#rpgaday2017
24. Share a PWYW publisher who should be charging more.
Preface: I spend money on RPGs, and on content creators on patreon. I back kickstarters.
I don't really understand the RPG industry as an industry. There are a few megastars (D&D) that can generate an income for a few professionals and represent a rounding error of the company (Hasbro) it is owned by. But, the indie stuff --- the vast majority of what I play -- I do not understanding generating a sufficient per hourly revenue stream to justify itself.
I'm looking at Fiasco / AW / Fate / OSR stuff. The economics have never really made sense, and maybe someone can explain it. I reckon to do something for economic reasons, it needs to be what, $30 an hour pose expenses?
Maybe that sounds high, but I figure: taxes are higher, insecurity is pretty high, and the requisite skills are pretty high. By definition, we're talking about people who have office skills -- as in, can write, maybe draw, have a creative vision.
I've no idea how long it takes someone proficient to crank out a cool-ass game. I reckon creating the game is only the first step, as there's playtesting, con going, maybe social media, etc. Even if these are free, they are all time.
The upside is made even harder by the same problem any professionalization of a hobby as -- amateurs. Why spend hundreds of dollars for D&D (or even, Traveller Mongoose books) when I can spend $10 on an OSR hack? Why spend $10 on a fate hack (or a pbta hack) when the community is small enough that I have friends who will write them for me?
And, sure, sure, there's quality and time issues -- but I am exactly the target demographic to spend more money to better enjoy my game time. And while I'll support content being created by people who I dig, it's at least partially to magnify those voices.
tl;dr - I don't believe in the RPG "industry".
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It's a pretty book industry. The roleplaying is just the excuse.
ReplyDeleteThose books maybe make a livelihood for the publishers, but I don't see it happening for the authors. The audience is too dang small.
ReplyDeleteBrian Ashford I don't buy that for a second. The payout that comes from having made a pretty book does not nearly equivocate to the payout for the time/work/emotional investment in making the game and the book.
ReplyDeleteThe pretty book may be the manifestation, the gravy or the roadmap but it's never the driver. And the games are not the excuse, they're the method, or the medium.
William Nichols very few authors do make a living on RPGs, for most it's a second job or a profitable hobby.
ReplyDeleteThat's exactly the point, Brian Ashford. It's not an industry, it's a hobby. And I betcha for the majority who think it is profitable it winds up not being -- it may offset costs associated with doing business, maybe even offset the entire hobby, but folks with those skills could make more on the open market.
ReplyDeleteMo Jave Think of it from the buyer's perspective: You want a new game, how much do you pay for it? £10? $50?
ReplyDeleteWhat determines how much it's worth? It's it the number of time you expect to play it? The word count? Or is it the size of the book, the quality of the paper and the gorgeous art?
Mo Jave You're not wrong. I'm also not sure that the point Brian made is entirely relevant to the economic point. That is, publishing the sorts of games I love (please continue!) cannot possibly be profitable.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols You are right, there is very little money in the content creation, but there is money to be made in the production of the books, and is the production values of the fancy books that keeps people buying D&D, Star Wars and Vampire when indie games are so much cheaper but still provide as much value at the table.
ReplyDeleteBrian Ashford Who are you saying is making money? Hasbro, in essence?
ReplyDeleteBrian Ashford Yes, but the buyer's PoV is the market, maybe even the economy. The industry (in as much as we can talk about it that way) is the production within the ecosystem of that market /economy, not the market itself.
ReplyDeleteBrian Ashford There is a limit to what gamers will pay for a game, and it is far below what games are worth in terms of time to produce.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols Sure, Hasbro are making money, so are the printers, distributors and shops.
ReplyDeleteEdit: And whoever owns Star Wars, Star Trek, Middle Earth...
Brian Ashford With the possible exception of Middle Earth, those are all owned by fortune 1000 companies, right? (Hasbro is 509, Star Wars is Disney, Trek is a variety of large companies).
ReplyDeleteSo, if the only people making money are the stockholders of the largest companies, then ... well, duh. They can mass-produce a thousand books for less money than 100 POD books. They don't have to commission art, they can use their own propriety art. They can even use it to train a certain class of employee, before sending them back to profitable business units. In other words, standard issue capitalism.
If Evil Hat actually made money -- especially if that's defined as salaries + profits to stockholders -- then I'd be surprised, and games would be profitable.
Anna Kreider For the games I love and you write? Absolutely.
ReplyDeleteHeck, the market has conditioned me to think "I gave this creative person ten dollars two years ago, so I can have everything they write", and that's some bullshit right there.
Also, I feel like it's worth pointing out that some games ONLY work as PWYW. Autonomy sure as shit wouldn't have made any money if I hadn't let people set their own price.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols In not sure what point you are making here?
