I had a recent debate on another forum that stemmed from CafePress' decision to do print on demand publishing. The debate basicly revolved around how that will effect the current distribution system and how places like Wizard's Attic make it too easy for game designers to get their games on book store shelves.

The debate was with an employee of an established game studio which will remain nameless. It was his contention that it is too easy for crap to make it to book store shelves and that the mass influx of new games brought about by the D20 OGL and Indy movement is "clogging up the channels" thus making it harder for established publishers to make a profit and remain viable buisinesses. It's his belief that established businesses that are out to make a profit are being forced to compete for shelf space with vanity press publishers.

What I want is for people to be able to make a living designing and
selling games. The current system makes that difficult because a lot of
people who are not in business to make money (whether knowingly or
otherwise) are competing for shelf space. They're not making enough
money for their businesses to be viable, but they're draining cash away
from other businesses, making them less viable.

You have a right to publish and find your audience, but if you want to get into distribution and onto retail store shelves you need (in my opinion) to be able to work the channel -- produce a professional looking product, research distributors, send them samples or sell sheets, and
pitch buyers on why they should carry you. You need to get a membership
on the Games Industry Forum and sell retailers on your product. You
need to be at the major shows (GTS, Origins, and Gen Con) making a show of being in the industry as a full-time publisher and attending local
small cons to build a groundswell in your area.

And if you can't do that because you don't have the time or the money,
then get yourself a web site and sell your product via .pdf or PoD. There's no shame in being a micro or vanity press. If you sell the book off your web site, you cut out the middle man, increasing your profitability so that you get more money out of your endeavor. You also don't put largely unviable product into the standard distribution channel where it hurts the guys who are trying to make a living at this (and I mean at all three tiers).

Hi there,

Matt, thanks for laying this out so clearly. I've been wanting to provide my own position about this issue - which I hear about a lot, as you might imagine - for a while now.

According to you, this fellow said (and again, I've heard the same from many):

What I want is for people to be able to make a living designing and
selling games.

Matt Gwinn wrote:


What I gather from this is that there is only so much cash floating around in the hobby and that there are so many new products out there that the money is being spread too thin.

Do vanity press games indeed clog up the channels?

Should they be allowed to compete for shelf space with move viable businesses?

Is the recent flood of new games hurting or helping the industry?

Speak up.

,Matt

Funny Matt, I had this exact same conversation with a guy whose been in the gaming business (mostly wargaming) for decades and his position was very similiar. Too many game companies turning out too much product.

Personally, my take on the whole issue is simply that there are two kinds of game companies: hobbiests and businesses. A hobbiest should have zero expectations of anything. He should evaluate $3000 spent on a print run the same as he'd evaluate spending $3000 on a plasma screen tv and home entertainment theatre. If you can afford to blow the money and the entertainment value of what you're buying is worth it to you, go for it...but write off any thoughts of a profit and consider what you get back like a rebate offer.

What pisses me off most about the industry are people who have business expectations with hobbiest execution. For instance, I've heard from several respected industry professionals on how difficult it is to pay their freelancers on time because the distributors don't pay them on time. This to me is ludicrous and a prime example of how unprofessional most of this industry is. There is a word for businesses that attempt to survive paycheck to paycheck like that...its called "undercapitalized" and its usually a step on the road to bankruptcy. All businesses deal with accounts receivables and delinquencies. All businesses have various means of dealing with delinquencies. All businesses when crafting their budgets assume a certain level of non payments and account for that upfront with "reserve for bad debt" accounts and so forth. I've not yet met a game publisher who can adequately describe their accounts receivable process to me. Which is fine for hobbiests but totally removes my capability to sympathize with people who claim to be running a business.

Now onto the question at hand of whether the hobbiests are clogging up the channels. I can only say that if ones business can not compete with the slap dash efforts of the majority of hobbiests than how can one consider oneself a viable business. If your customers would rather spend their money on a product put together by people who don't do all of the things the above party suggests should be a requirement than perhaps that tells you something about those requirements.

Valamir wrote: Funny Matt, I had this exact same conversation with a guy whose been in the gaming business (mostly wargaming) for decades and his position was very similiar. Too many game companies turning out too much product.

