Point/Success of Publishing Without Community?

[greyorm]

One of the most oft repeated pieces of advice heard around the Forge regarding getting people playing your game (and hence getting your game sold) is that in order to get people interested in your game, you need to get the word out, specifically by getting people to play the game at conventions, thereby driving sales and interest via word-of-mouth and personal connections with the author. But if you can't make it to conventions, if you're lucky to have one group play your game with you once ever, is there any point to trying to publish your game and hoping you can otherwise make do with the internet?

For example, ORX has sold 120-150 odd copies (mostly to gaming stores), and has received a few reviews (four or five, as I recall). Yet I've never heard of one group (that didn't include me) actually playing the game, or even mentioning it in discussion. ORX has been out since 2005 and I doubt anyone but me, even in the "indie scene", really remembers it, let alone has played it. I'm aware of a good number of other games/designers who are in the same sort of limbo. All the games I do see being played and being talked about being played are games where the creator (or someone else with an interest in the game) is regularly able to go to conventions and promote the game through play, not just by talking about it on-line or maintaining an on-line presence.

I personally began thinking about this when I started working on incorporating the feedback I've received on eXpendable into the current document -- wondering if I should. Given that traditional publishing is discovering, as we have, that in order to sell you have to utilize your community, and will generally only be able to sell to that community, and that authors have to be their own publicists these days...and that I might make it to one convention a year. So another way to put it might be: if you can't grow your own network (ie: community) from the ground up, for whatever reason, is there a real point in creating and publishing a game in the modern climate (if your purpose is having others purchase and play the game)?

But then the other part of this question is thus: is the accepted chestnut about the necessity of convention play true?

[Eero Tuovinen]

Well... I live in Finland, so I never do American conventions, either. Here in Europe we don't usually go to conventions outside our own country, so I haven't promoted my games at European conventions aside from Finnish ones. Zombie Cinema has sold around 400 copies after its first year, I think. Some people have apparently played it, too. I believe that the game could do better through active marketing, such as conventioneering, but that's geography and motivation for you.

(I could also discuss Solar System, but that's tainted by the fact that there is a pre-existing brand and community supporting that one.)

I do agree that not hearing anything about people playing a game is a pretty bad sign. And my experience towards ORX concurs with yours in that it hasn't sold much here, either (0-1 copies I've sold, I think). I don't think that this is so much the lack of convention presence, though - rather, I usually ascribe this sort of thing to bad luck and a lack of Internet noise; if the game had more visibility in the Internet, then it'd attract more people and more buzz, and then its sales might better reflect its quality. A part in why the game hasn't built up an audience could be related to how difficult it is to learn from the text (as I've said previously, ORX almost rivals Capes in incomprehensibility), but ORX is by no means the only underappreciated game in this scene, so it could be just bad luck in timing the publication or something like that.

In summation, I don't think that conventioneering is mandatory to get your game to people's hands, but in all likelihood it's a great help. I wouldn't consider it crucial, as it's lots of work and bother - in principle nothing is preventing me from travelling around Europe conventioneering with Zombie Cinema, but for the fact that I'd rather spend the time writing new stuff. I might be more keen about the matter if my sales were worse, I suppose.

[guildofblades]

Two points:

1) Games are social. They require more than one person to play as a group. But that is as much a "community" that is required to make a game commercially viable. If you can market and sell it to "group leader" type personalities, then you will have placed your game at the center of a bunch of local gaming group (ala, micro communities). That can be enough to drive brand recognition and word of mouth propogation that can lend itself to more sales.

2) If you are apt to builder a larger, all connected community around your game (which may or may not in the end be a more overall successful marketing strategy), the Internet is more able to offer that opportunity that play at conventions. Conventions are merely a front line location where you get an opportunity to make a great sales pitch by showing the product in action. Its a sales methodogy with a secondary branding opportunity.  I think it tends to be a favorite method by small companies because its straight forward and can be done with good ol elbow grease rather than needing more capital, coding or resources more involved marketing and sales systems may require. But I don't think anyone should walk away witht he idea that conventioning is the "only" way to market a game. As an example, GOB Publishing has not attended a convention since 2002. Back then we were a two man outfit, part time operation, with no one pulling home a paycheck. Today it is has a staff of 5 between part and full timers and generates many multiples of what it did back in 2002. So convention appearances had zero to do with our growth.

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Retail Group - http://www.gobretail.com
Guild of Blades Publishing Group - http://www.guildofblades.com
1483 Online - http://www.1483online.com

[Ron Edwards]

I only used cons a little bit during my first few years publishing, and those were tiny local ones anyway.

