In my previous blog post, I covered the basics of why game
companies don’t want to look at your game, game setting, trading card game,
miniature wargame, boardgame, or what-have-you (did I cover all the bases?),
and what you used to have to do to self-publish. To recap, game companies are
working on their own games, thank you very much, and don’t want the hassles
involved with buying the rights to your game (which you’ve likely over-valued
anyway); you could self-publish the old fashioned way, or as I like to call it
“why didn’t I just take all that money and burn it because that would have been
more efficient?” Today, I’m going to talk about the pros and cons of
self-publishing in the new environment of .pdfs and print-on-demand (PoD).
Specifically, I was asked “why would I spend my time and
energy supporting someone else’s IP by writing for them at $0.06/word when I
could be self-publishing and reaping all the rewards?” That’s a great question,
but needs some clarification. The writer in question wants to know why he
should submit something to, or solicit freelance writing from, an established
game company, when with .pdf, PoD and the various “open source” licenses he
could publish his own material for the same game and realize more of the
profit. Just to be clear, I’m doing just that; currently I’m working on a
Pathfinder campaign being released in .pdf.
It’s no secret around the hobby games industry that I’m not
a fan of the OGL, and left the industry just as that horse was leaving the barn.
It’s a miniscule industry, we all know each other (sometimes a bit too well),
and I’m what you could politely call “vocal” in my opinions. I’m going to try
to see it from the other perspective, however, and discuss the pros and cons of
being a 3rd Person Provider of game content.
Pros
First, the pros. I’ve got to admit, the whole thing sounds
great, and I know quite a few people who jumped on this bandwagon and rode it
to money-town for a long time. I know there are people and game companies who
stayed in the business making great products by becoming 3rd Person
Providers. First, and most importantly, you make 100 percent of the profit. That’s saying something. You’re
not making $0.02/word or $0.06/word, you’re making all the money after costs.
Given the size of the market for games like Dungeons & Dragons and
Pathfinder, that’s potentially a lot of money. The reason this is all possible
in the first place, and what makes it really cost-effective, is the .pdf format and PoD. These two elements
combine to lower your cost of goods.
You’re not paying to print, ship, and store thousands of copies of a book that
might not sell. You’re selling an electronic file, and your customer is paying
the printing costs if he orders a print-on-demand hardcopy. All you’re really
paying for is the writing (which is often done by the 3PP guy himself) and
layout, and the guy who turns it into a .pdf (if you can’t do it yourself).
That’s savings you can pass on to your customers, in the form of less expensive
books (and you are passing those savings on to him, aren’t you?). Even better,
you eliminate the middleman – those evil distributors and game stores who all
want their cut to not really sell your game all that effectively in the first
place.
As much fun as a lower cost of goods, higher profit margin,
and cost effective distribution can be, the real thrill for a lot of writers is
the ability to create and control an
intellectual property. This is
not just nothing. If you write something for Studio Manta, and
I pay for it, then it’s MINE. I buy the copyright. Not only that, but I get to
tell you what to write and how to write it. That’s what my job essentially is
as a line developer, and why Big Game Press employs me. Not only that, but
Studio Manta gets to use your material any way it likes, when it likes. You,
the writer, are adding to the Big Game Press’ intellectual property. If you
self-publish, however, that creative control is yours. You can design whatever
you like, so long as it conforms to any requirements of the license. It’s your
setting. In fact, I hold the copyright to my first book, The Bronze Grimoire,
because that’s how Chaosium rolls. I could turn it into a movie, or a novel, or
a video game. And at this point, I could reprint it myself, or sell the
publishing rights back to Chaosium. That’s power, my friends. And let’s face
it, you all have visions dancing in your heads of selling your magnum opus to
Hollywood, or writing a fiction line based on the setting, or getting Blue
Oyster Cult to turn it into a song… If you create and control your own IP,
you’ve got visions of sugar-plums dancing in your heads, and if you’re more
realistic you at least realize you
make the profit off your own IP.
I love this idea so much that I’m actually working on my own
intellectual property. Actually, three. I don’t want to take my idea to
Hollywood, I just want to publish the kind of setting in which I would want to
play (that’s an important game design element), and make all the profit from
it. I also like the idea of being able to circumvent the bastard distributors
who don’t actually do anything to sell games, but insist on their mark-up. So
you see, I’ve thought about this 3PP thing, too. Remember that as you read the
cons.
Cons
And there are a lot of cons, in my opinion. First, you take
on all the risks and costs involved
in publishing. Sure, a lot of people made a lot of money with the OGL, and
continue to make a lot of money on Pathfinder. These have been, generally,
either the early adopters or the ones who have a reputation for quality. A lot
of people have also lost a lot of money producing shovel-ware, or jumping on
the bandwagon too late, or just plain getting lost in the avalanche of products
out there.
Which brings me to, you have to fight for brand recognition. The market is glutted, or can easily
be glutted. Let me put it this way: I shop at Complete Strategist in NYC. A few
years ago, I noticed a trend. The 2nd tier game company sections
were getting smaller, and the D&D OGL section was getting larger. And
larger. And larger. I had no idea if I should buy a campaign setting from AEG
or the one from Green Ronin or the one from Mongoose…. How many freaking
monster books can a single game support, by the way? These books weren't organized in any manner, either. All the D20 stuff got dumped in the D20 section, so you could never find anything. I’m not even getting into
the morass of OGL .pdf products being offered. And not all of these offerings
are good; there’s a lot of crap out there (a point my friend Mark makes often, and loudly).
