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Appoda posted:How much would it change if someone like Fred said "gently caress the trad game industry" and told everything that they otherwise wouldn't, names and all? Could one person make a difference by themselves? Or even a group of big names? It would sink him, but probably wouldn't change much in the industry as a whole. There's too many people out there that either don't care how the sausage is made or don't want to know. Edit: to be more precise, the only way the industry will change is if people are actually willing to pay what a supplement would really cost with people making a fair wage on the sales numbers it's likely to get. Since people aren't willing to pay that, companies will continue to cut the numbers razor thin as much as possible. Kwyndig fucked around with this message at 02:37 on Oct 25, 2016 |
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Oct 25, 2016 02:31
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Appoda posted:How much would it change if someone like Fred said "gently caress the trad game industry" and told everything that they otherwise wouldn't, names and all? Could one person make a difference by themselves? Or even a group of big names? They could get black balled from the already cagey industry that they love so much and make their bread from
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Oct 25, 2016 02:33
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JackMann posted:Basically, there are a lot of publishers who drastically underpay their artists and writers. Sometimes, they'll delay or even forego payment entirely because there are writers and artists who will want to contribute just to feel like they're a part of the industry, and to see their name in the book. For example, see Catalyst Game Labs, who decided letting one of their execs get away with massive embezzlement for home improvement was better than paying freelancers, some of whom had been writing Shadowrun for 20+ years by that point, for work that was already in and ready to go to the printers.
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Oct 25, 2016 02:37
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@forexposure_txt on twitter is a pretty horrendous look at entitlement.
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Oct 25, 2016 02:43
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Appoda posted:How much would it change if someone like Fred said "gently caress the trad game industry" and told everything that they otherwise wouldn't, names and all? Could one person make a difference by themselves? Or even a group of big names? Even if Mike Mearls suddenly became RPG Jesus and upturned the usurers' tables, most of the hobby (customers as well as a sizable amount of the "industry") would not even notice. Whoever did this would also be torn asunder by gale-force "no u" and "well, you're no angel yourself", thanks to either good ol' conservatism, or apathy towards the problem and resentment over all the ~drama~ being stirred up (aka a different brand of "good ol' conservatism"). Plus, as intimated, the hobby's customer base isn't actually willing to pay reasonable prices for what they buy in the first place.
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Oct 25, 2016 04:26
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Appoda posted:How much would it change if someone like Fred said "gently caress the trad game industry" and told everything that they otherwise wouldn't, names and all? Could one person make a difference by themselves? Or even a group of big names? The problems are driven by factors that aren't going to go away. Most RPG design is by necessity done by freelancers paid for individual contributions, with the exception of some companies so few in number you can count them on the fingers of one hand, which make their money from board/card games and do RPGs as something of a vanity/IP thing. Most RPG companies are run out of someone's house. Not exactly an environment where people treat things as a purely business relationship, so this kind of low-level exploitation is justified by "We're friends/partners", etc. Then there's the sheer lack of money, leaving aside embezzlement. Say you run a kickstarter and end up with a bunch of stretch goals where the overhead eats into the budget for paying people. Or you do a print run and it doesn't sell. Or your day job eats away at the time you need to complete a project. Or you end up having an emergency situation that eats your savings. So, basically, the RPG industry is filled with exploitation and fraud because of its inherent limitations. RPGs are durable goods that have multiple users- a five-person group using a $50 print book is only paying $10 per person, and if they're using a $15 PDF, that's $3 per person. There's serious diminishing returns for each additional product in the line. The people who play RPGs tend to be people without much disposable income, both because we're in a long-running depression and because most people end up losing their RPG time to career, family, etc. as they start making money. Alternate models for monetizing RPGs are 1) not always appropriate for a given RPG, 2) out of the reach of most designers/companies and 3) are probably only workable for a few RPGs anyways. So we end up in a situation where most people run an RPG company as a hobby, and many times can't act without engaging in shady behavior, and in general may not recognize their behavior as shady. In theory you could have a system where companies like WotC, FFG, Steve Jackson, etc. acted primarily as publishers, but you'd probably not see much difference in any case, because there's not necessarily going to be a much bigger market for a game from this model. So, what if we increased the number of people who played RPGs? But you're still dealing with the same basic effects, and they probably are even going to be exacerbated since fewer people will have an impulse to collect books or buy them for pleasure reading as a proportion of the whole, meaning doubling the number of people playing RPGs, while it doubles the number of people buying them, isn't going to increase sales by double, especially for smaller games. And this is without the likely effect that these additional people will mostly play the big-name games. Probably the best way to eliminate this would be the establishment of a basic income and increasing public access to professional technology and equipment, such that it becomes much easier to design and do art and so on, making people more likely to fulfill their freelance contracts and also reducing the negative effects of a failed contract.