At that time, "community" for me meant various zines, webrings, and my email list, and that was it. It worked out very well.

Best, Ron

[Callan S.]

Kind of thinking "Selling 'just' 120 copies is pointless??"

[guildofblades]

>>Kind of thinking "Selling 'just' 120 copies is pointless??"<<

Well, 120 copies sold of most items isn't going to be a huge pile of cash. But there would be a significant difference in how they were sold.

120 copies of an item that retails for $30, sold to distributors for $12, costing $6 to produce and another $2 per in free shipping, marketing communications with distributors and other expenses would net someone $720, less all their developmental costs. Which, of course, would vary as based on artwork expenses and if anything like layouts or other production elements were outsourced. If all of that came to zero, $720 cash in pocket for your effort need not imply failure. be up to the individual authors to decide.

Alternatively, 120 copies sold direct off the publishers website, shipping costs charged to the consumer, would be a totally different picture. $30 less $6 printing, less 4% for online payment processing ($1.20) would be $22.80 gross after costs of goods sold, but before developmental costs. 120 x $22.80 = $2,736.

Now, maybe of that 120, we're saying "only" 120 because it has taken 3 years to sell that many, meaning just 40 per year (Not saying that is the case, just making an example). So maybe with direct sales the annual return after costs of goods sold would only be $912. Well, ok, as an independent designer, cobble 50 such publications together in your catalog of games to sell and suddenly you are bringing home $45,600. Some folks could live on that. I know I lived on a lot less a decade and a half ago when starting GOB.

Give them slow sellers some time. You might find they are long distance runners rather than sprinters. They might run a whole lot further than you ever could have thought.

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Retail Group - http://www.gobretail.com
Guild of Blades Publishing Group - http://www.guildofblades.com
1483 Online - http://www.1483online.com

[greyorm]

Sorry, all, would have responded sooner, but the recent 504's on the board have been keeping me away via frustration (I hate sitting for five minutes just trying to get the "Post Reply" page to show up, let alone then trying to get the reply to actually post...and that's all assuming I can get to the thread in the first place).

Eero, Ryan, and Ron, thanks for weighing in. You all seem to be saying much the same thing, which makes me wonder how and why the "conventioneering" chestnut got started? Any ideas?

I do notice at least some small amount of convention play was indicated. Even if it was "just" local it was still connecting with a community through shared play experiences -- though it also looks like that may be no different from any other shared-experience community building (mailing lists, etc). This tells me the fundamental idea that community-building is a necessity to sales and play is correct, even though conventioneering in order to build that community is not necessary (possibly the easiest route though?).

But I think, at least based on what I've seen, most indie designers don't know how to do that bit. I think many of us are very much in a "build it and they will come" mindset, because we're not really sure how to help that along (apparently fiction authors these days receive a list from their publisher that tells them exactly what they must do in order to try and self-promote successfully--many are things publishers used to do for them).

What are the guys whose games are selling/well-known doing to help create/maintain a community? One thing I'm seeing: Vincent blogs about interesting gaming questions/observations; Ron started a general gaming forum (duh); Luke likewise has an active product-specific gaming forum. These are all community-building behaviors. So are things like using direct sales and talking to the folks who buy your book, asking them where they found out about it, what interested them about it, and making sure they know you're always open for feedback; all of it creates buzz/widens the circle of potentials and contact points.

Of course, I've also seen plenty of attempts to do similar--the whole "using the internet to create community"--just fall flat on their face, with empty or one-lone-voice mailing lists and forums and blogs with dust bunnies blowing through them.

A part in why the game hasn't built up an audience could be related to how difficult it is to learn from the text (as I've said previously, ORX almost rivals Capes in incomprehensibility), but ORX is by no means the only underappreciated game in this scene, so it could be just bad luck in timing the publication or something like that.

One note before I jump into the following: I don't want this thread to be about my game or its numbers. I was worried even using it as an example, because I don't want the thread to be about it/me specifically in any sense, it was just a relatively easy example to pull out of my hat. And I'm sure any of us can come up with many more games in precisely the same boat if we need another concrete example.)

That said, Eero, I recall that conversation and pretty much agree with you, but am more concerned with the topic at hand and forthcoming products rather than "already were". As such, this "bad luck" more of us run into than not, as mentioned above (ala empty forum syndrome), what could be done about it, if anything? Is there a way to time publications "right", or at least avoid timing them wrong? Or is it pretty much a crap-shoot? (I certainly suspect so.)

