for art, design, editing, layout, etc.  Doubling a print run means each unit pays half as much for all those services.

I really don't see this at all.  Why couldn't small press companies putsh the quality and utility bars?

In large measure, the design of RPG game lines has moved past the point where any one individual can do the work alone.  An individual can design a game, or a game system, but a game >line< in the modern sense requires a team of individuals with specialized skills in order to achieve maximum quality and utility.

The idea of having a "group of designers" is not the same as having a "team of designers".  One of the things that the Wizards of the Coast R&D department got right is the idea that it needed to develop a "profession" of game design.  Working in WotC R&D is a lot like taking a series of advanced courses in statistical analysis, grammer, market research, systems analysis, etc.  The overall quality of the work produced by such a system is simply going to be higher than the work any one individual, working in isolation, can produce over time.

Likewise, there is a gigantic difference in sustained output quality between a "professional" game designer (one who does the work for a full-time living) and a part timer or hobbyist.  When you make something your job, suddenly you find that there are metrics to monitor your performance that the hobbist or artist need not confront.  Those metrics, when used properly, contribute to an incremental, progressive improvement in skills and application.

These two factors are one of the reasons that people leaving WotC to start their own D20 companies have been so much more successful, on average, than the new designers attracted by the chance to work in the field for the first time.

There will always be a place for the rouge individualist who likes being out on the frontier without a lot of support - pushing the edges of the envelope.  Realistically, those people in the future of the RPG market will be working on projects like Ron Edward's "Sorcerer", not something like Green Ronin's "Mutants & Masterminds" line - because the former is something one person can do as a thought experiment, and the latter is a professional career requiring demonstrable, repeatable, successful processes.

What quality and utility bars are "commercial" companies pushing that small press couldn't?

Clearly, the utility of D&D 3rd Edition was superior in many, many ways to most of the RPG content in the market on its release.  Reasonable people may debate about the philosophy of the 3E design, but it is also to reasonably examine the work done to recognize the substantial improvement in quality those rules represented compared to the benchmarks.  That work required the talents of 3 full time designers and a large community of support people to achieve, over nearly 18 months of continuous development.  No small press endeavor could afford the overhead required to mount such an effort.

Examine the average "quality" of Magic expansions over the past ten years.  They have been a fairly consistent progression of improvement towards some kind of Platonic ideal; setbacks have been minor and quickly corrected, and some great leaps forward have been acheived.  The Magic team relies on an extended network of card designers, playtesters, Pro Tour players, and internal teams who eat, breathe and sleep Magic to acheive this consistent improvement.  No small press company could marshal the resources necessary to continously sustain such an effort over more than a decade.

Look at the emerging World of Darkness 2.0.  White Wolf is drawing on the talents of a half-dozen designers who have been working non-stop with the Storyteller system for most of the last 15 years, combined with insights from the community of players and playtesters they have surrounded themselves with.  This is a team who have used those rules to create games simulating videogame kung-fu battles, pulp adventures, sword & sorcery wuxia, as well as a breathtaking range of modern and medeval horror.  No small press company can match the depth of understanding and the interlocking experiences the White Wolf team has aggregated through all those design projects.  I have every confidence the product line will be up to White Wolf's superior quality reputation.

In short, the game design "science" has moved past the idea of focusing on a set of rules or a game mechanic, and has embraced the concept of the "whole product line", a work encompassing compatiblity with other components, playtesting, feedback from consumers, illustration, production unit quality, marketing, organized play, etc.  That work has to be done by larger organizations than the individual "indie" game designer.

Nobody is in the game industry for the money.

You are quite mistaken.  Six-digit salaries are being made right now by a large number people in the gaming industry.  They see the gaming industry as a market rich with profit making opportunities.  In the past 10 years this industry has created by my count at least 2 dozen millionaires.  Salary is a hot topic at every company in gaming - and the salary direction is up, not down.

I, personally, am in the industry for the money, and I'm certainly not alone.

In fact, I think this would RAISE the quality and utility bar.  IMO the pace of publication today is far to fast.  The "gotta get it out the door so we can start making money to pay our employees" mentality would be replaced with "this ain't going out the door until I'm satisfied the product is as high a quality as I can make it".

