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Over on this thread in the Universalis forum, Chris Engle, Ralph, and Mike have been discussing the challenges of selling "simple games". Now, this is of personal interest to me, 'cause I like simple games, and frankly, I'm working on a "simple" game of my own. Does anyone have some brainstorms on approaching the marketing/selling of these types of games and continuing to generate interest for them after they've been out for some time?

An observation:
Chris' Matrix Game and Universalis have in no way caused me to buy less gaming material. In fact, they've often inspired the opposite reaction, as I grab up other companies' source books and ignore their mechanics in favor of something like Uni, MG, or Risus. However, this doesn't seem to benefit the original creators of the corerules.

Outside of getting involved with the dreaded supplement treadmill, what other ways could attention be generated? Or, am I looking at that wrong? Is the supplement treadmill GOOD, but the financial commitment is the killer?

Thoughts?
Robert

Price -- sell 'em cheap.

I'm sure most potential customers struggle with the amount of bang-for-the-buck that short, simple games will give them. A low price tag makes it easier to justify buying one of these games, because, if the purchaser ends up disliking it, they haven't lost much.

As an example, I love Universalis. Love it. Best thing since sliced bread. I almost didn't buy it, though. Why? Because I had a hard time justifying a $15 price tag on an 86-page book. Sure, $15 bucks is less than a trip to the movies. But it wasn't the amount that bothered me -- it was the amount in relation to the size of the text. I looked at that skinny book, then thought about a thousand page novel and wondered how Universalis could cost more. In the end, I did break down and buy it, and I'm glad I did. Do I think Universalis is worth $15? Sure, probably even more, based on how much fun it can give you. Do I think the Universalis book is worth $15? Errr....no, not really. It's tough to convey the idea that you're paying more for the ideas and the fun than for the physical item. At least that's my take.

Even recently, I hesitated at buying Dogs in the Vineyard. $22 for a skinny little book? C'mon, right? It shouldn't cost that much. But I know that the $22 I spend on Dogs will bring me more fun than a couple of hundred spent on various D&D books.

So the purpose is to get continued cash flow to the game designer, right?  Seems to me that you'd need to either

[*]Continually produce things and sell them, i.e. supplements,
[*]Make customers pay for continued use of a product, or
[*]Get people to just donate money regularly, maybe through some kind of campaign.[/list:u]

Since #1 seems antithetical to the idea of small games, at least a lot of the time, and #3 is not very assured, you're left with #2.  Now I don't think anyone will pay a table-top game subscription per se, as they would with a computer game.  But maybe some ancilliary service could be provided for a yearly fee; maybe a "Community Membership," that would allow participation in discussion forum and other online tools, like a player finder or something, and articles about the game.  That gets a little close to "supplements" but can really be more about discussing and using the game as is then adding on to it much.

Ron posted a comment on Vincent's blog that speaks to this, which is well worth checking out.

That said, I think Andrew is right on.

You know why people pay $22 for Dogs, even though it's small? Because it is so strong that its word of mouth references still persuade. If that applies to your game, cool. If it's not quite as groundbreaking/popular, you need to lower the profit margin.

I think PDF sales are the best thing ever to happen to small publishers. You can make the product and sell it for a low price because you don't have printing costs for each unit. And then people might still buy the printed version if they really like the PDF.

And remember, it's not only the mechanics you put into the game. You can expand on those with all sorts of examples, inspirations, and other goodies that'll make the product more useful and more substantial at the same time.

So, I intend to put much more work into P/E to flesh it out, but yeah, I intend to offer it for a low price. Heck, it's going to be my first published game, I'll be happy if people play it! (Like I'm glad that thousands of people listen to my songs, which are free.)

The first thing I would say is actually counter to Andrew's advice.  DON'T price it cheap.  There are only two models for effectively making money in business.  High volume & Low Margin, or Low volume & High Margin (or some trade off in between).  Low volume & Low Margin is a quick trip to broke.

Small press games are going to be low volume period.  That's just a fact of the current state of the business.  You can't afford to sell a low volume product cheap and make any kind of reasonable return.

Secondly, I'm a big believer that you're paying for ideas not paper or electrons.  If someone wants cheap paper they can go to Office Max and pick up a ream of recycled copy paper.  If they want ideas they can pay for the game.  If I had it to do over again, honestly, I'd probably sell Uni at $18.00 instead of $15.

