Owen Stephens Continues 'Real Game Industry' Posts

I've been collecting together the Real Game Industry posts that game designer Owen KC Stephens has been posting on social media. You can see Part 1 here, and Part 2 here.

• Full-time writing, developing, or producing in the TTRPG field means regularly having to create great, creative ideas, that fit specific pre-determined parameters, on command, whether you feel like it or not. This can be awesome and fulfilling... or awful.
• The board of GAMA, the Game Manufacturers Association, (the big non-profit trade organization for the hobby games industry) are unpaid volunteers with what time they can spare from trying to survive the harsh industry itself.
• Most TTrpg professionals get a lot more hate mail than praise or notes that their work is appreciated. BUT Those few notes hold a LOT more weight, per-word, than the ranting and whining. One person letting me they enjoyed a thing gets through 2-3 weeks of bile.
• No one, not any analyst, not any company, knows how many total copies of ttRPGs are actually selling in a given week, month, or year. Some big companies don't know the numbers for their OWN ttRPGs. Popular "rankings" are a compilation of unverified impressions.
• Even when I just had a couple of Dragon credits and no one knew me; at game pro gatherings I was NEVER asked if my girlfriend got me into gaming. Or if I was just there with a date. Which has repeatedly happened to women colleagues with decades of experience.
• When ttRPG professionals get to play RPGs together entirely for fun, the level of Ghostbusters and LotR quotes, bad puns, digressions to discuss recent movies and look at pet pictures, and fart jokes... is EXACTLY the same as when it's just fans playing.
• When a ttRPG professional makes a statement that is unpopular with a segment of fans there is always a group who, with no evidence, begin discussions to claim A: The pro is incompetent, B: the pro is lying to gain attention or sympathy, or C: all of the above.
• It is not unusual for ttRPG professional who like each other, and enjoy hanging out together, and live no more than 20 miles apart, to only see each other 1-2 times a year and only at after-hours gatherings during major conventions.
• The most common retirement plan among full-time ttRPG professionals, freelance and on-staff both, is "Work until you die."
• People who constantly struggle to have enough money to cover basic needs, with no job security, while being bombarded with community demands to do more, be better, and make games just for love and not money... are generally too stressed to make their best games.
• In ttRPG industry, you will find both employees who think the very games that cover their paycheck are "dumb," and CEOs who will move a meeting out of the executive boardroom so you can play a game there. But I've met many more of the latter than the former.
• Amazon sometimes sells ttRPG items cheaper than retailers can get from distributors. No one admits to selling them to Amazon at this price. Either Amazon is taking a loss (perfectly possible), or there's a hole in a distribution tier. This pisses off retailers.
• When a ttRPG pro makes a change or comment regarding the real-world impact of game themes or ideas, people come out of the woodwork to strongly present their view (in the real world) that real-world concerns (presumably like theirs) should not impact the game.
• Some ttRPG storylines, setting, themes, & even rules concepts are so tainted by racism, bigotry, and sexism that they cannot be redeemed. Even revised versions serve as a dogwhistle to toxic fans. There's no broad agreement about for which concepts this is true.
• Much less professional material from the big and well-known ttRPG companies is playtested than you thought, and playtesting takes more time and effort than you thought. Much more material from tiny 3pp- and Indy ttRPG companies is playtested than you thought.
• One advantage of being an established ttRPG freelancer is you can get as much work as you want. Of course most of it doesn't pay enough, so you now have the option of working 60-70-80 hour weeks to make ends meet. But unlike some folks, you DO have that option.
• You don't HAVE to have a spouse with good benefits and insurance to be a full-time freelancer in the ttRPG industry. But it's the most common answer on how to survive doing so.
• If you write work-for-hire on a ttRPG in the US, you can expected your work to be edited. Usually with no consultation or warning. You'll find out when the book is published. That's normal. For everyone.
• The more mainstream a ttRPG is, the more competition there is for jobs to design for it. For staff jobs, you're often one of several hundred applicants. Sometimes one of thousands. Of course, this also means you seem easily replaceable, even if it's not true.
• While doing contract work for a ttRPG company occasionally leads to a staff position, this is very much the exception rather than the norm. Especially if you don't already have many years of experience. It's normally a stepping stone, not a quick route in.

