Disclaimer: I don't know anything about Hogshead other than what I have read on their website. I have never played any of their games.
However, I wanted to call attention to some things in
the Ogre Cave interview with James Wallis. All quotes are from there.
Hogshead was set up to publish games that I designed; I was supposed to be the company's creative powerhouse. I had no idea that running a small business is so incredibly time-consuming and will-draining.
This is a really important lesson for anyone out there who plans to start a small business. Whether that business is for RPGs or widgets, running it will likely be one of the hardest, most draining things you ever do.
If it was easy to run a small business then more people would succeed at it. In fact it is incredibly difficult.
Fandom is a weird environment, populated by barely functional beings for whom gaming is their entire existence
Now this is one of the most condescending and insulting things I have ever read about fandom. Please raise your hand if you enjoyed being called "barely functional". I can only wonder why someone with as much apparent bitterness towards fandom would choose to work in a niche (RPGs) that is heavily dependent upon fandom for its continued existence.
So that's another lesson. If you don't like the people who will be buying your products, the ones who are the most enthusiastic about them - maybe you're in the wrong industry.
Hogshead could have completely revised its business model, moving to a system of pumping out new product every month or so, rushing stuff through the creative process to meet print deadlines. But the company was set up to create high-quality, innovative products
The world is full of failed, quality products. Success is the market is only partially tied to the quality of your product. A lot more of your success will be tied to how well you market the product, your ability to execute, and plain old dumb luck.
If you think you're creating a high-quality, innovative product, that's great. Now figure out how to compete with the shoddy, derivitive products out there. That's called business.
I've had a slightly higher number of retailers complain that the book is too large to fit on their purpose-built racks, because everyone knows it is against the laws of nature and God to produce an RPG larger than 8.5"x11".
Why would you design a product that is hard for retailers to sell? You do that at your peril. Retailers expect books to fit on book racks. For them, that
is a law of nature.
I mean, a good per-word rate in the games business is 4-5 cents a word. When I trained as a journalist, they told us not to get out of bed for less than 20 cents a word, because it simply wasn't worth your time. And that was more than ten years ago.
If you know that you are going to get paid one quarter the going rate for writing games - before you start writing them - then you certainly can't complain about it later. Well, you can always complain, but I don't think people will be very sympathetic. I'm sure we can all point to someone who makes more money doing something apparently easier or less demanding. So if you don't like what you're being paid, ask for a raise. And if that's not possible, find another career.
You do not earn what you deserve. You earn what you negotiate.
= = = = =
I hope I haven't come off as too harshly critical in this post. My overall point is that, from reading the Ogre Cave interview, it seems like Mr. Wallis had to learn some of the harsh lessons of capitalism. Maybe we can all benefit from what he experienced, so that we don't have to learn those same lessons the hard way.
