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What's holding everything back is the idea that professional designers are just amateurs doing slapdash work that any hack GM could toss together. This isn't helped by the fact that so many "professional" designers are just amateurs doing slapdash work that any hack GM could toss together.
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Mar 6, 2019 16:19
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The best way to be successful as a newer person in the RPG writing industry is to be lucky I assume. Even stuff like Monster of the Week getting a big sales boost from being on Adventure Zone is mostly because it was a good game that was fortunate to get picked. It would be really interesting to see what Critical Role or something similar would do for a game if they gifted something else with their attention.
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Mar 6, 2019 16:26
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Art isn't fungible and aesthetics doesn't reduce to effort. games aren't art
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Mar 6, 2019 16:26
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gradenko_2000 posted:games aren't art bullshit
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Mar 6, 2019 16:27
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gradenko_2000 posted:games aren't art
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Mar 6, 2019 16:35
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hyphz posted:Customers pay for value, not labour, and the value of a passive piece of entertainment is much more strongly guaranteed than that of a social one. We wouldn't even be having this discussion of how it's actually okay to underpay for things because "cUsToMeRs PaY fOr VaLuE nOt LaBoUr" if it was an art commission. poo poo, if you commission art that's going to show up in your game, you're going to negotiate a price with the artist and (ideally) they're going to set a valuation for it that ensure that they get paid a fair price. But it's different for a game? Come on.
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Mar 6, 2019 16:45
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:bullshit The vast majority of RPGs absolutely aren't. And even if they are, guess what, you should still pay a fair wage for art too.
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Mar 6, 2019 16:48
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Lord_Hambrose posted:The best way to be successful as a newer person in the RPG writing industry is to be lucky I assume. Contacts are also extremely useful. If you can get an endorsement off e.g. Adam Koebel, that's success right there regardless of what you're selling.
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Mar 6, 2019 16:49
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:bullshit I agree. The argument I've seen (if I understood it) is that since you come to art from any direction to appreciate it, and can only come to games from within their rules to appreciate them, they can't be the same. You could have a game that is also appreciable as art (imagine a really nice and unique chess set as an easy example), but when you're playing it, it's not art for you at the time.
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Mar 6, 2019 16:51
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its almost like the profit motive cannot reconcile with art and we have to kludge together all sorts of solutions to this problem
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Mar 6, 2019 16:58
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Kai Tave posted:The vast majority of RPGs absolutely aren't. And even if they are, guess what, you should still pay a fair wage for art too. I'm not arguing against the latter point, I'm just uneasy with the notion that the value of art is just "how hard did you work to make it." People making bad art for pennies on the dollar isn't a healthy outcome for creators or for audiences; if that's the only way an artistic industry can survive, then maybe it just shouldn't be an industry. Serf posted:its almost like the profit motive cannot reconcile with art and we have to kludge together all sorts of solutions to this problem
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Mar 6, 2019 16:59
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homullus posted:I agree. The argument I've seen (if I understood it) is that since you come to art from any direction to appreciate it, and can only come to games from within their rules to appreciate them, they can't be the same. You could have a game that is also appreciable as art (imagine a really nice and unique chess set as an easy example), but when you're playing it, it's not art for you at the time. Rules themselves are an aesthetic object, which to me is so obviously clear (and evident in literally any conversation about taste in games) that it boggles my mind how hard people resist it.
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Mar 6, 2019 17:03
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Rules themselves are an aesthetic object, which to me is so obviously clear (and evident in literally any conversation about taste in games) that it boggles my mind how hard people resist it. I strongly agree, and indeed one of the most compelling things to me about games are the ways that activities and interactions get boiled down to rules abstractions. A different way to resolve a persuade attempt is like a different way to render the shadows on a face.