.

strange... is the indie industry really "clogging the channels"? from what I've been reading, most indie game companies still can't get on the shelves. I bought Sorcerer at a game store instead of online, but it was NOT on the shelf. likewise, although there's tons of third-party d20 products appearing, most of them seem to be available online only; the products I see in the stores are from an imprint of an established game company, not from a true independent.

also, on a sidenote: what's this about Cafe Press doing print-on-demand? I hadn't heard this, and I've just checked their website pretty thoroughly: no mention of print-on-demand for books at all. their business still seems to be based entirely around printing images on t-shirts, mugs, and calendars.

RPGNow is doing print-on-demand, but you still wouldn't be able to use that to get on the store shelves.

Hi Matt,

I don't think I can add too much more to the topic aside from what others have said, but I am reminded of Roger and Me a little bit. You know Documentary, Michael Moore, GM plant closing in Flint MI,... This guy is sounding a lot like Moore and the people of Flint when they found out the plant was closing and all the jobs were moving to Mexico. It amounts to so much whining on their part. Yes, it's bad that GM closed the plant and everyone lost their job. Yes, it's depressing what happened to Flint as community. But, you can either continue to cry into your beer or you can do something about it.

That and I think that the reason why "viable" companies are losing profits has less to do with the indie movement and more to do with said company's lack of understanding of business in general.

"Gee, the third edition rules aren't selling as well now as they did back when they first came out. Why is that? It must be all of those indie games competing for shelf space! Damn them!"

also, on a sidenote: what's this about Cafe Press doing print-on-demand? I hadn't heard this, and I've just checked their website pretty thoroughly: no mention of print-on-demand for books at all. their business still seems to be based entirely around printing images on t-shirts, mugs, and calendars.

Here's a word that doesn't get used often on The Forge: asshat. I think it applies in several situations here.

First of all, Game Guy X that has been talking to Matt: definitely an asshat. People can make a living making RPGs. The formula's pretty simple: take the capital and resources you have as a larger game company and produce work that's either bigger, better, or prettier than the small presses. Your work sells more than smaller presses. If not, then, well, you've been beaten - not because there's a low bar to entry, or anything else, but because consumers prefer other work.

(And as a tangent: when there's semi-decent articles like this in local newspapers talking about role-playing games, the market is not drying up or any such thing.)

Second, anyone who thinks the same people that buy d20 stuff are primarily the people who might decide, "Hey, I'd rather get that indie game": asshat. Completely not true.

Third, who are these indie designers that have their games all over the game store? (Ok, Hero Wars and Sorcerer and Godlike. All great games.) Otherwise, asshats, all of you. The current distribution model is seriously broken in more ways than I want to go into today. Briefly: you can reach new people and larger markets online. Beyond that, you can expand who might buy your game by not putting it on the shelves of a moldy old game store inhabited by the same dozen people each week. Look around for things like 'zine stores, which'll carry your self-published game in a heartbeat. Any decent size urban center has a zine store, or a counter-culture store, or a sex shop (think I'm kidding? I've seen Obsidian in the same store as cock rings), or somewhere where literates, freaks, musicians, and others hang out. I've spoken with the local zine store to me, Confounded Books, and they've agreed to carry print editions of Anvilwerks games, just by looking at a copy of Donjon.

Thus ends my rant for today.

talysman wrote: strange... is the indie industry really "clogging the channels"?

Whoah!

I've seen Obsidian in the same store as cock rings.

Too much information!

So, Matt, was that you I saw talking to that coven of new-age witches the other day, saying, "Hey, I just talked to a fundamentalist who said that witches should be burned. What do you think?"

That was you, wasn't it?

Mike

Paul Czege wrote: Whoah!

I've seen Obsidian in the same store as cock rings.

Too much information!

Way off-topic, everyone, but two points:

a) Mike Holmes wins!
b) Chris - I'd buy an Atomic Brain coffee mug for certain.

- Clinton

You see, that's just it. I'd have completed and published several of my own indie games by now, but I didn't want to clog up the channels.

