Pay What You Want (But Please Pay Something!)

DriveThruRPG has the option to offer products for no set fee, but rather Pay What You Want (PWYW), in which customers pay whatever they think is appropriate for the product. The concept isn't new; PWYW has been around since performers have busked on street corners. But when it comes to role-playing games, certain PYWY strategies work better than others.

Picture courtesy Ron Mader.​

When PWYW Fails​

PWYW seems like a supremely confident strategy in one's product; if it's worth something, someone will feel obligated to pay for it. That's not quite true, as restaurants have found out. Vegetarian restaurant chain Lentil as Anything took a $4,000 hit in one day after customers took advantage of its PWYW pricing strategy. Likewise, a new restaurant in Guiyang China decided to try out PWYW...and lost $15,000 in the experiment. Another restaurant in China lost over $37,000 using the same strategy.

It's easy to look at these failures and assume PWYW is not a viable strategy. But in certain cases and certain circumstances it can work.

Then There's Radiohead​

PWYW rocketed into the spotlight when when Radiohead released their seventh album, In Rainbows, through the band's website as a digital download using a PWYW system. The band was between labels, so the PWYW strategy was as much a reaction to market forces as it was a marketing tactic. And the results were undeniable:

The Pay What You Want strategy (PWYW) was a good decision for Radiohead because it cut out the middle man and increased its profit margin. With traditional sales tactics, Radiohead would have only earned 15% of total sales (or around $2.24/album). By cutting out the middle man, it's profit margin has dramatically increased as the average album sold (accounting for fans who downloaded it for free) $2..25 which shows a slightly better margina on a per album basis. Assuming high sales volume, Radiohead's profit was even better than traditional sales tactics due to the popularity of the concept.

Since most role-playing game designers are not Radiohead, it's worth looking at another major publisher who has used PWYW successfully.

A Tip of the Hat​

Fred Hicks of Evil Hat Productions explained how the PWYW strategy worked for his company:

For Fate, we’ve been building an audience for a decade. Our fans are pretty damned dedicated, and the audience has grown to a very respectable size. The Fate Core Kickstarter is one way we’ve managed to tap into that. Our PWYW release of Fate Core and Fate Accelerated is another way. Over on DriveThruRPG, Core and FAE both went up on the 5th of this month. We’re 5 days later and we’ve grossed $2000 between the two of them (before DriveThru’s cut). Core itself has seen just shy of 300 paying customers, averaging a little more than $5 per purchase. These are folks paying $5 because they want to, not because they have to. Pretty incredible, and definitely something we’ll use to improve the Fate Core line.

I've released products using the PWYW strategy and they have not nearly been as successful. The one key element to all of the previous examples is that well-known brands benefit from the good will they generate. Start up game designers do not have that good will to begin with.

So When Does PWYW Make Sense?​

There are some circumstances where PWYW works. As mentioned above, a previous relationship with the customer is critical -- new customers have no emotional attachment or commitment to pay. But conversely, there's something to be said for giving away something without giving it away for free. This creates the illusion of value. As Fred puts it:

You do this because you want more folks, even the folks who couldn’t or wouldn’t normally afford the item at the price you’d set for it, to acquire your work, engage with it, become aware of it. That “better chance of a payment” side-effect can pay dividends to this goal, of course: if folks are paying even a little for a “free” item, there’s a greater incentive to regard the item as having value, which can increase engagement. Engagement drives to the heart of the marketing strategy, of course, so that’s a positive feedback loop in the mix.

This strategy also works when you're trying to sell excess or fill capacity -- a tactic that works for hotels and airlines but not digital products. Because digital products don't usually expire, they stay "on the shelf" theoretically forever and thus aren't nearly as relevant to PWYW.

But there is a strategy that definitely works for PWYW, and that's giving to charity:

In a 2010 paper in Science, a team of researchers led by Ayelet Gneezy conducted a field experiment selling souvenir photos after a roller-coaster ride using PWYW. Some customers were told half the money collected would go to charity, others were told nothing. Without the charity explanation, customers only paid $.92 for their picture. In the charity condition, however, people paid $5.33. For context, the normal price was $12.95.

