Sì, concordo in gran parte. Il repentino successo dei giochi forgiti a partire dal 2004 fino al boom del 2006 (si parla comunque sempre di cifre molto basse rispetto a wuelle WotC o di mercati di massa, ma alla Gencon di quell'anno il forge booth e' stato il terzo per vendite dietro WotC e un altro...) ha cambiato radicalmente il panorama. Il rapporto con clienti non appartenenti alla comunità di the forge, la possibilità di realizzare guadagni consistenti associata però al tempo e all'impegno che questo comporta... prima, quando l'obiettivo era vendere abbastanza per coprirsi le spese, vendere di piu' era un obiettivo comune condiviso. Ma in diversi poi si sono trovati a metà del guado, ne' carne ne' pesce, a dover scegliere fra il manterere la cosa come un hobby (e quindi, cercare paradossalmente di _ricavare di meno_: guarda l'intervento di Greg Hutton che parla dei problemi causati dal successo di 3:16) o se iniziare a farlo come un lavoro.
Nei mesi scorsi se ne è parlato molto, ma purtroppo i blog dove se ne è parlato sono quelli di Clinton Nixon e Matt Snyder, ormai entrambi chiusi (ma sono l'unico a cui l'idea di fare teoria sui blog, che possono svanire da un giorno all'altro, mi pare abbastanza poco previdente?).
C'è questo post di Lehman che ne parla:
Gut Check: Overjustification EffectIl post di Clinton di cui parla,
Marketing in the land of hobbyists purtroppo è offline, cancellato insieme al blog di Clinton. Pensino la wayback machine non può recuperarlo (tutto il blog era escluso), io ne ho recuperato una copia tempo fa usando la cache di google ma anche quella ormai è sparita. lo riposto qui preso dalla copia che ho salvato, ma purtroppo manca tutta la parte dei commenti, che era anch'essa molto interessante:
Marketing in the land of hobbyists (14 febbraio 2008)
(Note to readers: I had a super-long day, and found myself very tired by the end of this. It may lack focus, especially in the second half. Please read with understanding, and we’ll clarify in comments, ok?)
This week, I made a fairly typical move for myself and said something overly strident and militant on an Internet message board.
From a thread on Story Games (warning - some foul language):
Promotion - in the sense of it being a separate activity than just being excited about what you made - sucks. It’s a soulless exercise that either doesn’t work, or works because you had the stomach to sell somebody something they didn’t want. It is antithetical to the creative process.And, wow, yeah, that was a dumb thing to say. There was a whole lot of “for me” left out, for one. But I didn’t say it and not mean something there, right? This topic’s on my mind a lot, and I thought I’d unpack it.
Players, Designers, Publishers, and MarketersThe “indie RPG community” - and there’s an undefined term, but let’s roll with it for now - is made up of a lot of different types of people, all doing different activities. Of all the people in it, they are all doing one or more of the following: playing games, designing games, publishing games, or marketing games. (Again, caveats apply.) They intersect in different ways and different amounts here. I, for example, play a lot, design a little, publish a little, and market quite a bit. A friend of mine, Fred Hicks, probably plays as much as I do, but designs and publishing more, and markets a little more. Two other guys in my group, Remi and Joe, play a lot, and Remi designs some, but neither are publishing or really marketing.
So we all have different activities and different levels of investment in them. I can imagine that results in different viewpoints.
Hobbyists and professionalsThe part of the community that’s publishing is also made up of three distinct groups of people with financial investment in the community. Hobbyists (which I am) are not in it for financial benefit, but for other benefits. Some hobbyists make decent money on publishing, but this is a bonus and used, usually, to finance their hobby. Supplemental-incomers (no better word) have a day job, but work diligently at publishing, too, as a second job, and depend on their publishing income, but not as a primary source. Professionals, of course, publish and market for a living.
At first, I’d have said that hobbyists are the majority of indie RPG publishers, but on second thought, I’d at least say that supplemental-incomers are the most influential group, if not the biggest.
Again, these different levels of investment can create serious tensions.
Friends and colleaguesLastly, the community, as it is, was started by friends and is made up of friend relationships. This is a number one reason for tension inside and outside the community: the primary relationship is friendship, and you do not get to be part of the community without making friends with someone inside it. Generally, you’re brought it, but some people make the leap on their own.
But, we’re colleagues, too. Luckily, we’re not competitive colleagues, but we do depend on each other. For one example, I depend on other publishers to make good games, as there’s a common brand, and if their games aren’t good, it reflects on me. This is very important and I want to be explicit about it: the RPG publishing industry is not competitive. It is additive, in that good games sell more good games. They bring in more players and keep players in the hobby longer. RPGs are consumer goods, and any consumer who plays more than D&D is willing to play a large selection of other games.
Some conclusions I have foundSo, with all that background information, what do I really have to say about marketing?
My favorite thing about the indie RPG community is that it’s generally a positive one. It is powered by enthusiasm for one’s own creation and the creations of others. (It can have a negative anti-establishment side, but I find this not to be primary.) This enthusiasm is good marketing. People respond positively to enthusiasm, and bluntly, people want to buy things that other people are honestly enjoying. I find this style of promotion to be the majority of how the indie RPG community markets.
But this isn’t the only way it markets. When my level of enthusiasm correlates to the supplemental income of my friends, that’s a really weird conflict of interest. Let’s say, for example, that my friend writes a game about robots and what it means to be part of a workforce. Let’s say it’s interesting, but not fully-baked, and isn’t fun without some background in playing other games. Now let’s say I get asked about this game at a convention or online. What do I do? It’s fun, sometimes, if you know what you’re doing. Let’s go even further and say that someone says, “Hey, I want to play one of those indie games. I like giant robots that fight.” What do I say then?
If I go ahead with a pretty standard answer - “Robotslaw is awesome” - that’s bad marketing. And it’s easy to say on a weblog that, yeah, that’s a bad practice. It’s not easy at a convention booth with people yelling and your friends all around, and someone you don’t know with a $20 bill waiting for an answer. Anyway, though, I really doubt this is a contentious point (except that someone will think I’m accusing them of this and pick a fight: pack it up, and listen to your conscience, inevitable Internet dude.)
That’s one conclusion, and involves the struggle between colleagues and friends. Here’s one about hobbyists and amateurs and this one’s more ugly:
A hobbyist doesn’t care how many games he or she sells.This is a big deal for others whose games compete with or sell alongside hobbyists’ games. It’s why - and I say this with love and respect - people like Gareth-Michael Skarka have historically been unable to stand many indie RPG publishers. To be in the unique situation of being in an additive industry, and have a group of colleagues - especially ones at the crest of a fan wave - that do not want to operate under the same rules as you is decimating. It is easy to compete with someone who doesn’t want to sell a lot of games. It is hard to work alongside someone who actively demolishes their own methods of distribution and marketing, which is what a lot of hobbyist publishers do. I sympathize and understand this friction.
What do hobbyists really want? People to play their games and talk about their games, and to be part of a community. This has worked well, for the most part. The Forge, and now Story Games, are two of the greatest marketing successes RPGs have ever seen (again, outside of the monolith of D&D.) But they’re hobbyist marketing tools: they increase play and increase talk and increase community. They weren’t plans; they were growths of enthusiasm.
The indie RPG community is moving. There are more supplemental-incomers and professionals in it than ever before. As this moves forward, but hobbyists still remain, expect struggles, especially about marketing, but also about publishing and distribution, to increase. Hobbyists - like me - can afford to say something as out there as I did, but it not only can hurt the larger professional community, but strain friendships between people on different sides of that fence.