I agree with this completely.  Companies are selling their customers subquality work, and they're not getting away with it as much as they used to.  Right now, a lot of companies are moaning about the "glut" of products, while carefully ignoring the fact that >some< products are selling very, very well.  There are a lot of companies who are due for a rude shock, and a thorough business adjustment, and it is coming quite quickly.

The great thing about the market is that there's an intrinsic mechanism (profit) which will work to eliminate the low-quality producers, and reinforce the success of the high-quality producers.  Over time, that market effect will drive quality up.

Further, I'd suggest that the current commercial designer who would in fact quit designing all together if he could no longer make a living at it, would be no great loss.

So Monte Cook, for example, who could easily take a job at any of a dozen computer game companies, or write novels, or write for television or movies, would not be a "great loss" if he couldn't design games for a living?

Gaming was grass roots and Alarums & Excusions long before it was commercial.

"Gaming" was commercial since H. G. Wells sold copies of "Little Wars".  "Gaming" was commercial since Avalon Hill.  And "Gaming" was certainly commercial since Gary & Dave sold mimeographed copies of their rules for fantasy roleplaying with miniatures to the GenCon attendees.

Don't kid yourself.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Ryan,

I'm a little puzzled about how I fit into your frame of reference, because how I see it doesn't quite match up to your description of me.

Adept Press is profitable, and I'd shut it down if it weren't.

I think the issue of living-wage or salary of any kind is a red herring. If it's a desired expense, then it is, and if it's not, then it's irrelevant. Suggesting that it's a requirement of a business-model seems like stacking the definition-deck to permit only certain sizes of businesses to claim the name.

As for the products, Sorcerer and my other games aren't "thought-experiments," because people buy and play them, and that leads to others buying and playing them. Nor by any stretch of the imagination can I see them as a vanity press, because the business model is self-sustaining, both by intent and as it's happened, in practice.

Both the core book and the first supplement have continued to sell through their second printings, and I am now making sure that I'll be ready for the second printings of the other supplements as well. Down the line, I expect third printings to follow. All, as I say, funded through profits alone.

I can't see why an endeavor cannot be considered a "business" simply because it's not oriented toward supplying living wages. To me, a "business" relies on being continually profitable, interacting with the world around it in such a way that people (same people, new people) keep buying stuff.

To provide my alternative view: I think that if a company with rented offices, a pyramid-style wage-employee strucure, and very extensive design and production processes, were to be periodically externally funded, with no expectation of return from the funders, then it would be a vanity press. Yeah, all 500 employees and 100,000 copy print runs, etc - still a vanity press. (hypothetical example)

Whereas (to take an example besides my own), Half Meme Press has returned its initial investment to Paul Czege many times over, and continues to cover all expenses such as conventions, promotions, etc. Half Meme is one guy, and it pays itself/himself no salary. But I don't consider it vanity press.

So what about the size factor? My net profit is small, but it is in fact sufficient to fund new projects. Adept Press does not require infusions of outside funds in order to stay in existence. I don't see any point in comparing (say) Mongoose Publishing and Adept Press in terms of relative success, as each successfully matches its own model and stays in business. There is no "threshold" of raw return that validates a business, as long as it can continue to operate without handouts.

Anyway, I don't see any of this as a disagreement about what RPG publishing is, or how it works, merely an example of two-or-more different ways to deal with the opportunities that are available.

Best,
Ron

[Sean]

Well, I'm all for people making a living at this, 'professional' or 'indie'.

RyanD wrote:

"In short, the game design "science" has moved past the idea of focusing on a set of rules or a game mechanic, and has embraced the concept of the "whole product line", a work encompassing compatiblity with other components, playtesting, feedback from consumers, illustration, production unit quality, marketing, organized play, etc. That work has to be done by larger organizations than the individual "indie" game designer."


Logically valid, but what if one dislikes the 'game line' approach in the first place? Compatibility is only important if you've got a game that makes you add stuff to a basic framework in the first place, illustration and production quality are chrome, marketing and advertising are by definition waste expenses in all industries, and I can organize my own game group, thank you very much.

Playtesting and feedback are important, and here a larger organization does indisputably have advantages, though you can do some of that for yourself using the net.

