File-Sharing: Has it affected the RPG industry?

[Emiricol]

I have a PDF of every product I've purchased. I keep them on an old laptop and then I don't have to lug around a library when I go somewhere.

I've also previewed a number of products, most of which I didn't like and deleted. The ones I liked, I bought the product within 90 days. That's my operating standard - 90 days or I delete it. If I don't want it badly enough to pay for it in 90 days, clearly I just don't want it badly enough

I don't know enough to say whether filesharing hurts or helps the RPG industry overall, but I can say I personally have purchased about $300 worth of products I wouldn't have looked twice at had I not previewed them electronically. RPG Objects for example owes every sale I've ever given them (which is to say, nearly everything Modern and Darwin's World they ever did) to filesharing.

 

[wocky]

I only bought "Cry Havoc" and "Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe" after I downloaded them illegally from the web and was able to confirm that I would be able to print them (in a black and white inkjet printer, without wasting too much ink in big areas of pure black). At the time that information either wasn't stated clear enough in the web site, or I couldn't be sure that any existing previews were faithful to the actual product.

I also downloaded the "Moonshaes" book (AD&D 2nd Edition) from a P2P server and was bummed to see it was impossible to print, as every page had a dark beige background color, with text in brown. Printing it would not only waste ink, but also be completely unreadable. Eventually (months later) I found the way to edit the PDF and make the text black and the background white... when I did, I went over to rpgnow and bought it.

Similar to many times I bought CDs I first listened to in MP3.

BTW, I think you should keep this things in mind when discussing how P2P affects the RPG industry:

- At least in Argentina the usual practice (since... always) has been to photocopy RPG books. Even now, I know more people using photocopies than PDF printouts, since they either assume photocopies are cheaper, or don't have PDFs with printable quality.

- Some book scans in PDF are great, with OCRed text and images with good resolution. Many more simply stink... text is barely readable even on the screen, pages are skewed, dark scans... missing pages. The weird part is, it's unusual to find a good version of books with poor scans. People just keep sharing the bad version, and nobody makes a new one. I've seen the same thing happen with MP3s...

- I think I've yet to see someone actually use a PDF product downloaded illegally. Many people have gigabites of this stuff, but don't actually like reading books off the screen

- Most of the people I game with have access to illegal PDFs (or actually have them), but still buy real books for gaming. Some of them have a couple of photocopied products, but no printouts.

- I know of people who play using freely available versions of the SRDs in PDF format.

- If you ever search for RPG stuff in a P2P engine you'll see that while every single WotC book is easily downloadable, small publisher books are mostly nowhere to be found. I don't think PDF publishers (except for Malhavoc, maybe) loose any money to P2P.

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

My flatmate has dozens of illegal copies of various PDFs and yes I have nosed through about half. Whether he gets hold of stuff or not, I know that he wouldn't pay a cent.

I have little inclination to buy most suppliments, I use my core books + SRD. (Wow Wocky, those are the two books I want to buy too.) Anyway, I approach my campaign with a minimalist view to rules used, i.e. no prestige classes, core rules + ad hoc feat admissions.

Books in hand are a lot better I find in actual play, but I wouldn't want a book that is only being used for 3 pages of stuff.

PDFs are only of use between play because I don't have a laptop.

Another issue I have found for PDFs is the necessity for a credit card, which I refuse to get. I wish there was some other way.

 

[Solauren]

I can honestly say that the PDF's I have are limited to:

One's have have legally purchased
One's I own a hard copy of the book of to avoid scanning them in and damaging them (and spending so much time on it) to use on my laptop.

I lost alot of RPG books and boxed sets from over-use, so yes, I'm going to download PDF's of anything I own so I can perserve the books as long as possible

 

[Lazybones]

I've DLed books before to skim the content, but any book I've actually USED at the table I've always bought in hard copy. I am much more motivated to pay for RPG material because I know more of my $ is actually going to the author/artist, especially for a smaller company. With music, on the other hand, I find myself repelled by the actions of the "industry" and the way that they treat both their talent and their customers. I know that's a flimsy excuse for file-sharing songs, so instead I try to channel my purchases toward independent bands that we hear locally in my area, or whom are recommended to me by friends. I have gone from buying 20-30 CDs/year from RIAA labels to maybe 1-2/year. And I haven't had Kazaa on my HD for almost a year now, so it's not like I'm downloading songs instead.

