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Jimbozig posted:Thanks, Mikan, for sharing your experience. I've got a small project I was thinking of releasing PWYW. Now I think I'll either charge normally or put it out totally free depending on how much work I put in. I'm only a few hours in so far. I've got a project I'm planning on putting up on DTRPG pretty soon, and was planning on trying out PWYW with it. Now I'm probably going to just put it up there for 4 or 5 dollars and also circulate a free pdf, so that people browsing on DTRPG see the one that costs money, I don't get spammed by the people who got it for free, and people who got it for free have an easy route to take to pay for it if they want to.
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Sep 17, 2013 08:09
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I don't think the PWYW model is flawed necessarily; Ewen posted a good example of it working (quoted since it's on the previous page)Ewen Cluney posted:Letting people anonymously get free downloads from RPGNow/DTRPG seems to be about the worst way to do it. Ben has switched to using Gumroad.com, but for a while his setup was for people to email or PayPal him directly, and I bet a lot fewer people are willing to actually compose an email to a game designer saying they'd like to get his stuff for free. He also phrased it in terms of what each amount of money would accomplish; but it's absolutely useless on DrivethruRPG. I'd recommend something like patreon as a good supplement for folks who want to release small or free games. I've had excellent experiences there. I'm no Joe Mcdaldno pulling in $413 a project but I do OK. Mr. Maltose posted:I don't know if the industry is big enough to support the kind of word of mouth to recoup costs with games, even games as cool as your Council games. This makes me super happy to hear. I never hear anything about the Council games and they're not getting much attention, so I'm glad someone else appreciates them. I was afraid I was just writing them for myself at this point.
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Sep 17, 2013 08:16
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The Council games have a way greater chance of being played around here than any of the cool RPGs I have, because "Take five minutes to see who's King Wizard Bastard" is appealing to a larger slice of people. They're games you break out for a group of people, not games you get a group together for.
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Sep 17, 2013 08:25
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demota posted:I think Malifaux is a wargame that handles the strong female characters pretty well. They had some awful models early on, but they seem to be taking a definite change in direction with second edition. I'm... not entirely sure I agree. The models I saw for 2E were the Victorias (of the Hired Swords) didn't really impress me, compared to the 1E ones. To be fair, maybe it's because I only saw the 3D render, but they seemed to give them a standard pouty face. I dunno how it looks like on an actual miniature.
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Sep 17, 2013 15:32
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My PWYW experience is very much the same. In the month that the item in question was PWYW, earnings were half what they had been in previous months. No additional reviews or buzz were generated about the item. Half of the customers chose to pay $0. None came back to pay more later. I did have one person pay triple the original asking price, which was nice, but that didn't come close to making up for it. I think I'll stick to throwing around free links and coupons rather than using DTRPG's method of PWYW.
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Sep 17, 2013 15:34
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My experience with Pay What You Want is not TG, but it is relevant: I think the more "personal" the interaction surrounding the product, the more likely you are to get something at or above market value. I have done other kinds of work PWYW, very personal (teaching, tutoring) and been better-compensated than the going rate. When you can get something for free without human contact, I think it just feels like free stuff, even if you resurrect the [blink] tag for "PWYW" in 48-point font.
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Sep 17, 2013 15:38
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I don't pick up PWYW stuff because I know what will happen. I'll intend to pay for it when I've read it, I'll put it on the To Read stack, and I'll forget it was PWYW or even to read it for a good six months until it comes up again.
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Sep 17, 2013 15:59
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From what I've read with video games (specifically articles about the humble bundle), the pay what you want model is less of a way to release a product and more of a way to promote it after it's died down. When you initially release a product, charge what it's worth. Then, after your initial sales, put it on sale for a lower amount to promote more sales. Finally, after going through the normal price/sale cycle for a bit, set it to PWYW to squeeze the last bit of money out of it. This maximizes your profit, exposure, and perceived quality of your product.
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Sep 17, 2013 16:04
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Jon Joe posted:From what I've read with video games (specifically articles about the humble bundle), the pay what you want model is less of a way to release a product and more of a way to promote it after it's died down. When you initially release a product, charge what it's worth. Then, after your initial sales, put it on sale for a lower amount to promote more sales. Finally, after going through the normal price/sale cycle for a bit, set it to PWYW to squeeze the last bit of money out of it. This maximizes your profit, exposure, and perceived quality of your product. Even in videogames though it helps if you have some sort of mechanic providing an incentive to pay more, even if that's just showing the average paid and giving a bonus for paying over it.
