Hey guys,

First, I’d like to say that there is an absolute wealth of really useful knowledge here for aspiring game designers.

I think that an excellent place to learn about the industry is from those who have gone before. Thus, can anyone have any name any particular indie successes or failures AND how they ended up that way, from design, production, business, and marketing points of view.

Many thanks!

Hi! and Welcome the Forge!

In Ron Edward's Review of Orkworld he talks about how that game--which certainly made one of the biggest splashes of any indie game--can be counted as successful, and why it is dismissed as unsuccessful by others. That's the trouble with "success." One person's "successful" game doesn't even show up on the radar of someone else.

So, Cowboy, can you tell us what critera you're interested in discussing as far as defining "success" and "failure." Are we talking about profits, sales, long-term actual play, or something else?

I'll bite.

1) Define success in your own terms.

With the indie market, you aren't going to sell a ton of games, but you will sell enough to be content. I set success for Eldritch Ass Kicking early on at 40 copies. I've more than surpassed that in a year since it has been released, and that was with some major goofups and gamer kindness.

Goofup #1: When I first released the game about a year ago, I had a mailing list with over 100+ folks who were interested in the game. By accident, I emailed out the COMPLETE game to the ENTIRE mailing list. I am positive that cost me some sales. One gamer was nice enough to go ahead and pay for his copy anyway.

Gamer Kindness #1: I promised from the get go a free upgrade to the "sweet", "color rich" version that was going to be released later, with art and cool layout. I could have required those gamers to buy a new copy, thereby netting me more cash -- but why? So, a bunch of folks got the free upgrade.

Still, I am successful. My friends and fellow gamers love the game I wrote, and they love to play it. It has sold over 50 copies or so (I've lost track) without a whole lot of P.R. or heavy push from me. I ran a game of EAK at a local con, and it rapidly became an underground success. I'm having fun... What more could you ask for?

(Plus there are other big announcements coming for EAK too.. muhahahaha)

2) Don't get caught up in the flash.

If you pay any attention on various messageboards across the net, you can get caught up in that whole fact that you need to make your game look great. It needs art and layout -- it has to dazzle. Don't buy it. If you have a great game concept, it will sell itself. If you can do the art and layout, fine -- go for it -- but it won't make a poor game any better.

That is the best thing about indie games -- your customers aren't always interested in the flashy stuff. They want fun games and good ideas. They don't mind paying for no artwork or a basic layout. If the idea is there, it's worth it.

Thanks,
Nathan

Hi Space Cowboy,

This is an excellent thread topic, although as people have pointed out, there are a hell of a lot of variables to consider. I have been brushing the caked lint off the industry essay that I began writing in 2000, and some of it looks good enough to be the chassis for a new big essay ... and glory be, a whole chapteris about this very topic. So my reply here is going to be pretty sketchy in comparison.

Let's talk about business success in the long term, and further specify the publishing mode to actual books, sold in game stores. So by "long term," that means, to me, that not only have books shipped off to a distributor, but the profits from them have been seen and banked by the publisher.

Situation 1: the game is pretty damn good, and people play it. They even continue to play it when the publisher goes bust or discontinues the book because the profit is insufficient or too late in coming, or some other money-management fuckup goes on. So the company and the line are discontinued, but the play of the game goes on like gangbusters indefinitely. My case study for this one is Marvel Super Heroes.

Situation 2: the game "vanishes," which is to say, not many copies are bought, actual play is minimal to non-existent, and the only degree of success the publisher can claim is that he did indeed see the book on the shelf at his local game store, like he dreamed of for so long. A few books trickle back up the chain, but no re-orders, and the book's second supplement isn't ordered in any quantity. This is the classic fate of the Heartbreaker game.

(There is a corporate equivalent, which shows a real initial spike of sales and usually lands the retailers with tons of books they can't sell for what they thought was a "hot hot hot" game, but I'm restricting my examples to independent publishing.)

Situation 3: the game gets bought, played a fair amount, and a community builds, just as in #1, but in this case, the company avoids going into the hole or otherwise messing up its finances. Several sub-options are possible - restricting the print run and simply never printing more (e.g. Orkworld), planning for eventual store-obsolescence to a "low murmur" of play and on-line support for that alone (Obsidian, possibly), and whipping up end-user support to power future projects/products as an ongoing, opportunistic process (Sorcerer, The Riddle of Steel).