It's possible that there are some games with a degree of system and setting complexity that a large organization will inevitably do them better, and some of these may well be good systems and settings (ones which lead to enjoyable play). But I don't think that either of these forms of complexity is intrinsically lniked to game quality, and where it's not, there's no reason that the independent designer or small team can't do as well or better. Maybe not as well or better at selling a whole line to people who like buying lots and lots of products, but in terms of providing quality rules and a quality play experience, why not?

For myself, I hate big game lines and complex interlocking modular game systems, because they usually undermine or even cripple my ability to work with the system and world creatively. Others may disagree; fine; let a thousand flowers blossom. But the point is there are many gamers who don't prefer this particular approach to game design or the types of game it tends to produce, and at the current time the indie community serves those people about as well as the professional one does, AFAICT.

[ryand]

I'm a little puzzled about how I fit into your frame of reference, because how I see it doesn't quite match up to your description of me.

I think that you, and a few others have found a profitable, semi-sustainable business model outside the mainstream of the "RPG industry".  You're running for-profit businesses.  You are not operating a small-vanity-art press as I've defined them (non-sustainable business models).  The issue of owner draw or designer compensation is a pretty big deal, because without it, your whole business is predicated on you basically being willing to keep providing a non-cash investment in it every time you work on a project without getting paid.  

I say your busines is "semi-sustainable" because of that implicit subsidy.  To me, "sustainable" implies that if the founder walks, the business can persist.  In your situation, that is not the case.

You (and a few others) have found a middle niche between outright commercial and pure vanity press that meets your needs to be creative while self-funding the costs of production, and I think that's a fabulous evolution.

Yeah, all 500 employees and 100,000 copy print runs, etc - still a vanity press. (hypothetical example)

Not so hypothetical.  You're describing TSR on at least 2 occasions.

:)

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

Cool! I always suspected we were talking the same language, if from different "what to do" perspectives. Many thanks for your reply.

I wanted to avoid stepping on my foot with rumors-only pseudo-knowledge, but yeah, my example was kept hypothetical only because I don't know the hard numbers. Such a scenario has been described to me for more than one company.

Anyway ... so, given that this "semi-sustainable" model isn't a vanity thing, and also given that it could arguably become "fully sustainable" in your terms, owner willing ... the real question for me now becomes something else (and with any luck back to the original topic):

Does such a business actually hurt the other businesses in any way? Let's leave aside issues as to whether it might out-compete them, because I can see that going either way, and probably many weird ways that are hard to assess. Let's talk about price-pointing.

Fact: Sorcerer is priced kinda low. I don't think it's shockingly low-priced (as the Burning Wheel certainly is). But yeah, it's a slim hardback, and it's $20. Lots of people tell me I should have gone for $25.

But is that really so terrible for anyone else? It's undercutting, yes, in what I consider a competitive way, but at least in the same playing field. I think. But what is that minimal threshold MSRP at which point a game's low price becomes a terrible, unfair, industry-hurting price? I guess I have a hard time understanding how to identify it.

(And just to be very clear, let's assume that every company in this picture I'm painting is a business, sustained by profits.)

And furthermore, considering that a Sorcerer re-print run ranges from 750 to 1250 copies (depending on which book), can its impact on the other titles' sales out there be even a blink on, say, White Wolf's ledgers? I mean, it's kind of ... well, trivial, isn't it?

Here's an even larger question. Let's say, due to technological innovations, to various information-sharing, and to a variety of other factors, a set of publishers similar to me (some bigger, some smaller, but all in this "semi-sustainable" model) all discover that their games sell very nicely at fairly low price-points, with rather meaty profits at that scale. They get some few copies into distribution, enough to have a presence at various stores (probably not all in the same store at any given time, and most stores have none of them, or at least don't re-order once they sell). They mostly sell on-line and through cooperative effort at conventions.

Also assume that the games in question are diverse and notable for their "punch per page," leading to very rapid pick-up-and-play practices as well as a high appeal for gamers' spouses and non-gamer friends, unlike many RPGs as currently construed. Finally, assume that many of the publishers use websites as, effectively, fanzines for the games, providing a lot of positive feedback and sense of community among the end-customers.

I'm not sure why I see that they could be called unethical. What they've done, effectively, is tap into the existing market in a new and better way, effectively generating a new "industry."* If this phenomenon were to have a negative impact on the existing companies' profits ... so what? Is that, in any way, a problem or bad thing?

