File-Sharing: Has it affected the RPG industry?

[Aezoc]

My illegal PDF downloads fall into two categories: previewing a book I'm considering buying, or downloading a book that has no PDF version for sale that I'm not going to use enough of to justify paying for a print copy.

I live in an area with no FLGS; the closest is an hour or so away, the F part of this FLGS is questionable, and it is more of a comic shop than anything. More often than not I have to order the book from them because they don't stock much RPG stuff, which means that I don't get to flip through it and make sure its what I want first. Consequently, I wind up downloading copies of some books to skim them and make sure I consider it worth buying. I consider this to be the online equivalent of thumbing through the book at the store, as other posters have said.

What I consider to be worth buying depends heavily on how much of it I intend to use. This seems fairly obvious, but if I only intend to use a small portion of your $30 full-cover hardback, then I will either choose to ignore the book completely, or download an illegal PDF version. Either way, you aren't making any money off me.

Last is a factor that I haven't seen mentioned as much - the convenience of PDFs. If I'm going to be compiling my campaign from a lot of different sources, the value of "book in hand" is essentially zero to me. Yes, it looks nice on the shelf, and if I actually flip through it, there may be beautiful artwork, but if I'm only using a portion of the book, I'd much prefer to compile my own documents and use those at the table, instead of lugging around a huge pile of books so that I can reference a few pages from each. PDFs (at least ones with OCR) are awesome for this. Click, drag, ctrl-c, ctrl-v, and a few modifications, and it's done. Much faster and less painful than typing the entire thing up from a book or hauling said book around all the time. Thus, even if your work was offered in print and as a PDF and the prices were the same, I would likely choose the PDF version unless I intended to use a lot of the book.

Overall, I really have no idea how much of my views are shared by the rest of the RPG community. I don't at all consider myself to be thumbing my nose at any company, even the big guys, when I download a PDF. I've been playing RPGs since I was about 9 or 10, and the decline of the industry is the last thing I want to see. That said, I'm not willing to pay money for poorly written content or content that is uninteresting to me. The thing is that for books that I download instead of buying, the parts that I use are almost invariably OGC, there's just no way to get them without paying for the parts that I don't want. Hell, I would happily shell out a few bucks for just the OGC portions of a lot of books. Seems like a great deal for the publisher to me - a little copy/pasting and some formatting, and they make money on stuff that I could use (legally, if not ethically) for free!

Unfortunately, I doubt many if any publishers will release their compiled OGC, but if more publishers just released PDF versions of their work, or even better, subdivided PDF versions (like Malhavoc did with AU), I'd be a VERY happy camper.

 

[Li Shenron]

Has file-sharing had any significant affect on the RPG industry and how large do you think it is?

Well, after having read all the comments in this thread, I believe that file-sharing must have had only a very limited impact on the RPG industry .

Perhaps it is because the typical RPG product is not fully subject to piracy - as mentioned by many, a scanned PDF is not nearly a match for the real book - or perhaps because us or the typical RPG consumers percieve our market differently compared to how music/movie consumers percieve their own... At least me and all of my players want our books to stay, we are proud of our small collections of RPG books on the shelf even if we don't use all of them, while maybe music and movies are considered more wastable (how many times you watch the same DVD?).
Of all the RPG gamers I know personally, only one used to download lots and lots of stuff, going crazy to get them all but never using any at the end (he is the one who even plays least often); I don't think that nowadays he is still doing that, rumours are that he got a nervous breakdown when WotC released the D&D Miniatures line and he could not find them anywhere on peer-to-peer to download .

However I have to say that I am not a voracious purchaser. I am lucky because some of my friends are, and I always get to borrow the latest RPG books from them, which I read but then buy only if I want to keep them. It's not illegal but somehow it might have decreased the sales , if it wasn't for my friends I would have probably bought more books, only to later find that I didn't like them.
But the same thing happens to me with music. I am again very lucky to live in a country where music is considered culture, and culture is considered to be freely available, therefore every library has thousands of CDs to borrow. The point being that no one needs to make copies of them, because when you want to listen to something you just go to the library and take it.