Frankly, getting to Situation #3 and (unlike Wicked Press) staying in the biz is a damned tricky thing to do. I take some pride in what I've accomplished so far, and unfortunately, a great deal of my success rests on the fact that I don't rely on the retail-distribution system for my primary profits, except on the first spike of any release.

I'm not sure if this is really addressing your topic, Space Cowboy, so let me know whether I'm giving you what you're looking for or gassing about Some Other Thing.

Best,
Ron

Hey guys,

Thanks for replying! Thanks everyone for noting that "success" is indeed a vague term. To answer your points:

Michael- Thanks heaps for the welcome! As an aspiring RPG publisher, I look at my project as a business, not a vanity press. The biggest thing I'm worried about is spending a bunch of $$ and then failing. Yes, the vast majority of new businesses go under, I want to learn all that I can to have the best chance of avoiding that fate.
Thus, while it might be nice to get props for the design, etc., what I need by "success" for my (perhaps not quite so noble) goals is numbers of games sold, especially compared to costs. However, it is also true that design, long-term actual play, etc. all affect numbers of games sold.
From looking on the threads here and at rpg.net, it looks like even the most "successful" indie publishers only move a handful of games compared to, say, WotC. However, I'd love to know how those indie publishers operate, and how the ones that have disappeared into bankruptcy operated.


Nathan- Thanks for the war stories, that's exactly what I'm looking for- hear about what worked and didn't work for RPG publishers. Congrats! Even one sale means that someone believe in your product enough to part with their $$.
You have an interesting point about game success being fundamentally about the "idea". Could you please elaborate more on what you and/or the market think is a "successful idea"?


Ron- Thanks for your insightful response. Your reputation precedes you- I've heard that Sorcerer has a simple but innovative resolution mechanic.
If you would be so kind, I would love to hear more about your three situations- what kind of "management fuckups" can/do occur to sink an RPG? What sorts of cash flow problems bankrupt indie publishers and how can they, if at all, be avoided? Is it possible to get reasonably accurate marketing data to avoid being stuck with a bunch of "hot hot hot" games in your garage, and if so, how? What is "whipping up end-user support to power future projects/products as an ongoing, opportunistic process"?


Many thanks again!

There's a big perspective thing going on here.

When you say that you have to sell x amount of books, you mean in order to make y amount of money in z amount of time, right? Because who knows how much you'll be making per book, especially compared to overhead costs. It's not a simple matter.

But the way that Indie folks keep from going "bankrupt" is to never spend money you don't have. That is, publishing in the Indie world is a lot simpler than I think you think it is. The process might look like this:

1. I buy some art from someone. $500
2. I get a layout guy to throw it all in a book. $500
3. I send the PDF to a printer along with $3000 to print up 1000 copies.
4. I get the books and arrange to sell them somehow. Let's say I go with a Fulfilment house, and sell online.
5. I get $10 a copy after costs (like paying the fufilment house).

400 books later, I've covered my costs. If I sell out, I've made $6000 dollars.

If I start out with the $4000 in pocket, there's no going bankrupt, only the possibility of losing that money. Note these figures aren't at all realistic, just a rough idea of the sort of thing that happens.

Does "success" mean making enough money to quit your day job? If so, I think that you need to think about it again. There are very few people who make a living doing this. Ron is a Professor of Biology, for example, and I don't think he's planning on retiring any time soon to live off his Sorcerer earnings...

Also, note that I'll bet that Nathan, with his 40 copies sold has made money. How? Just go with no overhead. Get cheap art, publish PDF online from your website. Takes almost nothing to start, and is pure profit. Sell 40 copies for $5 a throw, and that's #200 dollars more than you had when you started.

Is that vanity publishing? If it makes a profit? And people you don't know buy and enjoy the game? I'd call it success. But that's my criteria.

How do you garuntee sales? If we knew, would we tell you? :-) Make the best game you can. What else is there you can do? How do you make a good game? See the fora here for a few thousand posts on how for a start.

Note, many of us here are of a mind that, "Write it, and they will play." That is, there's no silver bullet in terms of subject matter. Even a valuable license is no garuntee. Remember the Hercules & Xena game? No? Nobody else does either.

Mike

For my print zine, success has been defined by the following:

1) I make enough money to cover expenses.

2) People enjoy the read

3) They write to tell me so

4) It's even better if the material gets used in play. One lady ran a PBEM campaign based upon my work and I was tickled pink.

