New versions of games

[SaintandSinner]

Should publishers update books for existing customers?  Should someone who bought PDFs Shock or Mortal Coil (just to pick a couple of examples that have been tossed around as needing substantial updates) receive an new version as this comes out?  Do the publishers that put out these game have any responsibility for "recalls"?

[Matt Snyder]

I'm not interested in should. It's up to each publisher, I say.

I did offer a 40% discount to people who owned an eariler print edition of Nine Worlds when the updated version came out in 2005. Many people expressed their appreciation with that arrangement.

[MatrixGamer]

How would that technically work? I sell PDFs via RPGNow. When there is an error in a game and the customer tells me I send out a replacement PDF but I don't know who has bought my stuff. Is there a report on that?

PDFs may not cost anything to "print" but they do take labor to lay out. There probably should be a charge.

Chris Engle

[Ron Edwards]

Hey everyone,

Matt's right - it's not about "should." Chris, if you weigh in with "should," you're feeding needless contention. Sure, you or anyone may have an opinion, but so what? This isn't an opinion site.

Some publishers do offer some kind of "upgrade policy," some don't. Some might do so in some circumstances, and others might in others. Every customer must match his or her consumer preferences with whatever publisher policies or choices that they can live with.

Hey everyone,

Matt's right - it's not about "should." Chris, if you weigh in with "should," you're feeding needless contention. Sure, you or anyone may have an opinion, but so what? This isn't an opinion site.

Some publishers do offer some kind of "upgrade policy," some don't. Some might do so in some circumstances, and others might in others. Every customer must match his or her consumer preferences with whatever publisher policies or choices that they can live with.

Saintandsinner, can you provide a context for this discussion besides "should" and personal preferences?

Best, Ron

[Jake Richmond]

How would that technically work? I sell PDFs via RPGNow. When there is an error in a game and the customer tells me I send out a replacement PDF but I don't know who has bought my stuff. Is there a report on that?

There is. DrivethruRPG offers some kind of tracking report. I've used it to send out updated copies of Panty Explosion. Unles it vanished during the merger, I imagine RPGNOW must have it as well. I also sell PDFs through my own site. The free shoppingcart software I use keeps track of evry customer who bought the pDFs.

As to the original question, if I had to release a new version of Panty Explosion because it was broken then I would most definetly make the new PDF available to anyone who had purchased the old version. Print copie are a bit harder. If it was a small change (like a single missing page that made the game unplayable) I would simply offer the missing information for free. If I was totally rebuilding the book then I think I would have to offer the new version at cost to customers who had bought the old.

But that's only if I thought the product was broken and unplayable.

It would be different if I wanted to release a new version of Panty Explosion because I had thought of some cool new additional content, or because I wanted to redesign the physical book or redo the art. If I was rerelesing the game for those reasons then I would not offer the game to past purchasers for free or at a special discount. Or maybe I would offer an incentive discount of 10% off. this would be to encourage purchases from past customers.


jake

[Ron Edwards]

Hey guys, no more posting until this thread receives a better context for discussion from Saintandsinner. Thanks.

Best, Ron

[SaintandSinner]

Having just recently discovered the whole 'Indie Game Scene'.  I have bought several products some of which are a little spotty on editing or rule explanations.  There are some cool bits but they're just not put together as well as I would like.  Since these are in PDF format it would seem (relatively) easy to update the games and put out even better versions.  As for 'should' this is a value judgement.  Of course each designer will make their own determination but I think the input of the community might push some people to go the extra mile to polish up their games.  I mean 'hey' this stuff is mostly a work of love right?

[Jake Richmond]

I think the input of the community might push some people to go the extra mile to polish up their games.

It certainly has in the past. I've updated Panty Explosion several times to fix errors that have been pointed out to me. I find the PDF format makes it easy to do this, and since I print the game in small runs (about 150 at a time) I can often make the same changes inbetween printings of the physical books. I know a lot of other designers have mentioned that they do similar things, and there are certainly many games that have seen improvements with a new printing.

Not everyone has their system set up like that though, and there are any number of reasons why many designers who might care to make the kind of changes you are talking about are not able to. In some cases they may not be aware that there are mistakes to change. If you own a product with a mistake it certainly wouldn't hurt to let the designer know so they can fix it at some point if they want to.

[Ron Edwards]

That's a good re-statement of the topic. We aren't really discussing publisher choices, are we, but rather consumer choices. I think in a cottage industry of this type, that certainly the contact between customer and publisher is far easier and even perhaps expected than otherwise. I also think that today's technology makes revision far easier in most cases, without even the need for making a big deal out of it with so-called editions.

So speaking only for myself as publisher, it's always good to get feedback about fixing errors and considering different or expanded ways to explain things. Now, evaluating that feedback is a different story, and some customers have discovered that my response is a solid and in some cases dismissive No. But getting that feedback at all is a good thing for me, because it can sometimes make me notice things that I want to fix.

Best, Ron

[Dav]

I think that there is merit to offering updates for previous products when actual content has been changed.  To offer updates for minor editing changes, such as altering a comma to a semi-colon, or correcting minor spelling flaws, that may be excessive.  However, when there is something that changes that allows the game to be run more smoothly or effectively, then, absolutely.  In most cases, I think many publishers are best served to make a quick .pdf list of the changes and make it available on a website or other venue, rather than to track down previous customers and send it off to them.

In the end, however, I see a good 95% of indie games being "one-offs" or "fire-and-forget" games.  Once I finish something and place it out there for distribution, unless I am considering going back to it at some point to expand or productize some other aspect of the game, I am incredibly blase` about correcting, fixing, or altering the previous product.  Some of this is due to my own apathy, but in most cases, it is due to the fact that I expect my customer-base to be savvy enough to compensate for such mechanical flaws or rough spots. 

I realize that this is not necessarily serving the end customer very well, in many cases, but, in the end, I am one of those people that finds the conceptualization of a new system interesting, and the productizing of it extremely tedious and boring, which is why most of my games never find the market and instead get doled-out in tiny little runs and handouts to friends and other members of the gaming public. 

I have encountered people that want to make one of my games better, and I freely invite them to do so.  It is merely that, in general, I am someone that has usually moved-on to other projects and looking backward seems a waste of time for the most part.

Dav