I’m a strong believer that when you make games, you first goal before anything else like profit, protection of intellectual property, or validating your own self-worth, is to create and promote fun. Sure, it’s simplistic, it may be naïve, but I’m sticking with it.
How do you create fun? Part of it is catching lightning in a bottle. But part of it is never losing your own sense of fun. But maybe the greatest contributing factor is knowing your audience. And when I say knowing, I mean taking a good, long, unflinching look.
That said, there is a large and very vocal segment of RPG’ers who seem to be professional contrarians. What do I mean by that? Well in more modern vernacular, they are asshats. I think we know it too. There is a very interesting blog post at Mob United about this realization during a project, and a fantastic (and long) discussion about it on EN World, where Erik Mona makes some good points during in his rebuttal. Not all of our customers are asshats. In even the ones who are not always asshats. There are reasons for their asshattery. Often they feel justified—either rightly and wrongly—by the current landscape of the industry.
Let me show you an example—Prepainted miniatures.
Just recently Wizards of the Coast finally released the Orcus Gargantuan miniature. Personally, I was thrilled. I’ve wanted to see it released for a long time. While working at WotC, I would go to the display case of the pre-painted paint masters and stared longingly at the Orcus prototype. The entire time my brain droned “want, want, want.” It seemed for a long time that Orcus would never see the light of day. It was planned for the release of 4e and for various reasons it was pushed back again and again.
I knew not everyone would share my opinion.
I have another one of these simplistic, maybe naïve, views on products like this. Either you want it and you buy it (assuming of course you can afford it) or you don’t want it, and you do buy it. Sure there are reviews, there are people stating their opinion on the product, and so on, but often the conversation goes much further in the land of RPGs. Let me give you some examples from the Dungeons & Dragons Facebook comments (names of posters removed).
- All hail Orcus! I was worried that I wasn’t going to get one of these bad boys, but I found out today it’s on its way. I don’t believe it is too expensive. Consider I can pay up to $45 dollars for a smaller metal miniature from Reaper, and I have to put this thing together and paint it. I also paint miniatures professionally. I don’t get work often, but I demand at least $25 an hour, which I don’t think is unreasonable. That same $45 dollars Reaper mini put together and with a good and detailed paint job would probably run you between $95-$120 dollars, and I work pretty fast.
Post 8: Wayyyyyy too expensive… $35.99 price point would sell to the people who actually play, not just the rich collectors or the no-lifers… Us married with kids folk can’t afford it
Post 16: Glad that works for ya, [name of other poster]. I’m sire WotC is thankful for nonthinkers that buy anything with their logo on it. Me, I pay for *quality*. So I’ll pass on the Orcus.
Post 24: @[name of another poster] – I agree completely with you. My comment was an attempt to help people understand that WotC is showing their greed for an overpriced item. I would be more than willing to pay $75 for another Colossal of the same caliber as the Red. But for something similar to one of the other Gargantuans … NEVER!
@WotC - Is this an attempt to recover losses from the stupidity you displayed in taking away our ability to purchase your books in pdf format?
Post 33: GW [Games Workshop] called. They said nice job on the price.
All in all, by my quick count there were 25 positive posts (and I was generous with what I considered positive), 20 negative posts, and about 9 posts arguing over the term “gargantuan miniature” (Ah, gamers!). A decent percentage of the negative posts were a few guys cheerleading each other, but a number of the positive posts were people trying to get the negatives to see the other side of the story. Of course it didn’t work. I picked the posts above for a reason. Arguably except for post 33, each of these posts attacks fellow gamers for being no-lifers, stupid, and ignorant. Many of the negative posts painted WotC as greedy and somehow doing something underhanded by releasing this miniature at a higher price point. The last attempts to insult two game companies at once, implying that all WotC and GW want to do is gouge.
The gamers that wanted to screw you out of your money went into investment banking and junk mortgages. If that’s your goal, the game industry is the worse place to work.
Now I know what you are thinking. “Stephen, haven’t you heard of the internet? People are jerks on the internet.” Yeah, I get it. I tell you what, I am not above being an asshole from time to time. Ask anyone who knows me. I think I’m being charming…I’m usually wrong. I really do believe in the value of open and honest discourse. I absolutely adore the conflict of ideas, and the wisdom we gain from our views being challenged. I’m also a bit of a pragmatist and I understand these two truisms.
1) The RPG industry is small. It always has been.
2) A small industry, especially one that relies on the social aspect of your product, does not grow when people can’t be civil to one another.
Only a jerk wants to hang around with another jerk, and eventually they are going to piss each other off. But gamers seem to have a hard time with this. They often see success in the business as an assault of the integrity of the game. While I have heard people rail against D&D Encounters programs it is putting butts in seats and it is growing enthusiasm for D&D. And it is doing it in the rank and file. It’s not some above high marketing campaign or some magazine glossy. People are playing D&D and having a good time…in public! And while I hope the guy who wants to berate or take an elitist attitude with his fellow gamers continues to gripe about D&D Encounters, and never come near it, that’s not going to happen. Eventually he’ll acquiesce, and then complain about playing with idiots, hipsters, and kids, and he’ll cheese people off.