Kind of thinking "Selling 'just' 120 copies is pointless??"

I'm going to try to be specific in order to be general. In answer to the question: yes, in this case it is. For a couple of reasons.

Given IPR's retailer discount, the sales made just enough to pay for their printing each time. I actually made very little money on it above printing & shipping costs (at this point I'm not sure I ever actually managed to pay myself back for all the art I'd purchased for it. That is, I don't believe the book ever made it into the black. If it did, it didn't make it far). So profit-wise, yes, it was a failure as a product.

To be fair, a good chunk of that failure is due to not realizing just how many copies would sell to retailers and how much I would have had to adjust my price point to make those kind of sales worthwhile.

I would also rank it as a failure given that despite selling 120 copies, in over four years I have never had or heard one report from anywhere that anyone has played the game; I have also received perhaps two pieces of unsolicited e-mail on the game in that time. Given this, I suspect those 120 copies are sitting in retailer bargain boxes or on dusty game shelves. As such, play-wise it was also a failure as a product, because no one is playing it (or no one appears to be).

Thus, while selling 120 copies of a game may be numerically impressive, or at least not "bad", if the motive for the game was to have people playing it or making at least some small profit from it, then in this case the game failed on both counts, and the simple number of copies sold is entirely meaningless and does not speak to any sort of actual, appreciable success at all, by any measure.

Especially if we keep in mind we are not talking about direct sales.

Nearly all those ~120 sales were retail, and I'm not really willing to count a retail sale as a "successful sale". With a retail sale I haven't actually sold the game to anyone, I've (still) only potentially sold the game to someone -- it is just passing through one more set of hands (at a cut to my profits). Worse, with retail I don't know if the game ever actually reaches a pair of real hands, or if it just sits in a box/on a shelf. Functionally, those "120 sales" are more like "12" (actual, direct sales I can count where a real person has the product). This might be slightly different if retailers were re-ordering the game, thus indicating that it was actually selling in their store. However, from what I can tell, no store ever re-ordered a copy, which tells me something very different.

As such, I hope you can see why "120 sales" could easily be considered a failure.

As a comparison: consider that I've sold likely around 150 copies of Electric Ghosts over nine years. But I made nothing but profit on it (it has long since paid for itself and continues to do so), I'm aware of people who have used it as inspiration for games or played it wholesale, and every last sale was a direct sale to a real person. As a PDF product, yes, it compares slightly differently on the monetary front because I'm not paying for print costs, shipping, etc, but given its consistent direct-sales record in comparison to the direct-sales record of ORX, it comes out a measurable winner in terms of "success", and likewise "success" regarding play/use. (Also, an interesting measure: you can find people pirating Electric Ghosts -- but NO ONE ANYWHERE pirates ORX. That's a good indication that the former is on people's radar/valued, while the latter is completely off it.)

Now, Electric Ghosts also has folks' mind-space because it is linked to Sorcerer. It "borrows" or "rides" the community buzz that exists around that game, so I've never had to sell it or push it. A new game, or a game by an unknown author, can't do the same thing.

Which means I think the question is still valid: while it seems clear that conventioneering doesn't necessarily have to happen, if one can't/doesn't know how to/doesn't want to do that other community building stuff (in lieu of such?), then is the idea that publishing for profit/play is pointless. One has to do some kind of community-building?

Or, Ryan, would you disagree? (I don't know if you did any community-building, other than just putting your games out there.) And that it is (or can be) just a matter of making quantities of potential interest available (ie: multiple games) rather than a focus on making social connections?

[Callan S.]

if the motive for the game was to have people playing it or making at least some small profit from it

Well, it seems possible, historically, to meet that motive by making the same old crap and stretching the income on unending supplements (well, maybe you need one of the main brands to do this, but...)

Perhaps you weren't really thinking of that motive when you made the game?

[greyorm]

Callan, please note the question from the original post, with emphasis: "...if you can't grow your own network (ie: community) from the ground up, for whatever reason, is there a real point in creating and publishing a game in the modern climate (if your purpose is having others purchase and play the game)..." For this discussion, I don't care about the other purposes one might have for publishing. So I would prefer to avoid discussion of such as not topical -- similarly any talk about reasons for design (a separate undertaking). Let's focus on the intersection of community-building and publishing for the above stated purpose.

[guildofblades]

>>One has to do some kind of community-building?<<

Well, community building can happen at several different levels.