Anyway, definitely internet file sharing has had a much larger impact on the music/movie/software industry. It is always a controversial subject, and sometimes I think that even governments don't really want to address it. For example, I believe that in Italy the most popular reason for a PC owner to get a fast internet access such as ADSL or with optic fibers is exactly the possibility to download music, movies and games for free. I have no idea how much effect it has on the music industry for example (still in the past 15 years the price of a CD here has risen from about 9$ to 21$), but I do have an idea how much benefit it had on the internet services industry, since many of my friends ended up working in that field. At the end I wonder if the overall result on the general economy is that bad or even good, it would be very interesting to know...

 

[Calico_Jack73]

I realize I forgot to mention part of Behemoth3's publishing strategy: when you buy the print version of any of our first three books, you'll get its PDF version for free.

Too cool! When I get a bit of time I'll head over to the website and check it out.

 

[Celtavian]

re

I think it depends on the book. A book like Unearthed Arcana is a high target for piracy because you really only want bits and pieces of the book. Kind of like the analogy that was made with wanting only one or two singles off an artists CD.

For books like the PHB, DMG, Complete Fighters and the like, having the actual book for reference is preferable. File sharing probably won't affect the sales of WotC books all that much unless they continue to print books like Unearthed Arcana filled with rules that you pick and choose.

The small presses will probably be positively impacted by file sharing. They don't get alot of exposure for their products in the RPG community. There products might receive more exposure if some internet pirate downloads a product they like and then tells their friends about it or downloads a product they like and decides to buy the hardcopy. Alot of internet pirates wouldn't buy the products they steal anyway, at the very least they can provide free word-of-mouth marketing for some of the products they download that they like.

 

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

Some time ago, after the release of Crimson Contracts, I came up with a little idea after seeing copies of my book on KaZaA and Gnutella.

I took Adobe, took a select few pages of CC:AM, messed with the settings for awhile, put an advertisement in the back, and tagged in a lovely little piece of coding (formerly from a virus) that hit a counter on an HTML page I put up specifically for this whenever the PDF was opened.

I then made sure that the PDF size was correct when compared to the actual version, and dropped it into the various filesharing areas, just to see how many "unique IP hits" and "repeat IP hits" that the page recieved.

I also let the other PDF publishers I knew in on this idea, but it generated lukewarm response.

So, I did it with any PDF I could lay my hands on that was already on the file-sharing groups.
Roughly, each book (which had 3-6 pages of OGC in it) generated over 1900 unique IP's that also in the repeat IP hits.
Each book generated roughly 3000 unique IP hits.

You decide if it's hurting anyone, while I try to figure out how to pay the damn electric bill.

While my experiment was somewhat unethical, splicing a section of virus code into a PDF (a virus specifically designed to target PDF documents in order to do a DOS attack on Adobe, redesigned to only send a SINGLE ping to the web-page when opened) and then dumping these fake PDF's onto the filesharing systems, but, my questions were answered.

A PDF supplement IS pirated, often quite a bit. Ask Chris Johansen, of TRS, just how many hits he has seen from someone trying to use a hack of his software, and how much money each day he loses.

It hurts small-time publishers, and can hurt them bad. All moral flag waving aside, and all excuses aside...

Every time you pirate a 3rd party PDF product, you are STEALING money from them.

In my case, you're walking up and taking one of my kids dinner.

 

[Belen]

I always buy the book first. In some cases, this means that I bought crappy books, so now I buy from the publishers who gave me good books. Personally, I dislike the sheer number of small publishers. Everything is too bloated.

Now, I would like to have PDFs of the books that I already own. I do not see that as taking money from anyone as I have already bought their book.

However, I agree with the argument regarding copyright. If I write a novel, then I write it. My grandkids should go out and find a real job rather than living off my accomplishments. And a company sure as heck should not still own my work after my death.

28 years is fine for me. Although I believe the author should retain derivative rights for their lifetime. It would stink to have written a popular book, then have Hollywood wait until the copyright ended and do a movie without paying me a dime.

However, once I and my wife have passed away, then even derivative works should be fair game.

