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Kai Tave posted:I mean, FrIa Ligan A). had enough wherewithal to afford the Lord of the Rings license from the outset and B). has raised over $1.5 million while the average zinequest creator is making somewhere in the ballpark of low to mid four figures, so I feel like it's a little reductive to boil all of this down to a slapfight between two equally tiny and insignificant parties. FL doesn't actually hold the license, it's Nepitello's company that has it, and FL is the publisher here.
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Mar 4, 2021 21:29
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Kai Tave posted:a lot of people want to try and lump all RPGs and RPG creators that "Aren't D&D" into the same circle and that this doesn't actually work very well as a breakdown for a lot of things. Remember when Evil Hat was in the small press section on DTRPG just because they weren't WotC or WW, and thus regularly made up the bulk of the top 10 or so sellers?
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Mar 4, 2021 21:30
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No one gets to decide who gets to market their products on the basis of who is already "too successful" or something, and that reeks of desperate fighting over table scraps. Between that and a Kickstarter executive self-dealing, that again says volumes about the state of the industry. Kickstarter is not just a service for guerilla outfits making their first product and never has been.
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Mar 4, 2021 21:30
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moths posted:I'm not sure I'd agree with this, as a lot of (specifically big box miniature) games seem take a hit when a competing game launches. I mean, Fred Hicks thinks otherwise and has seen data to back up his opinion. His conclusion could be wrong. How would I know. But I don't think he did anything wrong by posting that the data he has seen suggests otherwise. And I think there is a difference between minis where they cost hundreds of dollars and you also need to paint them, and a 24-page $10 pdf. I would not back two $200 projects in the same month without at least consulting my wife. But I'll throw $10 or $20 at a cool thing without much thought.
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Mar 4, 2021 21:31
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moths posted:I'm not sure I'd agree with this, as a lot of (specifically big box miniature) games seem take a hit when a competing game launches. Yeah I have to admit I don't really understand the "there isn't finite money" argument, like of course there's finite money. People cannot spend infinity dollars per month on everything they want. Indie games are, whether they like it or not, in competition with each other, and the success of one game does not translate to the success of others. Warthur posted:A thornier question is, are there any RPG companies out there who benefit from being buddies with Luke? I have seen no sign of Fria Lagin getting any sort of special treatment from Kickstarter. I have, undeniably, witnessed OPP running two simultaneous Kickstarter funding periods at a time when the TOS said you weren't meant to do that. Does Luke have pals at OPP? If so then even if that isn't beyond-reasonable-doubt proof that corruption has occurred, it creates enough of an appearance of wrongdoing that it really shouldn't happen. Kickstarter has basically stated in emails that they let Onyx Path get away with it due to their "history of completed projects," so whether Crane himself is the one pulling the strings (he was head of Games before being moved to head of Community, so the buck would stop with him regardless) it's clear that Kickstarter is definitely playing favorites (see also CMON Games and their endless cycle of Kickstarter projects).
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Mar 4, 2021 21:36
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Part of the problem with Kickstarter is that when a project succeeds, and delivers, you don't hear anything. When a project fails to fund, you don't hear anything. When a project succeeds and fails to deliver, or delivers badly, the internet blows the gently caress up. So everyone is fearful of the failures and is hesitant to put their money down on anything that isn't a sure thing.
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Mar 4, 2021 21:41
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Kai Tave posted:Kickstarter has basically stated in emails that they let Onyx Path get away with it due to their "history of completed projects," so whether Crane himself is the one pulling the strings (he was head of Games before being moved to head of Community, so the buck would stop with him regardless) it's clear that Kickstarter is definitely playing favorites (see also CMON Games and their endless cycle of Kickstarter projects).
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Mar 4, 2021 21:50
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Kai Tave posted:Yeah I have to admit I don't really understand the "there isn't finite money" argument I believe you understand that for a great many backers, the other games on offer at the same time as a $15 zine's Kickstarter are 100% irrelevant to the decision to back the zine.
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Mar 4, 2021 21:58
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homullus posted:I believe you understand that for a great many backers, the other games on offer at the same time as a $15 zine's Kickstarter are 100% irrelevant to the decision to back the zine. I don't actually understand that given that I mentioned earlier that zinequest creators were mentioning losing backers as people dropped pledges to go back One Ring, and Fred Hicks says he has data but hasn't as far as I know actually shared any of it, so. "It's just $15 dollars of course it doesn't matter that much" speaks to an insanely detached perspective given how precarious everyone's income has been over the last, oh, year or so for SOME weird reason.