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Oct 25, 2016 05:06
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Brainiac Five posted:In theory you could have a system where companies like WotC, FFG, Steve Jackson, etc. acted primarily as publishers, but you'd probably not see much difference in any case, because there's not necessarily going to be a much bigger market for a game from this model. Kinda makes me wonder: what if people who just make games as a hobby (but work in ye olde coal mine full-time for their actual income) went to WOTC or w/e and were like "here's a game I wrote in my spare time, will you publish it for me?" I mean, you'd probably get an abysmal percentage or maybe just a one-time fee. Or am I dumb for even pondering this?
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Oct 25, 2016 05:37
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P.d0t posted:Kinda makes me wonder: what if people who just make games as a hobby (but work in ye olde coal mine full-time for their actual income) went to WOTC or w/e and were like "here's a game I wrote in my spare time, will you publish it for me?" Uh, isn't that how the video game, or even the board game industry works, at least for some people/some games?
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Oct 25, 2016 05:59
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Yeah, it's a thing that happens, but unless you're a big name yourself or know people with good connections you're not going to get a company that's not, like, Game Salute to look at you twice.
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Oct 25, 2016 06:14
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gradenko_2000 posted:Uh, isn't that how the video game, or even the board game industry works, at least for some people/some games? Not really. The american board game industry is especially unlikely to take on outside developed product because of rights concerns. If you somehow invent a new board game, you're pretty much stuck publishing it yourself unless you can cut a deal with a Euro company. Getting your product into the distribution chain and then onto shelves from there is even harder, because your average hobby/games/toy store owner is unlikely to throw down the wholesale price for a product they've never heard of (and with no advertising) just because it was in Previews. This is why a good chunk of kickstarted products never see retail. This is also why most 'new' board games you see at major retailers are themed versions of old standards, it's much cheaper to throw together a Star Wars Monopoly than it is to develop, focus test, and market a brand new board game. Video games is essentially the same deal, but the barrier to enter the market is much lower due to it being a purely digital product and there being marketplaces actually open to new talent (Steam, Humble, etc). That doesn't mean you're going to get a publishing deal with EA though, it just means self-publishing is significantly more viable for computer games. You need serious money to get into the console business though, dev kits aren't cheap.
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Oct 25, 2016 06:19
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gradenko_2000 posted:Uh, isn't that how the video game, or even the board game industry works, at least for some people/some games? I'm not an expert or anything, but my understanding is that the way video game publishing works is that either a publisher reaches out to a development studio and says "we'll pay you if you make X game for us" (if they don't have a bought and owned studio that they tap to do it instead) or a developer will approach a publisher with a proposal asking for funding and help publishing a game that isn't actually finished yet, but I don't know how common it is for a development studio to have a 100% finished product and then go try and solicit a publisher's assistance, especially because publishers frequently have conditions they want met which could necessitate having to go back and redo portions of a finished game in order to meet them. To be honest, if you have a 100% finished and done RPG that you've made all on your own, self-publishing these days even for extremely small, niche hobbies like tabletop roleplaying games, is easier than it's ever been between things like DTRPG and print-on-demand combined with self-publishing software that makes it much, much easier for a lone creator to produce something of respectable quality than it was back in the fantasy heartbreaker days when your only option was to order a 10,000 copy print-run only to wind up with 9,995 unsold copies taking up space in your garage. This also assumes that WotC is even all that interested in the RPG publishing end of things at the moment, which given the current state of D&D Next the signs point strongly to "not really." Rob Heinsoo has said he'd be surprised if the D&D division has more than six people currently working for it. Scarcely any first-party material has been created for the line in the time since its release compared to the two editions preceding it (including anything like digital tools), and WotC's showing at various gaming conventions has been similarly anemic. So I kind of doubt they're really in the market to partner up with anyone as far as publishing more RPGs go. Meanwhile White Wolf is currently split between "owned by Paradox Studios and currently the pet project of an extremely weird and kind of skeevy LARP enthusiast" and "Onyx Path Publishing which is an entirely crowdfunded venture run out of someone's garage" and Steve Jackson Games is for all practical purposes a company that produces Munchkin and Munchkin accessories. I would say that if you have an RPG you want to publish, a finished game and not just some vague idea, that the best thing you could do nowadays is get some advice on crowdfunding from successful self-publishers like Greg Stolze or Kevin Crawford (Crawford in particular is happy to discuss the ins and outs of successful crowdfunding and has the track record to back it up), start up a Kickstarter, and publish it yourself.