- Walt, who hopes y'all appreciate the sacrifice

So, Matt, was that you I saw talking to that coven of new-age witches the other day, saying, "Hey, I just talked to a fundamentalist who said that witches should be burned. What do you think?"

OK, that's more reasonable. I think that we can probably continue discussing this usefully as long as people try to present the Devil's Advocate positions. I think the first few posts hit the Con side of the argument pretty well, already.

That said, I got nothin'.

Mike

Matt Gwinn wrote:
I do agree with the guy on one point; there is a lot of crap out there that is simply wasting space. The question is, is the existence of that crap keeping my game or someone elses off the shelf? Is there such a thing as too many games? Does the gaming industry have a signal to noise ratio?

Sorry to be overly simplistic my fellows, but aren't the complaints at the top of this thread simply another example of the evolution of the print publishing industry? I've heard pretty much the same stuff coming out of the big publishing houses as print-on-demand prices get closer and closer to volume discount prices. And you know what happens every time the business paradigm shifts....

People whine that it shouldn't be that way.

Too bad, either evolve or go extinct. It ain't the indie publishers 'ruining the market,' it's the technology. Perhaps 'the nameless game company' should rethink doing business 'the old-fashioned way.' Why don't they slash their overhead and work outsourced with a boatload of freelancers; if they focus on finding reliable talent and use their expertise in marketing and presentation, they can make their skills payoff more than the volume discount used to.

What's that?

I think I hear the "three tier system" cracking.

I wonder what's on the other side?

Fang Langford

Well, perhaps a surprise to anyone that knows my political-social leanings, but "What Ron said."

I mean, I'd love to get all the local tech work being done by those who aren't accredited and certified as industry professionals...oh, wait, maybe I'll have the government put regulations in place so that no one can work in this field but me and who I say.

(Oh, wait, didn't Socialist Russia try that?)

See, in a free trade system, ultimately nobody cares about your kids or your hunger but you, except as a part of their moral social consciousness that says, "We should feed the hungry and help the poor."
The system, however, doesn't give a shit.

Welcome to business in a capitalist society.
If you can't survive in the career you're in, you need to change careers...quite the reverse of the desired scenario: Matt's friend leaves the business and thus makes more space for those willing to persevere losses or lack of income. Same result, though.

Matt Gwinn wrote: The question is, is the existence of that crap keeping my game or someone elses off the shelf? Is there such a thing as too many games? Does the gaming industry have a signal to noise ratio?

In regards to the general problems with the distribution system, is there any way to fix things without putting someone out of work?

Le Joueur wrote: Perhaps 'the nameless game company' should rethink doing business 'the old-fashioned way.' Why don't they slash their overhead and work outsourced with a boatload of freelancers; if they focus on finding reliable talent and use their expertise in marketing and presentation, they can make their skills payoff more than the volume discount used to.

greyorm wrote: Welcome to business in a capitalist society.

1. There is no such thing as too many games. Not on store shelves, not on my shelves, not on the Internet. There's a reason I have a 160GB hard drive. There's a reason I try to make contact with every publisher I can find out there in the field even though I am supposedly the cutthroat competition. Every time I walk into a game store I want to see something new, whether from an indie publisher or from an established veteran company.

2. I, like many game publishers, am concieted enough to think that I am an artist and that my art deserves an audience, however small. That sometimes clouds my business judgement, but is also why I don't spend sixty hours a week selling refrigerators. I don;t want to hear it when people tell me I don't belong in this business, which is essentially what I've been told on many an occasion for the last three years. It knaws at my guts. It aches in my bones. it hurts to be told things like that. I have experienced things in the game business, good or bad, that I could not have experienced any other way, and my life has been far richer for it. Nobody has the right to take that away from me.

3. Undercapitalization is frustrating, but not getting stuff to press is even more so. If borrowing against my accounts recievable means I get to go to the GAMA Trade Show, so be it. At least I know the money is scheduled to come eventually.

4. If POD and PDF publishing is so wonderful, why aren;t more people buying PODs and PDFs? We need to make a concerted effort to grow this market, people, for everybody's sake, to make the entire business more viable. Cutting each other down doesn't cut it anymore -- if we don;t build each other up, none of us are going to survive.