 

[dragoner]

I could not imagine an engineer who did not go to uni, it is where we learn to become an inhuman monster that will create the machines of your doom, DOOM!

 

[Jd Smith1]

Mental toughness is what you're supposed to get out of a degree. Too many college students think that college is job training. And, yes, there are vocational schools out there. But that's not what a college education (as in liberal arts sorts of things -- and, yes, computer science fits into the liberal arts) is really about. It's about learning how to think. It's about learning how to learn things. It's not about learning specific facts and techniques.

As you note, in many cases, you get 5-10 years out of college and the techniques have changed and there are a whole bunch of added facts. College is way too expensive for it to be job training for the first job you get out of college. It needs to be something more. Alas, a substantial fraction of college students don't get this, and actively fight against it. (How often have you heard "I'm never going to use this" as an implicit argument for not having to think about something in a college class?)

That only applies to the liberal arts, which is a questionable field to enter in any case.

It all boils down to supply and demand. So long as colleges crank out far more debt-ridden graduates than a particular field needs, then the value of that education is minimal at best.

The gaming industry is hit by a triple S&D issue: first, our hobby has a small customer base. Not as small as it has been in years past, but still small.

Second, you don't need game designers for this hobby; there are free rules, half-price used books, Ebay, and of course, the GM's ability to write his or her own material. I've been playing since 1979, and my per-year investment in this hobby would, if pro-rated to the start, run about $100 a year. Yet I play every week. One thing I do, is read reviews of gaming material, which generally give the gist of the scenario; I take these, and fill in the details as my campaign dictates.

Third, the products, old and new, are available for free. I don't know what impact piracy has on the industry, but I don't believe it is small; I know two weekly F2F games in my area that are run purely on pirated material, and I suspect some of my players hoist the skull and bones. This latter suspicion makes me loath to purchase commercial scenarios, since the odds are very good the secrets have already been compromised.

 

[rknop]

JD Smith1 -- when you say that the liberal arts is a questionable "field" to enter and "It all boils down to supply and demand....", in my opinion you're thinking about it all wrong in exactly the way that I say college students, and much of society thinks about it all wrong. Implicit in these descriptions is that college is job training, and that the result of college is somebody who has been specifically prepared to enter the job market.

While that is the purpose of some (many) education and training programs, that is not the real purpose of a liberal arts education (and, as Dire Bare says, earlier general education). Indeed, the liberal arts is not a "field". You don't get a job in the liberal arts. A liberal arts education is supposed to help you think more broadly and flexibly, help you be a more informed citizen of the world, help you engage with the intellectual tradition of the history of civilization. It doesn't prepare you for any job specifically. But, if you do it well (and many students do not), it prepares you to be able to adapt to a wide range of jobs. Yes, for a lot of fields, you will also need specific technical education and skills. but that's not really what a liberal arts education is about.

Re: gaming, when you say you are loath to purchase commercial scenarios because the secrets have already been compromised, I submit that you really need a new gaming group. Even without piracy, somebody in your gaming group could buy and read published modules without telling you about it. Your model assumes a tightly information-controlled adversarial relationship between the GM and the players. There has been a lot written about how the assumption of an adversarial relationship between the GM and players can be destructive to RPGs. (If that's what you really want, you're better off playing things like wargames than story-focused RPGs.) You have to trust your group. You have to have a group that's in it to have fun, and that wants to play along. They players have to want there be secrets they don't know if that's part of what makes it fun for everybody. The solution is not tightly controlled information that players can't get to, the solution is players who agree not to read spoilers about the adventures they're playing.

 

[Jd Smith1]

JD Smith1 -- when you say that the liberal arts is a questionable "field" to enter and "It all boils down to supply and demand....", in my opinion you're thinking about it all wrong in exactly the way that I say college students, and much of society thinks about it all wrong. Implicit in these descriptions is that college is job training, and that the result of college is somebody who has been specifically prepared to enter the job market.

