19. January 2010 by admin.

Let’s talk business for a second, shall we…

Roleplaying games are a shaky one; the market is vulnerable and not that strong, and there are plenty of options out there for anyone to go grab. The old proverb is that “to make a small fortune publishing RPGs, you have to start with a big fortune”, meaning that most of it is money out the window. Who would publish in a climate like this?

The answer to that is easy: Diehard roleplayers, and crazy hopefuls with an idea. Why? Because of a love of the game (or just the idea. It happens). But the big question is how? In the olden days, it was about getting a bunch of prints made, taking them to a game event like GenCon, and hoping someone would buy them. Then came Print on Demand and PDF publishing, and the business changed. Well, it changed a little; books were suddenly easier to produce and sell, and online sales were easier to get to a larger market. Free samples were affordable, and some people sold their wares. But things changed even more…

The business plan that I have been poking at for some time, without really understanding its practical implications, is ransom publishing. Essentially, it involves making people pay for something before it’s even created, like a massive pre-order, and then making it freely available once it is done. To a business man, that might sound like lunacy, or a wet dream, but people are doing it. I found out exactly how much the idea of ransom has spread when I came into contact with Kickstarter.com, a site that facilitates the creation of art and other things with the ransom process. Simply put, they collect prepayments and only bill them when a project has enough of them to be fully funded. Then, the creator can create it and make it free or hand out erly copies to those who supported it.

I like this as a business model for GEARS, but it is filled with uncertainties. The big one, of course, is whether people will fund a game book before it is made, or if they want to see it before buying it. But the potentials of this model are staggering! For one, it would provide opportunities I like, such as allowing anyone to print and sell copies for free. If the game shows its true worth successfully, that means a lot of people will be making money on it with little investment, and odds are they will be first in line to facilitate the creation of more books, giving them something to sell. Others can support with lesser sums to move things along, since 500 people supporting with $10 is $5000, which is enough to get a fiar-sized game supplement written. Having the line free after that makes it highly available, and people can print it however they see fit.

But the greatest win from a ransom model is freedom. In that, I mean freedom to focus on the writing and playing part of the game! A ransom model would take away a lot of business responsibilities from myself and those helping GEARS get created, allowing more to be written for it. No print hassles, no rights issues, no worries what book to write first, because the funding will show the interests that exist. It would allow us to be exactly what we want to be: Game creators, not business people. If we wanted to do business, we’d be making silly ringtones, after all

Ransom is not a guaranteed model for GEARS to launch on, but it is on the table, and it has a lot of attractive qualities. More research will have to be done, but if it can be pulled off, the need for extensive business research will fade in the future. It will be what it was always meant to be, anmely about the game!

Posted in PDF, Business, Game worlds | 1 Comment »

7. January 2010 by admin.

Writing continues, unabated. But in the meantime, the steady progress of GEARS Fourth Draft has made way for some talks on getting the game ‘out there’, getting it into the hands of gamers in not only a fiscally sound, but also overall cool way, a way that beenfits the roleplaying community as a whole. Technology has changed by leaps and bounds since Gygax and Arneson first got Dungeons & Dragons on the streets and birthed a generation of roleplayers, and RPG publishers. But as in so many other fields and industries, how that technology is used has been slow to catch up.

Print On Demand is a shining example of The Right Idea: Publishers can put up little or no money and yet have their content published worldwide, each copy printed as it is ordered. There are still massive flaws in this business model, but the uses (not to mention future potentials!) of it outshines those flaws. And the flaws are being removed, slowly but surely. This ‘POD’ model is a child of better printing and distribution technologies.

Another is PDF, or other digital publishing formats. Not only is there literally zero production costs per copy for the publisher, since it is just a computer file being copied, but the technology allows for in-book search functions, bookmarking, and other ways to get around often dense and extensive texts. While not horribly well utilized, even basic PDF technology also allows for interactive texts (forms, changeable paragraphs, etc.) and other features that go beyond what could ever be expected from a paper book. And with electronic readers bridging the gap between electronic and physical print content, there seems to be a lot on the very close horizon!

Putting it all to practical use is another matter. Publishing is a very old business, and its traditions are heavily engrained. Books are one of the oldest technologies on the planet, and printing has been around for half a millenium, too. Business procedures are even stranger creatures, being theoretically flexible but practically stubborn. It comes down to humans, and most people like their skills to continue being applicable, so changing technologies do not easily change the world.

But as GEARS grows ever closer to full publishing, and as background material piles up in wait for becoming published books, it has become clear that we, meaning everyone independently controlling publishing content (every writer and independent publisher of games, for example!), have the opportunity to change this. We need three things: The ideas, the knowledge, and the will. And it is starting to seem that all those things exist in the people around GEARS, and even more in the people we are connected to (ironically, often through the greatest of all those new technologies, the Internet). While stating the knowledge and will would be not only time consuming but also rather uninteresting, here are a few of the ideas that have come up and are currently being worked on with full intent of implementing them:

Growing Content is the idea that buying a book need no longer just be about buying a book. While print copies have their limitations, electronic ones have very few. For one, the current standard of delivering PDF books is to create an account with the publisher, from which the purchased PDF can be downloaded not just once, but for as long as that account exists. So why let the PDF stay as it is? Once a book is purchased and available for download, the PDF file can be added to every now and then, making it grow without further cost to the consumer. Imagine a small added section every two weeks, or updated facts as the world evolves. An updated copy can be downloaded every time the owner is notified of an upgrade, or just whenever the owner wishes to. With proper design, added pieces can even be printed separately and held in print form by the owner, using a standard desktop printer.

Transferable Property, an idea sparked by an RPGnet discussion, opens up the concept of a second-hand market for digital books. Essentially, the aforementioned download account can allow the owner to sell or give a book to someone else. The old owner has it removed from the account, and the new has it added. This allows the old owner to purchase new things and change with his or her interests without the full cost of the new material (because the sold ones make them more affordable), and lets the new owner enter the market cheaper. If a purchase has continual effects, such as the above Growing Content, the new owner will get those benefits for the purchased book; the old owner no longer has the access. This makes the second-hand market a dynamic and independent way for familiarity with the books grow, and anyone tempted by piracy sales (as opposed to free copies) has an alternative.

On-Location Printing is an idea stemming from the two facts that modern printers are cheap and effective, and digital distribution costs nothing to the publisher. That means that rather than shipping a book, a local vendor can be given a license to print it. Quality will not match a professionally printed book, but some people are fine with a simpler copy at a third the price or so! The publisher can produce and cheaply sell licensed material with no added production costs and spark local sales, getting in return local vendors motivated to promote the material. Local vendors get cheap products with very limited investments (a good printer and gluebinder, or even just a hole-puncher!) and no stock (except printing paper, but that is a very versatile kind of stock).

Interactive Books are an old publishing dream: The idea to make a book that can be changed according to the reader’s wishes, or do things for the reader based on the content. With PDF and other digital publishing, this is now a palpable reality. A roleplaying book could produce character sheets with the character information filled right in, or even create random encounters or descriptions! Books can even be compiled on request, containing the sections that the reader wants and little or nothing else. This is a highly maleable form of publishing, with books that are and do what the reader wants (as long as they are properly designed. The books, not the readers).

These are just the ideas that are simple enough to implement with technologies readily at hand. There are plenty of other ideas out there, which can transform publishing as we know it, including RPG publishing. At the moment, the basic tools for applying them to GEARS are being assembled, and some may be available as soon as the First Edition is published; some may be available even before that! What is for sure is that these concepts are worth pursuing, and that GEARS will be published with full knowledge of that, and full intent to do it!

Posted in PDF, Business | No Comments »