I hate to march out of step, here, but I just can't join in on the "bash the established game companies" fun, because (as I said) I think the fundamental premise of the nameless game insider is flawed. I don't think the big game companies are really being choked out by an upsurge in small game companies.

when I wrote: strange... is the indie industry really "clogging the channels"?

Pramas wrote:
What people are really talking about is d20 companies. An enormous number of new companies have entered the field in a very short amount of time, each trying to ride the d20 wave. In the early days of d20, it didn't matter how shitty your product was, you could still probably sell 3,000 of it into the channel. This enabled a bunch of companies to establish themselves quickly, and the imitators continue to come out of the woodwork.

Matt Gwinn wrote: I do agree with the guy on one point; there is a lot of crap out there that is simply wasting space. The question is, is the existence of that crap keeping my game or someone elses off the shelf? Is there such a thing as too many games? Does the gaming industry have a signal to noise ratio?

Pramas wrote:

Le Joueur wrote: ... Why don't they slash their overhead and work outsourced with a boatload of freelancers; if they focus on finding reliable talent and use their expertise in marketing and presentation, they can make their skills payoff more than the volume discount used to.

... Most RPG companies already outsource writing and art to freelancers.

...The rest will be done by freelancers, as will all the art, all the editing, and some of the graphic design...

Hi.

Now that we’re done (I hope) bashing non-Indie companies, let’s consider other options. My theory is that the “Big Game Company Guy” knows what he’s talking about, in a limited sense. Here’s what he knows: his company’s games aren’t selling. Here’s what else he knows: rumor is that the Indies are why. He didn’t manufacture this; it’s an old, old claim (these little fringe deviants are taking jobs away from Our Boys). And all this stuff about free trade and capitalism is missing the point. With a market this small, there ain’t no level playing field, and there’s not going to be.

Think of it this way: the big companies aren’t making as much money now, and blame the Indies, to which the response here is essentially, “Tough. If you made as good products as we do, you’d get your market.” Okay, so have all of you noticed that you’re now getting all that money instead? C’mon, speak up, those of you that have made a net profit in the, say, $10,000 range last year or so. Okay, so it’s just not a simple closed-market system problem.

Here’s a worry for you: Suppose the big companies die (they won’t, really, but this is as much an extreme case as is the closed-market theory above). Who’s going to buy games? Who’s got the advertising power to convince new buyers to buy things? The hobby will contract, there will be fewer buyers, so less money will come in. There is not a fixed sum of money being spent on games reliably; that sum will fluctuate, based on lots of factors (I’m sure the economy tanking doesn’t help encourage people to spend money on new d20 supplements, for example). This is the same kind of theory that caused a number of acquaintances of mine to invest heavily in Magic Cards a few years back, since “They’re worth X, and that will increase.” Sure, a few people actually made money that way, but a lot of them now have shoeboxes full of worthless cards, because the field contracted.

Okay, so let me suggest that there’s an alternative approach here. I don’t have hard data here; it’s just a theory.

1. Start with the Big RPG Company (from here on in BRC). It works like an ordinary publisher, albeit with a crappy distribution model and a lot of unprofessional stuff going on (like no accounts receivable and whatnot). So when books don’t sell at all, they get sent back from the retailer, and the BRC has to figure out why or they’re really screwed.

2. Here’s the retailer. I’m talking about the hobbyist retailer, not Barnes and Noble, which doesn’t devote space to anything not from a BRC, usually. Anyway, he’s got a lot of problems to deal with, and a lot of factors:

A. There’s only so much shelf space. He needs to maximize profit-margin for said space.

B. The books often come out in August, which is a really slow sales period. Why? Because the industry is stupid (why not Christmas?). So the big deal for getting new customers is students, who show up in town around September, perhaps with money to burn in their pockets. So we want stuff that will appeal to 18 year-olds.