I think the biggest mistake you can make is to under price your game.  No one in the world is going to be a bigger fan of your game than you...and if it isn't worth real money to you...that sends a message.  The wrong kind of message.  There's nothing that makes me shake my head more than popping onto RPGMall or Now and seeing a red line through the price with a new deep discount sale price.  Talk about wrong message...what that says is "Hey my game sucks and isn't selling so I'm marking it down hoping someone will buy it because its cheap".  The message I want to send is "This game kicks ass.  Its worth what I'm charging for it.  Its so good I don't need to discount it to get a sale, and if you don't buy it you're missing out".

Of course, to work, that actually requires a game be kick ass.  Because, as Andrew rightly points out for DitV, word of mouth sells.  If word of mouth is "eh...waste of time...this is just GURPs lite with the serial numbers changed"...then sales are going to stutter accordingly.


So to the meat of the question, how to sell a "small" (by which I think you mean uncomplicated without tons of spat books) game?  I think the sales start with the game design itself.

1) recognize that you are not going to single handedly revolutionize gamers gaming habits.  If your game gets play out side of the smallest niche of dedicated fan boys and girls it will be with groups who are fitting it in between sessions of Exalted, or 3E, or WoD, or what have you.  No one is going to dump their ongoing 3 year old campaign in favor of your new game.  So, play to that.  Small games don't necessarily have to be geared towards being one shots but they should be geared towards being able to get in a complete play experience from character creation to satisfying conclusion in 3-5 sessions (maybe 8-10 if the group really falls in love).  Short campaigns make it a game that people can play concurrently with their "real game" on nights when not everyone is available.  In keeping with this it should take minimal prep to get started.  Not necessarily Universalis minimal, but My Life with Master and Dogs in the Vineyard minimal.  I'd say Sorcerer prep is about as hard and involved as you can get and still get regular play.  If your game requires D&D or Vampire level prep...forget it.  So short prep time, short play committment time.  That helps ensure your game gets played...and actual play generates discussion about actual play, generates sales.

2) Be unique.  Not every game has to be bleeding edge insanely radical, but it does have to be different.  Recently on RPG.net there was a review of Fireborn the "play a dragon RPG".  Almost immediately the cry went up "Why would I need that game when I can simply play GURPS: Dragons".   Fireborn is a game backed by the full faith and cash flow of Fantasy Flight.  They'll probably be able to limp along for a couple of years on the basis of distribution coverage and high production values.  For a small press publisher...that's a death knell.  If you write a game that someone's first reaction to is "I could just do that with GURPS" (or Hero, or what have you) don't bother.  The people who would enjoy playing that sort of game already own GURPS.  Put it up as a $5 PDF and use the limited proceeds you generate to buy art for your next game...but don't sink to much into this one (IMO).  Come up with a game that is absolutely unique.  My Life with Master, Dogs in the Vineyard, Polaris, Mountain Witch, Troll Babe et.al.   None of which could be done anywhere near as effectively in GURPs.  

3) Don't worry about trying to appeal to alot of gamers.  That way lies defeat.  Firstly the only way to appeal to alot of gamers is to write a game like D&D, WoD, GURPs, etc.  Then your game will be critically acclaimed by many and played and purchased by none...because those folks already have D&D, WoD, GURPs, etc and don't need a new game.  Instead realize that there are alot of gamers out there who LOVE trying new games.  Give them something new and different and they will buy it...even if its pricey on a cost per page scale, and thank you for it.  Some folks may hate Universalis but love Dogs...but there are enough people to go around.  ANY game you make, if you can honestly play it yourself and think "this is really fun"  WILL find a niche of players who will agree with you and "too-da-loo and have a nice day" to those who don't.  

4) View other indie publishers as friends and resources.  Swap ads, learn each others games, talk up each others games.  If you've made a reputation talking about how freaking cool My Life with Master is, then you come out with your own game...then all those folks who agree with you about MLwM are going to be inclined to at least take a look at your offering because you've already demonstrated you share their taste in RPGs.  Take a look at the Trollbabe Sales Spike thread in the Adept Press forum to see a working example of intra publisher synergies.  

