What Would Happen If (Almost) Nobody Paid for RPGs?

[rogueattorney]

From almost a decade of watching both the indie-rpg scene and the old school D&D scene, I can say that people with little to no prospect of earning a dime from their work still put together extraordinarily high quality stuff and then offer it to the public at prices ranging from free to very cheap.

I, for one, have never noticed any real correlation between the price I pay for an rpg product and its quality or usability, and could be perfectly happy using nothing but products distributed (legally) for free on the Internet. (Over the last half year, I've probably gotten more enjoyment out of the completely free Encounter Critical than any other gaming product on my shelf.)

Given the amount of free (and legal) product on the Internet and the huge load of used product - some older collectables aside, the vast majority of which is available for much less than retail price - available from resalers all over, from a strictly economic standpoint, there is no reason whatsoever for a consumer to be buying new product as MSRP or even Amazon discounted prices.

The argument that one needs to keep new product coming out to continue to find players is a strange one to me, as it seems to me that if that is your reason for buying new rpg products, your money could be much better spent organizing and promoting gaming clubs, conventions, and the like.

 

[El Mahdi]

Potentially be quite bad, but involve some positive opportunities.

• If you're just talking about pdf's: then small publishers that only have the overhead for pdf only publishing would quickly go out of business. The authors of those products would then either not even bother, or just post to the internet as free community downloads (as many already do).

• If you're talking about all RPG's (only downloading pirated pdf's and buying zero hardcopy books): well then all RPG companies would quickly go out of business (that would be a lot of people out of work).

The RPG hobby would become a fan supported hobby only, with only fan connections and fan support on the internet (which in and of itself wouldn't be all bad, except for the "people losing their jobs" part). The fan base would probably shrink signifiicantly. The amount and quality level of progressive development of gaming ideas would also significantly slow down. The evolution of the game, although viral, would probably be very slow (relatively static).

The positive side, RPG's would wholly belong to the fans (although technically, our hobby already is owned by the fans - even though some companies tend to forget that).

 

[Beginning of the End]

Instead, under this scenario, almost anyone who produced RPG content would do so with the expectation that the content would be freely available, to anyone, online.

(1) Why is it good for creators get paid? Because creators who can make their living from their creations can invest the time to create more stuff. (Money may also motivated unmotivated people to finish, polish, and/or make public work that they would otherwise not be motivated to present.) Thus, under your scenario, the talented people I buy stuff from would have less time to produce the stuff I like and, therefore, less of the stuff I like would be produced.

Verdict: Bad

(2) Why is it good to pay for products? Because some of that revenue can be used to either supply and/or justify investing capital into the development of a product. Whether this utility is valuable to you is a matter of personal opinion, but utility requiring greater investment than just the text can be found in high quality illustrations, handouts, cartography, and so forth. It can also be found in things like professional editing and indexing.

Sure, all of this can be done for pure, labor-of-love type stuff. But, to some extent, that circles us back to #1. And a lot of the skills we're talking about here will still be paid for in other industries, leading to a talent drain out of roleplaying.

Looking around at existing labor-of-love material, we can see that some of it can be very polished. But a lot of it isn't. And, of course, there's plenty of stuff that people are asking money for which isn't polished at all. Sticking a price tag on something isn't a guarantee of quality. But, in general, I think it's safe to say removing development capital will reduce the average quality of product.

Verdict[/i]: Bad

(3) Will the lack of commercially available, mainstream products result in fewer new players entering the hobby? Almost certainly. Word-of-mouth and social networking are surely important, but gateway products are important.

Verdict: Bad

(4) Is there any upside to this scenario? Not really. There's plenty of labor-of-love material available for free over the Internet at this very moment. There might be a slight uptick in that type of material if the commercial market were to completely disappear, but in the long-run I'm guessing the amount of material being produced would actually decrease (see #3).

So I can't even really see the potential upside of "more material I don't have to pay money for". There's already more free material available online than I could hope to read or play in a dozen lifetimes. So even if there was a long-term increase (which seems doubtful), I don't see any personal advantage in it.

Verdict: Bad

 

[resistor]

The problem with comparing creating a gaming system and writing software is that a gaming system is much more a subjective work of art than a piece of software can ever be. Look at open source projects out there; they all DO something specific. If someone can contribute a bit of code that makes it do that something better, everyone wins.

Now imagine an open source gaming system. Someone contributes a feat (just to use nomenclature people here are familiar with) that they feel makes the game better. Some agree, seeing it as providing an ability they felt the game was missing before. Others disagree, seeing the feat as broken, overpowered, underpowered, both(?) or something else. Repeat this hundreds, upon thousands of times, and not just with feats but with classes (if they exist), races, even basic rules of the system. How do you judge the objective advantage a rule gives a system over another?