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Sep 17, 2013 16:18
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I'm always surprised at the number of ladies playing Warmachine/Hordes, given that tabletop miniatures wargames have always been such a boy's club and the game makes such a deal about being manly man men playing like you have a pair. The female models are typically absurd, but women occupy important, powerful, and significant roles both in the setting and in the tabletop game. Is that all it takes to make the hobby more inclusive?
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Sep 17, 2013 16:19
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moths posted:I'm always surprised at the number of ladies playing Warmachine/Hordes, given that tabletop miniatures wargames have always been such a boy's club and the game makes such a deal about being manly man men playing like you have a pair. That, and Privateer Press has gotten progressively better at this over time. It kind of puts the lie to the idea that women don't want to play wargames to begin with. If it's a man's hobby, it's because the men made it so.
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Sep 17, 2013 16:22
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This might be silly, but I think the steampunk genre has had more appeal to women just generally, compared to grimdark future war and tolkien-derived fantasy war. Something to do with the victorian costuming/pageantry/etc? \/\/Oh, OK. Well, I dunno then. Maybe it's just that it's a new system, so it's not a matter of women facing a pre-established entrenched grognardy male playerbase they'd have to break in to in order to get playing. Or maybe I just don't know. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 16:42 on Sep 17, 2013 |
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Sep 17, 2013 16:26
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That may be true for something like Malifaux (it's not big around here so I have no idea) but Warmachine's aesthetics are mostly only steampubk on paper. In practice, the models are just a combination of generic fantasy and sci-fi. Yeah some robots have smoke stacks, but there are no tiny hats and big dresses - everybody is dressed like they mean business. Sometimes sexy business with high heels and flintlocks, but otherwise it's not terribly Victorian.
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Sep 17, 2013 16:41
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Kerzoro posted:I'm... not entirely sure I agree. The models I saw for 2E were the Victorias (of the Hired Swords) didn't really impress me, compared to the 1E ones. To be fair, maybe it's because I only saw the 3D render, but they seemed to give them a standard pouty face. I dunno how it looks like on an actual miniature. I'll admit it's not perfect, and there are still a lot of problematic models. Black Viktoria especially. I do feel, though, that the models as a whole have gotten less exploitative since they moved to plastics, and the fact that they keep a roughly 50/50 split for masters is encouraging. It's not there yet, but it's head and shoulders above any other wargame I can think of.
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Sep 17, 2013 16:47
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Flavivirus posted:Even in videogames though it helps if you have some sort of mechanic providing an incentive to pay more, even if that's just showing the average paid and giving a bonus for paying over it. I know at least one of the videogame PWYW bundles had to put a floor in because people were buying in at a penny and actually costing the bundle guys money in transaction fees. I've actually bought into one or two of those for cheap soundtracks to games I already had. There was a... what was it? Bundle of Holding or something recently, with a bunch of Fate sourcebooks in. They took the 'above the average gets something extra' approach, but pre-seeded the average calculation with several hundred (a thousand?) purchases at twelve bucks a shot. Dunno how that went over. I thought what they had on offer was somewhere between generic and derivative, and then I remembered that I don't care much for Fate to begin with.
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Sep 17, 2013 19:35
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It's 1000 and Bundle of Holding always does that. The initial average is between $10 and $15 depending on the bundle. I haven't heard any complaints yet, but I haven't gone looking for them either. The Fate one is still going and added Bulldogs and Diaspora since launching. They also support very worthy causes, like eradicating sex slavery.
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Sep 17, 2013 19:46
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Bieeardo posted:I know at least one of the videogame PWYW bundles had to put a floor in because people were buying in at a penny and actually costing the bundle guys money in transaction fees. I've actually bought into one or two of those for cheap soundtracks to games I already had.
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Sep 17, 2013 20:52
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MadScientistWorking posted:Did RPGDriveThru actually put a floor in? I remember Fate being the major impetuous for PWYW on that site and apparently Fred Hicks actually said he was saying that he was seeing penny transactions which would cost more money to process. There is no option to set a minimum on DTRPG. They do charge an extra fee for low-price transactions (under 50 cents iirc), but I think they keep that.
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Sep 17, 2013 21:01
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Bieeardo posted:I know at least one of the videogame PWYW bundles had to put a floor in because people were buying in at a penny and actually costing the bundle guys money in transaction fees. I've actually bought into one or two of those for cheap soundtracks to games I already had. Humble Bundle had to put a dollar floor in for Steam keys, mainly at the time because people were using it to exploit a Steam promotional contest where they'd create a Steam account, drop a cent for the bundle, achieve some tickets to enter the contest, and repeat. It's been that way ever since, though that kind of promotional contest has never been repeated.
