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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:But he didn't work for free, he exchanged labor for labor. You say people shouldn't work for free but you're also dismissing the labor that he did for them as worth nothing, which is it? Agreed. Cash isn’t the only form of value that can change hands.
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May 31, 2018 16:26
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Yeah I mean I get the basic principle of "people should be paid cash for their work yes even in RPGs" but for real, exchanging labor for labor with friends is kind of normal?
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May 31, 2018 16:39
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When I was on a trip a while ago, I asked my neighbour to take my garbage out. When I got back I mowed his lawn to thank him. I don’t feel like I devalued the labour of gardeners.
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May 31, 2018 16:42
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The only really hosed up part of this is that the backers weren't told this was how things would work. If people knew that the stretch goals would be delivered on "whenever I can get around to it" time, there would have been fewer backers. I may have been jumping to conclusions earlier when I said that Harper withheld it intentionally, but come on. None of this makes sense, and I feel like not explaining it was an obvious move.
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May 31, 2018 16:43
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It’s possible that the plan was right away back then, but by the time the SRD was done people’s availability had changed.
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May 31, 2018 16:49
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Subjunctive posted:When I was on a trip a while ago, I asked my neighbour to take my garbage out. When I got back I mowed his lawn to thank him. I don’t feel like I devalued the labour of gardeners. Had your neighbor raised $2,000 for the stretch goal of "Subjunctive mows my lawn?"
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May 31, 2018 17:03
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TBH it had occurred to me that making an entire game from scratch, and then having people write hacks of a game that didn't exist yet was necessarily going to take a long-rear end time and would involve even more "creator miscellaneous peril" because of the more-than-usual amount of time that it would require for someone to be alive and healthy and capable of writing. I didn't even think about the compensation part - I thought we were lucky to get even some of the BITD hacks that we've already gotten.
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May 31, 2018 17:09
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Serf posted:It's almost as if tabletop RPGs are a hobbyist industry where getting people to pay you is hard for like a million reasons. I personally blame the willingness to work for free on foolish hope of "making it" and having more passion and creativity than business sense. In fairness to those who harbor that foolish hope, there are only two ways of "making it" in this industry right now: 1) Making free content that gets your name out there enough (via established people in the industry liking it on social media) to let you start releasing content people will pay for, eventually-maybe-possibly-but-probably-not leading to employment. This also includes doing transparent, public design work on your games and, again, getting people to retweet / share it on G+ where the mavens are. 2) Streaming, which is basically the same thing in a different hat. Virtually nobody will buy random PDF from an author they've never heard of who has no discernible online presence, so it's necessary to generate your own publicity by one of the above. Anyone who goes into RPGs thinking "I'm going to make this a living" needs to recognize that their labor has no market value at first, both because it is probably Very Bad because they are Bad Designers who haven't done the years of thankless design work required to get good, but also because the industry is tiny and incestuous and name recognition is everything. It needs to be part of your game plan to do a great deal of unpaid work, because nobody is going to pay you a wage for the lovely heartbreakers or the magnum opus setting book that you have to get out of your system before you write anything worth paying for, let alone the ten partially-completed games you're likely to write for every one you finish. But if you work in public, someone might see what you've done and say, "I've got a project this person might be a good fit for." Frankly, if you can convince John Harper that your work is worth trading a favor for, and you're one of the many no-names whose only meaningful interaction with the industry is "getting John Harper to give you a Blades project," you just about got away with murder. It shouldn't be this way, no argument there, but as someone said upthread, this is a hobbyist industry and what constitutes "fair wages" takes strange forms here.
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May 31, 2018 17:16
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So you are specifically defending offering people unpaid work for exposure?
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May 31, 2018 17:57
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Joe Slowboat posted:So you are specifically defending offering people unpaid work for exposure? Heeeere we go. No. I'm specifically pointing out that breaking into tradgames is virtually impossible without exposure, and that getting exposure in tradgames is likewise virtually impossible without doing unpaid work. Is that desirable for a normal, healthy industry? No, obviously not, but if the last 42 pages of this thread have taught us anything, it's that TG As An Industry is not normal or healthy, and the people who choose to try to make it there should go into it with realistic expectations about what they're going to face.
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May 31, 2018 18:02
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Kestral posted:TG As An Industry is not normal or healthy, and the people who choose to try to make it there should go into it with realistic expectations about what they're going to face. The same could be said for Hollywood, but that doesn't excuse any of it.
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May 31, 2018 18:54
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moths posted:The same could be said for Hollywood, but that doesn't excuse any of it. Ya'll need to read my posts until you see what I'm actually writing, which is about the realities on the ground that aren't changing any time soon because of the structural constraints of a hobby industry, not the moral worth of the system.