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Oct 25, 2016 06:32
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That's pretty much why "Heartbreakers" in the traditional sense are almost non-existent anymore. It's fairly rare for people to bankrupt themselves to self-publish their RPG. The new Heartbreaker is pretty much the Kickstarter Nightmare Project.
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Oct 25, 2016 06:41
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JackMann posted:That's pretty much why "Heartbreakers" in the traditional sense are almost non-existent anymore. It's fairly rare for people to bankrupt themselves to self-publish their RPG. I can't resist an opportunity to pedantically point out that the heartbreaking part of fantasy heartbreakers is the existence of the one or two genuinely good, clever, and original ideas buried beneath 300+ pages of attempting to reinvent Dungeons & Dragons, not the self-bankrupting part. Even today, even on Kickstarter, people are still attempting to do this, the difference being that this time rather than wasting tens of thousands of dollars beforehand they simply fail to receive more than a fraction of their funding goal and sink into obscurity (unless your name is Monte Cook). But yes, the era of self elfgame publishing we live in is like a veritable golden age compared to how things were 20 years ago or even earlier, and not having to shell out thousands of dollars in order to publish hardcopy books is definitely a huge part of that. Individual creators have better access to tools, social networks, and opportunities for funding even if the days of a big-ish RPG shelf at the local Barnes & Noble are more or less a thing of the past...but that's fine because honestly what we've got going on right now in terms of where the hobby is at (crowdfunding, self-publishing, digital distribution, online software integration with things like Discord and Roll20) is probably one of the better outcomes for a hobby that's always been extremely niche outside of the early D&D glory days. At this point while I wouldn't say anything like "traditional RPG publishing is dead!" I'd say that a motivated and capable creator doesn't really need someone like WotC or Steve Jackson Games to help them.
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Oct 25, 2016 07:30
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Appoda posted:How much would it change if someone like Fred said "gently caress the trad game industry" and told everything that they otherwise wouldn't, names and all? Could one person make a difference by themselves? Or even a group of big names? BIll Coffin already did this but he was on the way out of the industry already, and all it really did was made Palladium as a company a bigger joke than it already was. Lightning Lord fucked around with this message at 12:35 on Oct 25, 2016 |
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Oct 25, 2016 11:46
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Kwyndig posted:Not really. The american board game industry is especially unlikely to take on outside developed product because of rights concerns. If you somehow invent a new board game, you're pretty much stuck publishing it yourself unless you can cut a deal with a Euro company. Getting your product into the distribution chain and then onto shelves from there is even harder, because your average hobby/games/toy store owner is unlikely to throw down the wholesale price for a product they've never heard of (and with no advertising) just because it was in Previews. This is why a good chunk of kickstarted products never see retail. This is also why most 'new' board games you see at major retailers are themed versions of old standards, it's much cheaper to throw together a Star Wars Monopoly than it is to develop, focus test, and market a brand new board game. Thanks for the answer. It's just that I recalled an interview with I believe it was Randy Lein of Legion Wargames where he described his business model with people approaching him with boardgame designs that were already finished, and then he acts as producer/editor and publisher.
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Oct 25, 2016 11:55
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Heartbreaker RPGs can now be written up and distributed as PDFs (through DriveThru, or just given away) so people no longer need to take on five-six figures of debt for printing/shipping/warehousing in order to realize your dream of being a Real Life RPG Designer. Also, the market for physical RPG books has changed - even big game stores are carrying fewer RPGs so it's a lot harder to get stores or even distributors to take a chance on carrying your REALMSWORLD FANTASY CORE RULES (BOOK ONE) product. And yeah, people who just have to get their manufacturer of physical gaming goods folly out of their system are turning to Kickstarter.