5) Budget your business intelligently.  Understand that a good year is measured in 100s of copies not 10s of thousands.  Figure out how much revenue that's likely to get you reasonably, and buy appropriately priced art and an appropriately sized print run.   This means the sales you do get are that much more productive.  You won't need to worry about sales sales sales, and get just enjoy the sales and actual play stories you do get.

6) The rest of it is just word of mouth, grass roots, promotion.  Places like RPG.net are great for getting the word out on games.  Once you get a couple of reviews there and see a couple of actual play threads going you start to build a presence there.  I can search on "Universalis" in the RPG.net forums and pretty much every month the game's been name dropped into a couple of different threads by fans of the game.  One of the coolest moments ever was when I encountered a post recommending Universalis in a thread from someone I didn't even know...a second generation fan as it were.  For this, all of the usual recommendations about how to comport yourself in a public forum apply.


So how to sustain that?  Small games don't blaze and burn out like d20 splat books.  3 years into Universalis and my sales were higher in 2004 than in either of the prior years.  So you don't have a 4-6 month product cycle where you need to be continually pumping out schlok in order to pay the bills.  There are lots of ways you can go then.  You can add carefully crafted non splatty supplements like Sorcerer.  You could release a whole string of small unrelated games like Memento Mori.  You could collect all of the actual play suggestions and errata and put out a revised edition of the game that's a little meatier a little better playtested and potentially a little more attractive and look to increase your presence in distribution channels.  Lots of options.

Realistically what you're shooting for is to make enough profit on your game to pay for itself and pay for the expenses of your next game.  The rest is gravy.

Just a quick note on pricing:

Carefully evaluate where your game is going to compete. Twilight competes with Magic the Gathering, YuGiOh, Duel Masters etc. They're thinking nothing of dropping $4 per pack or $11 per deck at the time of sale, but the high buy-in is one of the CCG Vet's biggest gripes. Twilight is priced at $8 and gets folks on a "Well, its not too much", though I still have a number of "Its neat, but I have too much invested in X Game.". I still make a reasonable profit per deck ($1.81 to produce the deck, though art drives cost up to mid $2 range) though, and the gamers don't have to face the high sticker shock.

Just don't shoot yourself in the foot with the pricing and end up losing money. DitV may have to be that high anyway to cover costs, as well as be a kick ass game.

The Matrix Game Experience

When I started working on Matrix Games in 1988 there was NOTHING like them in gaming. Let me assure you this is not a place you want to be. The core of the rules that I still use were done by 1989. Here we are 16 years later and things are still small - but a lot of progress has been made.

I knew that Matrix Games were really fun to play and that they had the potential to be a hit - if someone was willing to do the footwork. I decided that this "holy mission" was worth doing so I joined the gaming jihad (I'd say crusade if I wasn't a Muslim).

So there you are...all alone...everyone telling you you're crazy...barking at the moon...but you know your right. What do you do?

I started off writing articles for "Wargame Development's" journal NUGGET. I explained my idea, looking for feedback. I got very little but the process of writing made me think. I realized that we live in a market place of ideas. We are selling them but it is a hard sell. What we need are routes to talk to people. In 88 that was amatuer newsletters, running games at cons, or printing a game to sell. The last avenue was not really open because printing was very expensive and if one did it they needed to know the game business to sell anyway. So I opted for the first two.

I set a three year goal. "In three years I want to tell 100 people about Matrix Games." I targeted game designers and newsletter editors. That's when I met Hal Thinglum, Frank Chadwick, Greg Novak, Guy McLimore, and Steve Jackson. I wrote 60 articles in that time for journals like Shadis (#6 - when it was an amatuer zine) the Midwest Wargamers Association Newsletter, the PW Review, Nugget, the Solo Wargamers Association Newsletter, and more. I also started my own newsletter the Experimental Game Group (when ran from 89-94).

I reached my first goal and made my next goal to write and sell a 100 copies of a game. In 1992 I published "Campaign in a Day" using a photo copier. Around this time article from EGG were filling up Nugget so Matrix Games were better known in the UK than here. A couple of UK gamers (who happened to be in the British Armies simulation gaming section) started writing article based on my 92 game for Wargames Illustrated. This UK branch of Matrix Gaming has gone off in a different direction from my work which is very cool. Matrix Games are mentioned in a few Osprey Campaign books. This was the outcome of my earlier foundation building work.