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May 31, 2018 19:03
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Mors Rattus posted:He shouldn't have, is the thing. Work has value, and working for free's a good way to keep people from wanting pay you for your work, because you clearly work for free, and so should others. Yeah, but, also, for a lot of people this is a hobby too. People write stuff for fun; look at the multiple complete BITD hacks that already exist. The "industry standard" is that people can and do self-publish, for free, work of essentially professional quality (minus glossy art and hardback) fairly regularly. Hell, come to think of it, the other half of the "industry standard" is actual professionals publishing games that are weird, sucky messes. spectralent fucked around with this message at 19:08 on May 31, 2018 |
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May 31, 2018 19:06
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Kestral posted:Ya'll need to read my posts until you see what I'm actually writing, which is about the realities on the ground that aren't changing any time soon because of the structural constraints of a hobby industry, not the moral worth of the system. I'd contend that widespread acceptance of industry shittiness does more to hold it back than any structural constraints. It's a small industry, yes. But nobody should ever be working for free on a paid project. That's not an unreasonable place to draw the line if we ever want to see improvement.
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May 31, 2018 19:33
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Subjunctive posted:When I was on a trip a while ago, I asked my neighbour to take my garbage out. When I got back I mowed his lawn to thank him. I don’t feel like I devalued the labour of gardeners. Kestral posted:Ya'll need to read my posts until you see what I'm actually writing, which is about the realities on the ground that aren't changing any time soon because of the structural constraints of a hobby industry, not the moral worth of the system. You know why the conditions on the ground don't change 'any time soon'? Because every time someone says 'this is lame' when poo poo like this happens there's people who pop up saying 'actually it's fine I didn't pay my neighbor for walking my dog when I needed it so that's the same of asking for hours of work from a friend after raising money specifically off them adding their effort to the project'
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May 31, 2018 19:35
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moths posted:Had your neighbor raised $2,000 for the stretch goal of "Subjunctive mows my lawn?" I’m talking about exchange of labour as payment, and how that affects (or doesn’t) the respect accorded a professional who might otherwise have provided the same service. I’m not talking about how he communicated the stretch goal structure, or if he considered the favour cashed in to be worth $2000, or anything else related to the finances. I apologize if I didn’t make that obvious.
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May 31, 2018 19:36
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sexpig by night posted:You know why the conditions on the ground don't change 'any time soon'? Because every time someone says 'this is lame' when poo poo like this happens there's people who pop up saying 'actually it's fine I didn't pay my neighbor for walking my dog when I needed it so that's the same of asking for hours of work from a friend after raising money specifically off them adding their effort to the project' Like I mean, you can complain about stretch goals or all marketing in general, that's fine and I try to avoid it myself, but presumably the $2000 represents the cost of integrating the material and the opportunity cost of cashing in his negotiated favor. Jeffrey of YOSPOS fucked around with this message at 19:41 on May 31, 2018 |
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May 31, 2018 19:39
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sexpig by night posted:You know why the conditions on the ground don't change 'any time soon'? Because every time someone says 'this is lame' when poo poo like this happens there's people who pop up saying 'actually it's fine I didn't pay my neighbor for walking my dog when I needed it so that's the same of asking for hours of work from a friend after raising money specifically off them adding their effort to the project' In this case it wasn’t walking the dog, it was doing writing work for the other person’s previous campaign, no? It seems to me that they’re exchanging labour that they consider equivalent. Do you feel that the conditions on the ground should change such that such exchanges don’t happen?
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May 31, 2018 19:39
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also if we're talking about the exchange of labor as pay (aside from the fact that we live in a capitalist system and you can't pay rent with 'my buddy mowed my lawn') then even then that's probably a bad idea to do for your kickstarter you promised people to deliver in a fairly timely fashion because no poo poo they're gonna put their real work ahead of labor exchange agreements.
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May 31, 2018 19:40
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sexpig by night posted:(aside from the fact that we live in a capitalist system and you can't pay rent with 'my buddy mowed my lawn') Would it have been better if they’d each paid the other $2000 so that there was tax deducted?
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May 31, 2018 19:41
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Subjunctive posted:Would it have been better if they’d each paid the other $2000 so that there was tax deducted? when people do work for you you should traditionally pay them in ways they can use to keep themselves fed and housed and poo poo yes. When you raise money for yourself off their name you probably especially should.
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May 31, 2018 19:45
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“Oh no I get less than 2000 dollars, better take 0 dollars instead” is certainly something one could claim to be a logical stance but they’d have to do some loving rhetorical legwork to support it.