Which brings me to the problem
of quality. When the subject turns to 3rd Party Producers and
their products, a common complaint I hear is that they’re simply not edited. Editors
and line editors are important. Because while you may be intimately familiar with
your subject matter, you may not communicate it well; what may be clear to you
could be a muddle on the page. Subject-verb agreement, shifting tenses, run-on
sentences, sentence fragments, these are all too common, I’ve heard. Hell, I
need an editor just for this blog, because I sometimes type “they’re” when I
meant “their” and I don’t catch it because I’ve been staring at the text for
too long. You’re also trying to cut costs by not including art. I know we’re
writers, and many of us don’t understand why the artist gets paid so much for a
quarter-panel of art when we, ink-stained wretches that we are, are the ones
doing all the work. Art is important. It not only breaks up the text, it
conveys a sense of the setting. Seriously, go to a local high school, steal
some kid’s chemistry notebook, and print his Metallica doodles. If you’re not
going to try to put out a professional-looking product, then you’re not a game
company: you’re a vanity press.
There’s one other issue you’ve got to contend with on the
quality side, and that’s perception.
For many people, cost equals value. That’s just the way the human brain works. You
may put out a setting for $4.99 on RPGnow, but to many people that
automatically means it’s got to suck compared to the $39.99 giganto-setting put
out by Paizo. Because value equals cost. Moreover, Monte Cook might be able to
self-publish a setting for D&D and make a million dollars; Jonathan Tweet
might sell 100,000 copies of his latest IP. But you’re not Monte Cook. I know, I checked. You have to answer the question “why should I
buy this dude’s setting?” because that’s the question your consumer is asking. Often,
that answer is “quality.” See the paragraph above. If you put out a product
that offers perceived value, do it consistently, and get a reputation for it,
then you should be okay. That’s a BIG “if.”
Alright, you say to yourself “I don’t care about the risks
and costs, and I’ll brave the marketplace, because at least I’m supporting my
own IP.” Are you? Are you really? I
don’t think you’re supporting your intellectual property at all. I think you’re
actually supporting Paizo’s and WotC’s. You’re building their brand identity with your offerings. And without any threat to
their bottom line, no less. If your product tanks in the marketplace, it’s no
skin off their nose. They didn’t spend money to produce it, you did. You lose
the money, not them. If you’re a success, and I hope you are, then they get the benefit. Everyone buys
Ross’ Land of Angst because they’ve heard it’s so good, and everyone’s talking
about it, and… you have to own Pathfinder or D&D to play it. Let’s put another
way, everyone’s saying “have you seen Ross’ new setting for Pathfinder?!” Sure, I’m benefitting, too, by making the sale.
But I’m also adding to their Intellectual
Property; they can take what you wrote and use it in their own stuff, and so
can anyone else. In the end, you’re still tending someone else’s garden, but with
your own IP.
(As an aside, this can be dangerous. Every time there was a
rumor that WotC was going to change the OGL, dozens of companies froze in fear.
Do you really want to be at the whims of some MBA who decides enough is enough
and drastically revises the license? I can’t answer that question for you, but
it’s one you should consider.)
You don’t care about all of that, however, because the IP for the
setting will be your own. You can sell it to Hollywood. You can sell it to
Electronic Arts. There can be comic books! Let me assure you, Hollywood does
not want your IP. Ditto for EA and Marvel. Also Tor, Viking or any other
publishing house. My friend Shane Hensley has been trying to sell Deadlands for
years, with NO success. He took it to game companies who said that wild west
videogames won’t sell, then produced Red Dead Redemption; in fact I have an
Xbox game called Darkwatch that is an almost perfect rip-off of Deadlands. So
get those fantasies of selling your IP and retiring to Megan Fox right out of
your head. If you’re going to turn it into a videogame, I hope you’re good at
coding. If you want a comic book, start taking art classes.
Working for The Man
To return to the original question, some people don’t want
to deal with all of this. My friend Chris Pramas says that if you want to write
and design games, the last thing you should do is start a game company. Do
that, and suddenly you’re running a company, not designing games. For some
people, they just want to write, and submitting work to a game company is a
good way to do it without all the headaches. Sure, you’ve got to write what
they say, only make $0.06/word, struggle to get work, and have to deal with
irrational line editors (hello!), but you don’t have to do all the heavy
lifting of writing, editing, layout, sales, tracking payments… That’s why you
would want to work for an existing game company. It’s safer.
In Conclusion
Remember when I said I was working on a Pathfinder 3rd
Person Production? I am. Just because I’ve been pretty harsh on the idea
doesn’t mean I don’t see the value in it. I’m even going to pursue two other
licensing agreements. What I want you to do is go in with your eyes open. There’s
tremendous potential to make money, especially with the cost of goods so low
(thanks to .pdf and PoD). There’s also a strong possibility you’ll lose your
shirt. Have no illusions, you’ll have to take on the risks and costs of
production yourself, fight for brand recognition, work hard to put out a
quality product, and fight to get to the top of the heap. Don’t do it because
you think your D&D setting will set the media world on fire and have
Hollywood beating a path to your door. Do it because you love to write games.
Because let me tell you something, this stuff is a lot of hard work.
No comments:
Post a Comment