You would end up with either numerous game systems with small followings of pretty happy people (who will hopefully be able to find friends to play with) or a few large systems with followings of people with numerous house rules (and hopefully anyone joining the group is willing to abide by whatever set of rules the group agrees to)

I just don't see it as a tenable situation. More likely, to me, is that those who currently play will continue to do so, using whatever is left from the current model, recruiting others when possible but slowly decreasing in population. Eventually, I think it would be an end to this type of gaming.

I think you draw a false dichotomy here.

Plenty of open source projects have exactly the problem you describe. The project I work on has strict review requirements before random people can add stuff to the codebase, to make sure it is consistent with the goals of OUR project. If you don't like it, go write your own. The Linux kernel, in particular, is famous for this kind of stuff. There are lots of patchsets and separate trees that represent someone other than Linus' idea of what should go into the kernel, but don't get merged in because Linus disagrees.

You're right to the extent that it's unviable is you try to have a "never turn any contribution down" approach. But, realistically, nobody in the open source community does that. You turn some things down because they don't fit your goals. And if the contributor doesn't like it, they can fork the project and make a new one that targets their goals instead.

 

[mlund]

The outcome would be total crap, to put it mildly.

The industry (such as it would be) would be a toxic waste-dump that only the truly obsessive would enjoy wading through to piece together their own home systems. Since there are no operating standards or technical requirements to participate, everyone's oafl would be tossed in the community well. It would be a text-book tragedy of the commons.

It would take some form of for-profit business to step in and assume the burden of separating the wheat from the chaff for the general consumer. They would, essentially, be packaging retail "builds" of open-source gaming material and copyrighting the build combination. They might even restrict the content delivery to a proprietary platform of some sort. That might work to recover from the "nobody pays" dark-ages that would ensue.

Market-wide innovation, however, would slow to a crawl because mass-adoption would be so slow. The lack of common reference points and interests would result in many smaller, more insular online communities based around small distributions. That would probably end any sort of advertising-revenue support for gaming blogs and forums. Also, with or without a new commercial distribution channel many people would still cling to a pre-dark-age standard system hear or there. We'd also probably see a lot less in-store RPG support and a general regression of D&D back to a "mom's basement" / "college dorm room" environment.

- Marty Lund

 

[resistor]

The industry (such as it would be) would be a toxic waste-dump that only the truly obsessive would enjoy wading through to piece together their own home systems. Since there are no operating standards or technical requirements to participate, everyone's oafl would be tossed in the community well. It would be a text-book tragedy of the commons.

This represents a total miscomprehension of how open source works.

A lot of people around here seem to be of the impression that it's just "everyone adds their improvements to one big pool." But that's not how it works.

There are distinct projects, with their own design goals. They usually start from one or a few motivated individuals deciding to start their own project. They then accept contributions from others IF the contributions are of acceptable quality and meet the design goals of the project. Eventually they come to trust this outside contributors and start to allow them to freely contribute to the project without prior review. As the project closes in on its design goals, more people become aware of it (provided its design goals align with theirs), leading to new contributors. Rinse and repeat.

Of course, sometimes a contributor will have a different vision for the project than the maintainers. When this happens, sometimes that contributor will make a "fork" of the project, a duplicate incorporating their changes, and then continue to develop it according to their vision. A lot of these forks peter out, as they exist only to fuel one individual's vision, but some of them prove successful and eventually compete with or even displace the project they branched from initially.

There's not some magical "technical requirements" that make every open source contribution good. In fact, lots of them are crap. The "goodness" comes from individuals coming together to satisfy their shared design goals, and then sharing the resulting work with the world.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It will be different, but not "better" or "worse."

There are a lot of truly amazing volunteer efforts out there. Creative Commons is great. Wikipedia is a better resource than normal encyclopedias. The Open Source Software community builds things that, if it came pre-installed on your Dell, you'd wonder why you ever liked Windows or OSX to begin with, and that will probably be changing the TV world in the near future (Hulu/Boxee/Netflix, I'm starin' at you!). In our own little circle, whatever virtual table top WotC pumps out will have a long way to go to rival MapTool for versatility and awesomesauce.

Indeed, the OGL is built kind of along that pattern, forcing people to share their works, and, by all measures, the d20 industry as a whole did pretty nice for themselves in the last 8 years (and may continue to do well even without WotC leading the pack). Some of the quality, especially at the beginning, WAS sucktastic, but there were also some amazing supplements that rival anything put out by WotC (compare, say, From Stone to Steel to The Arms and Equipment Guide, and tell me with a straight face that WotC's was better).

So you'll get some good, solid stuff, even in sold books, under that model.

You might get people doing it more as a desktop publishing deal, or as a side-project, as opposed to a full publishing house, though. Say, selling books compiled from a wiki of rules. You probably won't get people who do it as a job, since it doesn't directly pay: it might end up something like webcomics or blogs, where particular authors (or teams of authors) put up information, settings, rules, etc., in one central location, and then sell products branded with it (in this case, rather than T-shirts, Print-on-Demand folios of rules, or VTTs for playing).

