This is another split from <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=17645.30">Pricing and Marketing your games and mine, to avoid derailing it further.  I welcome further discussion on the issues brought up in this thread.

Victor Gijsbers wrote:
If you have a normal job and RPG-design is not your main source of income, why not make your game as cheap as possible?

Clinton R. Nixon wrote:
As an indie game publisher, I can't understand pricing your book any higher than enough to make exactly twice what it cost to make the book.

Frank T wrote:
I totally agree with Victor and Clinton. Also, I know a good many people already gulping at PtA’s 20 bucks plus shipping. Here’s a bit on “fair payment”. See, I’m a lawyer. I’m just an employee with little experience, so they only charge € 175 per hour for me. When I’m finished with BARBAREN!, let’s say I’ll have put 300 hours of work into it. That sums up to a total of € 52,200. Adding € 800 for artwork and layout, that’s € 53.000. Let’s say I can sell 100 books of the German version, and I can print the books for € 8. So in order for me to get paid properly, that’s € 538 per book.

...

No offence, Josh, but getting fair payment for the work you put into an Indie RPG? Boy, not even the rates I got when I was still a student chained to the copier in the cellars deep below some law firm. Get real.

Hi Ben,

Ben wrote:
My basic rebuttal is this: Art has value, game design is art, game designers deserve to be recompensed for their effort, and it is not unreasonable to expect that a game designer could make a decent income -- whether or not they have another job.

Viktor --

I'm curious why you think we should not discuss this here.  I think the question of whether or not an artist can make a living from his work, and whether or not an artist should make a living from his world (which seems to be what you're raising) are of pressing importance to a forum who's self-described purpose is the creation, promulgation, and faciliation of art.

They are of even more pressing importance to the independent artist, who is lacking a patron or some such to provide for his well-being.

I have a certain position with respect to this -- my mother is a writer by trade and I was raised around writers and other artists as family friends, which has given me the very strong perspective of "art as job."  You have a different perspective, and I think it's really important that we see multiple sides of this issue, because it's one that's dogged art for a really long time, and will continue to do so into the future.  As independent artists, we're making our own decisions with regard to these crucial issues of money, work, and time, and I want all perspectives to get a fair hearing in front of everyone so that they can make their decisions with full information.

If you still want to withdraw from discussion, I will respect your wishes and not press you further.  Is there some other forum where you feel that this important discussion would be more appropriate?

yrs--
--Ben

Clinton R. Nixon wrote: As an indie game publisher, I can't understand pricing your book any higher than enough to make exactly twice what it cost to make the book.

That was very nicely and diplomatically said, Ben.  I know that my initial gut reaction on all of these issues is "Hey!  You can't tell me what an artist is or is not!", even when people aren't saying anything of the sort.  You remind us that nobody is saying what art is or isn't, where money should or shouldn't go.  Everybody is saying how they feel about those issues.  I can be interested by how they feel, but I have nothing at stake in it.  Their feelings don't affect my actions.  If they feel very differently from me then the my response (to be sane and calm) has to be "Wow!  That's really interesting!"

I really hope that we can have a discussion in that context.

For me, personally, I don't decide my prices based on what I think the book is worth, or what it cost me.  I decide based on what I think I can get away with charging.  Why?  Because I'm very, very mercenary.  I don't see that as debasing my art ... selling it is a different process from making it.  The art part is finished before I sell the first copy.

Now if I started saying "Hey, I really want to make a game about teenage romance, but a game about over-the-top soulless kung-fu would sell," and made the latter then that would be a different matter.  I do worry about how much I'm unconsciously motivated by profit.  Is that division between "what sells" and "what is art" something that any of us has absolutely?  Or is it all shades of grey?  Did the Rennaissance masters paint exactly and only what they wanted to paint, or did they say "Hey, I can attract a patron if I paint this"?  (seriously ... I have an intuition that it's the latter, but art history is not my thing, so that's not a rhetorical question)

Hi Ben,

All right, if you think a forum called 'Publishing' is the right place to discuss the relationship between art and society, I'll remain and discuss it with you. I agree that it is an important subject, relevant to indie designers, but I have repeatedly seen discussion of this sort of deep, quasi-normative questions stopped by the moderators in favour of more practical discussions.

Should an artist be able to make a living from his work?

The answer to this question depends upon how it is interpreted. In an ideal world, would those who could spend their time making valuable art get enough support to actually spend their time doing it? Yes. In our world, is an artist who is not able to make a living from his work doing something morally or aesthetically wrong? No.

There are many forms the question can take that lie between these two extremes, and our answers will vary accordingly. What struck me in your posts, and also those of some others who agree with you, is that you somehow equate artistic value with monetary value. If something is a better work of art, it should cost more. This equation or connection eludes me. Arguing against a position, or even just talking about a position, that I do not really understand is probably no going to be very useful; so I'd like to ask you if I am reading you right and, if so, whether you could elaborate a bit on the connection between artistic value and monetary value as you perceive it.