5) Most important of all, I gotta have fun!

Take care!

Hi Cowboy,

[]quote]what kind of "management fuckups" can/do occur to sink an RPG?

Let me count the ways ...

1. The corporate way is to shoot for a very big initial sales-spike, driven by hype and rewarded by orders from retailers + distributors, and then to follow up with supplements, each of which is supposed to "boost" or re-spike the game's sales.

2. The independent way is twofold: either be strapped for cash when it's time to reprint your book (due to successful sales) or be stuck with a million extra books, and the debt from printing them, which you cannot move.

What sorts of cash flow problems bankrupt indie publishers and how can they, if at all, be avoided?

Is it possible to get reasonably accurate marketing data to avoid being stuck with a bunch of "hot hot hot" games in your garage, and if so, how?

What is "whipping up end-user support to power future projects/products as an ongoing, opportunistic process"?

Excellent information here, and I'd not disagree with any of it. Any small business is almost guaranteed to lose money for its first 5 years. It's just the way of things. Although we built our company slowly, we're working on the 5 year mark now and are just seeing some turn around in our profits & losses. Cashflow is fine, and our profits are paying for what little debt we do have fairly evenly now.

Definitely keep the overhead low. If you go to print, expect to keep your copies in the basement (or closet, or under your bed, or all of the above). When you get them, expect to NEVER sell them. If it becomes a game that people buy, and if you happen to be able to sell enough to cover the cost of printing it, pat yourself on the back, you did just fine. If you expect to break even or even make a profit right away, forget it.

Also, with the way the market works, it's true that the majority of your distributor sales will happen in the first three months. However, if it's something that sells over time, that's my definition of success. As such, Arrowflight is quite successful, in that we've continued to have re-orders and it's been out for a year and a half now. It's got a few problems, but it is our very first printed product and we've learned a lot since then about publishing and everything else that goes with it.

The biggest, most important piece of advice I can give is to never ever go into more debt than you can pay for out of your own pocket. That's the way to lose everything you own, and even some things other people own.

I was once told the objective definition of success was how much money you made. this was by an ardent Randist who believed you could measure objectively the value of all commidities, even human beings. I was not making much money at all at the time, and beat myself up constantly in consequence.

I shouldn't speak ill of the dead, but in that respect the guy was a jerk. You can;t objectively measure the value of a human being. Indeed, you can;t objectively measure success. Is Martha Stweart a success? She may be rich, but she's also under indictment and may go to prison. I sincerely doubt she is a happy woman, or indeed ever was.

Indie publishers measure success in a completely subjective set of temrs that have nothing to do with the bottom line. It's the only way to stay sane in this crazy business.

Are you doing work you can be proud of? If you are still excited about what you did a year after you did it, you are a sucess. I can't pick up a copy of my book, or open a PDF file I published, without a thrill going down my spine, a sense that I have somehow accomplished something important even if only twenty people ever read it. My business is very early in the five-year cycle, and may turn a profit someday, but I am doing what I love and can continue to do it.

THAT is success. why do I publish? Because there's something inside me that can't NOT publish. That part of my soul takes great joy in what i accomplish. If I can publish my own ideas, if I can help others exprress their visions, and if I can reach an audience howveer small, then I am a success no matter what the world says.

Hey guys,

Thanks again for all the helpful feedback. I've found a bunch of good general background materials about how to start an RPG company. There's a good article here by Ron (http://indie-rpgs.com/articles/12/), Sandy Antunes has a good column at rpg.net:

http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/collists/soapbox.html

I also came across a good article at Wizard's Attic, though I forget the internet address.

I guess now what I've looking for now is more specific information about what has "helped" indie publishers (whether from design, publishing, marketing, etc.) and more specific mistakes to avoid.

Also, how exactly does the "three tier" system work? For example, if you ship a bunch of books to Alliance or Diamond, do you get paid for the whole shipment 30 days after shipping, or do you get paid for individual book sales 30 days after some retailer sells a copy of your book?

Many thanks!

Space Cowboy wrote: Hey guys,

I guess now what I've looking for now is more specific information about what has "helped" indie publishers (whether from design, publishing, marketing, etc.) and more specific mistakes to avoid.