Maybe a few of the "top earners" in the industry can become the Penny Arcade of game design, holding cons and driving links to other sites and selling enough to live comfortably (but not fantastically well).

I don't think it'll be particularly hard to recruit new people. The best recruitment tool any TTRPG has is "other people who play the game." Plugging into an existing group is the way most people start playing, so unless people in existing groups stop playing, the industry will continue to fill out its little niche nicely.

 

[mlund]

This represents a total miscomprehension of how open source works.

No. I'm familiar with how open-source software works out.

Entertainment Media != Software

A lot of people around here seem to be of the impression that it's just "everyone adds their improvements to one big pool." But that's not how it works.

That's not how it works with certain software projects.

The original post suggests a scenario where almost no one pays for RPGs - an entertainment good.

Open Source Software Projects do not exist in a market where almost no one pays for software.

There are distinct projects, with their own design goals. They usually start from one or a few motivated individuals deciding to start their own project. They then accept contributions from others IF the contributions are of acceptable quality and meet the design goals of the project.

Successful contributions to an Open Source Project can be a means to the ends of earning more money being writing for-profit software. That opportunity would not exist with Open Source RPGs in a world where "almost no one pays for RPGs."

Instead projects would start pro-bono and constantly die off or mutate horribly as the various volunteers came and left the project. RPGs don't even have basic objective standards such as "does it compile?" or "does it run?" They have "do you like this?" and nothing else, really.

There's not some magical "technical requirements" that make every open source contribution good. In fact, lots of them are crap. The "goodness" comes from individuals coming together to satisfy their shared design goals, and then sharing the resulting work with the world.

You know, Internet forum content comes from individuals coming together to satisfy their entertainment goals. They aren't terribly productive. While open source software might get you Debian Linux distributions, open source entertainment that no one pays for (not even advertisers) doesn't get you stuff like World of Warcraft - it gets you stuff like 4chan.

- Marty Lund

 

[resistor]

Successful contributions to an Open Source Project can be a means to the ends of earning more money being writing for-profit software. That opportunity would not exist with Open Source RPGs in a world where "almost no one pays for RPGs."

I think we fundamentally disagree here. Lots of people I have worked with on open source project did not do so as a means to any end other than satisfying their desire for software that does X. As I pointed out above, my job is to write open source software, and I'm only one of a large number at my company, which is itself by no means the largest employer of open source programmers.

My company sells services and value-add products. They pay us open-source-ers to improve the underlying system. One can certainly imagine a world in which such a business model were true for RPGs.

Instead projects would start pro-bono and constantly die off or mutate horribly as the various volunteers came and left the project.

Yes. So what? That's part of the reality of open source, for ANY type of media.

RPGs don't even have basic objective standards such as "does it compile?" or "does it run?" They have "do you like this?" and nothing else, really.

You and I fundamentally disagree on this point. Any random student of computer science can knock together something that compiles or runs. Any who have taken an operating sytems course can put together a kernel that boots.

Writing good software is FAR more subjective than you give it credit for. Otherwise, there would only be One True Open Source Operating System (as opposed to Linux, and FreeBSD, and NetBSD, and OpenBSD, and OpenSolaris, etc.), One True Open Source Desktop Environment (instead of Gnome, and KDE, and XFCE, etc.), One True Open Source Compiler, (instead of GCC, and LLVM, and TinyCC, etc.).

Software engineering depends on defining design goals, and working towards them. Just like designing a good RPG does.

Yes, lots of projects will be started than end up completing. Yes, lots of them will have their goals evolve over time. BUT THAT'S NOT A BAD THING. Ultimately, the ones whose goals best match what the audience wants will attract the most like-minded contributors, and thus will become the best developed/most successful.

You know, Internet forum content comes from individuals coming together to satisfy their entertainment goals. They aren't terribly productive. While open source software might get you Debian Linux distributions, open source entertainment that no one pays for (not even advertisers) doesn't get you stuff like World of Warcraft - it gets you stuff like 4chan.

But it does get you Wikipedia. And lots of other open culture projects.

Plus, I think it's disingenuous to claim that 4chan is (a) a bad example, or (b) the only kind of example.

On (a), you're making the claim that 4chan is unsuccessful at producing cultural content. I don't like it, and I assume you don't either, but it obviously serves the goals that the participants want from it, and it's very popular, so I don't think either of us has a leg to stand on to call it "unsuccessful".

On (b), you're completely disregarding lots of other Internet fora that are extremely productive. You might have noticed the The Great Conjunction RPG design contest on these very boards not that long ago, where a decent number of posters came together to write and critique game designs together. That's productivity. Even if their style of game doesn't appeal to you, the posters over at The Forge produce LOTS of games, including some very high quality ones. That's productivity.

 

[Caliber]

mlund is basically mirroring my thoughts here. I know how open source software works; I dispute that model would work for a role-playing game (or a movie, a song, a book, or any other piece of art that can only be judged subjectively).