Greetings,
Victor

Let's look at the facts. Ron and Luke are the two most successful designers here at the Forge, and I don't believe either of them make enough to quit their day job. Ron, If I remember right, has said he makes $5k-$10k a year. Luke I'm not sure about.

Successful games at the Forge tend to sell 400-500 copies a year (Uni, DitV, MLwM, PTA, potentially tMW, etc). Less successful games can sell, I don't know somewhat less than that (200-400?). After two years, it seems those numbers start to drop a bit.

Those numbers *may* be rising a bit as the Indie game movement rises in popularity. But let's remember that not everyone is going to sell 500 a year. The Forge has plenty of deserving games that have sadly not gotten the attention they deserve.

What we should make is entirely a moot point. We shouldn't let our perception is skewed by the success of games likes Sorcerer or DitV. Noone without an established fanbase can reliably count on much more than 300 sales a year. Take your profit margin and multiply.

Victor wrote: If something is a better work of art, it should cost more.

Should an artist be able to make a living from his work?

I think the interaction between art and money, as with many other human endeavours, is very complicated.  They conflict and support each other at the same time.

Jasper wrote: Actually, I think that interaction is just like all commercial endeavours: Supply and demand determine the price.

I don't know about comparing indie game publishers with writers of various stripes.  We do more than write -- we also edit, layout, acquire art, manufacture, market, and sell.  Writing is one essential but very small element of the much larger industry of publishing. Comparing our earnings with writers' is like comparing a one-man show's earnings with actors' in broadway productions.  It's not the whole picture.

As Tony says, creating art is a separate process than selling it.  How much you allow the requirements of the latter to affect the former is a question that really comes down to personal preference, but I'd argue that no one disregards "what will sell" entirely when designing.  Our definitions of the quality of art are always at least partially based on community norms, and we produce art with an eye for getting others to appreciate it.  (Especially RPGs -- even if you made a game for you and your three buddies, they'd have to like it in order to play it.)

Which is why the comments about supply and demand are a little off -- the S&D chart determines the optimal price point for a given product, the intersection of how many units a supplier will offer for a given price and how many units customers will purchase for a given price.  Supply and demand does not determine price -- it predicts the optimal price.  A lot of indie publishers aren't necessarily after the optimal price, and Josh's original post recognized that pricing is a communicative act between merchant and customer which can attempt to alter both lines on the S&D chart.  We can increase demand through pricing strategies.  "Increasing demand" does not mean making more people want to buy the product, it means increasing the amount of money people will spend to purchase the product.

Art's value, as perceived by the artist when the artist is the salesman, is what determines the supply side of the relationship.  The demand side is determined in part by the art's value as perceived by the customer, and that perception of value is going to be different.  The customer is buying a thing, an artifact, a product.  The customer will consider that finished product, in most of our cases a book, which has a whole assortment of assumptions about quality, artistic value, and pragmatic use attached.  While I absolutely love the Forge's emphasis on making a quality game, if we want to accurately gauge customer demand, we need to think of our products in terms of quality products and quality books.  That includes considering them as quality games, but it also includes a host of other considerations -- layout, manufacture, marketing.  And it appears that this reply has come full circle, all zen-like.

Also, the link to Wikipedia that Clinton cited is a marvelous article.  Anybody selling anything should take a half hour or so to read it in its entirety.

I'll respond to everyone else in a bit.

Victor wrote:
All right, if you think a forum called 'Publishing' is the right place to discuss the relationship between art and society, I'll remain and discuss it with you. I agree that it is an important subject, relevant to indie designers, but I have repeatedly seen discussion of this sort of deep, quasi-normative questions stopped by the moderators in favour of more practical discussions.

Should an artist be able to make a living from his work?

The answer to this question depends upon how it is interpreted. In an ideal world, would those who could spend their time making valuable art get enough support to actually spend their time doing it? Yes. In our world, is an artist who is not able to make a living from his work doing something morally or aesthetically wrong? No.

There are many forms the question can take that lie between these two extremes, and our answers will vary accordingly. What struck me in your posts, and also those of some others who agree with you, is that you somehow equate artistic value with monetary value. If something is a better work of art, it should cost more. This equation or connection eludes me. Arguing against a position, or even just talking about a position, that I do not really understand is probably no going to be very useful; so I'd like to ask you if I am reading you right and, if so, whether you could elaborate a bit on the connection between artistic value and monetary value as you perceive it.

I haven't been posting here in a while, but I've been talking to Clinton (and even Luke, a bit) about this kind of thing.  Like Clinton, I have absolutely no interest in becoming a professional roleplaying designer.  That is not what my life's work is to be and, honestly, I'm not at all attracted by the kinds of things I would have to do in order to quit my dayjob.  Maybe if the game industry changes completely in the next 10-15 years (and it might), but even then I doubt it.  However, I'm not going to stop designing roleplaying games.  And with a regular source of income, I could probably afford to spend time writing games, buy artwork for them, do the layout myself, pay for a print run, and then give copies of the game away, all without losing more money than I normally would on a side hobby (far less than I would if I had a video game or pot habit, actually).  I could totally do that.