 

[Calico_Jack73]

It hurts small-time publishers, and can hurt them bad. All moral flag waving aside, and all excuses aside...
Every time you pirate a 3rd party PDF product, you are STEALING money from them.
In my case, you're walking up and taking one of my kids dinner.

I'm going to respond to this and I really hope you don't take any offense to it as none is intended.

Is writing these PDF role-playing supplements your only source of income? Did you honestly come into the business hoping to become the next Gygax and actually make a decent living off of writing role-playing supplements in such a easy to steal format?

I've kicked around the idea of publishing an RPG supplement of my own but I'd never dream of quitting my day job. I'd be happy if people pirated my material, I'd be happy that it was just being read and appreciated. I like your little idea of putting out a coded PDF... I'd probably do the same just to see how many people thought it was worth downloading. If I make a little money doing it then great but the main reason I'd do it is for the love of the game, not to make money on it. I always thought that the majority of PDF publishers went into their project understanding that their work WILL be pirated... there is no way around it and that because they understood it that they were doing it because it was something that they always wanted to do rather than becoming a full time career choice.

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

I have several gaming books on .pdf from file sharing. Do I use any of them? No. I downloaded them, looked at them, and decided whether or not they were worth my hard-scrabbled coins. Thanks to file-sharing, I actually helped some publishers by buying books from them I might never have considered.

 

[cybermonkey]

I view the whole thing like checking out a book at the local library.

If I like, I buy. If I don't, I'm happy that I didn't.

 

[Lazybones]

Great post above, Sigil. I always appreciate your thoughtful comments on this subject.

I think that the old models of distribution of intellectual property (songs, movies, text) are doomed. Already we see it in music, where the technology for copying and disseminating information have advanced to the point where it's very difficult to stop it. RIAA's campaign against pirates is rapidly alienating consumers, and is driving a campaign to rewrite laws to enforce strict DRMs that restrict the ability of consumers to use the product. This too will fail, IMO; if I've seen anything in the last ten years it's the ability of the motivated public to stay one step ahead of such schemes.

I think Sigil hit it on the head, in that the actions of the industry have essentially legitimized piracy in the minds of many (and especially among the young, who are the key demographic in this debate). The more that the industry is associated with faceless corporations that are motivated primarily by greed, the easier it is for people to rationalize their actions (thus the greater sympathy toward RPG producers, as opposed to movie/music producers, that we see in this thread).

Direct distribution of content from producer to consumer is coming, inevitably in my view. A few changes will drive this:

1) Continued expansion of storage capacity and internet transmission speeds, and the dissemination of broadband (and later fiber networks) across the country.
2) Improvement in viewing technology, such as ultra-thin tablet PCs, that make looking at PDFs (and whatever next-generation format that will follow) and other document formats easier and more user-friendly. I think a big increase in battery technology (or decrease in power consumption) will likely have to happen to ultimately push this technology "over the top" in terms of widespread public acceptance. Already, though, I have 50 novels in Microsoft Reader format on my PDF, which are easily readable (provided by the Baen Free Library).
3) Widespread public acceptance of a technology/method to make small payments (i.e. a few cents to a few dollars) quickly and easily online. This exists today but is not yet "mainstream" IMO.

It will be interesting to see how the big conglomerates (RIAA, MPAA, etc... or more specifically, their member corporations) fight to keep their dominance over the distribution of intellectual material in an age where the copying, transmission, and viewing of digital material is easy and nearly instantaneous. Imagine in ten years: when your hard drive can hold 1000 DVD-quality movies, and it takes 6 minutes to download one, which scenario will exist: a comprehensive distribution system that allows you to access ANY content you wish from a vast library for a minor fee, or a heavily regulated, restrictive DRM system that maintains high cost and limited flexibility for consumers? Let me ask you: which model is more likely to be associated with heavy piracy?

The ONLY chance for the IP industries is to be on the cutting edge of this new distribution model, and win back the respect and allegiance of its public. This public will have an alternative: free content achieved through nominally illegal channels. There will always be those who will refuse to pay if they can get it for free, but they aren't the people that the companies need to be worried about.