Meanwhile I ran Matrix Games at conventions all over the midwest from 1988 on. I've been at Gen Con every year since 1991. I figure I've run games for about a thousand people. I met Dave Arneson, Steve Lortz, Randy Porter, the people from Grey Ghost, the author of Fudge, and more. Still I'd not cracked the surface of the puzzle.

In 1994 I was completely burned out and took a year off from writing. In 95 I wrote a second Matrix Game book that was completely worthless - it was too long. Then I wrote "Nazi Speis over London". This game could have flown but I was afraid. I didn't want Matrix Gaming to be pidgeon holed as - That spy game. I wanted it to do more.

In 1995 I started Hamster Press. I realized I knew nothing about business so I had to learn. First we started saving money. This was real important. Whatever financing I had had to come from me. I started to learn accounting (which I now 10 years later feel comfrotable with.) I kept on going to cons and running games and met more people. Jim Dietz of Jolly Roger Games (Maul of America) let me squat at his GenCon booth for years. He introduced me to a couple of marketing reps, who I've been courting ever since.

I tried doing a commerical game in 98 using the traditional route that you've never heard of...I wonder why? It's simple really - writing is the easy part, actually selling is hard.

In 1998 I finally got on line and started building up a web community. There are now regular Matrix Games played on line. There are MG sites in English and Spanish and I show up on the first page of google searches for Matrix Games, Chris Engle, and Hamster Press. Of course I have a web page and still I've not cracked the shell.

In 1999 I started writing games. I evolved the product into the present rules. Each years I show my goods to the marketing rep who shows them to the distributors, who have yet to buy a single game. But each year my books get better.

I now operate on a business model that relies on cheap printing. Print on Demand is fine but I can do it for myself for a little less. This means I can print as I sell so I have NO money tied up in stock. It's taken years of experimenting (and it helps that my Dad was an etcher sop I grew up around art printing) but I now have my own print show and bindery. It's not as expensive as you'd think. So I know how to do perfect bound books and hit what has been mentioned above. a $15 perfect bound books doesn't seem worth it. So I'm swtiching to smyth sewn hardbacks (it costs 30 cents more in materials). Will this work? I can't say. If it doesn't then I'll keep on looking.

So what can you take away from this experience? Please don't feel discouraged! I never did anything all at once. If I hadn't been doing this I would have been doing something else. This was as worthwhile as anything else and I have seen changes.

For one, I'm no longer alone in putting forward my kind of game ideas. Though our games are different Universalis is attempting the same thing I am. There are other games as well. The idea has spread and it will continue to spread. If I am successful, then my little game will be seen as so simple and primative in twenty years that people will wonder why it was ever written "Why say that? It's obvious!"

I'm not there yet but it's coming...

Oh, did I mention that it is absolutely imperative to have an unrealistic outlook on the future? It is. It is our internal flaws and demons that defeat us. Success is inevitable - just like Gandhi said - if you work for it.

Chris Engle
Hamster Press

Well that was a long tear. Hum.

While I was trying to sell people on my SOL RPG system back in the mid-90's, there was one question I kept getting over and over again:

"Are the rules simple?"

The people I often got this question from were professional, busy people. Very few working adults have the time or energy to keep track of the encyclopedia of rules that most RPGs have become. For heaven's sakes, the GMs of one of my gaming groups has to keep an elaborate spreadsheet to keep track of all the spells for D&D! Some hardcore gamers may start drooling in anticipation of opening up a big fat gaming book, but I am sure there is an even larger number of people that are put off by the sheer amount of rules they would have to wade through.

The first step you have to make in selling/marketing ANYTHING is determing who your audience is going to be. You have to establish your position in the marketplace and in the minds of the customers. You have to find your niche.

I've played demos of Univeralis and Engle's Matrix. Both are extremely powerful game systems. Their simplicity is deceptive. Universalis is actually a formalization of the Social Contract that exists between the players. A Matrix game's mechanics consists mostly on common sense to determine the difficulty of a roll. In both cases, it is extremely easy to set up a shared reality and then build on that using exactly the same rules. Everything else is social interaction and imagination.

I would say that if I were going to build a simple RPG, I would do the following things:

1.) Not make the game "jokey." There is a place for humor in a game, but if you don't take it seriously, who will?

