Hey everyone,

On the Most popular RPG genre... thread there was some discussion of whether a designer should concern himself with the popular interests of the gamer public. Kirt "xiombarg" Dankmyer took the contrary position:

First: Don't worry about popularity.
....
Rather than worrying about popularity, work instead on making a game you would enjoy playing, making it work, and playtesting it. Your enthusiasm for your own work will translate into sales.

To which Mark Arsenault responded:


With all due respect, this is not good advice, IMHO. If the designer or publisher's passion alone were able to generate sales, then I would be a wealthy man by now.

The reality is that in the specialty hobby market, one makes money selling things, and one cannot generally sell something that consumers don't want. Sounds ridiculously simple, yes, but it's something that a lot of passionate designers don't often take into consideration.

If you are designing something intended to be sold in the marketplace, then I would strongly suggest keeping an eye toward creating something that will appeal to the broadest market. The reality is that "content," no matter how good, does not sell product, no matter how much we designers wish it were otherwise.

That wasn't much of a discussion, so this is me sharing a related prior exchange I'd had on the Story Engine mailing list. Someone had bemoaned the lack of popularity of the Story Engine rules, and list members produced the conventional response:


...there needs to be a larger pool of settings and genre materials that take the kit system and flesh it.

To which I replied:


I'm going to agree and disagree. I agree that Story Engine is under-utilized, but I disagree that setting and genre kits are the right prescription for turning that situation around. It seems there's a perception among folks that if someone would just do some of the setup work, that it would pave the way for others to start using the system. And I don't think that's true.

What Story Engine needs is people posting about their actual play experiences. And not those "and then we did this...and then we went here...and then we did this" recountings either. What Story Engine needs is very focused posts, both to this list, and in public forums like RPG.net and The Forge, that demonstrate how the system solves problems that other games don't, reveals how the participants learned and became better roleplayers, and how the game creates an experience of player enthusiasm. What we're talking about here is solutions and rewards. People are motivated to utilize some tool because it provides a solution and rewards they can't or don't get elsewhere.

In my experience, when there's a public perception of unique and valuable solutions and rewards associated with a tool, the user community will overcome the the work and setup requirements to get those rewards. Without the perception of unique and valuable solutions and rewards, the potential user community will languish in a mire of disenthusiasm, no matter how much of the work and setup has been done for them.

For example, a largely unrecognized coolness in the Story Engine mechanics is how the strategy of buttonholeing a significant NPC in a Quick Take to remove dice from the opposing side of a scene resolution is both mechanically elegant and results in a very cinematic "cut scene." Actual play posts that reveal this kind of thing, that reveal how the mechanics produce drama and effects folks can't get elsewhere, effects that, to be completely honest, are so furiously undermined by the incoherent and broken game systems that people are probably familiar with, that they aren't even on the average gamer's radar.

This is the essence of advocacy. The Forge (www.indie-rpgs.com) has an Actual Play forum for this exact purpose, and I have posted extensively there about my actual play experiences with Theatrix, The Pool, and other games, what I've learned from play, and how I overcame long-held frustrations I never realized were being produced by other game systems being broken and incoherent, and based on design principles that didn't meet my needs.

I encourage you all to take a look at the Actual Play forum at The Forge. If anyone wants links to a couple of threads that maybe better exemplify what I'm talking about, let me know.

Paul Czege

So anyway, that's where sales come from...player enthusiasm. No amount of designer enthusiasm independent of post-release engagement with actual play will produce an upward growth curve of sales. There will be a spike and a decline. And no amount of design attention to what the user community says they want that doesn't follow through by demonstrating satisfying play will either. Players are naturally disenthused by the psychological detritus of prior experiences with incoherent gameplay. Meaningful public discussion of actual play turns that around.

Paul

Uh, but doesn't that beg the question Paul? I mean if nobody is playing the game in the first place because it's not something that the market wants, then where are all the play examples going to come from?

I mean, what you're saying is to advertise, but advertise in a more effective way. And that's fine. But it doesn't at all speak to other ways in which the game sells itself. One of which Mark points out is designing the game to be appealing in the first place. The debate isn't how to market, but what to put in the game.

Mike

I'm glad Paul asked this, because Mark's earlier comment has been bouncing around in my mind for a few days. It greatly troubled me, to be honest, and I didn't want to get on the thread saying only "I totally disagree! You're wrong!" I did, however, want to think of a cogent point of disagreement. Luckily, I don't have to - Ron's done it for me.

In The Forge as a community (the best, and most underrated, thread on the Forge, most likely because it ended up being split into several points - the second of which I'll quote), Ron said:

It's a major point for me that has emerged from the four threads so far, and it has everything to do with the primary activity at the Forge, independent game design. The logic goes ...

1) When a person creates something (film, novel, RPG) that shares interest with another, it's because the content "speaks" to the second person. What jazzes you, jazzes me. Or, in some cases, what jazzed you in way X, jazzes me too in way Y.

2) The personal commitment and personal spin brought to the creative work - the extent to which it jazzes and satisfies its own creator - is precisely what the audience member (or user, in the case of a musical instrument or an RPG) is responding to.

Which is to say, the more a work expresses a personal vision, the more likely it is to appeal to its audience.

I'll just add this: a market-driven strategy can only succede (due to its' market "savvy") when there is a healthy, well-understood market to sell to. I'm no industry insider, but NOTHING I've seen/heard about the RPG market indicates to me it is either healthy or well-understood.

A "personal vision" strategy has at least as good a chance to succede in such an environment as a market-driven one, it seems to me.

Gordon

Hello,

Aren't we overlooking the fundamental issue? The definition of "sale"?

Given a direct market via the internet, a sale is a sale, with no ambiguity.

Given a three-tier distribution system, often with more parties like warehousers or agents, sales occur several times per product. I sell to a distributor - he sells to a retailer - the retailer sells to an end user.

Please note that these things occur in vastly different amounts and at vastly different rates. "Demand" instantly becomes very squishy, and I strongly question the widespread assumption that retailer demand will obediently mirror customer demand in terms of rate, or that distributor demand will resemble retailer demand in terms of physical product.

Mark's comments on the Indie Design thread were, I think, mainly from the point of view of someone who considers a "sale" mainly at the manufacturer-to-distributor level, letting distributor demand essentially reflect retailer + consumer demand (i.e. assuming it does so enough to count on). Whereas my and others' comments were made from the point of view of interacting primarily manufacturer-to-end-user, via the internet.

That makes a lot of difference and, I think, accounts for the majority of what only looks like a vast divergence in conclusions. If we're dealing with different questions, then the difference in our answers isn't actually disagreeing.

Best,
Ron