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Mar 6, 2019 17:06
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:I'm not arguing against the latter point, I'm just uneasy with the notion that the value of art is just "how hard did you work to make it." People making bad art for pennies on the dollar isn't a healthy outcome for creators or for audiences; if that's the only way an artistic industry can survive, then maybe it just shouldn't be an industry. It's absolutely acceptable for people doing, as Gradenko points out, artistic illustration commissions to charge prices for them based on complexity and amount of time that's going to go into their creation. I'm not sure why the same standard suddenly falls apart when applied to elfgames. "But it shouldn't HAVE to be that way," sure, and until the fully automated gay luxury space communism kicks in creators should get paid a fair wage for their work without dumb nerds trying to convince them to work for a pittance because "it's art man, you can't put a value on art!"
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Mar 6, 2019 17:07
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Kai Tave posted:It's absolutely acceptable for people doing, as Gradenko points out, artistic illustration commissions to charge prices for them based on complexity and amount of time that's going to go into their creation. I'm not sure why the same standard suddenly falls apart when applied to elfgames. "But it shouldn't HAVE to be that way," sure, and until the fully automated gay luxury space communism kicks in creators should get paid a fair wage for their work without dumb nerds trying to convince them to work for a pittance because "it's art man, you can't put a value on art!" If the dumb nerds are trying to convince them to produce art for less money than you could be earning for it, then they're full of poo poo and you shouldn't listen to them. If the dumb nerds are the sole audience for the art you're producing and they won't pay more, then practically speaking your options are to go along with it, not produce art, or produce art for its own sake. As a former poetry major, I'm sympathetic, but also pretty comfortable with options #2 and #3. Another parallel train of thought here is that maybe if the tabletop gaming world had better critics and curators (as I think Leperflesh argued?) then maybe D&D wouldn't be the only thing that's profitable without running on starvation wages. (Because the profitability of art is largely dependent on the taste of either a small in-group, or of the general public, and critics play a pretty crucial role in that system.) But as it is, the reason something like Critical Role can raise millions of dollars for an animated adaptation and generate incredibly hype for D&D 5E is because, by and large, 5E is what the general public recognizes and wants. You don't have to convince me that marketing is the devil, but I'm already the kind of weirdo who'll spend $60+ on nice hardcover copies of obscure RPGs I'm probably never going to get to play, just because I like their design. The problem is everyone else. 
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Mar 6, 2019 17:17
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Kai Tave posted:The vast majority of RPGs absolutely aren't. And even if they are, guess what, you should still pay a fair wage for art too. It reminds me how DungeonCommandr replied to (white) people decrying their initiative to get ten cents a word with "maybe you're just used to being exploited."
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Mar 6, 2019 17:22
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Oh, hey, let's get into an "art versus craft" argument! Some chairs are art. Some chairs are utility objects. Some craftspeople put a lot of thought about the aesthetic details into the manufacture of their chairs, while also recognizing it should do what it’s supposed to do, which is be a game. Role playing games can definitely be art. They also have a utility they should fulfil. You can do either one well or poorly. So, Dungeons and Dragons is whatever brand of recliner Target sells. It’s not a great chair, it’s not even the best recliner you can get, but it does a pretty decent job of keeping your butt off the ground in comfort and is available everywhere. And then you’ve got people trying to sell this thing, saying “it’s elegant, it’s beautiful” and wondering why they’re not getting paid the amount of time it took to make it and also realizing that the market for people who wants chairs like that is almost nothing.
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Mar 6, 2019 17:49
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okay great but what does this have to do with paying writers 10 cents a word
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Mar 6, 2019 17:53
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That's true, but I'm not sure the difference in function between D&D and Nobilis or Burning Wheel (let alone Fragged Empire or Fellowship) is anywhere near as big as the difference in function between those two chairs. Like if you were talking about Kazekami Kyoko Kills Kublai Khan then yeah, maybe, but that's a much bigger contextual gap.
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Mar 6, 2019 17:54
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I would buy this chair. I would buy this chair SO HARD.