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May 31, 2018 19:48
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Mr. Maltose posted:“Oh no I get less than 2000 dollars, better take 0 dollars instead” is certainly something one could claim to be a logical stance but they’d have to do some loving rhetorical legwork to support it. I mean I totally agree if we lived in a society with poo poo like, say, UBI and healthcare and poo poo where people didn't need a constant income flow to survive then ya labor trades would rule and it'd probably be a net win for society, especially the arts, as a whole. We kinda don't, though, so....yes, money is how you thank people for their labor that you profit off.
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May 31, 2018 19:51
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Mr. Maltose posted:“Oh no I get less than 2000 dollars, better take 0 dollars instead” is certainly something one could claim to be a logical stance but they’d have to do some loving rhetorical legwork to support it.
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May 31, 2018 19:52
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Its way more analogous to the topic if he'd been paid $2000 for you to mow his lawn. Or even more appropriate if we acknowledge that everybody involved (him and each of the backers) valued that job at $2000 - and then you let him pay you 0.0% of that because "you owed him a favor." As long as the lowest acceptable wage is "nothing," writers will get suckered out of earnings because it's now an economy based on convincing each other labor has no value. And how can talent compete in that market?
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May 31, 2018 19:52
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I think that's my core issue with the 'well I mow my neighbor's lawn and he takes my trash out I don't think WE'RE ripping each other off' thing. Yea, that's a bro move for both of you to do, good looking out. That's not this because Blades is being sold for money and so are the stretch goals, not to mention the fact that they only are on the table because he was able to raise more money with the promise of those goals. If your neighbor was making money off his nicely mowed lawn wouldn't you think 'hey taking my trash out is nice but he should probably just break me off some of that'?
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May 31, 2018 19:53
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moths posted:Its way more analogous to the topic if he'd been paid $2000 for you to mow his lawn.
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May 31, 2018 19:54
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thelazyblank posted:We can be dumb and just try and score points. It seems we did, but to be fair, that's just par for the course.
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May 31, 2018 19:54
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:They only "let him pay 0" because he "let them pay 0" with his own work that he did for them. They traded the labor directly instead of going through an intermediary for no reason. yep, congrats at figuring out the lovely part of working in an exploitative field. Sometimes you have to say 'ok I'm not gonna work for free any more and I'm not gonna have others do that' and that probably means you're 'stuck' paying someone for something you originally would do as a swap. When you're the one with the well funded kickstarter that ball is in your court, though.
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May 31, 2018 19:56
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sexpig by night posted:yep, congrats at figuring out the lovely part of working in an exploitative field. Sometimes you have to say 'ok I'm not gonna work for free any more and I'm not gonna have others do that' and that probably means you're 'stuck' paying someone for something you originally would do as a swap. When you're the one with the well funded kickstarter that ball is in your court, though. I don't know anything about the other participants but they could have paid harper for his work just the same.
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May 31, 2018 20:00
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:Nobody worked for free and both parties got more labor than they could have afforded if they used cash because the government didn't get a percentage. "If everybody works for free, then nobody works for free" only works until you notice where that $2k went. E: And taxes are literally the last thing anyone cares about. Working "for free" perpetuates the system just as much as expecting people to work for nothing.
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May 31, 2018 20:01
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moths posted:"If everybody works for free, then nobody works for free" only works until you notice where that $2k went.
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May 31, 2018 20:03
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And that was just as poo poo.
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May 31, 2018 20:04
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It's almost as if capitalism has created a vicious living situation for most people wherein they live on a razor's edge and therefore need to be paid for any labor they do. But at the same time, the industry they want to work in is small and incestuous and the only way to start earning money for your work is to get your name out there by producing either free fan content and marketing yourself heavily or by doing work for bigger names and your name in front of their audience. In neither of these situations are you getting paid, so you are most likely still working a full-time job to support yourself, or more likely working several part-time jobs to barely get by, which necessitates that this work actually be your "hobby" and competes with what limited leisure time you have. This leads to a situation where you're most likely desperately unfulfilled in your working life and you want to "break into" a creative field, and you're willing to make the concession of working for free in exchange for that opportunity. And you don't want to ask for pay because you know that there are plenty of other people out there who would do the same job for nothing, and you're convinced it will lead to something better. Really it is reminiscent of the "how do I get experience for a job application when all the jobs require experience" issue and the "I had better do whatever my boss says because I am easily replaceable" issues, which are also tied to the capitalist mode of production. Harper and his crowd have internalized this state of affairs so much so that even when the money begins rolling in you are trading favors and repaying debts from years ago when you got help and owe someone else for what they did or you worked for free so it makes sense to ask the same of the people who asked it of you and so on and so on. It's a loving toxic rear end system which, like all capitalist hierarchies, produces few winners (if you can call the meager existence of a game designer winning) and many losers in the form of people who wanted to pursue their passion but couldn't handle the strain of doing that and working on another full-time career. In short, eat the loving rich.