 

[Calico_Jack73]

I downloaded only the books that I bought and burned them to CD so I could take them with me when I was sent to Saudi Arabia a couple years ago. The Saudi govt has some pretty draconian customs laws and I didn't want to worry about them taking my books and not giving them back to me. I figured if they take the CD, no big deal, I've got my books back home.
Personally I prefer books at the gaming table. I can flip to whichever page I need much quicker than searching through a PDF since most PDFs are simply image scans and aren't searchable by text.

 

[JDWiker]

Piracy, PDFs, and TGM

Wow, great discussion!

When Rich Redman, Marc Schmalz, Stan!, and I formed The Game Mechanics, since our goal was to sell PDFs (initially, followed by print versions later), this question weighed heavily on our minds. After some debate, we decided that file-sharing wasn't likely to affect our sales overmuch.

And, so far, it hasn't. Logically, the small companies--such as The Game Mechanics--would feel the most pressure from file-sharing, and a company that produces PDFs of all its products would seem to be a prime target. But it just doesn't seem to be making an impact on our sales.

From some research I did (including talking to some pretty hardcore Internet "pirates"), the philosophy is mainly "Screw the big companies!", so it's not surprising that smaller companies don't get targeted as much. Now, obviously, some of those folks are just rationalizing, and some couldn't tell the difference between a big company and a small one. (The distinction almost seems to be "Have I heard of this company?") And the list of products I've seen ripped and converted to PDFs is heavily tilted toward the big guys (TSR/Wizards in particular)--though that could simply be because they've been around longer, and therefore produced more material.

If you're interested in this topic, and you plan to be at Gen Con Indy this year, The Game Mechanics is hosting a debate on this very subject at Gen Con, on Saturday afternoon ("Internet Piracy: Impact vs. Ethics" at 3 pm). It's our intention to present the basic arguments for and against file-sharing, then open up the floor to comments from the audience. If you've got an hour to spare, we'd appreciate getting your insights!

 

[Calico_Jack73]

Personally I don't think it is a "Screw the big company" mindset that causes people to download some PDFs illegally and yet buy PDFs from smaller companies. The paper books from the big company is often in many people's opinion WAY overpriced and they would be perfectly willing to buy a PDF copy from the company if one were provided for download. This is why those same people have no problem paying $5 to download a legal copy of something from RPGnow. If WOTC were to make their new books available in either format I think there would be fewer illegal downloads. Heck, I for one would probably buy the same book in both formats just so that I'd have an easy way to cut-and-paste parts of the PDF into my own reference sheets prior to running a game.

 

[SSquirrel]

Well I'll freely admit I download material from time to time, altho not lately as I've been really busy. Do I enjoy reading pdfs of gaming material? No I use it to browse really and check out in a bit more detail than my wife will allow me to have at Barnes & Noble or Hobby Corner. DO I much prefer to have teh gaming books in my hot little hands? Heck yes!

On the otehr side of this is teh monetary issue. I've been so broke for the last year and a half that the only game books I've bought were AU and The DIamond Throne...and a few issues of Dragon and Dungeon. That's IT. I finally started a new job that will help us catch up pretty well and I might finally be able to buy things I want again, but we'll have to wait and see on that.

So people who want to call me names, like has been previously done in threads like this, for downloading and not buying can bite me *grin* I know why I'm doing it and I know that as soon as I have the funds to rectify said situation I will.

editosted before finishing teh thread and everyone's civil which is a nice change. If you decide to NOT be civil, THEN pay attention to the 3rd paragraph. heh.

Unrepentant
Hagen

 

[dreaded_beast]

Great responses everyone!

For myself, I prefer books over PDFs. It is an entirely different feeling, at least for me, reading an actual book instead of reading from a monitor.

My concern is that it would be a shame for the smaller RPG companies to be affected by the file-sharing phenomenon. From what I have read on these boards and elsewhere, the RPG industry is not a "strong" industry to begin with. I can imagine the great risk involved in attempting to start a fledgling RPG company.

Personally, I am not against file-sharing, but the discussion of the "ethics/morality" of file-sharing in general is better discussed elsewhere.

I just hope that file-sharing is not having a negative impact on the RPG industry.