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Mar 6, 2019 17:57
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All I’m saying is that the “are games art” question is immaterial, because they’re craft. Some are art, some art not, some are somewhere in between. And some artists struggling to find $0.10 a word and some other artists making a bajillion Kickstarter dollars are not mutually exclusive concepts.
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Mar 6, 2019 18:09
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Yeah, and the reason they're not mutually exclusive in this case is 'capitalism is a horrible system for allocating the resources people need to live or rewarding either art or craft' and your extended chair metaphor added nothing but smugness to muddy the waters. Seriously this is just Nozick's 'actually pro athletes being billionaires while others starve is good' argument, the world doesn't need more of it.
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Mar 6, 2019 18:15
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I really like Critical role, do I need to stop liking it because it's not being good enough societally?
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Mar 6, 2019 18:19
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Josef bugman posted:I really like Critical role, do I need to stop liking it because it's not being good enough societally? I don’t think anyone is saying this so much as this is a discussion about the environment that it’s in as a whole and, as stated above, the unhealthy “feast/famine” system that tabletop gaming finds itself in.
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Mar 6, 2019 18:24
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Josef bugman posted:I really like Critical role, do I need to stop liking it because it's not being good enough societally? Unless you're a full blown tankie no. There are far worse things in trad games than a good podcasting group getting a lot of funding for their new product. Also thinking it over I don't actually know how to sit on that chair. I would still buy it though.
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Mar 6, 2019 18:27
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The critical role thread in TV IV is having this exact same discussion but seem to be going in a different direction. People coming at the same problem from two very different angles - one is 'this is a tv show' and one 'this is an actual play'
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Mar 6, 2019 18:29
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if anything, thinking too hard about the realities of making a living in the elfgames industry should lead one to rightfully becoming a communist
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Mar 6, 2019 18:29
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Serf posted:if anything, thinking too hard about the realities of making a living in the elfgames industry should lead one to rightfully becoming a communist ain't nothing wrong with communism, but tankies need to be punched
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Mar 6, 2019 18:33
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Circutron posted:I don’t think anyone is saying this so much as this is a discussion about the environment that it’s in as a whole and, as stated above, the unhealthy “feast/famine” system that tabletop gaming finds itself in. That is very fair. I do think that CR just happened to hit the "new hotness" thing at just teh right time, but I am glad it got a lot of my friends into D&D and tabletop stuff in general. It also got people to play Glorantha stuff which is darn cool to me! Arivia posted:Unless you're a full blown tankie no. There are far worse things in trad games than a good podcasting group getting a lot of funding for their new product. That is fair, I just stick to my elf games and Glorantha. Sion posted:The critical role thread in TV IV is having this exact same discussion but seem to be going in a different direction. People coming at the same problem from two very different angles - one is 'this is a tv show' and one 'this is an actual play' Hmmm, that is fair too, I wonder what the best way of viewing this sort of thing is? Serf posted:if anything, thinking too hard about the realities of making a living in the elfgames industry should lead one to rightfully becoming a communist Oh I am already there my dude, I just know I need to listen to people about what I can find cool and good and what I should only watch with like, reservations and caveats.
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Mar 6, 2019 18:34
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Josef bugman posted:I really like Critical role, do I need to stop liking it because it's not being good enough societally? NoEthicalConsumption-VibratingTressa.gif
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Mar 6, 2019 18:37
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Josef bugman posted:Oh I am already there my dude, I just know I need to listen to people about what I can find cool and good and what I should only watch with like, reservations and caveats. sorry, my point was more that the profit motive cannot support a robust rpg industry where people can live healthily and comfortably, and people shouldn't be forced to work just to survive
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Mar 6, 2019 18:41
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Joe Slowboat posted:Yeah, and the reason they're not mutually exclusive in this case is 'capitalism is a horrible system for allocating the resources people need to live or rewarding either art or craft' and your extended chair metaphor added nothing but smugness to muddy the waters. I don't know that I disagree with any of that (except maybe the personal attack). Capitalism sucking, are games art, and is it fair that some corners of elfgames make millions while others can't make $0.10/word, are three different conversations. I was just pointing out that the second one is dumb.