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May 31, 2018 20:05
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If your problem is that they all colluded to make all of their kickstarters look better than they were, fine. That's probably true, lol if you think kickstarter isn't a complex way of grifting and marketing but whatever, you do you. That is a totally separate complaint from one party exploiting the other, which didn't happen because they all got labor that made all of their kickstarters raise more money.
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May 31, 2018 20:07
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The main issue is that payment-in-kind is still payment and needs to be laid out and contracted. The work needs to get valued and in many jurisdictions you have to offer cash payment as an option. In-kind can be very iffy even when it’s done above board and transparently. Just doing favors for each other on the side not only creates issues with valuing work, it creates barriers for people trying to break in to the industry because you have to already have certain kinds of exposure for it to work. It’s effectively being done under the table. And yes that sort of thing will happen on a small scale always and in every industry. But it should not be the default and not the planned approach. As I said, I’ve done work on spec or in-kind as favors because friends got stuck. And the key as to why it’s okay is that the alternative is no one was going to get hired to do it. If the money and time existed to do a normal commission or hire, then that should be done. Edit: And not necessarily okay but at least acceptable and reasonable. The most important aspect is that it’s a last resort option. Comrade Gorbash fucked around with this message at 20:10 on May 31, 2018 |
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May 31, 2018 20:07
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sexpig by night posted:You know why the conditions on the ground don't change 'any time soon'? Because every time someone says 'this is lame' when poo poo like this happens there's people who pop up saying 'actually it's fine I didn't pay my neighbor for walking my dog when I needed it so that's the same of asking for hours of work from a friend after raising money specifically off them adding their effort to the project' It's actually because there are deep, structural issues with the industry - the, again, and I can't emphasize this enough, tiny hobbyist industry - where your work has zero monetary value until you've proven your merits to and been adopted by the community in some way (see above). But we're at the point where we're just shooting past each other to score points, so, nah. Edit: Serf gets it. Good post, Serf.
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May 31, 2018 20:07
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Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:But he already did the favors, does he not deserve to be paid? Shouldn't they also pay him the $2000? Do you really want payment of $2000 back and forth on an account sheet somewhere so they can both pay taxes on it and net nothing? I'm so lost, y'all are missing the point about what makes "working for free" exploitive - the point is nobody worked for free because each got a commensurate amount of labor in exchange for their work which they were able to stretch further because they didn't go through dollars. yes he should have been paid too. That's literally the entire point, they should have paid each other. It sucks but at some point in that cycle if you want to change it you gotta just kinda pay it forward and treat others better than you were treated, and when you've just made bank on Kickstarter is kinda the perfect time to do that. I mean, it's that or we just keep doing the 'well the reality isn't changing any time soon' thing and nothing happens.
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May 31, 2018 20:10
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So how many of the promised hack writers also ran Kickstarters where Harper's name was attached to a stretch goal, anyway?
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May 31, 2018 20:17
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Mr. Maltose posted:So how many of the promised hack writers also ran Kickstarters where Harper's name was attached to a stretch goal, anyway? I've been doing research on this actually, and it looks like John Harper was a stretch goal author on Dungeon World, so presumably Sage LaTorra and Adam Koebel's hacks were gonna be in repayment for World of Dungeons. Jonathan Walton hasn't done much and probably best that we don't hear from him since he apparently quit selling things on DTRPG in response to them "censoring" Chris Fields lol. Jason Morningstar apparently got the art from Fiasco from Harper so maybe that was unpaid too and Coneycatchers was gonna be the repayment for that? Allison Arth and Dylan Green are first-time designers and appear to have been longtime PBTA hackers that were friends with Harper. James Stuart has made a few things, and Acimovic/Nittner/Labouef-Little appear to be amateur designers who were friends of John who are now moving up with some professional work. I remember hearing some talk at one point that Throne of the Void and Band of Blades could turn into full-fledged Kickstarter projects as well, if so we'd likely see Harper attached to those. Of course, if the envisioned hack ideas for Blades were as simple as World of Dungeons I can maybe see why the parties involved figured it wouldn't be a big deal to work for exposure. Given how substantially Blades changed over the course of two years, it definitely looks like the hacks became more and more involved and substantial too.
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May 31, 2018 20:49
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