>>Or, Ryan, would you disagree? (I don't know if you did any community-building, other than just putting your games out there.) And that it is (or can be) just a matter of making quantities of potential interest available (ie: multiple games) rather than a focus on making social connections?<<

Well, ideally, if you can do both, that gives you two weapons in your marketing arsenal. For us, we've had different marketing strategies for our different game lines and otherwise an over-arching branding strategy for the company. For instance, with our Empires of History board game line, we've had three distinct target audiences for the games, each of which was approached differently and recieved varying amounts of our resources and attention. Those were we joinned existing communities for the Axis & Allies series of games, as our games were billed as "variants" to those. We did not have to build those communities, as they already existed, and merely needed to join them and behave responsibly once in (ala, not spam folks are shill our wares overly much). Another focus was to join existant wargame communities. As our games tend to be more simple than most war games, this was not a large focus, but it was done to maintain a presence to snag in the curious of mind. And the last, broader stroke effort was simply to target folks with an interest in history in general. Other than that, this line never established a "strong" cohensive community as a singular type entity, but rather we supported our customers with good customer service and other support along the way so that they could use our games within their own local play groups and such, forming their own micro communities.

Though one notable exception would be our 1483 Online game, which was born from one of the board games from the Empires of History line. It has been in development, first as a PBEM and the last few years in beta as a fully automated MMO game, since 1999. At its peak its had about 1500 active players of which the most active few hundred were at the core of a fairly active online community. That community was centered around the online game though and not direclty around the board game line, so while there was crossover (and still is), its not a 1 = 1 type thing. More an effort to build a seprate enterprise that happens to have a community and to broaden the brand rather than make a centralized community for the board games.

Similar marketing approaches were taken with our Heroes Forever RPG line and Button Wars line. It has worked reasonable well for the Heroes Forever line, but less well for Button Wars. Though we've come to the conclusion that that had less to do with the marketing strategy and more to do with value proposition of the line in its current incarnation. Hence why a new approach for a new edition is in the works.

My overall experience is that you can make all sorts of nice shiny games and sell them all sorts of ways, but the games and game lines with the greatest prospect for longevity will be those you help to build and support communities for (need not be a singular large community).

We ourselves are reshaping our marketing approaches for the relaunch of several game lines with this new understanding of how we should shape our marketing efforts to support community building.

Ryan
GOB Retail
GOB Publishing

[MatrixGamer]

I think I have some useful experience to offer on this.

I've been at this for over twenty years and can not honestly say I've every had much commercial success. We do okay at Gen Con because of stuffed animals and puppets not becuase of games. So profit has never been the prime motive of doing this. Having people play my games is the payoff and that is hard to achieve.

When I started I wrote a ton of articles for newletters (now it would be called Blogging - but this was pre-internet). I put out a newsletter which I gave away for free for a couple of years and then just charged cost. I ran play by mail versions of Matrix Games through the newsletter. Sure I went to some conventions but that was as much because this is my hobby as due to selling. I ran games at regional cons to run games. They were not tied to a product I had for sale. Duh! It took me years to figure out I should link what I run with what I sell!

Along the way all this effort has led me to burn out a couple of times. I could easily have quit but when I asked myself what else I'd be doing I didn't have a better thing to do. Pushing Matrix Games is important to me even though I've never had a hit. Along the way this has lead me to learn a ton of skills some of which are cool (like being able to make board games and hardback books). When I die I will not view this as wasted time.

Right now I continue to make games. I have a yahoo group where we play PBEM Matrix Games. We are about to get a Hercule Poirot murder mystery game going. These are all free and account for a good half of the gaming I do in a year. I attend a few cons for fun (Pentacon this coming weekend in Fort Wayne IN, the Seven Years War Association Con in South Bend IN, Marcon in Columbus OH) and Origins to run games. I only have a booth at Gen Con, where I sponcer three people to run games for me out in gaming rooms.

I know the next step for me is to take my most commercial products and sell them to stores. I know I fear doing this. It is mild social anxiety (one of my fatal flaws) but I move ever closer to that goal. Will that bring "success" I suspect not. A few games catch people's imaginations or get enough buzz to be called a hit. Most things don't so we have to be alternately motivated to do the work.

So about the original question - do con runs sell games? My experience is that they do but not many. Cons are expensive to attend and even big companies shot to break even rather than for a profit. Getting actual play is more elusive than a simple answer. Presistence though is a useful trait - one which I think you have - look at how many posts you've made!