Also, how exactly does the "three tier" system work? For example, if you ship a bunch of books to Alliance or Diamond, do you get paid for the whole shipment 30 days after shipping, or do you get paid for individual book sales 30 days after some retailer sells a copy of your book?

Pramas wrote: I wrote a letter awhile back to a guy who wanted advice on starting a d20 company. Here are some of the points I made, with the d20 specific advice edited out (as that doesn't seem pertinent).

Hello,

Yeesh, this thread is kind of expanding in focus ...

Chris, if you want to chisel that letter into an article, with or without D20 focus, please do - it'd be very welcome here.

Space C, here's one thing out of many to consider. You should choose which way you go with it carefully.

Mutualism vs. Isolationism. Mutualism is based on massive cross-referencing across your game title and others. Sharing links, exchanging free ads, providing services for others, sharing booth space and demo time at conventions, and more. Isolationism is based on building a play-community whose needs are served only by your game, essentially making a sub-subculture within the hobby.

Adept Press (me) is highly Mutual; the Apophis Consortium (Dav Harnish) is, or was, fairly Isolationist. Both strategies can work well.

What doesn't work is just "getting your game out there" with no attention to actual play (and positive feedback for it) at all. When you do that, you enter a competition for distributor and retailer attention based on production and promotion costs that you probably won't win, not without massive outside funding.

Also, how exactly does the "three tier" system work? For example, if you ship a bunch of books to Alliance or Diamond, do you get paid for the whole shipment 30 days after shipping, or do you get paid for individual book sales 30 days after some retailer sells a copy of your book?

Hey guys,

Once again, thanks so much for your replies. I'm sorry that I haven't gotten back to this thread earlier, haven't been feeling well lately.

Chris,
Thanks for all the good points. If you don't mind, I'd like to ask you a question- How important is it to use the three tier (manufacturer-distributor-retailer) system? Right now, I'd like to retail my game directly to the consumer, without going through the three tier system. Is this possible, or suicide? I know that my sales would very likely be MUCH lower, but I would avoid all the discounts to the middlemen, and I wouldn't have to deal with all the hassle of going to GAMA (which, as you note, is for distributors and not consumers) and such.

Ron,
How I'm conceiving my current approach for my project is "marginally mutual". By that I mean, "haring links, exchanging free ads, providing services for others, sharing booth space and demo time at conventions" would all be things that I would like to do, but not something that I would actively push. Rather, I would put the vast majority of my marketing time and effort on my project alone. If I'm misusing or misunderstanding the term "mutualism", please feel free to correct me.

Many thanks!

Hi SC,

With apologies to Chris for shouldering in and addressing the question you asked him ...

It depends on the physical nature of the product.

1. If you're talking about an electronic file, then ignoring the three-tier (stores, etc) is both necessary and functional. It's all you, your website, your on-line interactions, service sites (RPGhost, RPGmall, whatever), and customers paying you for download access. It works great.

2. If you're talking about a hard-copy product, let's split it into two categories.

a) Relatively low-budget printing, whether print-on-demand, "Kinko's Special," or perhaps a short-run but spiffy small book. If your product looks like this, then follow the strategy outlined as #1 above, and I also suggest a fairly solid commitment to the mutualist strategy. This approach works wonderfully in terms of customers.

Its downside is that you're responsible for fulfilment, which is to say, sending the game to each and every person who orders. That's fun ... for the first month. After that it's a grinding chore, and the more succcessful your sales, the more onerous the fulfilment gets.

(People to talk to about the details: Ralph Mazza, Matt Snyder, Matt Gwinn, and Vincent Baker.)

b) Plain old familiar book-printing, just like most of the games you see at the stores. Getting one of these into print takes a lot of financial outlay - several thousand dollars at the very least, and perhaps over $10,000 if you're careless or unlucky. Frankly, it's a real risk - you stand to lose your total investment and to sit on a basement full of RPG books that you can't pay people to take away.

With that kind of investment at stake, even if you haven't printed on credit, a publisher probably does need to use the three-tier in some way, to get the games across the stores, across the land. When your costs are in the thousands, your profits need to be in that range as well, and that means bulk.

That "in some way" is a big deal - you cannot afford simply to get the game out there and then sit about, feeling entitled to profits. Personally, I consider the three-tier to be promotional and supplemental for most of my business, but crucial during the first few months after releasing a new book (and also crucial in the long term for select retailers). Everyone arrives at some personal approach to it, of which mine is only one example. Arriving at one's own approach includes lots of decisions about promotion, conventions, printers, format, and much more.

