The Need for Attention
By The Warden
I’ve never been one for trends. To me, the latest website or service means another username and password for yet something else I might not use. When I received a link to Pinterest, I checked it out and moved on as I’ve never been one to share photos, let alone take them. (Being in front of a camera is not exactly my most comforting moment, even when I had to do so for a recent project.) I’m good with Facebook and Twitter, thank you, though I have been trying Google+ as a more “professional level” of Facebook.
There has been one exception recently: Kickstarter. I know I’ve talked about it before briefly, but it’s ramping up a path on the publicity ladder this week as two projects surpass $1 million, including one hitting the mark in 24 hours. While these are far from the traditional RPGs this column features, the implication for future designers and the game publishing industry as a whole is astounding when you think about it.
Aspiring game designers – myself included – are chomping at the bit to take advantage of these tools to launch our new designs without having to go through the bother of submissions to publishers or convincing a bank your idea is the best thing since sliced bagels. No one hangs rejection letters on the wall. On the surface, having sites like Kickstarter, Indie-Go-Go, and others all over the world provide an exciting means for us to pitch our ideas to fellow gamers and other like-minded enthusiasts for help getting our ideas off the ground. But like all concepts, there’s more to this story than the enthusiastic winners and nothing is as simple as it seems.
Funding
For every successful project, there is another failure. Or perhaps two or three. Not everything makes it off the ground and the process can be a daunting task. Name recognition still plays a huge roll in any successful campaign, much as it does with anything else, and people are more willing to invest in an idea from a name they recognize than one they do not. This is not to say the person standing behind the curtain is the beginning and end of their success, they had to work for that level of recognition and should be rewarded as such. What this teaches us is we should not be so quick to assume instant success because of the victories read about online or in mainstream news because even these have to struggle to achieve their results. We can, however, learn from their efforts and avoid the pitfalls they’ve had to overcome to get to where they are now.
Daniel Solis (Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple) has taken on quite a few projects through crowdsourcing and public funding, including the recently completed Writer’s Dice. His blog provides a very open and detailed accounting of the trials and tribulations of putting these projects together and still struggles with financial concerns (with shipping being the biggest nightmare all projects have to overcome). Anyone looking to openly produce any project would be wise to heed his advice.
In the early days of my own Kickstarter project, I sought out the advise of Richard Bliss from the Funding the Dream podcast and found him to be an immense help. While the concept of pubic fundraising is still in its infancy, there are various standards in place proven to have worked from project to project, all of which involve impact marketing and direct targeting. This reveals yet another advantage of the Online Age: availability.
Recognition
When it comes down to it, creativity and ingenuity are just as essential as they’ve always been. Only the tools have changed. The challenge in finding and obtaining investors can be more daunting than convincing people to buy the final product, but each step requires promotion and individuality. Games designed with original rule mechanics face a daunting climb, as they must convince potential backers and players their work coalesces into a unique and enjoyable experience while shouting above the commotion of the tried and true representatives of the genre.
Greg Christopher devised a rather clever means of garnishing some of that crucial attention by drafting a Disclosure Agreement to his upcoming NordBoerne RPG. Contrasting the standardized Non-Disclosure Agreement prohibiting playtesters from revealing the secrets of a game, this one encourages players to talk about it as much as possible. In essence, what’s been drafted here is a concise requirement of perhaps the most assumed portion of playtesting: word of mouth advertising.
Evaluation
There’s an invaluable resource available to the kind of exposure your upcoming project can gain from methods such as Kickstarter: information. Rare are the projects failing to collect any backers at all. It’s like setting a booth at GenCon and no one stops by at all except to ask you where they can find the bathroom; it doesn’t happen. Even if the project fails to get off the ground, the effort provides you with enough information to make a second (or third) attempt, fueling you with enough data to determine what went wrong and where to go from here. Sometimes it’s not about what you gained, but what you didn’t gain.
All of this possibility leaves me very eager to see what the RPG community produces over the next few years and gives me cause to wonder what direction it will take by the next decade. Like the last publishing boom of the previous decade, there is enormous potential for new ideas, mechanics, and concepts to evolve for a wider audience. Unlike the earlier decade, it’s not limited to the production of a single rule set guided by a single publisher. This is truly a chance for the roleplaying game to spread its winds and try something different. What may be the standard design now can become just another flavor in the candy store; we may enjoy it now and again, but want to have just a taste of something wild.