This isn’t new. I remember when I was a kid would go to a local library to participate in the local D&D group. At first, I went with my friends. Eventually they stopped coming…I should have too. Because we the youngest in the “club” everyone treated us like a chore—maybe we were. But I also remember numerous shouting matches, heated arguments, and people storming out of the room. And these were adults for the most part. I stuck it out because I’m a nerd for D&D. My friends ditched it and eventually the game. It stopped being fun for them. The rules were the same. The pop and chips were still bad for us. They just sick of the constant struggle for fun due to asshatery.
Yes, you have the right to your opinion, but realize that name calling, abuse, and bullying don’t make people like you. And it sure as hell doesn’t make them want to play games with you. And when you are a game fan, and you are the first person they meet, they will equate you with that game. People have asked me all week, how can we grow the RPG market? Here are my simple (maybe naïve) ideas.
1) Create good games.
2) Create fun experiences.
Play the game you want and have fun. Buy the products that you want to use. It’s not a war. Saving RPGs can’t be done by a company. It can’t be done with a product line. It can’t be done by railing against or for whatever bit of minutia that your potential and casual user doesn’t understand or even cares about. Saving RPGs is about winning over the hearts and minds of players, one table, one event, one experience at a time. It’s done by showing people who while we are geeky weirdos, we’re fun geeky weirdos. It’s done by making fun. It always has been.
There is always an object problem with rudeness online, I think it’s simply a chip on the shoulder of the internet in general that needs to be filtered. Pretty much any forum on nearly any topic of discussion is going to have problems.
That said, I like your 2 points to success there. I would add point 2b however.
“Everything needs to be as simple as possible, but no simpler.”
Gaming in my point of view is about acting, and having fun in no particular order. That being said, ruleset bloat is a serious problem to new people. It’s enough of a challenge to get people in, but then expecting them to learn a complicated ruleset before they’re considered “competent” is a major killer to enthusiasm, and another hurdle before they can really have fun.
Hey, those prototypes look really nice
@SRM – Well said! I’d suggest Rule #3 …
Always, confront asshattery when it raises it’s head.
Now, I don’t mean one should get sucked into the black hole that is Internet flame wars. Nor, should one feed the trolls on forums either. Both, are generally fruitless tasks.
I’ve run a gaming show, a regional gaming site and a monthly game day for three years. Over the years, I’ve had to deal with semi-regular foolishness . Sometimes, this is aggression or rudeness at the table. At other times, it is bad hygiene which borders on pathological uncleanliness.
I never enjoy taking action that I know is likely to to embarrass the person or hurt their feelings. So, I never make the decision to confront these folks casually. But, when an intervention is required, I always find it easy to do. Before I start, I always recall an admittedly nerdy, but entirely applicable, quote from end of the Wrath of Khan:
Spock: Don’t grieve, Admiral. It is logical. The needs of the many outweigh …
Kirk: … the needs of the few …
Spock: … Or the one.
In every circumstance, there are at least four or five other people being negatively effected by the individual’s behavior. Those other folks did not make a choice to disrupt the gaming experience, the individual in question did. So, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
Still, unless the person leaves me no choice, I always pull them aside and have the conversation privately. I make it clear that such behavior has no place at the event or in the community. Sometimes, the person storms off, but more often than not, they apologize for their behavior and make an adjustment to continue playing the games they love. Problem solved.
Whenever money, in the form of an admission badge, is involved, I make a point of offering to refund their badge, even if I have to eject them. I do this even though our policies clearly state that we can keep it if we wish. Why? I feel that, while one needs to be direct with foolishness, one should always be fair. So, I figure if someone comes to my show and does not understand the rules, they deserve their money back because I did not do a good enough job explaining the expectations up front.
While one needs to adjust this approach to their own circumstances, this approach can work anywhere from the private home game to your FLGS to to online communities to conventions both large and small. At their core, asshats are the bullying troll under the bridge. And, like the oldest of the Billy Goats Gruff, we need to be willing to deal directly with the troll so we, and those that follow behind us, can cross the bridge without fear and have a little fun.
Doug
I have always emphasized that the number one rule around the table (be it physical or digital) is that everyone is responsible to ensure that their own actions do not do anything to diminish the fun of others around the table. It is easy to remember such a thing when one is face to face, or when one interacts through some digital medium that provides for instant feedback (Skype, Ventrilo, TeamSpeak or some other chat service). Repercussions for poor behaviour in this case is rather immediate. You get scolded by the others playing or, worst case scenario, you get booted from the game.
However, on places like Facebook or community sites like EN World or the WotC forums, people are completely anonymous, and there are no repercussions to their behaviour. As such, people who are more concerned with having their point heard, as opposed to discussing their point, tend to end up dominating some discussions, even though they are in the minority, resulting in the perception of our community being much, much worse than it is.
Negative images stick around a lot longer than do positive images, and people remember negative things much more vividly. Who are people going to remember: The guy behind the counter at the FLGS giving them advice on what game to buy their nephew for christmas or the loud, rude guy in the corner yelling “that game sucks! Only losers and idiots play that!!”