Anyway, that's my very brief call, without a whole bucket of qualifiers, examples, or other stuff. Chris, what do you think?

Best,
Ron

Space Cowboy wrote:
Chris,
Thanks for all the good points. If you don't mind, I'd like to ask you a question- How important is it to use the three tier (manufacturer-distributor-retailer) system? Right now, I'd like to retail my game directly to the consumer, without going through the three tier system. Is this possible, or suicide? I know that my sales would very likely be MUCH lower, but I would avoid all the discounts to the middlemen, and I wouldn't have to deal with all the hassle of going to GAMA (which, as you note, is for distributors and not consumers) and such.

Ron Edwards wrote: Hi SC,

...
2. If you're talking about a hard-copy product, let's split it into two categories.

a) Relatively low-budget printing, whether print-on-demand, "Kinko's Special," or perhaps a short-run but spiffy small book. If your product looks like this, then follow the strategy outlined as #1 above, and I also suggest a fairly solid commitment to the mutualist strategy. This approach works wonderfully in terms of customers.

Its downside is that you're responsible for fulfilment, which is to say, sending the game to each and every person who orders. That's fun ... for the first month. After that it's a grinding chore, and the more succcessful your sales, the more onerous the fulfilment gets.

(People to talk to about the details: Ralph Mazza, Matt Snyder, Matt Gwinn, and Vincent Baker.)

b) Plain old familiar book-printing, just like most of the games you see at the stores. Getting one of these into print takes a lot of financial outlay - several thousand dollars at the very least, and perhaps over $10,000 if you're careless or unlucky. Frankly, it's a real risk - you stand to lose your total investment and to sit on a basement full of RPG books that you can't pay people to take away.

With that kind of investment at stake, even if you haven't printed on credit, a publisher probably does need to use the three-tier in some way, to get the games across the stores, across the land. When your costs are in the thousands, your profits need to be in that range as well, and that means bulk.

That "in some way" is a big deal - you cannot afford simply to get the game out there and then sit about, feeling entitled to profits. Personally, I consider the three-tier to be promotional and supplemental for most of my business, but crucial during the first few months after releasing a new book (and also crucial in the long term for select retailers). Everyone arrives at some personal approach to it, of which mine is only one example. Arriving at one's own approach includes lots of decisions about promotion, conventions, printers, format, and much more.

Anyway, that's my very brief call, without a whole bucket of qualifiers, examples, or other stuff. Chris, what do you think?

Best,
Ron

Pramas wrote:
I agree with Ron's points. I especially want to reinforce the idea that you shouldn't do a traditional print job if you plan to sell direct. It only makes financial sense if you are going to print 500-1000 and if you print in those numbers and only sell direct, you'll lose money. Either a PDF or Print On Demand scheme will suit you better.

If you are serious about cutting out the middle man, you might also take stock of how many conventions are within driving distance of you. If you live in an area with lots of small and medium-sized cons, you could try taking the game to the customer that way. Tables at small shows are cheap and many are only one day anyway. If you can show up with a friend or two and run lots of demos, you might get a grassroots campaign going. This presumes you have some kind of print capacity, probably POD.

I'll try my hand at answering some of your questions from my experience...

Storage space for books adds up pretty quickly. 30 books take up a box about 12x12x18 (about 1.5 cubic feet). 1000 books is about 500 cubic feet - a little more than a 10x5 room at most storage places, at a rate of about $70 a month (in Seattle, anyway). You'll need a dry and preferably cool place to store them.

1000 units is a lot to sell if you plan on doing it directly. It took me a little over a year to sell 100 units of my pre-release, and that's with attendance at GenCon and Origins (which cost me more than I made by selling them, but were valuable for the exposure, I think). POD suddenly seems a lot cheaper if you think of it that way. Storage for 1000 books costs about $800 a year, and if it takes 10 years to sell them all, you're looking at $2 a book (your figure) for printing and $8 a book for storage.

The best quote I've seen for printing at 1000 units would put your per-unit cost at about $4.50, however and $6-8 is more common. I'm not sure where you heard $2, but if it's an actual quote, I'd like to know who. Make sure you factor in shipping costs - they can be a significant part of the printing price. Your $2 number may be for overseas printing... in which case you'll pay a lot more for shipping and see much longer turnaround times, plus import hassles.

