Playing at the World -- Errata

Ok, I just started reading Playing at the World.

I may review it later, but I wanted to address/gloss over the few times I'm mentioned or footnoted in the book.

"a certain Steve Marsh" [footnote 848][at Kindle page 14,,498 of 21,,918].  Made me wonder how I could become an uncertain Steve Marsh. ;)

The footnote is accurate.

 "Elder" Steve Marsh [footnote 856].  Flipping to the footnote, Steve Marsh was referred to as "Elder" because he was at that time serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and missionaries all use the title "Elder."

Next, "Tim Kask may claim he paid "good money," but the case of Steve Marsh ..." leads to the wrong conclusion.  At the time, for what I was doing, Tim wasn't supposed to pay me anything. [footnote 889] -- Tim was also gone by the time the fall-through occurred.  Bottom line was that Gary was unable to keep promises he made because he lost control of the company.  You can guess who was responsible for the company when Gary did not have control. 

Page 15,911 of 21,918 does make reference to my gibbering ghoul and some work by Mark Swanson (who was a gentleman and a scholar) as well as credit Gary gave me for my undersea creations (a lead in to the plane of water which did not emerge from the depths, due to conflicts and issues).

Finally, the author quotes my comments about Authentic Thaumaturgy with my caveats.  That made me smile.

All in all, good work, first pass. 

Now to read it with much more depth.

Political Post 4

To quote:

No reasonably intelligent person can deny this. All you have to do is look at the way the Other Side has been running its campaign. Instead of focusing on the big issues that are important to the American People, it has fired a relentlessly negative barrage of distortions, misrepresentations, and flat-out lies.

Just look at the Other Side’s latest commercial, which take a perfectly reasonable statement by the candidate for My Side completely out of context to make it seem as if he is saying something nefarious. This just shows you how desperate the Other Side is and how willing it is to mislead the American People.

The Other Side also has been hammering away at My Side to release certain documents that have nothing to do with anything, and making all sorts of outrageous accusations about what might be in them. Meanwhile, the Other Side has stonewalled perfectly reasonable requests to release its own documents that would expose some very embarrassing details if anybody ever found out what was in them. This just shows you what a bunch of hypocrites they are.

Naturally, the media won’t report any of this. Major newspapers and cable networks jump all over anything they think will make My Side look bad. Yet they completely ignore critically important and incredibly relevant information that would be devastating to the Other Side if it could ever be verified.

I will admit the candidates for My Side do make occasional blunders. These usually happen at the end of exhausting 19-hour days and are perfectly understandable. Our leaders are only human, after all. Nevertheless, the Other Side inevitably makes a big fat deal out of these trivial gaffes, while completely ignoring its own candidates’ incredibly thoughtless and stupid remarks – remarks that reveal the Other Side’s true nature, which is genuinely frightening.

My Side has produced a visionary program that will get the economy moving, put the American People back to work, strengthen national security, return fiscal integrity to Washington, and restore our standing in the international community. What does the Other Side have to offer? Nothing but the same old disproven, discredited policies that got us into our current mess in the first place.

Don’t take my word for it, though. I recently read about an analysis by an independent, nonpartisan organization that supports My Side. It proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that everything I have been saying about the Other Side was true all along. Of course, the Other Side refuses to acknowledge any of this. It is too busy cranking out so-called studies by so-called experts who are actually  nothing but partisan hacks. This just shows you that the Other Side lives in its own little echo chamber and refuses to listen to anyone who has not already drunk its Kool-Aid.

Let’s face it: The Other Side is held hostage by a radical, failed ideology. I have been doing some research on the Internet, and I have learned this ideology was developed by a very obscure but nonetheless profoundly influential writer with a strange-sounding name who enjoyed brief celebrity several decades ago. If you look carefully, you can trace nearly all the Other Side’s policies for the past half-century back to the writings of this one person.

To be sure, the Other Side also has been influenced by its powerful supporters. These include a reclusive billionaire who has funded a number of organizations far outside the political mainstream; several politicians who have said outrageous things over the years; and an alarmingly large number of completely clueless ordinary Americans who are being used as tools and don’t even know it.

These people are really pathetic, too. The other day I saw a YouTube video in which My Side sent an investigator and a cameraman to a rally being held by the Other Side, where the investigator proceeded to ask some real zingers. It was hilarious! First off, the people at the rally wore T-shirts with all kinds of lame messages that they actually thought were really clever. Plus, many of the people who were interviewed were overweight, sweaty, flushed, and generally not very attractive. But what was really funny was how stupid they were. There is no way anyone could watch that video and not come away convinced the people on My Side are smarter, and that My Side is therefore right about everything.

Besides, it’s clear that the people on the Other Side are driven by mindless anger – unlike My Side, which is filled with passionate idealism and righteous indignation. That indignation, I hasten to add, is entirely justified. I have read several articles in publications that support My Side that expose what a truly dangerous group the Other Side is, and how thoroughly committed it is to imposing its radical, failed agenda on the rest of us.

That is why I believe 2012 is, without a doubt, the definingelection of our lifetime. The difference between My Side and theOther Side could not be greater. That is why it absolutely must winon November 6.