I'm pretty ethically neutral on that score. It strikes me as plain old evolution (meaning change, not improvement) of culture and commerce, the same story as played out hundreds of times throughout history. I don't even claim it's good (i.e. calling it "progress"), but just ... a phenomenon which is easily understood and not especially controversial.

Best,
Ron

* quotes are non-derogatory, in this case merely indicating that we are talking about commerce that doesn't include a whole ton of images that are often associated with the word industry, like guys in overalls or hooting whistles at factories or executive offices

[Valamir]

The issue of owner draw or designer compensation is a pretty big deal, because without it, your whole business is predicated on you basically being willing to keep providing a non-cash investment in it every time you work on a project without getting paid.

I agree with this to a point, but IMO it does not have nearly the importance that you're giving it.  See this is a hobby as well as a business.  To a great extent we'd be pouring this non-cash investment into the hobby anyway.

Therefor it isn't really an opportunity cost at all.  Legions of gamers out there spend hours and hours and hours of their time reading, thinking about, writing about, and prepping for games...even (especially) for games that never get run.  So the time investment that you're holding up as a big deal  really isn't.  If I wasn't spending the hours on Ramshead projects, I'd be spending the hours on other gaming related projects that I wouldn't be compensated for.  So shifting those hours over doesn't really represent an opportunity cost at all...at least not most of them.


That line of thinking is actually part of what I've been criticising.  Hours spent on game design is only an opportunity cost for those who really don't enjoy game design...for those for whom game design has become a "job" for which they're just putting in their time.  For those doing it because they love it, its already the first choice of how to spend that time anyway.  

There's a clear difference between a game text written by someone passionately thrilled about what they're writing, and one written by someone just trying to meet their word quota.  That goes for all game writers, commercial and independent.  The advantage the independent has is since they don't have bills to pay they can simply stop and return to the project when they are inspired; or quit entirely if it turns out its crap.  The commercial author doesn't often have that luxury.  The best commercial works occur when the author's personal inspiration coincides with his assigned schedule.  That doesn't always happen, and there is little the commercial author can do about it.  The professional ones have the discipline to complete their assignment in a technically proficient fashion.  But that's not the same result as if they'd been able to pour their love and soul into it.


Can large companies achieve a higher degree of technical proficiency at the task of assembling a gaming product? Sure, though I don't think that gulf is nearly as wide as you do.  There are plenty of talented artists, graphic designers, editors, etc. who perform those duties professionally outside the industry who are willing to contribute their talents at reduced cost to a project they're excited about.  Armed with such talent, the indie publisher can produce products that compare quite favorably on most any quality metric.  Besides, having a large team of professional designers is hardly a guarentee of technical proficiency.  Plenty of WotC D&D 3E products have been blasted for their layout problems, starting with the bizarre underline design in the first run of the PHB.

On average, is the average commercially produced game going to score higher on technical metrics than the average independent game?  Yes.  But compare the cream of commercial games with the cream of independent games and that margin will be much narrower.  Narrow enough to be pretty unimportant as a measure of relative quality of the game.

Also keep in mind the different goals of production quality.  A commercially produced game that requires high volume and high retail sales in order to recover its costs needs to be highly produced in order to catch the eye of store browsers.  Independent games that rely on the quality of their game play and word of mouth advertising do not need to do this.  This accounts for the vast majority of difference between production quality of commercial vs independent game publishing, IMO.  Its a choice...its necessarily a result of an inability on the part of independent publishers to do those things (sometimes it is to be sure).  But for the most part is that independent distribution channels don't require those things.  

And yes, for the record I do concider the hard cover, full color interior, high gloss, rampant graphic design of many modern RPG books to represent "unnecessary costs".   They exist for 2 reasons...they are a marketing tool; and they appeal to collectors.  Those things don't add to game play.  They don't add to the quality of the gaming experience.  They are entirely unnecessary and they are quite expensive.  That's not to say I don't appreciate and enjoy them.  But they are clearly not necessary to game play.