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Mar 4, 2021 22:00
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I think I'm probably not atypical in going "I'll back like, three zines I like, I can't just back all of them there's too many". My feeling is it's almost definitely the case that not only is there a finite money pool in RPGs (certainly month to month), it's probably not even that big. I feel like RPGs as a broader medium need to get way more out there because at the moment everyone just plays D&D and their purchasing money goes on like, fuckin', dice towers when they could be buying (and playing) better games.
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Mar 4, 2021 22:04
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The question isn't whether it happens at all, but rather, whether it happens enough to significantly impact one KS's chances of success. And I believe the assertion has already been made that you can't resolve that question based on a few comments from backers, you need actual data.
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Mar 4, 2021 22:07
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Kai Tave posted:I don't actually understand that given that I mentioned earlier that zinequest creators were mentioning losing backers as people dropped pledges to go back One Ring, and Fred Hicks says he has data but hasn't as far as I know actually shared any of it, so. An anecdote about zine creators noting that some people backed out for The One Ring: solid data An anecdote about Fred Hicks saying he has data saying that simultaneous Kickstarters help sales: pfft he hasn't actually showed anything It's great that you're mindful of grotesque income disparity. Why go right to accusing people of "insanely detached perspective"? Why not go for "yeah, it makes sense that there are some projects that do better when there are more eyes on Kickstarter, and some projects that lose people when there's another big one, and some that are both"?
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Mar 4, 2021 22:19
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homullus posted:An anecdote about zine creators noting that some people backed out for The One Ring: solid data If Fred Hicks wants to share his data I'll be happy to listen to it, until then people are under no obligation to respect him for saying "you stupid loving idiot proles should be grateful someone else is making it big because maybe some of their crumbs might land at your feet."
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Mar 4, 2021 22:30
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homullus posted:An anecdote about zine creators noting that some people backed out for The One Ring: solid data I hope you're not genuinely trying to present "I have (anecdotal) data and refuse to show any of it" and "I have (anecdotal) data and can and will present it" as the same thing.
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Mar 4, 2021 22:34
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I went to kickstarter to look at TOR, decided not to back it because they don't need my help/I can wait until it's completed and on sale to buy a game I'm just buying to read and flip through the art  (Note that this is 100% true of any zine I back as well). Once I was already at KS I saw all the zine stuff and backed one, I'll probably poke around and back some more later. I'm sure there're some people who backed out of a zine because of TOR, but I'm sure I'm not like the only person on the planet to do what I just did either. I don't think generalizing from miniatures is helpful. If I've already bought into a giant miniature thing, and I'm like "I need yet more miniatures," I will just give more money to the giant miniature thing I'm kickstarting, not someone else. But giving more money to TOR doesn't really give me more TTRPG books in a meaningful fashion.
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Mar 4, 2021 22:40
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I remember there being data showing it's a factor with huge-rear end big boxed miniatures games. Like, you'd see obvious slumps in backing representing a competing product's launch. It makes sense that it would scale down to zines and stuff, but yeah without specifics it's all kinda guesswork when it comes to budget digital tiers and zines
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Mar 4, 2021 22:42
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I don’t particularly think it’s some sort of bad action from the lotr game person if some people wanted to pay money for their product more than the for the zinequest thing. That’s the core of the issue, yeah? That indie creators resent having attention and money go to larger name creators?
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Mar 4, 2021 22:45
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thetoughestbean posted:I don’t particularly think it’s some sort of bad action from the lotr game person if some people wanted to pay money for their product more than the for the zinequest thing. In the most overly reductive sense, yes.