C. There are thousands of new products every year. Yes, thousands. So how the hell am I supposed to know which ones are going to sell? Few products stay on the shelves long enough before getting pushed out by new stuff to gain a track record. Also, if they’re new, there’s not going to be a lot of “buzz,” because there’s nothing to buzz about. So I prioritize:

(1) Is this thing similar to something that has sold well recently?
(2) Does this thing come from somebody that has done reliable business recently?
(3) Does this thing look like the sort of slick, pretty stuff 18 year-olds seem to want?
(4) Does it hit the sort of currently-fashionable version of personal angst that I hear my customers yapping about?
(5) Is it expensive enough that my markup will make it worthwhile?
(6) It is particularly physically large (bad) or small (good) and so somewhat alters the ratio of space to profit?
(7) If it doesn’t sell, what are the chances I can get rid of it for a token loss instead of a total loss (i.e. does it come from a BRC)?

D. My business will not make me rich. I know that. I’m in this business (listen up guys: this should sound familiar) because I want to be involved in this hobby I love full-time, make enough to live on, and get to know lots of other people like me. When a customer comes in and wants to talk about the new cool game he’s heard about, I would like (it’s not always possible, but this is my dream) to be able to chat about it with him, not only because I want to make money selling that game, but because I want to read it and play it. I don’t want to have to carry fringe gaming products I hate, but I will if they make me enough profit to keep in business. I want to be a mainstay and center of the hobby community I love.

3. Okay, so now the BRC says to the retailer: “You sent our books back again. Why?”
Retailer: “Because nobody bought them, or at least, not fast enough that I can afford to keep them on my shelves when there’s lots of new stuff coming out.”
BRC: “Why are your shelves so crowded?”
Ret: “Because there are a hundred million little companies cranking stuff out, and you know, I have to take a chance once in a while. Besides, my customers want to see new stuff all the time. I really really rely on my return business, and if those guys see the same products, they leave my shop.”
BRC: “But where is all this new stuff coming from?”
Ret: “Well, some of it from you, obviously, but there’s all these other people out there. I can’t keep up. I don’t know what’s hot, because ‘hot’ lasts about 10 seconds. And then the worst thing is that my customers decide that they can find out what’s ‘hot’ by checking the Internet, and there are all these games that think they’re so great because they have no middleman, just PDF crap, you know? But I can’t make a dime on that! Why would they do this to me? Don’t they remember the good old days [see Ron’s Myth article] of Weird Harry’s Game Emporium? Why are they so unwilling to allow me a tiny profit margin? Why do they hate me so? <sob>”
BRC: “There, there. Those goddamn Indies. Don’t worry, we’ll fix ‘em.”

That, in essence, is my theory of why this BRC guy thinks the Indies are at fault. I really don’t think it’s because we’re outselling them, nor because the BRCs are just whiners.

I'm sorry, clehrich, but that still amounts to only so much whining <sob>

Maybe I have a better view of these people. The market is shifting, away from game stores and towards the internet and downloading free PDFs. (at least that's what you'd said above)

Now, they could complain about how this is taking business away from their sales, or they could do something about it. Everyone complains about the weather but no one does anything about it. If the market is indeed changing then they need to shift business tactics or they will flounder and eventually close up shop. If the market really isn't shifting but this ia a fad of sorts, then they need to stock their rescources to wait it out. This goes for the game retailer as well as the publisher.

And you lost me (and some other I would guess) with this:

I’m in this business (listen up guys: this should sound familiar) because I want to be involved in this hobby I love full-time, make enough to live on, and get to know lots of other people like me.

I'm finding this discussion interesting. As a librarian, I interact with publishers on a regular basis. And just last week, I had a meeting with one supplier account rep who was trying to understand why our total purchases were down this past year. (Answer: we can get some titles cheaper & faster from another source, and we've been selecting titles not covered by said supplier.)

The rpg industry is not alone in being affected by the increasing number of players in the publishing field.

Julie

p.s. Reading the arguments about the indie competition preventing the livelihood of other, more deserving individuals reminds me of similar arguments made as to why women shouldn't be allowed to enter the workforce.

Jack,

I'm not saying that they're not whining, or that they're right about Indies. What I'm saying is that it's not all the BRC's fault. What worries me here is that we're setting up a deep antagonism between Indies and BRCs, and that's really not good for anyone.