While that is the purpose of some (many) education and training programs, that is not the real purpose of a liberal arts education (and, as Dire Bare says, earlier general education). Indeed, the liberal arts is not a "field". You don't get a job in the liberal arts. A liberal arts education is supposed to help you think more broadly and flexibly, help you be a more informed citizen of the world, help you engage with the intellectual tradition of the history of civilization. It doesn't prepare you for any job specifically. But, if you do it well (and many students do not), it prepares you to be able to adapt to a wide range of jobs. Yes, for a lot of fields, you will also need specific technical education and skills. but that's not really what a liberal arts education is about.

Re: gaming, when you say you are loath to purchase commercial scenarios because the secrets have already been compromised, I submit that you really need a new gaming group. Even without piracy, somebody in your gaming group could buy and read published modules without telling you about it. Your model assumes a tightly information-controlled adversarial relationship between the GM and the players. There has been a lot written about how the assumption of an adversarial relationship between the GM and players can be destructive to RPGs. (If that's what you really want, you're better off playing things like wargames than story-focused RPGs.) You have to trust your group. You have to have a group that's in it to have fun, and that wants to play along. They players have to want there be secrets they don't know if that's part of what makes it fun for everybody. The solution is not tightly controlled information that players can't get to, the solution is players who agree not to read spoilers about the adventures they're playing.

If you are going to pay six figures for a 'education', it had better open employment opportunities with an earning potential worth the investment, or it is wasted money. Yet we see study after study demonstrating that LA majors are emerging from college with crippling debt levels and poor job opportunities.

Because no landlord cares about what sort of 'citizen of the world' you are; they want a credit check, security deposit, and first month's rent, with subsequent payments on time.

Thanks for sharing your opinion about my group, but we're been gaming together for years (19, for a couple of them), and you're completely wrong on all counts. As I noted, I've found solutions, and in any case, there are not many really good commercial scenarios out there. Gaming is my cheap hobby, and always has been. As I noted, I've probably spent no more than $100 per year going back to 1979, and probably a lot less. I seriously doubt I will spend that much this year.

 

[Emerikol]

Re: gaming, when you say you are loath to purchase commercial scenarios because the secrets have already been compromised, I submit that you really need a new gaming group. Even without piracy, somebody in your gaming group could buy and read published modules without telling you about it. Your model assumes a tightly information-controlled adversarial relationship between the GM and the players. There has been a lot written about how the assumption of an adversarial relationship between the GM and players can be destructive to RPGs. (If that's what you really want, you're better off playing things like wargames than story-focused RPGs.) You have to trust your group. You have to have a group that's in it to have fun, and that wants to play along. They players have to want there be secrets they don't know if that's part of what makes it fun for everybody. The solution is not tightly controlled information that players can't get to, the solution is players who agree not to read spoilers about the adventures they're playing.

To me there is a high value to players not knowing things and discovering them as the campaign progresses. One way I do it is to rename and reskin existing monsters. Other times I invent some new monsters. I also tend to hide the fact I'm using a commercial product so that if by chance one of them has seen the module they won't realize it. I also change up somethings in any commercial product I use.

It's not a matter of trust. It's the fact I don't even want to ask if they have heard of a module to tip them off. I want a genuine sense of wonder to be maintained in the game.

 

[Tyler Do'Urden]

somebody may want a pseudo-intellectual, crypto-fash OSR paean to Ayn Rand,

SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!

 

[dragoner]

SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!

 

[Tyler Do'Urden]

Not what I had in mind...

 

[Rob Kuntz]

Yep. Been there and still doing that. Owen speaks the truth. It's like that in most publishing fields. Like Daily newsprint. It's relentlessly long hours to get to print, last minute changes, the works, and the team sighs in relief after having put in 80-100 hour work weeks each. Vacations? (translated): "Taking a bathroom break and then grabbing a sandwich on the way back to your desk." There's this real sense of accomplishment even with (and especially because of) all the grind, "But Nobody Knows But Me" to quote Jimmie Rodgers.