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Mar 4, 2021 22:50
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thetoughestbean posted:I don’t particularly think it’s some sort of bad action from the lotr game person if some people wanted to pay money for their product more than the for the zinequest thing. It's worth once again reiterating that nobody was demanding Fria Ligan pull their project, nobody was trying to "cancel" them or accuse them of some sinister conspiracy, but if your response to people very understandably frustrated that they can work and hustle and self-promote and then someone else with a glossy license can just roll in and sweep up while you're trying to drag yourself across the finish line of your four-figure project, going "oh but see this is good for you actually, dude trust me" maybe it shouldn't come as a huge shock if people think you're kind of an rear end in a top hat, especially when it takes an incident of grotesque unethical malfeasance unignorably blowing up for you to go "hmm maybe there's something to this after all, much to ponder." Like you can boil it down to jealousy I guess which like, yeah, no poo poo people are jealous that someone can make seven figures because they have access to a cool license everyone loves that you couldn't begin to afford if you wanted to, but there's still this expectation that everyone in the scene should be chummy and uplifting and like one big happy family grateful for any not-D&D success that happens, as demonstrated by the fact that the moment people started to voice this unhappiness the guy in charge of one of the bigger fish in the pond weighed in to tell everybody that they were wrong to do so.
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Mar 4, 2021 22:54
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Sounds like sour grapes to me tho.
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Mar 5, 2021 00:05
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Yeah, and? e; like okay so what's the takeaway then, "people should just be placidly happy to get to watch their efforts blown away because someone's in a position to leverage advantages they'll never have access to?" Cool, I'll let everyone know.
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Mar 5, 2021 00:15
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I mean, it’s valid for them to be upset, but I don’t see why anybody else has to be upset on their behalf
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Mar 5, 2021 00:19
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thetoughestbean posted:I mean, it’s valid for them to be upset, but I don’t see why anybody else has to be upset on their behalf Empathy?
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Mar 5, 2021 00:20
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thetoughestbean posted:I mean, it’s valid for them to be upset, but I don’t see why anybody else has to be upset on their behalf Nobody has to be upset on their behalf, nobody has to tell them "you should just be grateful you're along for the ride" either, and I don't know how to explain that any clearer.
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Mar 5, 2021 00:22
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Kai Tave posted:Nobody has to be upset on their behalf, nobody has to tell them "you should just be grateful you're along for the ride" either, and I don't know how to explain that any clearer. I don’t think I was saying that. We might just be talking at cross purposes here
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Mar 5, 2021 00:24
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Again, as I mentioned in my much longer post on this, the big overarching issue is that there is an inability or unwillingness on the part of a lot of people, some of whom are (comparatively) big names with influential voices, to acknowledge that there are a lot of layers in the indie RPG scene in competition for a very limited pool of resources instead of everything being a homogeneous whole all working in unison towards some cooperative goal, acting like some random one-person show and a $1.5 million licensed RPG are somehow in a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship.
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Mar 5, 2021 00:25
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Fred Hicks has shared and shown data. Like actual data, not anecdotes. Many times. About Kickstarters and other RPG business stuff. Just, like, not every tweet has to be a research paper. He is a professional and publishing RPGs is his job and he's as much of an expert on RPG kickstarters as there is in this world. He wasn't countering anecdote with anecdote. He was countering anecdote with expert knowledge. You don't agree with his conclusion? Fine. You're entitled to your opinions just as much as he is. But acting like he did something wrong is silly.
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Mar 5, 2021 02:04
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Kai Tave posted:Again, as I mentioned in my much longer post on this, the big overarching issue is that there is an inability or unwillingness on the part of a lot of people, some of whom are (comparatively) big names with influential voices, to acknowledge that there are a lot of layers in the indie RPG scene in competition for a very limited pool of resources instead of everything being a homogeneous whole all working in unison towards some cooperative goal, acting like some random one-person show and a $1.5 million licensed RPG are somehow in a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship. I don't disagree with this generally, though.
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Mar 5, 2021 02:08
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Jimbozig posted:Fred Hicks has shared and shown data. Like actual data, not anecdotes. Many times. About Kickstarters and other RPG business stuff. Just, like, not every tweet has to be a research paper. Yeah, I think the pushback here is about acting like Fred Hicks said what he said in the most snide, condescending manner possible. I get people being upset another Kickstarter is seemingly stealing their thunder, but Fred was trying to point out that it doesn't work out that way in his experience. Treating that like he's telling them they should be grateful for crumbs is pretty weird.
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Mar 5, 2021 02:16
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spectralent posted:I think I'm probably not atypical in going "I'll back like, three zines I like, I can't just back all of them there's too many". At this point, more people must be making a living playing DnD for the Internet than make a living designing new games, right?