One of the better known models of this version of PWYW that has been applied to tabletop RPGs is the Humble Bundle:

Humble Bundle, Inc. is a digital storefront for video games, which grew out of its original offering of Humble Bundles, collections of games sold at a price determined by the purchaser and with a portion of the price going towards charity and the rest split between the game developers. Humble Bundle continues to offer these limited-time bundles, but have expanded to include a greater and more persistent storefront. The Humble Bundle concept was initially run by Wolfire Games in 2010, but by its second bundle, the Humble Bundle company was spun out to manage the promotion, payments, and distribution of the bundles. In October 2017, the company was acquired by Ziff Davis through its IGN Entertainment subsidiary, though operates as a separate subsidiary.

So can the Pay What You Want work for you? Maybe, if you're a well-known game designer, you're giving the funds to charity, or you want to gain more visibility for your product without making a profit on each sale. But for those designers who can't afford to depend on the charity of strangers, a set price might make more sense.

 

[generic]

I'm trying to find a game or supplement designed by the members of Radiohead, thanks to your article.

 

[Jd Smith1]

There is such a glut of material being cranked out, and the quality of so much of it is so low, that I seldom buy RPG products anymore. How many generic 'for levels 1-5' scenarios do you need? (Exception: Oones maps).

Far easier to convert stuff from years ago that had some substance, or just create my own.

PWYW is an exception. I'll throw in a buck to test the waters, and if the publisher can deliver, then they've got a repeat customer. So far, though, that is extremely rare.

I miss the FLGS, where you could flip through a product and get a feel for a product before buying.

 

[Morrus]

I miss the FLGS, where you could flip through a product and get a feel for a product before buying.

There is no publisher on the planet who doesn’t want their books in a game store in every town.

 

[generic]

I've found that with quantity, there came lack of quality, on DM's Guild. There are some great publishers, but the vast majority of products published are low-quality and over-priced. Guild adept items, as well as items by Alfstfudisch(Spelling?) and others, are the exception.

 

[Jd Smith1]

There is no publisher on the planet who doesn’t want their books in a game store in every town.

Those days are dying.

I quit using anything but pdfs years ago. It's just how things go.

 

[Morrus]

I miss the FLGS, where you could flip through a product and get a feel for a product before buying.

I quit using anything but pdfs years ago. It's just how things go.

Hmmm.

 

[Jd Smith1]

Hmmm.

Yeah, there's a connection. But it is an electronic era. And I'm tired of having shelves full of RPG books taking up space. I go to my game with a laptop and an iPad these days.

 

[schneeland]

The tricky part with PWYW is that most of the time I will think: ok, this seems decent, I will check it out and decide later how much it is worth. But when I finally get to do that, I have long forgotten that it was a PWYW item. So maybe the willingness to pay could be (at least slightly) increased by either adding a note in the PDF that you bought the item for 0$/€.

The only exception to what I mentioned above happens for me when I know the creator and like their previous work (or the person in general). In that case I typically pay the price I would have paid if it was on a regular sales model.

 

[Michael O'Brien]

This is the advice we gave creators for the Miskatonic Repository (community content program for Call of Cthulhu on DriveThruRPG) back in September last year. The advice still holds true:

[TLDR: DON'T make your product "pay what you want" if you want to make any sort of financial return on a community content product.]

The Miskatonic Repository community content program has been in operation since the start of the year.

The top-grossing item, a scenario, has been available for only part of that time, and is priced at <$4. It has made its creator over USD$800.00 so far.

A different scenario added about the same time has had significantly more sales (downloads), but is "Pay what You Want". It has made its creator less than $150.00 so far, because the vast majority of people who download it choose to pay nothing - even though it has a "recommended price" similar to the above.

Likewise, a "pay-what-you want" scenario was uploaded in July and has been downloaded approximately 150 times, for a grand total of 0.60c to the creator - because virtually everyone who 'bought' it decided to pay $0.00 because they could. A similar product, with an actual price (99c), has had a similar number of downloads and made the creator $75.00 so far.

The lesson: whatever you do, DON'T make your product "pay what you want" if you want to make any sort of financial return on a community content product. The typical payment for a pay-what-you-want product is, sadly, $0.00 regardless of how many people download it.

As the creator, you can nominate any price you like, including pay-what-you-want or even free. They are plenty of satisfying reasons to participate in this creative process that don't revolve around money.

But if you're participating and hoping to get any sort of financial return for your efforts in community content, put a price on your work, even if it is 99c.

 

[David Anderson]

I will always put in at least the recommended amount, but I think if I were to publish I'd put at least $1 on it. just seems to make more sense.