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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Erik Mona" data-source="post: 428080" data-attributes="member: 2174">I said:>>>Crap rates have chased off dozens of talented designers from this business, which I think is a shame. There are plenty of good ones waiting in the wings, but there are plenty of over-enthusiastic fans who continue the cycle of crap products waiting there, too.>>>ByronD said:>>>Do you really mean this? The fans are to blame?>>>No, of course I don't hold the fans to blame. The fans are the consumer. Totally removed from how much a product costs and how much the writer was paid, if the fans don't want your product, you've got serious problems.I was referring, as Wulf suggested, to "fan" designers, as opposed to folks with lots of design experience. Make no mistake, EVERYONE is a "fan" designer at the beginning of their game design careers. Not everyone is good at it. If there are no experienced freelancers to work on a given project, that project will be written by less experienced authors.There's no magic power held by industry types that makes them "better" than "untested" designers, but they are probably more likely to hit deadlines, be more familiar with subtle game balance issues, and are likely more polished writers (which in turn requires less editing). The best of them know how to deal with editors and publishers and funnel the sum total of their experience into each product. THAT is the advantage of using experienced authors. Idea quality doesn't, in my opinion, have much to do with experience. A sheer newbie can come up with ideas that will knock the socks off of similar ideas by established writers.But since this thread is aimed at publishers and already assumes that the "ideas" in question are interesting to potential buyers, I decided to focus on areas in which paying more for experienced authors can _save_ money by cutting down on editing and development time and can perhaps increase long-term customer satisfaction because the rules are more likely to be balanced than those of a novice designer.I realize, looking over my original message, that I wasn't being terribly clear. Sorry about that. Hope this makes my point of view a little easier to penetrate.Thanks,Erik</blockquote>

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