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Mar 5, 2021 02:40
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Kai Tave posted:Again, as I mentioned in my much longer post on this, the big overarching issue is that there is an inability or unwillingness on the part of a lot of people, some of whom are (comparatively) big names with influential voices, to acknowledge that there are a lot of layers in the indie RPG scene in competition for a very limited pool of resources instead of everything being a homogeneous whole all working in unison towards some cooperative goal, acting like some random one-person show and a $1.5 million licensed RPG are somehow in a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship. Kind of feels like that ends up being the case in any "indie" industry. Like if you're a bunch of 10 year Valve veterans who decide to strike out on your own are you really an indie game studio?
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Mar 5, 2021 02:47
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Kai Tave posted:I mean, FrIa Ligan A). had enough wherewithal to afford the Lord of the Rings license from the outset and B). has raised over $1.5 million while the average zinequest creator is making somewhere in the ballpark of low to mid four figures, so I feel like it's a little reductive to boil all of this down to a slapfight between two equally tiny and insignificant parties. So, just as Cubicle 7 didn't directly have the license, Fria Ligan didn't have the 'wherewithal to afford the Lord of the Rings license '. Sophisticated Games have the Lord of the Rings License (for x/y/z properties, not all given FFG's card game license etc) They chose to work with C7 until they pulled it from them, and now Fria Ligan. Obviously there's going to be a financial element, but this is not a typical license in the industry where the publisher has negotiated directly. It's been stamped all over the products, but because it's behind the scenes it's not as obvious. Edit: also unlike some other license holding companies in the past (Conan being an obvious example) , Sophisticated have put out product under the license and Francesco Nepitello designed swathes of the 1st edition and supplements etc. PST fucked around with this message at 02:58 on Mar 5, 2021 |
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Mar 5, 2021 02:52
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PoontifexMacksimus posted:Kind of feels like that ends up being the case in any "indie" industry. Like if you're a bunch of 10 year Valve veterans who decide to strike out on your own are you really an indie game studio? Yeah there’s tiers of “indie” isn’t there? We just lack the terminology. That said, if you are a bunch if Valve veterans who went independent, you are still indie by the nature of the word (this is pure pedantry on my part). I absolutely understand finding it grating that a person who’s multiple degrees more successful than you acting like they are the same as you, but I also don’t really love the mindset of “you must be this unsuccessful to call yourself indie”
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Mar 5, 2021 03:01
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PoontifexMacksimus posted:Kind of feels like that ends up being the case in any "indie" industry. Like if you're a bunch of 10 year Valve veterans who decide to strike out on your own are you really an indie game studio? That's definitely a big unexamined part of it. As Lemon Curdistan alluded to earlier, does Evil Hat qualify as an "indie RPG studio" at this point? Does Onyx Path? Does Fria Ligan? There's been some sorta semi-serious/semi-jokey discussions about it but it feels like a thing a lot of people are tiptoeing around at times rather than acknowledge that some people still benefit massively from advantages that others don't have access to, while still all being reductively lumped together in a "D&D versus Not D&D" sense.
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Mar 5, 2021 03:06
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I think the one part that seems unreasonable to me is people taking issue with FrIa Ligan as a company specifically. While they're ostensibly still within the "indie rpg" scene as a whole I don't feel like anyone involved really runs in the same circles as the people involved in Zinequest, thus there's not really any reason to assume the company knew or cared about their Kickstarter overlapping with Zinequest, nor was there really any reason for them to consider that. Getting mad at Fria Ligan, as an entity, just feels counterproductive when the problem is more with the nature of Kickstarter and the crowdfunding scene as a whole. The larger point about high profile projects often overshadowing smaller-scale ones and having a negative effect on their funding is valid, but applies just as evenly, from the perspective of Zinequest, to non-rpg-centric, big-name Kickstarter projects. If it wasn't TOR that was outcompeting them it would have been a high profile indie video game, or board game or any number of other projects that were running at the same time. Singling out Fria Ligan as the example to take issue with just seems incredibly arbitrary.