2.) Publish the basic rules cheaply or as a free electronic giveaway, but include the rules in the setting books, applying any necessry rules modifications to that setting.

3.) The settings should be rich and imaginative. If possible, attempt to tap into a fairly popular genre to make it more palatable.

Cheap printing.

The more I think about it the key factor in success in a game is cheap printing.

Here is why.

Say you have a $15 game.

The Distributor gets a 60% discount (at least that is what I use in my cost projections) That's $9. You have $6 left.

The marketing rep gets a 10% fee - .60 - you have 5.40 left.

The author gets maybe a 5% royalty - .30 - you have 5.10 left.

There is a postage cost. If you sell books by the box then this is fairly cheap - let's say .10 - you have $5.

The cost of the book can't be more than five dollars. POD places are at this point not profitable because that is about as much as they cost. Of course prices vary but they don't go too much below that.

Oh, but I forgot the cost of advertising and marketing. Say you spend a dollar per book - you have $4 left.

Say you get printing for $4. That means you'r making it, right? Not really. There are overhead costs to any business. Office supplies, convention expenses etc. Say you give a dollar per book for this. You have $3 left.

What about making a profit on each book? You may not care about this but if you're dealing with the distribution system they do care. If you are not for profit then they may not trust that you are in this for the long haul.  So say you play on a dollar profit per book. You have $2 left.

Not POD place will print for this. So how can the cost per unit be lowered? There lots of answers. Mine is to do my own printing. PDF publishing is another way. Doing mass printings is another. The point is that the ink has got to be cheap.

Say you have an outside printer who will do it cheap. Next come the topic of quality. If your book looks crapy it will not sell in stores so distribution won't pick it up (they are a profit driven business). More importantly for us game designers is that new players will not take it seriously. A pretty book seems more real than other games.

So I put forward the question, how do we make good quaility cheap printing?

Chris Engle
Hamster Press

Okay, that stuff sounds pretty good. I think I phrased part of the original qusetion badly, though. I guess imeant how does one continue to generate interst after an initial release. Specifically, I'm thinking of the idea of the supplement treadmill.

As I understand it, the theory is that supplements generate core book sales by showing that:
The line is healthy. If consumers see supplemental material, they might reasonably presume that other players are using the game, otherwise the publisher wouldn't take the monetary risk in releasing a supplement. Plus, nerw and shiny is "good".

The publisher has lots of good ideas, and the maker needs more publications to pass those ideas on to their fans. And new and shiny is good.

The down side seems to be that in fact supplements do cost money to publish, and sales of supplements may be lower than core books, especially in the case of "simple" games which are very viable stand alone products.

So, while all of the above advice is good in regards to initially releasing a viable product, the follow up question centers on generating continued interest.

Thanks,
Robert

If a game is really simple it probably doesn't take many pages to cover it. That was always my problem with Matrix Games. After you've played once the rules are really not needed (they'r just a few simple proceedure anyway) so the product was never a "core book".

Instead I'm tryong to make each game book stand alone. They all have the rules up front (16 cartoon pages later) followed by two different stories with three or more scenarios each to play with. In this way it is like selling a novel rather than a game. People buy lots of novels so the market exists. Also I want other people to do the book writing in the future so I need to present a repeatable format for them to follow.

I didn't mention in my first post, but I have a new long term plan. In 2002 I decided to shoot for getting 100 books into print in the next 10 years. I'll have 20 books by years end, so 80 more due in 7 years. I know I can't write  that many but if the ball gets rolling others will.

Which comes back to cheap printing. Right now there is a barrier to introducing new product - printing cost. PDF and POD do away with that but don't quite reach the mass audience. I have no disincentives to putting out new titles (save the time doing book design - which is a piece of work). POD often want an upfront fee to put the book in their system. Even a $50 fee would keep me from putting just any book on the list.

Chris Engle
Hamster Press

Chris,
I've only been in the biz a few years, I think you are overemphasizing the significance of printing costs. If printing costs are high, this needs to be passed on to the consumer. It's just the way it works.

Robert,
Ralph offers sage advice for sustainable growth of an rpg. His is not the only way to do it (I ran counter to a number of his points with Burning Wheel), but he speaks from experience and wisdom.