In fact, in some cases I'd go so far to say that rampant overproduction can lead to games that aren't designed to be played.  These are games that to me are clearly designed to be sold.  They are games designed to be admired.  They are games designed to be oohed and ahhed over.  But far less attention is paid to making them worth playing.  Clearly not all commercially published games fit this bill.  But many do.  Since this is clearly not, to me, a standard of quality to be emulated, it is obvious that merely being commercially oriented does not lead directly to quality.  And this goes double for games with a licensing tie-in, which are even more prone to being designed to be collectable to fans of the license rather than designed to deliver an amazing play experience.


"Technical proficiency at the task of assembling a gaming product" does not equal quality.  At the end of the day no matter how pristine your grammar, no matter how technically proficient your layout and design, and no matter how accurate your statistical analysis...if you put out a crappy game, you put out a crappy game.  That's true no matter what the size of your company is and no matter how many employees worked on the project.

For me give me a game that delivers an amazing play experience designed by someone with an amazingly unique and powerful vision (warts and all) over a technically proficient but ultimately sterile game any day.  By that definition of quality, commercial vs. independent are on a much more even footing.   One can find plenty of examples of both produced by both models.

"The ability to deliver an amazing play experience" is a valid definition of game quality.  "The ability to sustain a prolific product line of supplements" is, IMO, not.  It may be a valid definition of commercial success.  But its not an indication of quality.

In fact, I'll put an impassioned independent with something profound to say up against an uninspired paid employee just working for a paycheck (no matter how talented) any day of the week on that measure of quality.


I should conclude by explicitly pointing out that I am not criticising the commercial author model in general, and do not wish to offend those commercial authors whose works I admire.  Most of the commercial authors I know are clearly not "paid employees just working for a paycheck" and have (at least on select projects) the kind of passion I'm talking about.  Nor should it be taken to suggest that all independent games are published with the kind of passion I'm talking about.  There are several I can think of published for what I consider poor reasons that I would not consider of high quality.

The above is solely intended to demonstrate that when it comes to determining which publishing model is more likely to produce quality games, that I disagree with Ryan's assessment that the commercial model based on full time employees / free lancers has a pronounced advantage.

[contracycle]

That said, RPG design AIN'T BUSINESS!... it should be a community, it should price set collectively, and it should have the ability to call up someone in another company and say: "have you thought about X, that would be AWESOME!"

Thats pie in the sky IMO I'm afraid.  While I agree that in terms of innovation and vision, the office-based companies are not leading the way, nonetheless settling for a hobby press means abandoning all aspiration to high levels of production quality.  This seems to me completely self defeating.

[Dav]

Contracycle:

Riddle of Steel, Sorcerer, Obsidian, Menschlichkeit... all of these feature production values competitive with, even exactly on par with, most market standards.  Hard-cover, 40-60# paper, color cover with b&w interior at 300 dpi or better.  All of these games are indy, all are operated (well, I speak less of TRoS, as I am not privy to Jake's methods of operation) on a profitable model of moderate sales through standard distribution channels, and higher sales through direct or semi-direct (meaning direct-to-store) means.  

All of these games occupy a smaller niche in a niche market, but they still have wide impact.  Further, again without including details of TRoS, all are operated as secondary income, at best, and not a competitive business models.  What Wizards did with that Eberr... whatever it is... new world is pretty much the same thing Ron does with Sorcerer.  Seriously.  Ron allows development of mini-supplements, centered at his website, by third parties.  Wizards did the same thing with their new D&D world, but made it a cash-prize contest.  No difference except in the scope of support expected for That-E-World for D&D.  

I think that Ryan and the minds behind d20 had a good idea in creating a system that fed development of "mainstream" games.  The Forge does similar with indy games.  Again, the scale is different, but the idea is the same (not that I am assigning motives to the d20 crew, I am sure that cementing a wide array of support for D&D3E was a factor, but I am likewise relatively certain that the idea of a creative community of designers was likewise a nifty side-benefit in the minds of some).  