Can you sell more than 100 units a year? Maybe, but probably not. It partly depends on where you live, who you know and how much time you put into sales. Don't make the mistake of thinking that "interest" equals sales, however. Of all the people who tell me they want to buy the book, only a third actually do ("my wife has the wallet" is a very popular one at conventions). Others want to buy the game, but can't convince their friends to buy it (since they need someone to play it with).

It depends on the person how much of a pain fulfillment is, but expect to spend at least a few whole days doing nothing else. If you also do the writing, art, etc. it may well be a significant drain on your time. I live less than a block away from my store room, the post office and the UPS place so I can get around quickly - but if you have to spend half an hour driving to ship every order, the time adds up that much faster.

jdagna wrote: I'll try my hand at answering some of your questions from my experience...

Storage space for books adds up pretty quickly. 30 books take up a box about 12x12x18 (about 1.5 cubic feet). 1000 books is about 500 cubic feet - a little more than a 10x5 room at most storage places, at a rate of about $70 a month (in Seattle, anyway). You'll need a dry and preferably cool place to store them.

1000 units is a lot to sell if you plan on doing it directly. It took me a little over a year to sell 100 units of my pre-release, and that's with attendance at GenCon and Origins (which cost me more than I made by selling them, but were valuable for the exposure, I think). POD suddenly seems a lot cheaper if you think of it that way. Storage for 1000 books costs about $800 a year, and if it takes 10 years to sell them all, you're looking at $2 a book (your figure) for printing and $8 a book for storage.

The best quote I've seen for printing at 1000 units would put your per-unit cost at about $4.50, however and $6-8 is more common. I'm not sure where you heard $2, but if it's an actual quote, I'd like to know who. Make sure you factor in shipping costs - they can be a significant part of the printing price. Your $2 number may be for overseas printing... in which case you'll pay a lot more for shipping and see much longer turnaround times, plus import hassles.

Can you sell more than 100 units a year? Maybe, but probably not. It partly depends on where you live, who you know and how much time you put into sales. Don't make the mistake of thinking that "interest" equals sales, however. Of all the people who tell me they want to buy the book, only a third actually do ("my wife has the wallet" is a very popular one at conventions). Others want to buy the game, but can't convince their friends to buy it (since they need someone to play it with).

It depends on the person how much of a pain fulfillment is, but expect to spend at least a few whole days doing nothing else. If you also do the writing, art, etc. it may well be a significant drain on your time. I live less than a block away from my store room, the post office and the UPS place so I can get around quickly - but if you have to spend half an hour driving to ship every order, the time adds up that much faster.

Space Cowboy wrote: How important is it to use the three tier (manufacturer-distributor-retailer) system? Right now, I'd like to retail my game directly to the consumer, without going through the three tier system. Is this possible, or suicide? I know that my sales would very likely be MUCH lower, but I would avoid all the discounts to the middlemen, and I wouldn't have to deal with all the hassle of going to GAMA (which, as you note, is for distributors and not consumers) and such.

Glad that I was able to help. I think it's very easy to overestimate sales or ease of entry into the game market at the scale that would provide a real income for you.

Space Cowboy wrote: If you would be so kind to answer, some questions that I have for you are:

If I "need a dry and preferably cool place to store" the printed copies, will a bedroom or garage suffice? What if I wrap them in garbage bags or something?

If you don't mind my asking, if you were moving about 100 units a year, what did you do to promote your RPG, other than attending GenCon and Origins? How much time did you put into marketing? Did you have a day job at the same time?

Space Cowboy wrote:

Hmm.. if you would be so kind as to ponder them, two questions that I have for you are:

Why is it very unlikely for an indie RPG to reach 1000 units sold?

What sorts of things do you think work well for a grassroots marketing approach for RPGs? For example, that’s a great idea on how to use small to mid-sized conventions. There are, indeed, a bunch of such conventions that are held within fairly easy driving distance of me.

Of course, our demos were four hours long and included handholding everyone through character creation (since that was one of the coolest features of the game), so the number of demos we could run was somewhat limited.

rafael wrote:

Space Cowboy wrote: How important is it to use the three tier (manufacturer-distributor-retailer) system? Right now, I'd like to retail my game directly to the consumer, without going through the three tier system. Is this possible, or suicide? I know that my sales would very likely be MUCH lower, but I would avoid all the discounts to the middlemen, and I wouldn't have to deal with all the hassle of going to GAMA (which, as you note, is for distributors and not consumers) and such.