To put it very directly:

The BRC guys are apparently saying that the problem is the Indies. I think they're wrong, and I've tried to supply a hypothesis about where that idea came from. We want to quash that rumor: where is the real problem, is there anything that we can do about it, and what can or should the BRCs do about it?

The Indie response, in this thread, is, "Ha ha, sucks to be you, we hate you anyway." This is not helpful.

We're all part of one industry, like it or not. If we don't like the way the industry works, laughing at the big-money guys isn't a good way to fix it. The problem is getting people to buy games, preferably ours (whoever we are). This will not be solved by internecine conflict.

This whole thing sounds a bit like Microsoft whining because people can buy a computer and install some other operating system than Windows.

Or Pepsi getting nervous because Pathmark decides to devote a foot-and-a-half of one shelf to Canfield's Diet Chocolate Soda or Vernor's Ginger Ale.

In other words, just a bit ridiculous.

clehrich wrote: The Indie response, in this thread, is, "Ha ha, sucks to be you, we hate you anyway." This is not helpful.

clehrich wrote: BRC: “There, there. Those goddamn Indies. Don’t worry, we’ll fix ‘em.”

That, in essence, is my theory of why this BRC guy thinks the Indies are at fault. I really don’t think it’s because we’re outselling them, nor because the BRCs are just whiners.

clehrich wrote: We're all part of one industry, like it or not. If we don't like the way the industry works, laughing at the big-money guys isn't a good way to fix it. The problem is getting people to buy games, preferably ours (whoever we are). This will not be solved by internecine conflict.

Julie wrote: p.s. Reading the arguments about the indie competition preventing the livelihood of other, more deserving individuals reminds me of similar arguments made as to why women shouldn't be allowed to enter the workforce.

Hi Chris,

Your perception of the communal response is, I think, not accurate.

Let's take a look at my response: No one owes you a living. What's the implication, to the BRC guy?

Is it, "Fuck you and your stupidity?" No, it's not. Perceiving (inferring) it this way is quite the low-self-esteem thing to do and receives a shrug from me.

The actual implications are:

1) Scale back your publishing ambitions such that they are not your primary source of income. Please note: this is not saying "run it like a hobby with no attention to profit." The career/hobby dichotomy is a false one.

2) Discover means of promotion and sales that focus on end-use customers rather than the distributors and retailer-advertising. Establish a community and communication system for these end-users.

3) Do, however, develop and strengthen three-tier ties and means of distribution that reflect actual sales and use; establish personal contacts with those reliable retailers who understand the audience for your game.

4) Discover and participate in the subculture of multiple-reciprocal ties in publishing. Tundra Sales Organization is one example; the Forge itself is another.

5) Define "success" for yourself in a directly-assessed, realizable way. Neither market-share (selling more copies than some other company) nor "just get it on the shelf" are recommended.

6) Understand and consider the options of ownership: self-publishing, freelancing, leasing, and so forth. Choose the one you want and understand its implications.

The real point of all the responses so far is to say, "Learn." Every assumption in the BRC comment is incorrect. Anyone who states it needs to learn some things. The first thing is my initial comment. The second things are listed as #1-6 above.

Some final points: Jack, I've always been forthcoming about Adept Press finances. I put $5000 into the company as seed money, mainly for the first printing. After that, every single Adept expense has been paid for by Adept profits. Those expenses include three supplements (art, layout, printing, etc), one mini-supplement, half the cost of last year's three-booth space at GenCon, last year's trip to Origins, last year's trip to Las Vegas for the GAMA Trade Show, server space costs, the second printing of Sorcerer last October, and various promotional efforts. They do not include a paycheck for myself; Adept Press is a business, but it's not my job.

Adept Press is still in the black.

Best,
Ron

IMO, and you won't be surprised to hear this either, I agree with greyorm. This is the normal operation of the system, and so to a large degree business as usual. Industrialism finds most of the physical problems of production trivial, its access to markets that counts. Technology moves so fast that the barrier to entry steadily falls, and the relative profitability of existing machinery drops. Competition for market share stimulates overproduction that clogs the channels.

