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Message: <blockquote data-quote="eyebeams" data-source="post: 4590972" data-attributes="member: 9225">Well, this idea fails right out of the gate. Creatives in larger companies don't usually make royalties and in smaller ones, they'd be better off doing something other than game design for money.The thing that's difficult for people to accept is that there really is such a thing as professional knowledge in this field, and that there are things in this industry that work in very specific ways, once you get past the hobby publishing niche.For example (and in reference to what's above), there are very few instances of "Let's make a book just to fill a release slot!" In large companies there are always more ideas for books than the budget can handle. WotC is a little different in this regard because marketing is more tightly integrated into design. It's probably the only company that can order the creation of a book called "Dragon Magic" for no other reason than books with "Dragon" and "Magic" in the title sell well. They're also the only guys who would mandate annual versions of core books for the same reason, or DDI.But barring these sorts of things, you have proposals coming from creative staff and then, marketing and creative teams butt heads about what actually goes on the release schedule. The initial idea almost always comes from a designer/creative, not a Man in a Suit. The Man in a Suit just decides which of these ideas people might actually buy. In many, many cases the Man in the Suit *is* the creative guy, and is really looking more at how he can sell what he was going to do anyway, or decide which of a number of things we wants to do, would be a good idea for him to do.This kind of insight isn't necessarily going to gain the most traction in any online discussion, however, because it lacks the dramatic flair of accusing game designers of being ripoff artists. And thanks to this, anybody so accused has the choice of doing nothing and letting a consensus build around a falsehood, coming in as a target, or simply relaying most things to a guy who is paid to tell you nice things abut the company.What is most troubling from a writer/designer perspective is that the online medium kind of makes talking about RPGs a decidedly different thing than playing them, to the point where trusting what people have to say about games on a forum like this one can actually be a mistake. When I was writing for Mage: The Ascension this was a serious issue, because the fan community had become practically monopolized by people who didn't play the game. Compare this with letters and APAs, which included pauses long enough for things to naturally spring from play. Your last D&D session would inform things more than the pressure to say something about gish-builds *now*.The fact of the matter is that most gamers use the Internet to get stuff, not talk about stuff -- so what you're left with is a community consisting of a subset of gamers that is inspired by gaming, but for which the central activity of gaming is often in the theoretical. Forums have evolved around this to devote space to documenting play, but this has its own problems, due to time and social pressure from the medium.This means that after a while, due to company policy or self-directed searching, creatives in the field usually look for information that hits our interest: supporting and improving gameplay within a particular creative direction. I have a my own gaming group to listen to and when I can, other groups to observe face to face (I spent a few years observing and documenting games as a third party, fr example) and there are a number of online play venues I anonymously visit. The conclusions I get from this are not always going to conform to any out-of-play consensus developed here or anywhere else. This isn't spectacular but the rewards express themselves over the long run.</blockquote>

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