Having released core books, a supplement and a new edition of my core rules, I can see the seductive nature of supplement/splat treadmill. More product means more revenue. Of course it also means higher production costs, but you hope the increased revenue outweighs that. Obviously, given the predominacy of DnD and White Wolf, it does work to a degree.

But there's a hidden cost. Creating IP for all those supplements requires more work than any one company can fairly pay for. Certainly more work than one designer can output. So it's a perilous road to travel, from my stand point.

Personally, I'm following Ron's model: Core books backed by meaty supplementary material that focuses on taking alternative looks at the core.

Combine this with a solid presence at my local cons and a steady presence on the web via my forums and I think I've got a good shot at steady growth.

Hope that helps,
-L

Quote from: abzuChris,
I've only been in the biz a few years, I think you are overemphasizing the significance of printing costs. If printing costs are high, this needs to be passed on to the consumer. It's just the way it works.
-L

I've seen this done - I talk with the manager of the local store once a week - but what that does is push the price of the book above what the average consumer is willing to play. It is amazing to see how a small change in price totally changes people's behavior. I've had that "It costs too much" feedback for full color, laminated covered perfect bound books.

Strangely it seems to be the thinckness of the book that increases precieved value. Odd.

Chris Engle
Hamster Press
Who still thinks cheap printing is important...

I tend to think that the number of gamers who bitch about the price of a game is ALOT higher than the number of gamers who actually won't buy the game due to price.

The primary group of purchasers you lose due to price are the impulse, curious, collector types who aren't planning to play the game and probably won't even read it more than on a superficial level anyway.  Those folks may buy if its cheap, but its a single one time sale.  No play, no talking it up, no additional sales generated.

Those who WANT to play the game.  Who are really into it and can't wait to get it in front of their group.  They'll buy the game, and they'll happily pay a fair value for it.  PLUS they'll play it, some of their friends will buy it, they'll talk it up, others will hear about it, and those gamers become a source of additional sales growth.

If I had to pick which group I wanted buying my games it would be the latter.  So my recommendation is not to put too much weight on the price bitching of the former.

Hello,

Chris, I strongly suggest that you are working with some assumptions and standards which are obsolete, even if they were at one time relevant. These assumptions and standards are still repeated (parrotted, really) by many RPG publishers. They are, bluntly, useless in terms of actually making any money.

One of them concerns what a book should look like - how thick, how pretty, how whatever. This viewpoint should be recognized for what it always was: the basis for distributor profit. It was constructed during a time when both publishers and retailers were entirely at the mercy of distributor choices about what to purchase and what to supply. It is not surprising that only publishers who complied (often using outside funding, with no ROI worth mentioning) were then carried in stores, and only stores which complied were supplied with books.

Another obsolete assumption concerns maintaining a "line" of continuously released material, which is to say, a string of supplements to "maintain interest." This is essentially a periodical model of publication, based on retailer solicitation, just as with comics and magazines. It is grossly unsuited to role-playing games as a product. I suggest that you look more carefully into the history of GURPS to understand why it is continuously carried in many stores; the answer has nothing to do with an ongoing and constant customer demand.

I suggest that neither of these assumptions has anything to do with actually publishing and profiting from a role-playing game, once you recognize that your customer is the role-player, not the distributor. Role-players are readily available over the internet, and your website and associated ones serve as useful fanzines and promotion centers.

Therefore stores are no longer the primary method for sales. They are supplemental. "Getting it into the stores" does not mean business success, either as a starting point or end point. You do not need them, but they need you.

And even better - once you establish a profitable business based on this real, actual customer base, then the distributors and retailers come up to you and say "Oh pretty please may we carry your books." At which point their participation is gravy - more profit, not the foundational profit. Catering to their standards in the first place is a bad idea.

Chris, with respect, I strongly suggest that you learn from the successful business model represented by Adept Press, Ramshead Publishing, Driftwood Publishing (prior to its sale), Lumpley Games, Anvilwerks, Burning Wheel, and Half Meme Press. None of us utilize these obsolete standards, and all of us make some pretty good money.

And all of us are successful as well in stores as well, precisely to the extent which we want to be, and without any need to cater to the needs of the store-based distribution system. Get your head out of the "And I can release supplements forever!" model of success - it's hamster wheel which has destroyed the dreams of dozens of role-playing publishers, if not hundreds.

Best,
Ron