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Oct 25, 2016 13:01
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Kai Tave posted:I can't resist an opportunity to pedantically point out that the heartbreaking part of fantasy heartbreakers is the existence of the one or two genuinely good, clever, and original ideas buried beneath 300+ pages of attempting to reinvent Dungeons & Dragons, not the self-bankrupting part. Even today, even on Kickstarter, people are still attempting to do this, the difference being that this time rather than wasting tens of thousands of dollars beforehand they simply fail to receive more than a fraction of their funding goal and sink into obscurity (unless your name is Monte Cook).
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Oct 25, 2016 14:07
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Green Ronin may be removing their forums soonquote:For many years now Green Ronin has continued to provide these message boards as a courtesy to our fans even as the costs for continuing to do so have risen. We pay for forum software and secure server space and do our best to be vigilant about spam protections, as well as paying our staff members for their time as they try to engage in a reasonable way. This is not a zero sum, cost-free endeavor but as long as our forum users have been willing to follow our Terms of Service and be generally self-policing, decent people, we've been willing to keep it up.
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Nov 4, 2016 16:47
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Oh wow, I wasn't aware things had gotten that bad over there. Good on them for recognizing the issue and deciding it's not worth the cost of doing business though, too many people just let their forums turn into total cesspools and then don't do anything about it.
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Nov 4, 2016 16:52
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Wow, what's been happening? Taken over by nazi frog alt-righters?
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Nov 4, 2016 17:59
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dwarf74 posted:Wow, what's been happening? Taken over by nazi frog alt-righters? Were those seriously even an actual thing prior to the current election cycle? Because outside of 4chan using Pepe the frog as a meme and /pol/ making nazi versions of those existing memes for shock value, the only cartoon frog anyone heard of was the one that sings HELLO MY BABY but only when the person you want to impress is looking away. Kwyndig posted:Oh wow, I wasn't aware things had gotten that bad over there. Good on them for recognizing the issue and deciding it's not worth the cost of doing business though, too many people just let their forums turn into total cesspools and then don't do anything about it. Several other places can afford to follow this extremely good example.
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Nov 4, 2016 18:55
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My experience - which does not include that many other RPG forums, really - is that most forums moderation is wildly incompetent, with moderators playing favorites at best, or being more or less totally random and capricious at worst. Most moderators were just forums superstars to begin with, so being granted mod status just further inflated already inflated egos. Vaguely-written forums rules and a lack of safeguards to prevent banned posters from just registering a new account compound the problem. I'm not at all surprised that small scale RPG companies don't find themselves able to manage a forum well. Almost nobody does.
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Nov 4, 2016 19:06
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dwarf74 posted:Wow, what's been happening? Taken over by nazi frog alt-righters? I mean he comes right out and says in that statement that there's been at least one stalking incident.
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Nov 4, 2016 19:21
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I've seen the usual MAH FREEZE PEACH morons complaining about it, but not as many as I'd expect. It's just the usual "how dare moderators tell me how to behave" types it's really hard to take seriously.
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Nov 4, 2016 19:46
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Leperflesh posted:My experience - which does not include that many other RPG forums, really - is that most forums moderation is wildly incompetent, with moderators playing favorites at best, or being more or less totally random and capricious at worst. Most moderators were just forums superstars to begin with, so being granted mod status just further inflated already inflated egos. Vaguely-written forums rules and a lack of safeguards to prevent banned posters from just registering a new account compound the problem. This isn't really unique to RPG forums.
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Nov 4, 2016 20:29
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Mors Rattus posted:This isn't really unique to RPG forums. *nods to myself while clearing my throat in the most obnoxious manner possible, over and over*
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Nov 4, 2016 20:34
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Bedlamdan posted:*nods to myself while clearing my throat in the most obnoxious manner possible, over and over* 
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Nov 4, 2016 20:38
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Bedlamdan posted:*nods to myself while clearing my throat in the most obnoxious manner possible, over and over* So are you really bitter about internet elfgame arguments, or did some other subforum here make fun of you?
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Nov 4, 2016 22:16
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Nuns with Guns posted:So are you really bitter about internet elfgame arguments, or did some other subforum here make fun of you? Internet elfgame arguments are 100% fine. Those are hardly a problem. Anyways, it's still very important to criticize the things you love, so it can become better.