Chris Engle

[MatrixGamer]

I think I have some useful experience to offer on this.

I've been at this for over twenty years and can not honestly say I've every had much commercial success. We do okay at Gen Con because of stuffed animals and puppets not becuase of games. So profit has never been the prime motive of doing this. Having people play my games is the payoff and that is hard to achieve.

When I started I wrote a ton of articles for newletters (now it would be called Blogging - but this was pre-internet). I put out a newsletter which I gave away for free for a couple of years and then just charged cost. I ran play by mail versions of Matrix Games through the newsletter. Sure I went to some conventions but that was as much because this is my hobby as due to selling. I ran games at regional cons to run games. They were not tied to a product I had for sale. Duh! It took me years to figure out I should link what I run with what I sell!

Along the way all this effort has led me to burn out a couple of times. I could easily have quit but when I asked myself what else I'd be doing I didn't have a better thing to do. Pushing Matrix Games is important to me even though I've never had a hit. Along the way this has lead me to learn a ton of skills some of which are cool (like being able to make board games and hardback books). When I die I will not view this as wasted time.

Right now I continue to make games. I have a yahoo group where we play PBEM Matrix Games. We are about to get a Hercule Poirot murder mystery game going. These are all free and account for a good half of the gaming I do in a year. I attend a few cons for fun (Pentacon this coming weekend in Fort Wayne IN, the Seven Years War Association Con in South Bend IN, Marcon in Columbus OH) and Origins to run games. I only have a booth at Gen Con, where I sponcer three people to run games for me out in gaming rooms.

I know the next step for me is to take my most commercial products and sell them to stores. I know I fear doing this. It is mild social anxiety (one of my fatal flaws) but I move ever closer to that goal. Will that bring "success" I suspect not. A few games catch people's imaginations or get enough buzz to be called a hit. Most things don't so we have to be alternately motivated to do the work.

So about the original question - do con runs sell games? My experience is that they do but not many. Cons are expensive to attend and even big companies shot to break even rather than for a profit. Getting actual play is more elusive than a simple answer. Presistence though is a useful trait - one which I think you have - look at how many posts you've made!

Chris Engle

[greyorm]

Thanks for the input, guys, and thanks for answering my question, Ryan.

Chris, you bring up a good point. Looking back, I realize I was really vague in my meaning of using Cons as a platform: I wasn't thinking of the profit-at-Con motivation or running-a-booth when I posted; I was thinking solely about the use of Cons, local or national, for the use of running slots of the games/products in question. I didn't mean to imply using Cons as a way to sell product, because you're correct about them not being good profit-venues. Rather, I think they are seen as a way to build community (or mind-space in the larger community), and then using the community to actually sell the products.

[MatrixGamer]

Thart's how I've always viewed them. Nothing wrong with making a profit if you can but breaking even is a good goal for Gen Con and at other cons I'm there having fun as much as I'm pushing product.

Is there anyway you can run your game on line? I've seen people talking about playing on Skype over on the Story Games forum.

Chris Engle

[Christoph Boeckle]

Hello Raven

I also believe that the question of conventions or not is probably only the second concern about the overarching one of community.
I think this discussion needs to take into account three precise points, because this discussion is totally connected to Orx as a product:

1) Elfs and Orx look like they are competitors for the same kind of gamist play with an additional objective of exorcising roleplayers of past AD&D-like frustrations and/or providing slapstick comedy in a fantasy setting. Both are essentially catering to the same demands.
2) Elfs was published before Orx and has a very easy to understand text (Eero seems to say the Orx text is more complicated).
3) I could only find two AP reports on Orx (plus another one which was the report of the first playtest) on the Forge, all written by you, while I've found about ten for Elfs (three by Ron, the rest by others). Both your AP reports have at least some ambiguous notions about the game's ripeness and concerned short one-hour sessions (whereas you imply the game is rather for longer sessions). Only one other player responded to say he was ready to continue testing the game (I'm instinctively thinking: "Oh, the game is not ready.") Ron's AP are enthusiastic and very positive. Plus he manages to get people discussing the game or the session.

You have a high quality competitor and no all-out positive AP to speak of (at least on the Forge). Maybe I'm projecting too much of my attitude on the average indie-consumer, but as far as I'm concerned, I don't even consider buying a game if the author isn't all jazzed and positive about it.

Since you're a well-known and long time Forge contributor, you should start by getting the word out here via enthusiastic AP reports. It's one community you're a part of and you've under-used it, in my opinion.