Hey, man.

Yo, Ron and Chris, if it's okay, I'd like to toss my two cents in.

See, Space Cowboy, this is exactly what I did with my game. It's possible, and it's not necessarily suicide. Your sales will be lower, but you won't have to deal with all the hassles of distribution.

Now, if you're fulfilling orders yourself, it can be a hassle. For the first few weeks, I found myself running to the post office every other day. Since then, sales have slowed somewhat, and I now go on the weekends (if at all).

For what it's worth: I broke even. The game cost about ten bucks per book to print up. It looks pretty sweet, or so I'm told. People have reacted with surprise when told that I did the whole thing myself. So you can produce something that looks just like what you seen on the shelf at the game store (more or less). Now, ten bucks per book is kind of steep, so I only printed a hundred copies. I figured it was money I could afford to gamble. I also paid for art. I won't discuss the exact figures, since that's for the artists to divulge, but I paid hundreds. There were several artists. It was worth it, I think.

Now, I haven't sold every copy. I still have a few. They're in boxes, in the closet, and they really don't take up much room. If you print up thousands of copies, you'll have to find storage space. If you print up thousands, you want distribution, probably. You may not be able to move thousands by yourself.

You can try. I certainly won't tell you it's impossible. But you'll probably wind up moving about what that other guy said, 100 copies per year. I figure by the end of its first year (this winter), the game will be sold out, all hundred copies. Taking into account printing costs, art, and web hosting, I'll be ahead a few hundred bucks, part of which I'll disseminate among the artists and the rest I'll probably invest in a sequel to the game (or a new version or something).

So that's how I did it. I should note that I actually produced the book in two print runs, so it wasn't even like a thousand bucks all at once. Five hundred, then five hundred more.

I should also point out that I've convinced three local retailers to stock my book, and I've sold a few copies that way. They take a cut, sure, but each sale is still profitable for me, and I reach an audience that I might not have reached via the Internet (which is my primary advertising tool). And I've been invited as a guest to a local con, so I'm trying to use that to get the word out to the people.

Anyhow, hope this helps in some way. Good luck with it.

-- Rafael

Hey Justin,

Thanks for again replying!

Pramas wrote:

Space Cowboy wrote:

Hmm.. if you would be so kind as to ponder them, two questions that I have for you are:

Why is it very unlikely for an indie RPG to reach 1000 units sold?

Basically, there's too much competition for the mindshare of the average gamer. There are a ton of RPG products released every month, more than anyone can actually use. Many of those products come from established games and companies. Convincing the average player to try something new (with a system that's not familiar, that's published by a company they've never heard of) is a tough proposition.

The classic publisher mistake is to think, "Well, my game is so brilliantly designed and so clearly better than D&D/Vampire/Rifts that we'll sell the crap out it!" Quality though, is only one part of the equation. Familiarity with a system is important, having a group to play with is important, having a reasonable expectation that your new favorite game will be supported is important.

The question you have to answer is, what does my game offer that isn't available elsewhere? Followed by, how can I let people know that?

Mike Holmes wrote:

Of course, our demos were four hours long and included handholding everyone through character creation (since that was one of the coolest features of the game), so the number of demos we could run was somewhat limited.

But as Chris says, even those few sales are critical. Because players of your game are your ambassadors to other players. Nobody buys advertising about how great a game is: everyone says the same things. But hear from a trusted friend how great a game is, or better yet play it with him, and you'll buy, right?

To reiterate Chris's point, if people aren't playing, people won't buy. Get the game in the hands of people who will play by whatever method you can, and that generates consistent sales. At least the sort that we count on around here.

Mike

Space Cowboy wrote: What do you mean when you say "fulfillment"? People have been throwing around the term "fulfillment", and it sounds like a term of art with a specific definition. I assume that it means that once you receive an order, you process the paperwork, and mail out a copy of your game. That doesn't sound too bad to me. Am I missing something?

Space Cowboy wrote: Also, what, by way of marketing and support, did you do for your game?

Space Cowboy wrote: Finally, did you use Print on Demand for your books? If so, did you encounter any problems? What was the turnaround time? (e.g., how long, after you approved the final proofs (I think that's what they are called) did you receive the printed products?)