In Britain we have more cars than we dispose of, more fridges than we can dispose of, and the EU certainly has more food than it can dispose of. Now we have more games than we can dispose of, what else is new?

Its also correct to point the finger at the big companies, but not in a moralistic way. The little companies and private presses are doing exactly the right thing, exploiting new technology to gain a competitive edge. They're getting relatively more bang for their buck - consider that the Connections forum here is duplicating many of the de facto services that a publisher would have carried out in say, oh, 1970, and for which it could take a cut. In many cases, IT in one form or another has been the particular catalyst that changed the dynamic.

Of course the other alternative to clogged channels is to expand the market. Here I feel that the cynicism in regards mainstream bookstores is misplaced, for several reasons. All these stores are facing much the same problem - overproduction means demand is quirky. What they want is a flow of new quirky things; Blackwells on Tottenham Court Road has a section for kitsch stationary, a section for "toy" books or various sorts, one for fantasy fiction. In fact it even used to carry some RPG's, but stopped - a half shelf of a few mainstream products didn't attracte RPGers, and not many others were interested. But sorceror wouldn't look out of place in such an environment, or something like whispering vault. I mean, they even cater to comics fans somewhat, and have star wars technical diagrams and similar sundries. This is where the small press should be, IMO.

[as asides from even my own digression, I think developing RPG's in paperback format is probably a good idea, and that Civ 3 came with a 232 page manual]

Jack Spencer Jr wrote:

Pramas wrote:

Le Joueur wrote: ... Why don't they slash their overhead and work outsourced with a boatload of freelancers; if they focus on finding reliable talent and use their expertise in marketing and presentation, they can make their skills payoff more than the volume discount used to.

... Most RPG companies already outsource writing and art to freelancers.

...The rest will be done by freelancers, as will all the art, all the editing, and some of the graphic design...

How about freelancers in marketing and presentation, which seems to be what Fang is talking about. People who sell the books rather than the people who put the books together in first place.

Hi Ron,

I'm really not making the argument you think I am. Let me try to rephrase.

The claim has apparently been made that "the indie industry is clogging the channels." This doesn't appear to be true. So where does the claim come from? I have tried to suggest one way that it might arise.

Now this claim has largely been described as "whining." The big companies have been compared to Microsoft, the Evil Empire of the computer industry. Several people have, however, remarked on this response as "bashing" and so forth. I think there is a good bit of truth to this: the idea that White Wolf, for example, has (1) nearly total control over what consumers buy, and (2) enormous monetary and other resources to force that down your throat (i.e. that they're like Microsoft) is silly.

The related argument, that it's all free trade and hip-hoorah for capitalism, does not make sense to me economically. Lots and lots of people are attracted to this hobby in the first place by things like Vampire. We do not have the resources to accomplish this goal, i.e. of drawing people in from nowhere. So we are to some degree reliant on the advertising capability of larger companies. If we then steal their readers because our games are better, great. If they whine about that, it's their own damn fault as everyone says. But I really doubt that the big problem for White Wolf is that everyone in Vampire campaigns has decided to switch to Sorcerer. Wonderful game though it is, I just can't see it having that big an effect on WW's sales.

All I'm saying, then is:
(1) It's not a good thing if a lot of folks out there, including for example those initially drawn to the hobby by (say) White Wolf, think that Indie games are bad for the industry.
(2) If we want to improve matters, bashing the big companies isn't really going to help much. As a politer variant, telling them to stop whining and get out of the business is not terribly helpful either.

I think the ideal situation is a healthy, successful, growing business of big companies. They draw lots and lots of people in, and get them hankering for more. Then these people start increasingly saying, "You know what? This was okay when I was 13, but now it stinks. Isn't there something better?" And they come over to the indies.

There is a third category here, which I haven't discussed because I don't know anything much about it, of people who really honestly believe that their start-up business of cranking out d20 supplements is going to put their kids through college. If those people whine, I have less than no sympathy. I much prefer Fang Langford's complaint: "My game design is slow because I have a real job and responsibilities." Annoying it is (I mean for Fang), but those are reasonable priorities. If White Wolf were actually saying, "We're starving to death in the gutter because of you indies," I'd laugh with the rest of you. But I really don't think that's the case, do you?