But I won't.  Because I think my work is worth something and I want other people to think that too.  And I want people to play my game.

Making money?  That's nice, I guess, and makes it easier for me to invest funds in art and printing costs, because I know I'll make some back.

Making a living?  Not interested, thanks.

This is what I can't understand:

The books you are selling are not your art. They're your medium for expression, not the expression.

The price of your books doesn't have anything to do with the value of your art. If that was true, nobody could afford Shakespeare. I can buy a poster of a van Gogh painting for $15. That's not the value of his art, it's the value of the poster.

Offering something cheap or free devalues it not only in the mind of the public, but in the mind of the creator.

Jasper wrote:
The books you are selling are not your art. They're your medium for expression, not the expression.

The price of your books doesn't have anything to do with the value of your art. If that was true, nobody could afford Shakespeare. I can buy a poster of a van Gogh painting for $15. That's not the value of his art, it's the value of the poster.

I'll add emphasis to what Tony said above because I'm less polite than he is:

Pricing at what the market will bear is the only reasonable strategy for economic viability of a product. If that price makes it so you can't make as much money as you need to make on the project, you can't do it unless you want to pay for having people play your game. If you charge more than the market will bear, people won't buy it and you can lower your price.

Any attempt at making up a value based on anything else is economic fiction.

Artists don't sell their ideas. They sell the expression of their ideas. Just like engineers don't sell their ideas, they sell the expressions.

What you buy when you buy a poster is the value of a piece of art, amortized over thousands of poster sales, on top of other value that the owners get from the ownership of the original.

Look, this is not an argument unique to RPGs. This is a discussion that's been going on for the entire Modern period among artists, who pour everything they've got into their art and craft, and a public that believes that it should be enough that they give everything and get a reputation for it.

Now, of course, the monetary value of a piece of art has little to do with its value as a piece of art. But the logical conclusion of that idea is not that artists shouldn't get paid. It's that they should get paid whatever they can, just like everyone else.

By undercharging — and this is to those of you who do it on purpose, or out of the fear of overcharging — you undersell yourself and you deflate a maket.

To those of you who charge what you can because you feel it's what you can get for your work, excellent on you. If you think, "would I make less if I charged a dollar more?" and the answer is yes, then you're doing it right, in my book.

... and as for this being a matter of supply and demand, we don't know what the demand is yet. Sorcerer is still selling, and so is Dogs. We've never saturated a market with our works, so the discussion is moot until we have some data.

glyphmonkey wrote:
Any attempt at making up a value based on anything else is economic fiction.

By undercharging — and this is to those of you who do it on purpose, or out of the fear of overcharging — you undersell yourself and you deflate a maket.

So what?  Alls fair in love war and business according to default capitalist theology.  Its a price war, thats all.

Hello,

In the interest of not being a total ogre, I decided to let this thread proceed to see whether a discussion beyond "my emotions" would develop.

I do think everyone has been sufficiently non-confrontational and forthcoming to make it a decent read. So thanks to everyone. I'm not moderating anyone's behavior or input at the courtesy level.

However, now that we're onto the second page, I don't think the topic has developed into discourse. It's basically a "show ideological peepee" exercise.

Some older threads exist which lay out a lot of options and principles regarding the issue, without preferences ruling the roost, so I invite people to search a bit, or for someone to hunt down a slew of'em, such as the threads Ryan Dancey contributed to. I'm a little strapped for time at the moment.

Posting those links here would be a nice service. Aside from that, I think it's time to call this one closed. People should take any desire to continue comparing "what I feel" are encouraged to do so privately or on personal sites like blogs.

Best,
Ron

OK, then, here's a little reading for everyone:

Luke talks about raising his prices last year and hilarity ensues:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=11266.0

Ryan speaks about sustainable pricing with sexy results:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=11290.0

There's more, but I gotta go grocery shopping. Let's start with that, then come back to the thread after we've agreed.

However, unlike Ron, I actually want to know what people feel (and I suspect he doesn't because he's already heard this discussion go around a bunch of times). I don't mind hearing my fellows tell me that something upsets them, particularly when we're talking about buying stuff, which requires a gut reaction.

Those threads say pretty much everything we've been saying here.

I guess I have one thing to say before closing this thread: consider what's said in those threads — particularly Luke's one — about pricing. Consider what Ron and Ryan said about sustainability. And consider what Mearls said about socioeconomic class assumptions.

I'm looking forward to a new thread that's digested that information.

Ron, I consider this thread closed. Can I do that, or do you have to?

Er, except this thread's not mine. It's Ben's. Sorry, I forgot which thread we were in, I guess.

I simply think that, in a modern capitalistic society, the way that we express how much we value something is how much money we will pay for it.

Folks, this thread's on hold until Ben can tell us whether it's done or not.

Sorry if that wasn't clear before.

Best,
Ron

I think it's pretty much done, yeah.