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Sep 17, 2013 21:39
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General Ironicus posted:It's 1000 and Bundle of Holding always does that. The initial average is between $10 and $15 depending on the bundle. I haven't heard any complaints yet, but I haven't gone looking for them either. The Fate one is still going and added Bulldogs and Diaspora since launching. They also support very worthy causes, like eradicating sex slavery. Ah, cool. Can't really blame them, especially since they probably don't have the same sell-through that the video game bundles have. (Just bought in. Kwyndig pointed out Bulldogs, which looks awesome, and Diaspora was icing on that. Didn't beat the average though... the locked ones really didn't appeal. And I'm poor.) Alien Rope Burn posted:Humble Bundle had to put a dollar floor in for Steam keys, mainly at the time because people were using it to exploit a Steam promotional contest where they'd create a Steam account, drop a cent for the bundle, achieve some tickets to enter the contest, and repeat. It's been that way ever since, though that kind of promotional contest has never been repeated. That's it. I couldn't remember the specifics, but I remember it being a lovely situation when it was unfolding. I can't argue with the Bundle of Holding asking for at least a few bucks; even at their minimum, it's still an incredible deal.
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Sep 17, 2013 22:05
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Monte Cook announced what is probably the worst license terms I've seen in a long time. Pay Monte Cook $50 and you too can make a Numenera product, but you can't crowdfund it or make more than $2000 in sales.
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Oct 8, 2013 18:59
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So basically they made a license that would seemingly only be used for homebrews, which nobody would ever actually buy/use?
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Oct 8, 2013 19:05
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MisterShine posted:So basically they made a license that would seemingly only be used for homebrews, which nobody would ever actually buy/use? Fun fact: if you even so much as make house rules for his lovely system which recycles the 3.5 Wizard spell list nearly verbatim, he could demand you fork over $50 or C&D you, because the "license" doesn't define what counts as publishing content for his game. This is in direct contradiction of his "fan use policy." Monte Cook: Pay Me For The Privilege Of Making Homebrew Content For My Game
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Oct 8, 2013 19:09
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My favorite part is where if you have an unexpected success, all of a sudden the license doesn't apply to you anymore and you have to renegotiate with the Numenera folks. What happens during the negotiations? Do you have to take your product down? Do you owe them even more money, which they conveniently don't detail in the license? It's amazing.
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Oct 8, 2013 19:13
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This is the first I've heard of Numenara. Why would you want to make a licensed hack for something that's already a hack of D&D and Anarchy Online?
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Oct 8, 2013 19:24
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Mikan posted:My favorite part is where if you have an unexpected success, all of a sudden the license doesn't apply to you anymore and you have to renegotiate with the Numenera folks. What happens during the negotiations? Do you have to take your product down? Do you owe them even more money, which they conveniently don't detail in the license? It's amazing. The fact that it's $2000 ever is particularly bizarre. If it was like $2000 per year or something, that would be lovely but would make some degree of sense. And I guess it doesn't cover production costs, so if you want to maximize profits, better only sell ebooks, because it seems like selling physical books means your production costs effectively count towards that $2000 limit? I want to formally apologize to the Pathfinder Compatibility License. In light of this, all is forgiven. 
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Oct 8, 2013 19:40
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The Numenera folks reached out to me since I made fun of it on twitter, so if I get any useful clarifications I'll pass them on. edit: apparently you can make free content without paying them but you can't put it on DrivethruRPG to host it, but you can if you give them $50.
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Oct 8, 2013 19:46
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It's kind of a shame, in my opinion as wrong as it may be, that this hobby has become so monetized. Thanks to people making less and working more they have hardly any free time, so the few things they can do they feel they need to supplement their income with it. What was once a few magic items, a quickly done class, or some neat random table now people want $5 for amateur stuff that I think really detracts from the core shared creativity of the hobby. People needing to make money off online casting for league of legends, YouTube ad share, etc are all in the same boat. It just seems so lovely. Now, I feel this is different for a hobby as opposed to a legitimate side business or project. A 15 page short story on the kindle market shouldn't even be 99 cents, but the person who out time and effort into a big work of literature should absolutely charge money on that avenue. In the same way a kickstarter with new mechanics, setting, and art should definitely be a thing, but the guy selling his lovely non professional playbooks on DTRPG shouldn't even be close to a reality, yet it is. I guess the lovely economy and the social demands have turned people into thinking that no matter how amateur and insignificant their poo poo is they still deserve to get paid for it. Which is wrong.
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Oct 8, 2013 19:53
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That "this is a hobby and you should do it for the love of the game" bullshit is toxic and awful. Folks deserve to get paid for their work, and if people feel it's worth shelling out money then awesome.