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Nov 4, 2016 22:27
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Bedlamdan posted:Internet elfgame arguments are 100% fine. Those are hardly a problem. While I'm flattered, I am so not into you.
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Nov 4, 2016 22:30
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Mors Rattus posted:While I'm flattered, I am so not into you. I'm not sure how any sane person could look at that and can read it as flirting, but I've seen your profile pic on G+ and rest assured I am platonic as gently caress right now Mors.
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Nov 4, 2016 22:34
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Bedlamdan posted:I'm not sure how any sane person could look at that and can read it as flirting, but I've seen your profile pic on G+ and rest assured I am platonic as gently caress right now Mors. I was not serious, chief, I was going off the 'criticize things you love' line and making a really bad joke.
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Nov 4, 2016 22:36
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Bedlamdan posted:Were those seriously even an actual thing prior to the current election cycle? Because outside of 4chan using Pepe the frog as a meme and /pol/ making nazi versions of those existing memes for shock value, the only cartoon frog anyone heard of was the one that sings HELLO MY BABY but only when the person you want to impress is looking away. It's basically come out into the open now, what with Trump bringing Nazis into the conversation and all.
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Nov 4, 2016 22:47
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dwarf74 posted:Gamergate was part of its 'birth' so it pre-dates this election. I've seen both it and the 'sad feels guy' thing on there since 2010. I'm sorry, it's not really even that important, but seeing it treated as an exclusively "nazi/trump" thing is both weird and funny. It's seriously just used for shitposting, and it blew up as a right wing symbol because someone made a picture of Pepe the Frog as Trump and Trump retweeted it. This would never have happened if Bernie Sanders retweeted his Pepe and/or Feels Guy. 
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Nov 4, 2016 23:05
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Bedlamdan posted:Internet elfgame arguments are 100% fine. Those are hardly a problem. You say you're not bothered but something must be rustling you if you're going from zero to mad over a joke. It's okay to share your feelings on a forum you love 
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Nov 4, 2016 23:06
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the dude who made pepe originally had an interview where he basically said "this is hosed, I hate this," so please stop associating the frog with nazis and instead enjoy the frog for being a funny meme frog.
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Nov 4, 2016 23:06
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Nuns with Guns posted:You say you're not bothered but something must be rustling you if you're going from zero to mad over a joke. It's okay to share your feelings on a forum you love I'm okay, seriously!  Countblanc posted:the dude who made pepe originally had an interview where he basically said "this is hosed, I hate this," so please stop associating the frog with nazis and instead enjoy the frog for being a funny meme frog. They talk about it on knowyourmeme too.
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Nov 4, 2016 23:09
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Kwyndig posted:Oh wow, I wasn't aware things had gotten that bad over there. Good on them for recognizing the issue and deciding it's not worth the cost of doing business though, too many people just let their forums turn into total cesspools and then don't do anything about it. Wasn't this very thread having a laugh back at the start over how WotC was so pathetic they couldn't even keep their forums open? Anyway, wondered if anyone's heard whether Stranger Things had any effect on the market... Seems like people were talking about D&D more for sure, but I don't know if that translated into any sales or not.
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Nov 4, 2016 23:56
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Bedlamdan posted:I'm okay, seriously! Okay!  Countblanc posted:the dude who made pepe originally had an interview where he basically said "this is hosed, I hate this," so please stop associating the frog with nazis and instead enjoy the frog for being a funny meme frog. it did lead to a great comic from him at least https://thenib.com/pepe-the-frog-to-sleep-perchance-to-meme Pham Nuwen posted:Wasn't this very thread having a laugh back at the start over how WotC was so pathetic they couldn't even keep their forums open? I don't remember what people were saying about the wotc closure here, but I know that wotc itself had different reasons for closing it. Specifically, the MtG fans were far more active on third party forums like reddit. The D&D forums were active but apparently not enough to justify ongoing maintenance.
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Nov 5, 2016 00:13
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Pham Nuwen posted:Wasn't this very thread having a laugh back at the start over how WotC was so pathetic they couldn't even keep their forums open? There's a difference between "we can't afford a working forums" and "our forums are filled with human monsters"
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Nov 5, 2016 00:36
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