Living from the game

[neoknocker]

Hi everyone,

                 I'm seriously considering of starting my RPG company and publish my first game. I used to work for a small RPG company, for a brief moment, and the guy I worked for was struggling big time, he couldn't pay my salary, therefore I left. The thing is I was wondering if it is something from which you can do a living or if you need to have another income to put food on the table? Without going in the numbers, of course.

                 Thanks for your time.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Short answer: no way in hell are you going to gain a living from rpg publishing.

Long answer: you'd better start small, control your investments very carefully and see how your talents stacks up in the market. In three years or so from your first publication you'll have a solid understanding of how you can expect your games to sell. At that point you can decide if you're one of those few who can do it as a day job.

Read the articles about publishing on this site, for a start. Then read the forums, which are chock full of information about how to run a profiting business without doing it full-time with massive overhead.

Also, consider what you mean by doing it for a living. If you have a family, house loan and a car, forget it. If you're a student or slacker with nothing better to do, then perhaps. Even better if you live in one of those socialistic countries that subsidy your living while you work on your rpg masterplan. It all depends on the quality of living you shoot for. I get by easily on 6000€ a year, so for me it's not that strange to plan for a writing career. If you routinely spend double or triple that on rent, food and luxuries, then it's a whole another kettle of fish.

[jdagna]

Very few people in the RPG biz get their primary income from publishing.  In fact, I'd wager that about half the people you think do, actually don't.

I don't know if you still have open communication with your boss, but I'd encourage you to see if he'll share some numbers or experiences of his own.  Perhaps he's at a point, where he'd let you take over certain operations, which could give you a foot up because having a name and existing product line are valuable.  You might also consider partnering up with another small publisher.  In short, I think a lot of people are reinventing the wheel when they don't need to, and that's affecting their profitability.

Anyway, your standard business advice says to expect to lose money for up to two years with any business.  With RPG publishing, consider the two years to start once your first product hits the market.  But even that's a rosy picture.  I think most people can start breaking even after two years, but very few are bringing in enough money to pay back the original debts or afford a wage.

[philreed]

You might also consider partnering up with another small publisher.

Speaking from experience this model, as long as all parties are working at pretty much the same quality level, can be very beneficial to everyone involved.

Earning a living publishing is difficult, but can be done. I would not recommend that anyone attempt it without having money in the bank, a spouse/SO with a steady job, and a few years of experience. A known and respected name/reputation can also help considerably.

[neoknocker]

I honestly thought so. I also have the conviction that it is possible overtime, with a good game ( I hate the word product. People dont want products, they want solutions or adventures)  and I'm considering of taking it quite slow. I'm happy that I've found this forum it'll help a whole lot.

Thanks for your answers and I hope other people will keep throwing a word on this topic once in a while.

[MatrixGamer]

I've got a day job and have never made much money off my games but I have thought about where the money would need to go if Matrix Games did take off.

My making a living off them is way down on the list. I ran a social work private practice in the late 90's and it definitely put a strain on my marriage. Instead of my making $, I will first hire others to do specific jobs.

Since I do my own printing my first employee would be a production/shipping person.

Next would come a sales/marketing person.

Next would be an officer staffer who did books keeping/sales/shipping.

I'm not certain who would come after that.

It is interesting that writers, artists, project managers, editors, book designers and me are not on this list. These prestige jobs would have to be independent contractors (or me) until I have a business that was regularly putting out many books a year (6? No probably 12). I figure that people will want to do this work (for a royalty or straight fee). The people mentioned above are revenue producers. They pay for themselves. Book developers (all the guys in this paragraph) don't automatically lead to more cash.

If you're starting out it's a good idea to look at your business skills. How are you with sales calls, networking at conventions, doing accounting, budgeting, working with vendors, running a booth? You don't have to be expert in these areas - but know where your weaknesses are so you can start strengthening them. A lot of this business stuff is emotional. I feared accounting - so it was VERY hard. Now by over learning the skill I'm comfortable with it so it is just work.

Even if you're doing this as a hobby it is a good idea to learn these skills. When you know the score and are talking to industry guys they sense it and take you much more seriously.

Good luck with your venture - keep presistent - have a completely unrealistic view of your chance of success - and never take set backs personally, it's just business.

I think that's enough platitudes.

Chris Engle
Hamster Press

[guildofblades]

Hi,

Well, it is possible to turn game publishing into an actual career. But it is not easy. Its quite a long shot.

It took my main partner and I 5-6 years of running the Guild of Blades before the company was fiscally stable enough that we could draw a salary from it. And even today, both of us still do a bit of freelance contract work in other industries to supplement our income. We *could* eak out a living on our gaming salaries, but certainly not live well off them. I don't forsee the company's revenues being that strong for another year or two yet.

Also, the only reason we've made it this far is that we carved and conquered a niche in the board gaming market. We still publish some RPGs, but in no way do we draw enough money from those to support us. As others have suggested, unless you have a mighty large pile of cash (say upwards of $100K above and beyond what you need to invest in launching your company right -- at least another $20K), I wouldn't even think about trying to the RPG field as anything other than a hobby at first. But you CAN start small and build up from there; it will just take a while.