ReplyDeleteThere is money to be made here or these big budget games wouldn't get made. I mean the money might not make it to the creators but that, unfortunately, doesn't mean that it isn't a viable industry.
The money that is being made is being made on the sale of big shiny books.
If Evil Hat are making money it's in their pretty books, not their games, because their games are free, is the books that you have to pay for.
Small press stuff is probably mostly barely breaking even.
This isn't unique to roleplaying though. Creatives artists and performers the world over mostly do it for the love of it not as a living.
Anna Kreider Could I poke a little into that?
ReplyDeleteWithout getting too into the weeds or pulling back too much of your wage affairs, if we assume your labor is $30 per hour (USD or CAD, this is ballpark), did autonomy make enough to justify the time put in?
Brian Ashford They don't have to be making money. If I'm Disney, I can let a few dozen employees make an RPG and it's just a rounding error. They can bring in zero dollars and develop useful skills for later, and those skills are valuable to, for example, make rides.
ReplyDeleteThat's the point. Hasbro et al do not need to be making money directly from RPGs to continue making RPGs.
William Nichols Nope! By that metric, it juuuuust pays for playtesting, but not for time to develop, write, or polish for publishing.
ReplyDeleteBrian Ashford You are vastly, vastly overestimating the amount of profit that exists in the RPG publishing business. And as small press goes, if even ten percent of those creators earn enough to pay for the laptop on which they wrote their game, they are lucky.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to make money printing pretty books, the last thing you do is get into RPG publishing.
I'd be really surprised if anyone at Hasbro even knew what was going on with D&D the game. At best, I'd wager that the D&D brand is what pulls in enough money to even appear in a spreadsheet.
ReplyDeleteAside: I love talking RPG economics with gamers, as virtually no one (except creators who can speak to their own experience, like Ms. Kreider) has any data on which to base anything (myself included).
Thank you, Anna Kreider. Is that a reasonable metric to judge profitability/break even level? Would you be ok to talk more about other games and metrics you use for economic success?
ReplyDeleteMark Delsing Being a public company, Hasbro has public books. D&D is not sufficient to even appear, though TSR Wizards for sure is. That is, they can safely ignore D&D so long as Magic keeps making money.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols I don't think so, because there's also the issue that it's reasonable to expect to actually make profit on games, not just break even.
ReplyDeleteAlso, even the games that LOOK like they're making money almost never meet that standard of "at least $30/hour". Like, there's no fucking way we'd hit that with The Watch with the hundreds of hours that have gone into it.
William Nichols to add an extra perspective to this, I've been putting out RPGs for about 4 years now, and while it's nowhere near a full-time job level of income it's allowed me to afford con attendance, art, subscription to Creative Cloud etc. I'm not saying it's not possible to make a full-time level wage on RPG writing - the profit on my Kickstarter than ended today is comparable to my day job - but it takes a lot of work and, I'll be honest, the privilege to have that much free time, to begin with. Not to mention an NHS that means I don't have health insurance bills on top of everything else.
ReplyDeleteAnna Kreider That's about what I figured. And The Watch is a great example of a successful pbta game. If that's not making money (which, frankly, I suspected it wasn't), then nobody is making money.
ReplyDeleteWhich is pretty much the point I started with: making games doesn't make any money. Economically, one is better off selling out and working for The Man (err... darkness? I get confused who I work for.)
Which, and let me be clear and restate this again, doesn't have any bearing on whether or not I will contribute to games. What it does mean is we're expecting professional results at hobbiest rates. Which is, of course, bullshit.
That is, that the industry qua industry doesn't exist.
Oh, hi James Iles, and congratulations! I look forward to playing Legacy soon!
ReplyDeleteAFTER expenses, are you making at least $30/hour on Legacy?
I feel like that's the question. I've got reasons for using $30.
It's also worth keeping in mind that, iirc, none or close to none of the companies that were born at the inception of the hobby — when there was actually a mass culture boom that made it profitable — survived. And that story repeats itself in later eras (e.g., White Wolf).
ReplyDeleteAnd the self-publlushing renaissance birthed out of the Forge mad a point of acknowledging this, hence cutting out the middleman and self-publishing (with the explicit expectation that no way were you going to earn a living at this).
William Nichols Good point. I seem to remember reading about how keeping D&D alive is valuable primarily for the brand, and it's the brand that actually has value (even if that value is too small to appear on a Hasbro earning statement).
Mark Delsing Yup. Break even is a very different business model than turn a profit. And both have to deal with the force of amateurs doing the same thing for free.
ReplyDeleteIt's a fair point that the D&D brand can make a loss making D&D RPG worthwhile, but does that apply to Star Wars or Middle Earth? I can't imagine those brands benefit in any noticeable way from the presence of their (multiple) RPGs?
