New Indie RPG released - The Blight

[Ron Edwards]

That's exactly right.

Merely getting your game "into stores" doesn't do it.Your book sitting on the shelf only gets you the piddly profit margin for that particular copy; store sales are only actually profitable in major bulk or if you can rely on retailers to re-order what sells. So some self-proclaimed Guy telling you "I can get your book into the stores" is blowing smoke in terms of concrete success. I have my books in stores, but only stores I trust to re-order and only those which the store owner is confident of selling.

Nor does hitting the internet with tons of nigh-spam corporate boilerplate press releases and banner ads; we've all seen so much of that it bounces off our eyeballs into the void. Nor does engaging in fierce battles with jerks who make it their life's work merely to trash reviews of games they don't know because they aren't (fill-in-the-blank title).

What we've found here is that honest reporting about your play and publishing experiences, the bad with the good, can really showcase the good. Opinions vary about the interfering qualities of fashion and personality support, but I think there are some pretty powerful case studies of people presenting their games well, and with good will, in such a way that others who would like this kind of game become interested customers for this game.

Personal enthusiasm helps, especially if you have the time and money to make it to conventions and hook up with people who know you're coming, and especially if you like other people's games, play them, and talk about them too. I wish it were true that these things were reliably successful, but as it is, I can only say that they apparently help.

Best, Ron

[Devon Oratz]

Someone settle something for me. Is this particular subforum the correct place for this type of thread (i.e. the OP)? As opposed to Game Development. I'm confused because Game Development seems to be more like Actual Play and I'm not entirely sure where the boundaries of any forum are delineated after the big compression that I gather took place a while ago. Thanks, and I don't mean to hijack your thread, Iain. I am just trying to learn how to 'use' the Forge by observing examples.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Devon,

The original post isn't exactly a great Forge post in the first place, being mainly a press release. Iain has amended that by turning it into a relevant discussion, and the topic he chose happened to fit best in Publishing.

Game Development is about the design of the game content, up to and including prose presentation. That includes but is not limited to playtesting and talking about it.

Whereas Publishing is about visual presentation, physical design, marketing, and all considerations of getting the thing available to people in the way you want - all that goes here.

Actual Play is for any and all discussions about playing already-published games.

I hope that clears up any confusion. Let me know.

Best, Ron