Pramas wrote:

Jack Spencer Jr wrote:

Pramas wrote:

Le Joueur wrote: ... Why don't they slash their overhead and work outsourced with a boatload of freelancers; if they focus on finding reliable talent and use their expertise in marketing and presentation, they can make their skills payoff more than the volume discount used to.

... Most RPG companies already outsource writing and art to freelancers.

...The rest will be done by freelancers, as will all the art, all the editing, and some of the graphic design...

How about freelancers in marketing and presentation, which seems to be what Fang is talking about. People who sell the books rather than the people who put the books together in first place.

On rereading what Fang said, I'm not sure what he was saying

Pramas wrote: To answer your question, yes, there are some people/companies that you can go to for sales and marketing. Green Ronin uses Osseum Entertainment for sales and fulfillment and they've done a great job for us. Liz Fulda does freelance marketing under the name Sphinx Group. Aldo from Wingnut does sales and fulfillment as Impressions. Outfits like this are a relatively new development (last three years or so), but they can take be very helpful to small companies. I am not, by trade, a salesman. The Osseum guys are and they do a much better job than I did in GR's early days.

...where clehrich wrote: I much prefer Fang Langford's complaint: "My game design is slow because I have a real job and responsibilities." Annoying it is (I mean for Fang), but those are reasonable priorities.

Matt Gwin wrote: He's just opposed to them using the same distribution system.

talysman wrote: I'm just not seeing a huge quantity of small-press d20 in the stores. when I go to my favorite, best-stocked gamestore, I see:



• a whole lot of WotC d20 stuff;
• a whole lot of d20 stuff from other major, pre-d20 companies (White Wolf, Chaosium;)
• a lot of d20 stuff by a small number of companies whose history I'm not clear on, but I suspect had pre-d20 existence, based on the breadth and (physical) quality of their product lines;
• hardly any d20 stuff from new companies with small product lines.

heck, when you go to secondary channels like comic book stores and Barnes and Noble. you see no small press stuff at all, d20 or non-d20. you see WotC and White Wolf and maybe Chaosium or some other major RPG publisher.

First of I agree the statement probably isn't true...In my local game store I see WW, WotC, GURPS, Palladium, Chaosium, AEG, and the remains of FASA almost exclusively. There are a few other bits and pieces; like games on consignment from a dying distributor.

But, let us suppose for a moment it is true.

I hate to suggest this kind of behavior, but I'm going to stop being an idealist for a moment. Big companies have some common solutions to this 'small company threat' issue.

Threaten the channel's pocket book. If you don't put only Windows on your systems then Windows will cost more for you, if we even let you have it. Technically illegal in the US, but easily greyed if done correctly. Especially if not done to fellow big companies that could fight about it.

Push out the small companies with volume. Apparently, White Wolf wants to be the #1 third party supplier of D20 products; probably because they know might makes right. If the retailer sees a line of two products from Mom & Pop studios and a line of twenty products from WW, his best chance for supported sales is getting the customers into the bigger line.

Buy the small company. If their product is squishing yours, then you could be making that profit instead. If their product is just cutting into yours, then you can shelve it or neglect to promote it; making it as if it never existed.

I bet there a more excellent methods I've neglected, but I'm really not a very good cutthroat capitalist.

Hmm, the devil seems to be having some trouble finding an advocate here. I'll see what I can do.

One more shady practice can be added to Cruciel's list: Sell your product for below cost to drive competitors out of business. Which at least under some circumstances is considered an unfair business practice and is even occasionally illegal.

That gives at least a remote thin straw to grasp for the idea that underpricing one's products might not be entirely ethical.

And if one further describes pricing so that the profits, even over the long term, are extremely unlikely to ever compensate the publisher for the time spent developing the product, as "underpricing," well, then, it's clear that most of the indies are bound to burn in hell for their sins.

I can think of many counterarguments, but as the devil's advocate it would be unethical for me to speak against my client's interests. So I'll let others try.

- Walt