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Mar 5, 2021 03:06
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KingKalamari posted:I think the one part that seems unreasonable to me is people taking issue with FrIa Ligan as a company specifically. While they're ostensibly still within the "indie rpg" scene as a whole I don't feel like anyone involved really runs in the same circles as the people involved in Zinequest, thus there's not really any reason to assume the company knew or cared about their Kickstarter overlapping with Zinequest, nor was there really any reason for them to consider that. I don't think anyone was calling for Fria Ligan to pull out or demanding they be burned to the ground, and you probably do have a point about the impact being there from other high profile projects, though I'd argue there's less direct competition between, say, video games and tabletop RPGs in that particular sense, but as for why they got singled out, well, they were an extremely high profile RPG project launching during a time when a bunch of other creators were launching much less high profile RPG projects, and now it looks like TOR is on track to be one of the single most successful RPG kickstarters of all time, so that part at least seems pretty obvious. You can absolutely call it jealousy or sour grapes, but in a hobby where one big game (D&D) already sucks most of the air out of the room it's frustrating to try and find ways to carve out a niche for yourself to try and thrive as an independent game designer and then just get effortlessly overshadowed by something else altogether. PST posted:So, just as Cubicle 7 didn't directly have the license, Fria Ligan didn't have the 'wherewithal to afford the Lord of the Rings license '. Fair enough, swap out "wherewithal to afford it" for "ability to work with it" and I feel the point holds up the same, but I appreciate the additional details.
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Mar 5, 2021 03:12
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It's not crazy to imagine a world where established RPG creators simply know about ZineQuest and either avoid launching their RPGs at the same time or acknowledge that ZineQuest is going on and link to it.
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Mar 5, 2021 05:03
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PoontifexMacksimus posted:At this point, more people must be making a living playing DnD for the Internet than make a living designing new games, right? It at times feels that way.
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Mar 5, 2021 08:49
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Kai Tave posted:I don't think anyone was calling for Fria Ligan to pull out or demanding they be burned to the ground, and you probably do have a point about the impact being there from other high profile projects, though I'd argue there's less direct competition between, say, video games and tabletop RPGs in that particular sense I mean, you don't have to reach for video games. Kickstarter is so full these days that no matter when you launch your KS you're going to be competing with at least one 'big indie' project and probably 1-3 small indie projects that have exploded.
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Mar 5, 2021 10:28
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Sodomy Hussein posted:I kinda start at the up-your-own-rear end position of calling something "The Perfect RPG" and that dissolving almost immediately because you apparently didn't tell everyone who would be involved, and that unfortunately sets the tone for what I think of the RPG industry generally. The problem with Crane trying to do self-parody is that it's already his public persona with a wink added. But then, he seems largely responsible for #ZineQuest which has been a big boon for me this year, so I can be simultaneously thankful to him for that and tremendously disappointed over his shenanigans. So it goes. Warthur posted:A thornier question is, are there any RPG companies out there who benefit from being buddies with Luke? I have seen no sign of Fria Lagin getting any sort of special treatment from Kickstarter. I have, undeniably, witnessed OPP running two simultaneous Kickstarter funding periods at a time when the TOS said you weren't meant to do that. Does Luke have pals at OPP? If so then even if that isn't beyond-reasonable-doubt proof that corruption has occurred, it creates enough of an appearance of wrongdoing that it really shouldn't happen. I think it lot of it just comes down to being a proven moneymaker; I've worked for a company that gets to run Kickstarters while multiple projects run fulfillment, and I'm not aware of any special Kickstarter connection there. That's not to that some degree of nepotism might not occur, but I don't get the impression that's a driving force. Of course, does this create a situation where big companies that demand a lot of money from backers exact a higher price on consumers than small, low-tier projects when they fail or stumble? Yes, but Kickstarter doesn't seem particularly concerned. ----- As far as The One Ring, a lot of it does have to do with overlap, too. I was lucky with my Kickstarter, I think, to find a really underserved gap where I'm not really competing with other current RPG KSes other than just in a finite dollars sense. But a #ZineQuest Kickstarter that's trying to do high fantasy stuff might find more of an issue. The problem is that setting up a big-name Kickstarter like The One Ring is that it can be time-sensitive considering when licensing gets discussed and how many projects a company has in the fire, so kicking it back a month can result in just... not making money for a month. Which can be murderous in this industry. Even with my Kickstarter I wish I could have timed things better, to have more of a finished product to show backers, but I was busy kicking a book out the door. And I didn't want to miss #ZineQuest, and so got Fontes to help me get it out to hit that window. But we turned out fine despite that, thankfully, and I'm glad folks have put their faith in me, it's been really heartening. But big Kickstarters can face similar pressures and so I don't necessarily blame them. Would it be nice for huge RPG projects to take a break from February? Yeah, it really would. Would I expect it to happen? No.
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Mar 5, 2021 19:35
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