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols See, uh, no? You're actually WAY better off creating your own content and selling it than working for The Man because of the economics of ownership and compensation.
ReplyDeleteSexyTime Adventures, my stupid Dungeon World hack which is TOTALLY A JOKE and NOT MEANT TO BE ACTUALLY PLAYED, made me more money than the 10,000+ words I wrote for V:20 Dark Ages - which was about the same length. Further, I didn't have to wait 18 months for the money I was owed.
You will almost always end up making more money self-publishing than signing away your IP as a freelancer.
William Nichols Let's see... at a rough estimate, I started properly working on Legacy 2e in November 2016. As I generally did the majority of the writing/design on the train to and from work, that's about 2 hours/day. ~200 days of that, plus I'd say a month of full time days for kickstarter run-up and the actual campaign gets you about 640 hours. $30 per hour makes $19,200 or £15,000. Which, yeah, the kickstarter profit exceeded. I'm pretty sure this might be an outlier though.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols I remember an interview with Mearls where he said something to the effect of how WotC is essentially competing with every single player/DM using their game, hinting at how this is a hobby of creators who, when you think about it, don't really need anything from them beyond maybe the basic rules.
ReplyDeleteHeck, I know at least one guy who, lacking funds to buy lots of games, just makes his own instead. And I've played them, and they're great. Who even needs publishers? 😇
And, even if it didn't? This isn't something I do to make money. Making money is nice, but I do it because I'd find it intolerable not to. Same reason why I'm making my own stuff, and not trying to freelance for WW/WotC/Pelgrane etc
ReplyDelete.
ReplyDeleteMark Delsing I'm not overstating it, there must be some money in the big books or people wouldn't keep putting them out. The entire mainstream RPG industry (or whatever you want to call it) isn't an accidental gift to geeks.
ReplyDeleteConversely, I am well aware that small press RPGs really are a wondrous gift from skint creators to geeks.
Brian Ashford They don't beyond the licensing they charge for. Theoretically, the licensees do, but I have to wonder how much.
ReplyDelete(Companies like Cubicle 7 and Modiphius are really intriguing. I have no idea how they stay afloat.)
Brian Ashford The entire mainstream RPG industry (or whatever you want to call it) isn't an accidental gift to geeks.
ReplyDeleteI guess I would argue it largely is, but I admit that I"m as in the dark the next person.
From a writer's standpoint, I think Modiphius are positioning themselves as something like Image in the comics space - they boost particular products that they like the look of, with the creator keeping all the rights. Unlike Image, they don't carry any of the risk either - I haven't got any resources from them except some great advice, and I'm paying all the printing costs. What I am getting is access to much cheaper distribution and far-reaching promotion.
ReplyDeleteJames Iles I started doing this as a way to get my hobby to pay for itself, but as a woman AND someone with an arts degree I feel like I have to push back on the notion that we shouldn't expect to make a significant profit, because it's been my experience that messaging always ends up unequally targeting women and minority designers.
ReplyDeleteYeah, if you are doing it to pay for the hobby, then that's not an industry.
ReplyDeleteAnna Kreider Oh yeah, for certain. I was more describing my motivations as I got started designing and selling games - these days I try very hard to make sure I charge enough to justify the time I put in and the time my artists and writers I hire put in. It's partly what was mentioned upthread - if people with little need for money don't put a value on their time, it ends up driving down the perceived value of everyone's time.
ReplyDeleteJames Iles So that would fit with what I was saying that there is money to be made in the distribution of the books if not their actual creation.
ReplyDeleteThe RPG industry is like the bowling industry without the beer: non-existent.
ReplyDeleteWhich, yeah, the kickstarter profit exceeded. I'm pretty sure this might be an outlier though.
ReplyDeleteI was a backer, so I'm happy to see the project generated profit, but to Brian Ashford, I'd say that we'll see once all the rewards are delivered. (No disrespect to James Iles intended. I'm psyched for Legacy!)
Yup. As part of pricing out the maths of print runs, you slice up the RRP. Assuming you're selling via distributors/game stores, 50% goes to the shop, 20% goes to the distributor, and then the final 30% goes the book publisher. If you're entirely self-funded and self-publishing, you need to make a large enough print run that there's enough left of your 30% chunk for you to make a living.
ReplyDeleteSo it basically comes down to finding out the RRP your audience is willing to pay, and then working out if there's enough of them that the size of your print run brings the per-unit cost down to 10% of that RRP. If the answer's no - if they're too frugal or if your product's too niche - then you're limited to PoD, which has very low setup costs but also very low margins.
Hey Brian Ashford, I don't mean to come off like I'm picking on you, and I'm sorry to be such a dog with a bone about this; this publishing stuff fascinates me.
ReplyDeleteMark Delsing It's all good, I'm enjoying the discussion.
ReplyDelete