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Mar 6, 2019 18:42
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Serf posted:sorry, my point was more that the profit motive cannot support a robust rpg industry where people can live healthily and comfortably, and people shouldn't be forced to work just to survive Broken incentives are weird. I definitely struggle with a misalignment between rewarding actors against metrics as they should be and metrics as they are.
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Mar 6, 2019 18:44
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So, because this is interesting and totally not because I'm trying to avoid writing a report at work right now, I grabbed the number of pledges listed by tier and stuck it in a spreadsheet to see how it distributed out by number of pledges and value to the overall kickstarter. I'll preface by saying that the numbers and the total KS value don't quite add up; I think this is because they don't have an established "pay a buck tier" but you can donate a no reward amount if you prefer. It amounts to about 2000 pledges worth 300k or so so ~15ish dollars. I left it out for this calculation. So, about a third of the pledges are $50 bucks or less, but account for about 6% of the value of the kickstarter. About half the pledges are at $100, and account for about a third of the value. 42% of the value of is provided by 10% of the backers pledging at a higher tier. Whether this sort of distribution would be viable in the tabletop market for a non-Monte Cook, not sure though I tend to be dubious.
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Mar 6, 2019 19:00
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I really thought we'd been thoroughly over this, but I'm seeing the same arguments re-presented and it implies to me that either people aren't budging from entrenched positions, or, people are assuming the new question at hand is the same as the old question at hand. Or maybe both. As I see it, the previous question which brought about 20+ pages of discussion was: "can or should the TTRPG industry support a living wage for workers, and if so, how could that be made to happen". One of the key variables in that discussion was whether the TTRPG marketplace contained enough consumer dollars and demand (essentially the same thing, from an economics point of view) to support a large and diverse set of products all costing enough to pay their producers a living wage. The new question is "is a multimillion-dollar kickstarter for a TTRPG-adjacent product - a cartoon based on D&D - evidence that the market is definitely plenty large enough to pay content producers a living wage?" I'll argue that this question is based on three premises: 1. The marketplace for TTRPG books and supplements is the same, or has a large overlap, as the marketplace for a D&D cartoon kickstarter 2. The consumers in this marketplace place the same value on both products, e.g., they'll willingly pay the same amount for some perceived unit of value 3. The consumers in this marketplace are equally informed of both products, e.g., they are making informed choices between them when deciding how to spend their money I find all three premises to be pretty shaky. 1. I suspect the marketplace for video and audio entertainment - podcasts, youtube videos, etc - is both mostly a different audience, and massively larger, than the audience for print and PDF RPGs and supplements. 2. I suspect that most consumers do not evaluate their total entertainment budget based on rational dissections of net hours of entertainment provided, or any similar basis. Rather, perceived value is a complex topic on which libraries full of volumes of academic work have been expended, in no small part because it derives from complex human psychological and cultural factors. Even if we grant premise 1 for the sake of argument, it does not follow that because a given nerd will spend $100 on a kickstarter for a D&D cartoon, they'll also willingly pay $100 for an indie pen and paper RPG product; the given nerd's internal valuation-model just doesn't work on that kind of simple comparative basis. 3. Even if we grant 1 and 2, there is the advertising/marketing factor. The candy and gum in the checkout line at the supermarket sells better than the candy and gum in the candy aisle, because of positioning and impulse buying and incremental cost analysis and various other reasons. Simply being better positioned or advertised or marketed can easily account for vast differences in profitability between two products or categories of product. An already-established audience, the momentum factors of explosively growing kickstarters, network effects, etc., can account for a huge difference in potential dollars locked up by a product, again (and this is critical) irrespective of individual consumers' perception of value between two categories of product. I think it's therefore a stretch to see a multimillion-dollar kickstarter for a D&D cartoon and conclude that this is proof that there is sufficient money available for a large majority (or all?) indie pen and paper RPG products to successfully charge enough money for their products to support content contributors with living wages. And I think even if you disagree with me, it's an error to shift the argument back to the question of whether or not it's OK or good or reasonable to base pricing on labor costs. The discussion of how we price products under capitalism has been had, and I don't think anyone still disagreeing on these points is going to be shifted by repeating the same argument two weeks later. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 19:11 on Mar 6, 2019 |
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Mar 6, 2019 19:03
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also the vast majority of people donating to the kickstarter are not people who would have any interest in donating to a kickstarter for a tabletop game or module or the like.
