It is the dream of many a prospective gamer to make money doing what they love, and rightfully so. Game designers are the rock stars of our business, and everybody wants to be rock star! Well, maybe not Meatloaf, but definitely Slash. The most common question I get as a business major is “should I start X business?” Should I open a game store? Should I start writing RPGs and publishing them myself?
No, no you should not. You also shouldn’t open an espresso bar, a restaurant, advertising agency, business consultancy, or a head shop. These are saturated markets with a high probability of failure and that require a lot of industry-specific, hard-earned knowledge to be successful in. Essentially, it’s a question of “if you have to ask, the answer is no.”
This isn’t an elitist thing, and I don’t mean to crush your dreams. It is a gatekeeper rule, and it’s also based on a lot of analysis of the market and the industry. Here are some reasons you should be apprehensive about getting into the game industry.
1. You need a killer business model. Wait, wait, you say, I’ve got this great game, it will totally sell, and I’m going to do some interesting trickery to get people to buy it (like give the core rules away for free or make a blog or something). The only problem is that is not a business model. That is (probably) a marketing plan, which is part of a business model, sort of.
I mentioned this earlier, but a lot of the models for releasing RPGs, and most of them suck. I think it can be summed up nicely by defining a spectrum between the TSR model and the GURPS model. (Note that these are my own designations.)
As many of you may be familiar, TSR owned D&D for most of its lifetime. In the late eighties and early nineties, they literally ran D&D into the ground by adopting a publishing model that has, against all reason, been copied by most small press games! The basic idea is this: you release a core game, and then you release a followup supplements for that game, expanding existing material and introducing more of it. Maybe, if your system is big enough, you release a setting or two, and then some splatbooks and adventures for that setting.
The problem with this is one of diminishing returns, essentially. The tenth splatbook for Professor Cirno’s Wild and Crazy Penguinland is going to sell a LOT less than the core book did, because a certain (likely large) percentage of people are going to be happy with just supplements 1-9 or fewer. You also run in to issues with segmentation of your customer base and decreasing quality, as TSR did. The common solution is to either a) release new games and stop supporting the old ones or b) release a new version of the game and only partially support old ones.
On the other end of the supplement-based model is GURPS. GURPS releases its core rules, which cover damned near everything (there are GURPS rules for how much damage you would roll for a nuclear explosion). Then, they release setting and themed books, like China, Steampunk, Magic, Mysteries, or Discworld. The huge difference here is that very few of these are dependent; the entire line is modular. You can run GURPS China with out GURPS Martial Arts (although the latter book may enhance your experience). Discworld doesn’t really require Magic. Now, the really good part is that you CAN combine stuff from all of these together and run GURPS Magic Steampunk China Mysteries (drawing things from all of those books, if you have them).
Additionally, the books are fucking good. I would hand GURPS China to someone who just wanted a good background on Chinese history and culture. The High-Tech book has a lot of great information about modern technology and weapons. Mysteries includes a lot of great information that can be useful in just writing a mystery story. Some of the settings are just brilliant (Transhuman Space, I’m looking at you).
You should not follow either of these. While it’s obvious that the GURPS model has enjoyed more general success, it’s important to note that it is not newer, or really, more sophisticated. These models are mostly bunk. Even SJG is finding that for the money it puts into a GURPS supplement is probably better spent making more Munchkin cards.
These models aren’t unique to RPGs either. Games Workshop essentially just uses TSR’s model: New edition, new codexes, more supplements, more models for those codexes! Oh, wait, we’ve done everything, time to revise it again!
One of the things that makes board games (even really geeky ones) more successful is that the expansions are fully modular. I can play Catan with any, all, or none of the expansions. When I pick up a wargame, I am automatically curious as to what core books and models I need if I wanted play Imperial Guard or Germans or Kzinti. What’s worse, most games are fucking awful at enumerating this on the cover, so I get to dive through the game and try to figure it out. Or, even better, put it back on the shelf.
Mind you, I am not discussing the behind-the-scenes parts of a business model, like whether or not you outsource any of your production process, how customer support is handled, or who owns your business. These are things that I don’t think are wrong with the industry.
What new models are there? Well, not many.
There’s Dungeons and Dragons Interactive (DDI), which is a set of online tools that Wizards has developed to bring D&D into the 21st century. It’s a brilliant idea, really: for $5-10 a month, you get access to every single rule, power, item, class, race, and whatall they’ve released. Additionally, you can use the online character generator to make and print off all of your characters, and the monster and adventure tools! As a bonus, you get all of the Dungeon and Dragon magazine you can download.
So, now you can get into D&D for $20 the first month (DDI doesn’t include the actual game rules, so you need to buy a Rules Compendium for the DM), and a lot less in subsequent months. While that may add up to $60-140 a year, that’s about what you’d spend on books (if not less). What’s more, you get all the convenience of an online tool, and you don’t have to buy 12-15 books just to get caught up with the line. It’s all right there, ready for adventure!
I don’t know if this is a workable model for a smaller-press publisher, but I do think this is the future (or one of the futures) of gaming. Trying to release books subsequently is a failing notion. Don’t do it. Find something better. If you can’t, don’t bother.
Okay, that’s enough for today. Part two will happen on Monday.