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Oct 8, 2013 19:59
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Mikan posted:That "this is a hobby and you should do it for the love of the game" bullshit is toxic and awful. Folks deserve to get paid for their work, and if people feel it's worth shelling out money then awesome. Agreed. My problem is that thanks to asshats who would happily scrape full previews, it can be really hard to see if what's being offered is what you're looking for. Only the passionate seem to bother reviewing, so that doesn't help matters much either. On the other hand, putting it up on your website with a donation button is going to pull in half a buck a month at best.
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Oct 8, 2013 20:16
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Mikan posted:That "this is a hobby and you should do it for the love of the game" bullshit is toxic and awful. Folks deserve to get paid for their work, and if people feel it's worth shelling out money then awesome. Well, there's a difference between "Here's a 50 page setting guide" and "here's a front-and-back character sheet I slapped together in Word '98"
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Oct 8, 2013 20:18
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Mikan posted:That "this is a hobby and you should do it for the love of the game" bullshit is toxic and awful. Folks deserve to get paid for their work, and if people feel it's worth shelling out money then awesome. Yes, this. If people elsewhere are allowed to get a bit of cash for doing and enhancing what they love, then so can I. Artists and writers shouldn't be exempted from the "do well off what you love" train.
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Oct 8, 2013 20:21
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jivjov posted:Well, there's a difference between "Here's a 50 page setting guide" and "here's a front-and-back character sheet I slapped together in Word '98" This is where that "if people feel it's worth shelling out money" bit comes in.
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Oct 8, 2013 20:24
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jivjov posted:Well, there's a difference between "Here's a 50 page setting guide" and "here's a front-and-back character sheet I slapped together in Word '98" Then don't buy it. That still has nothing to do with this nonsense about the monetization of the hobby. Bieeardo posted:Only the passionate seem to bother reviewing, so that doesn't help matters much either. This is a big issue. It's difficult to get products out there as a publisher or find products as a consumer for any number of reasons.
The only real avenue you have if you're not White Wolf or WotC is DrivethruRPG and relentless self-promotion, which sucks for both publisher and customer.
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Oct 8, 2013 20:28
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Scores of student films, music, and others have shaped the world we are in today by being free. The big reason I loved this hobby and got into it is because of all the awesome ideas and creations people gladly put out online and shared. If you were a kid today wanting to get into it you'd be hosed and told to just wait outside the paywall because ""people DESERVE to be paid for ANYTHING they do". That's not eve a realistic expectation for adults.
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Oct 8, 2013 20:48
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For small amateur stuff (like my aforementioned "here's a character sheet you can fill in"), I think the best way to handle it is PWYW. Either a formalized Pay What You Want payment option or just a personal blog with a "Like my stuff? Here's my donate link" thing.
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Oct 8, 2013 20:51
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if you get paid for it it's not amateur by definition, dude
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Oct 8, 2013 20:53
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That's part of the problem, is people putting in subpar amateur effort think they are OWED money for their efforts.jivjov posted:For small amateur stuff (like my aforementioned "here's a character sheet you can fill in"), I think the best way to handle it is PWYW. Either a formalized Pay What You Want payment option or just a personal blog with a "Like my stuff? Here's my donate link" thing. It's been said before and I will attest as a writer and with a friend as a musician that PWYW for any artistic endeavor is throwing money away if that's what you're after, so it could be considered a non-option. If it's really that amateur then it should be used to either boost your image or preview what you hope could be professional.
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Oct 8, 2013 20:53
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Fenarisk posted:Scores of student films, music, and others have shaped the world we are in today by being free. And people still do that. Hell, most of the small products people release for f.e. Dungeon World are for free, as well as for money. Payments are already at the levels of a tip jar, and encourage more creativity and more things being released, often for free. Entire game systems are for free now, and you choose to complain about what amounts to tipping a waiter. e: Oh and I didn't even notice the student film thing. Did you know people get subsidies - i.e. money - for making those a lot of the time? Did you know that they are often funded, even crowdfunded? That good ones even get sold for actual money? Because as it turns out said films cost both money and time in expressing their creativity. And as for monetizing music, that's something artists are doing right now directly on their own such as by selling on their own sites. It also costs money to play songs on the radio. These are things that are quite monetized. Rulebook Heavily fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Oct 8, 2013 |
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Oct 8, 2013 20:54
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Fenarisk posted:Scores of student films, music, and others have shaped the world we are in today by being free. More free RPG stuff is available than ever, this is some dumb bullshit
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Oct 8, 2013 20:55
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