RPG design requires solvency to continue, and profitability for some of the larger companies, but what is really the key issue is that liking/disliking, or supporting, or whatever one game, has no real impact aside from turnaround period, of another game.  Therefore, there is little reason to be competitiors in any real sense.  RPG is not that market.  Go ahead and design that model, it can work (I've heard horror stories of Hasbro meetings about how to "crush Mattel"), but eventually, the cyclic nature of the market catches up to everyone (even TSR).  For indy games, market along a fad model... for bigger people, try to flatten the spike with supplements, if you can give something of substance, but in the end, every company is searching for "the next thing", all the time.  No reason not to work together on it.  RPG design is too tiny a market to really be something where "real business practices" are readily available to any but a very few.  Hell, if I ran my RPG businesses like I ran my trading consortium, I'd be screwed... people would think I'm a bigger asshole than they already do.

Recently, I have been in contact with Eden Studios.  They (Derek) mentioned a great idea for a new supplement on the Flames Rising boards, and I pitched my support.  I ran it by a bunch of my friends in the industry, and suddenly, the idea has eight to ten big names attatched to it.  We don't even want to be paid, we just want to design a world for the zombies (and who wouldn't?).  THAT is the core of the RPG community.  A few can manage to eke out a living, but no one will argue that bigger money isn't available elsewhere.  Hell, I can't consult for the RPG market, maybe 1-2 of the companies can afford me, and I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, the top-shelf of financial and accounting consultants.

To me, RPG design has a lot to learn from creator-owned products, and creator-owned products need to learn to step up to the plate (ala the bigger market companies).  We all "work" in the market (with some of us working, rather than "working"), and much as Ryan's presence on these boards wanting to educate and illuminate, and Ron and Mike and Ralph tearing hairs out explaining the hows, whys, and whynots of their processes for success; I don't see why, in some cases, the market shouldn't band together for a few moments and say: "what the fuck?" to do something fun, simple, and potentially kickass (such as the AFMBE Book of Worlds, the IGC Publication, the 24-hour Game Design, etc.).  Yeah, yeah, we are all busy(ish), but marketing is marketing, and you can brand yourself faster than a game...  In the end, it all feeds the same machine.

Therefore: community, not business (or, if you want me to word it less frictionally: community and business).  Not a pipedream, it just means that occasionally, you need to use foul language and browbeating to get it done.    

Dav

[Dav]

Ralph and Ryan:

Just tossing a couple cents in:

Ryan speaketh thusly:
"Small, art, and vanity press endeavors have more in common with each other than they do with "commercial" releases. Most notably, they usually have business models that are not designed to be self-sustaining."

I must say that, overall, I completely agree.  A good majority of small press designers (and speaking primarily of creator/owners), most have a realistic grasp of their products in such a way that they have either 1) designed an "end", or 2) have some critical threshold in their own benchmarking that signals a "cut it off here" point.  

Beside this point, Ryan is completely correct as most creator/owner businesses (or small press, or pick a label) have little in the way of legacy ot leave behind, and, in any event, have even less that could be considered a valued asset over and above current stock.  In short, few, if any, small press games have a true brand value... they tend to be stand alones with little, if any support.

This is not a bad thing... don't get me wrong.  It is merely a different thing (and less risky, and less stressful, and any myriad other nice side-benefits that one often associates with either a hobby or secondary income source).  

I go back to my corner now.

Dav

[Olibarro]

Everyone looks to see what other people are doing when they set prices, whether as a manufacturer, wholesaler, retailer, whatever. If you're serious about the biz, you'll be watching the competition.

It's a free market. This is capitalism. If someone wants to give away their product or sell it cheap, let them. It is their choice and it is only they who are missing the money.

On average, the more expensive products by more professional publishers will have higher production values and higher quality (you know, things like paid editors and paper... as opposed to review by friends and pdf).

The undervalued yet still high-quality products out there are the exception to the rule. And when they occur, maybe the person will wise up eventually, or maybe someone with more business savvy will make them an offer and publish for a higher price, who knows? It's free market economics. It goes up. It goes down. If you want to play, then you have to be as smart as you can, and you can't count on mounting a massive wave of industry altruism to prop up your own prices. It just won't happen.

[Andrew Morris]

On average, the more expensive products by more professional publishers will have higher production values and higher quality (you know, things like paid editors and paper... as opposed to review by friends and pdf).

Heh. Oh yeah? Like White Wolf? I'm pleasantly suprised if I see a whole page without grammar errors or typos in anything they put out. Having a big budget or lots of staff doesn't guarantee high production values.

[wakingjohn]

For my opinion on White Wolf, please see page XX.

*sighs@ww*