The Future of Sales
By The Warden
Selling your game means convincing at least one of a crowd to stop and look at your product. Then you have to convince them to buy it.
Once you have a game designed, tested, and ready to engage a skeptical public, there’s still one last hurdle to overcome: selling the damn thing. And if you thought you busted your hump just getting a finished product ready, you’re in for a nasty surprise.
Selling a game – whether it’s a brand new system or a third-party supplement supporting an existing and massively popular system – is an endeavor all it’s own due mostly to the fact that it’s a small, yet crowded, market. Proving this point can be rather simple: just take a look at the front page of RPGNow. Now check it out again the following day and the day after that. Odds are incredibly strong those products featured at the top of the New Releases list are pushed off the front page by even newer products.
It’s the inevitable result to the availability of online resources and nearly every entertainment market is dealing with such issues today. While there are major publishers/labels/producers operating with significant budgets, there are thousands more pouring every resource at their disposal into independent releases. Competition is huge compared to ten or twenty years ago and the RPG market is a shining example of such overcrowding, but in a good way. Competition forces everyone to constantly stretch their material in new directions to the benefit of the consumer, who has the ability to sit back and choose what they want of their favorite hobby rather than pick from a small pile and hope for the best. Depending on your personal experiences with independent releases, this level of choice can be good or bad. (Many d20 fans of the last decade felt the OGL tainted the entire system line with so many mediocre releases and left major publishers loathe or reluctant to allow for anything as available as before.)
If we thought the previous decade was an unveiling of new potential for a truly open market, it seems we’re not even close to reaching the edge. While online sales are truly revealing new and exciting resources for publishers and consumers alike, many entrepreneurs have found a way to unhinge the standard joints holding the walls of retail in place and shift them around as needed. As expected, there have been harsh reactions by the popular and established to try and quash or subdue these shifts and that’s what we’re here to talk about today.
GAME DESIGN AND AN OPEN MARKET
How exactly does this affect game design, you ask? Other than the fact that every aspect of a game’s production and release affects game design, this one is and will continue to be a dynamic condition of a game’s success.
Tabletop games need to be aware of their release possibilities in the same way a video game producer needs to know which devices their product will be compatible. Sure, you could release a PDF-only product and make it look like a regular book on your screen, but PDFs are capable of more than paper copies and with the rise of tablets and ebook readers, portability and convenience are become stronger factors. Rather than list off all the featured differences between PDF and paper books, let’s just look at my personal pet peeve with PDFs: page flipping. With a paper book, you can simply flip around and find what you’re looking for using visual memory from the original read. With PDFs, not so much. That’s where the technology offers additional solutions to make that particular product useful: bookmarks and active page links for one. Add to that the possibility to add layers for additional or removable content (incredibly useful for home printing), background music or sound effects, video, and online access offers up far more than any paper edition can provide.
Here’s the kicker: not everyone wants the same type of format anymore. It’s about versatility. To reach the most number of people, publishers have to meet the demands in order to stay ahead or keep up with trends (which will change over the years because we’re still innovating when it comes to home entertainment).
The point is your game has to work within those formats it’ll be released under, simultaneously and individually. Your game has to be readable casually during the first pass-through by a potential GM and accessible in the middle of the game by players. Page references alone can be a daunting task if you release a book under different formats. If a GM with a PDF on their iPad tells a player with the print copy to find details on their weapon of choice on page 156, that player still needs to find it on page 156. This is perhaps the primary reason why RPGs do not make for good ebooks as the page number varies according to the settings of the reader. It’s a matter of presentation and that has always been a crucial factor in game design. Compare two editions of D&D, for example, to see the difference and you’ll know these were not conceived during the layout stage of production.
GOING FOR THE JUGULAR
The days of everyone buying their games through a retailer are becoming rare, at least that’s the fear of many retailers. The recent trend of Kickstarter for directly accessing an alert consumer base is the latest effort by publishers to connect with their customers by going straight to the source. To be clear, this is not an active attempt to remove retailers, but an effort to reach more consumers. This past week, Kickstarter reinforced their goal as a consumer-direct website by enforcing the ban on retailer-level rewards. While many RPG publishers, such as Evil Hat Productions, have made an active point of including retailers in their last two Kickstarter projects – Dinocalypse Now and Race to Adventure – such practices were deemed a conflict to the website’s true purpose: allowing creators to access potential customers directly.
There are many retailers, particularly small comic book and gaming shops, who have been opposed to many direct consumer practices ever since the Internet became a dominant force in retail and have kicked and screamed about unfair exclusions along the way. The always direct Gareth M. Skarka of Adamant Entertainment – and successful beneficiary of Kickstarter with his wildly popular Far West game – had some interesting points on this topic. Regardless of valid and invalid points, the impact of sites like Kickstarter leave retailers little choice but to adapt and survive, as any business should, including online retailers.
Do direct consumer sales and relations make a massive impact on smaller publishers and game designers and is it more important than working through retailers? Personally, I doubt it because it’s just another access point. It’s all part of a larger pot filled up by individual hands. While some publishers may have incredible success with one method over others, it is not always the case for everyone. Let’s face it; if you’re designing a game, you want it to be available to as many people as possible. If you can’t get it sold within your favorite local gaming store, you’ll use online sales. But if your local store calls you up and wants to talk about putting print copies on their shelves, you’re ordering steak for dinner in celebration. To earn that steak dinner, your product has to be a success online in order to prove to the brick and mortar retailer it’s worth the finances buying your game.
Perhaps the greatest risk is spreading oneself too thin, something companies like TSR attempted and failed. With a line as popular as D&D, they pumped out so many products, campaign settings, boxed sets, and more, it became near impossible for any single product to become a profitable powerhouse. Sometimes, less is better. Allowing publishers as a whole to have the option to product material for one format or delivery does allow publishers of all sizes to find a market suitable to their budget with room for expansion. There will always be a place for retailers, but perhaps only for the most successful publishers.
Even today, there are major publishers and copyright holders fearful of the impact of these new mediums and tools for delivery. While the reasons are purely speculative, Cubicle 7 recently announced all PDF sales for The One Ring RPG have been suspended pending further investigation. With memory still fresh to Wizards of the Coast’s harsh reaction to their PDF sales due to minor doses of piracy and the fact that The One Ring’s creative property is owned by Tolkien Enterprises, not the game’s publisher, it’s hard to believe the PDF pull is due to anything other than piracy concerns.
PROMOTION (AKA PIMPING YOUR GAME)
Another valuable tool the Internet offers is promotion and like sales, it’s applicable to the resources and ability of the publisher to pull it off. For example, anyone can make a web banner, but few can create an animated presentation of their upcoming product. That being said, outside resources have started to make a significant impact on the RPG industry.
Target, one of the major retail chains in the United States (and opening soon in Canada) announced this past week they’re working with the Geek and Sundry channel on YouTube to carry all the games featured on the popular show, Tabletop. This includes two roleplaying games, Fiasco by Bully Pulpit Games and the soon-to-broadcast Dragon Age RPG from Green Ronin, making them the first RPGs to be carried in Target’s stores. While there are no reports of these games placed on their shelves as of yet, the impact alone trumps any efforts by other larger publishers to get their products in such a major position.
With tabletop gaming rising into popular culture once more, combined with the increase in online promotional tools, it’s entirely possible for independent publishers to find their own path towards the success every business craves. It’s ironically appropriate, really. Just like RPGs themselves, the rules are merely recommendations designed to help players achieve their goal of having fun, but not the only way. In today’s ever-shifting market, the old standards are simply a guideline for success, but it’s not the only way.
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