How committed is committed?

[Michael Hopcroft]

IN the back of the HeartQuest book I had an ad for the next game Seraphim Guard was planning to publish, Fuzz: the Furry Police RPG. IT's a nice-looking ad with a good, solid blurb that should hopefully catch people's attention. Fair enough.

Problem is it's going to be a while before the game comes out. It's still in the very early design stages in fact, and I wonder if I will find out at some point that there is simply no market for this type of game.

If that is the case, I'd like to somehow find out before investing huge amounts of time and money on it. Is there any way I can research who would buy a game like that and, if it turns out the answer to that question is nobody, quietly slip into the sunset and do something else?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Michael,

Unfortunately, to my knowledge, there is no rock-solid Marketing Research method for role-playing games. (I remain unconvinced there is any marketing research method for any product, but that would upset people, so never mind.)

However, I'm a little surprised that you aren't spotting the most effective equivalent, which is available, and works very well. It is to describe the game on-line, and to provide a fair amount of information about it, even enough to permit people to play it (although perhaps not the whole thing). If people like it and continue to play, and if you can get a community and dialogue going, then continue developing the game into a commercial form.

This method works, both for positive and negative results. It's very solid. The Forge is largely dedicated to this activity, and it's also been effective at RPG.net.

Best,
Ron

[rafael]

It's still in the very early design stages in fact, and I wonder if I will find out at some point that there is simply no market for this type of game.

there's definitely a market for it.  there's a market for everything.  but before you invest 'huge' sums of money in it, you might want to invest a smaller amount in a demo version.

even if it's in the design stages, hammer something out, take it to some cons, mail it to people, hell -- when people buy heartquest, you could toss the demo in there, let 'em get a taste for it way in advance.

-- rafael

[Valamir]

Thats a great idea.  Lots of computer games come with demos of other games on the CD.  Every time you direct sell a copy of Heart Quest include a quick start set of Fuzz (or at least a promo piece) for it.  Wet peoples appetite for it.  Its amazing how much extra motivation there is to finish a project when people expect to see it.  Its also not a bad idea to spend some money on it.  IMO, until you spend a non trivial amount of money on the project its still just a vague plan that could easily become vaporware.  Spending money and setting a release date is what forces you to make sure that doesn't happen.  If Mike and I hadn't committed to a GenCon release and spent a couple hundred bucks on art we might still be fiddling around playtesting the game instead of releasing it.

[Gordon C. Landis]

In the cynical opinion of a group of White Wolf afficiandos I played a few sessions with some years back,  the "ad in the back of the book" IS a market research tool.  Say you're going to release this cool new product.  If people start saying "hey, that IS cool - when will it be out?", you go ahead and work on it full-out.  If you get no feedback . . . the project never really gets started.  Somewhere in between - a back-burner project, or you put junior developers on it.

Not that I recommend this as a good method or anything - what other's have said about demos and the like is MUCH better - but I've always remembered that comment, and wondered if there might not in fact be some truth there.