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Mar 6, 2019 19:08
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At a certain value there is not a lot to charge five figures for. With an animation project you can offer a lot more than a gamebook, eh?
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Mar 6, 2019 19:11
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Farg posted:also the vast majority of people donating to the kickstarter are not people who would have any interest in donating to a kickstarter for a tabletop game or module or the like. Yeah, they're coming at it from the perspective of it being a show instead of a game.
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Mar 6, 2019 19:14
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Desiden posted:So, because this is interesting and totally not because I'm trying to avoid writing a report at work right now, I grabbed the number of pledges listed by tier and stuck it in a spreadsheet to see how it distributed out by number of pledges and value to the overall kickstarter. I'll preface by saying that the numbers and the total KS value don't quite add up; I think this is because they don't have an established "pay a buck tier" but you can donate a no reward amount if you prefer. It amounts to about 2000 pledges worth 300k or so so ~15ish dollars. I left it out for this calculation. This is really cool. It reminds me of political campaign funding. Small donors typically provide only a small fraction of total funding for a candidate. Large donors provide the bulk of funding. This is not always the case*, but it's typical for most candidates for federal and major state offices. Large donations from wealthy donors and industry lobby groups is thus essential for most candidates; but, this type of funding is considered less desirable than the small funding. Why? -Small donors represent individual voters who are enthusiastic, well informed, and very likely to turn out to the polls -Small donors can be tapped again and again for more money as the campaign goes on -Small donors are activists; they can convince others within their social groups to vote the same way they do -Large donors are essentially engaging in legal bribery. They expect to get something in exchange for their large donations. At a bare minimum, they expect access to the candidate; more realistically, they expect to gain (via access or simply by giving the money) to benefit from the candidate directly, through legislation or regulation etc. that is favorable to them -Large donors often give money to "both sides," which diminishes the net value of their donation. Small donors never do this. Now look at those kickstarter numbers again. While the small donors comprise a minority of total money earned, they constitute a third of the total popularity or enthusiasm for the project. Each $15 pledge thus represents more than its net $15: it represents someone who is likely to contribute additional donors, by network effects. Further, many of those small donors can be tapped for additional money: as stretch goals appear, or as time goes by, they are more likely than the large donors to add to their pledges; and in the future, if they were happy with the first product, they're likely to come back and spend again. The whales are super important too, though, because they provide the bulk of the actual money. That top 10% demand something in return, though, and sometimes those demands include some kind of expectation of input into the product design, or direct access to the designers, or at the very least, a premium, exclusive product unavailable to the masses. I dunno, it's not a perfect analogy, but I think you see what I'm getting at. * when this number is inverted, that's typically for a populist candidate - bernie sanders, for example - and it says important things about their "grassroots support" and how voters will behave. But it also can put them at a disadvantage in some ways. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 19:23 on Mar 6, 2019 |
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Mar 6, 2019 19:20
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In fairness, I suspect that a small cadre of extremely committed enthusiasts having more sway is good for game design for nearly the same reasons it's bad for politics. I'd like it even better if creators could just make the game they want to play without concern for what will sell, but then we're back to The Soul of Man Under Socialism territory again.
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Mar 6, 2019 19:27
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