Political Post 3

To quote Nate again:

Just to be clear, crazy people who agree with me are an unfortunate aberration that are unfairly being used by people who agree with you to slander people like me. On the other hand, crazy people who agree with you simply reveal the frightening true nature of your beliefs.

Political Post 2

To quote Nate Oman:

I have bipartisan solutions that the other side is too partisan to support. Of course it goes without saying that I have no choice but to oppose the purely partisan measures pushed by the other side.

Politcal Post 1

Your candidate flip flops. Our candidate evolved.

Pragmatic NeoFederalist campaign talking point 57.

Some must read articles on video game design

Finally hit some must read articles on understanding design choices and the most popular video games of our times.

Start with: http://insertcredit.com/2011/09/22/who-killed-videogames-a-ghost-story/ It goes over exactly how farmville and similar games work, why they work and the entire theory and practice behind microtransactions. Everyone who is thinking of selling an app or a computer game needs to read it, if nothing else, just for the numbers.

Also, if you can tolerate it, here is his in depth review of Sims Social which extends the analysis  (the web page design is actually extremely painful and hostile to readers, I'm not certain of the reason for the template he uses).

Next, with very clean numbers, again, is Congratulations, Your First Indie Game is a Flop

How much can your first indie game make?

This question has been answered many times in the last year and we now know some important things about full or part-time independent as well as hobbyist iOS game developers:

• The majority (median 25 percent) of their games earn from $1,000 to $10,000.
• If you're lucky, you'll be in the next 20 percent above that, earning from $10k to 100k.
• But you're more likely in the quarter below, earning only $100 to $1,000.

Lots more.  His game flopped because of marketing failures, miss-steps, bad luck and, of course, it was a first game.  But the numbers are interesting and useful.

After that, well, I'll have to update ...


 

Going into the business (FRPGs)...

This one is about going into the business of FRPG games as a writer and publisher assuming you have two years to do it from today.

The best advice I saw was:  don't.  Ok, you are going to ignore that advice and have two or three years to prepare and save money.

First, attend NTRPG con next year.  You can visit with almost every old style publisher in the industry and with almost every one of the old style designers.  Eldritch Ent, Frog God/Necromancer Games, Sandy Petersen.  Odds are you will only miss out on Chaosium and Steve Jackson Games as far as old school games go.  Talk with people about their product lines, look at the product lines.

Second, buy and read Marketing Without Advertising: Easy Ways to Build a Business Your Customers Will Love and Recommend by Michael Phillips and Salli Rasberry (Jun 5, 2008).  There are a number of editions, similar names, any will do.  Available cheap through Amazon but -- even cheaper through interlibrary loan.

Third, decide exactly what niche you will fit in the industry. I just saw an excellently produced Cthulhu mythos product for OD&D -- but it is going to compete with both d20 Call of Cthulhu and BRP Call of Cthulhu.  cf Call of Cthulhu. It was a really good product, but good enough to squeeze into that niche?

Fourth, get an idea of the supply lines and distribution lines in the industry you want to sell to -- where will you meet people who might buy your materials on the wholesale/distributor/retailer level.

Fifth, if you want to pay a professional who knows the industry to talk about the industry, I'd retain Jennell Jaquays.  As Paul Jaquays (before the transition), Jacquays edited or worked for just about everyone in the industry and in related industries -- and never did anyone wrong.  Open, honest and intelligent and insightful.  If you are going to pay someone, hire Jennell after you've done steps one through four above.


Sixth, do something, a proof of concept, in final form (the way it would look off the press -- you can use a POD or print on demand service to do a small run of five or less copies) so you can do the following:

• Decide if you have it in you to do tight editing (I find that I do, but my willingness to do it is highly dependent on being paid in advance.  Until then I tend to be more interested in playing with the concepts than in refining them).
• Decide if you have it in you to do professional proof reading (I can do that too, I've been a professional editor -- but, see the above.  I get more out of playing with things than editing my own work).
• Decide it you understand how to do professional formatting.  There are some brilliantly executed works out there (being a judge for the Five Castles competition this year really wowed me.  There are people who are executing brilliantly in genre, producing things that would pass for TSR products of the 1980s, and those who are producing things using modern sensibilities). That includes consistent artwork, presentation, use of white space, etc.
• Decide just how much material you can produce and why you want to produce it.

Seven, ask yourself what you have to offer (that is very, very similar to finding a niche) and why someone would want it from you.  Do that in the context of visiting the Small Business Administration offices in your area and going over the free materials and advice that they have for people who want to start a business.

Oh, and what order to do all of that?

Start with step seven.  Then do step three -- but you will revisit that.  Then take step two. Then look at step four.  Rethink step three (in light of step two) and do step six.  

Now you are ready to revisit step four and talk to the people in that chain.  Now, you should still be more than a year away, and ready for step one and step five.

It has been one year. You are now ready to start applying what you learned in step six.  Put together a business plan, map out what product line you intend to promulgate, get a much better look at independent publishing.

Year two, plan a launch strategy to go with your business strategy.



Now, all of that said, I want to note what some people have said on the topic:

David Morrison Trying to make significant cash in traditional RPG publishing is a tricky one, because there's an endless supply of gamers prepared to make stuff ever more cheaply. However, the market is within reach of a combination of disruptive technologies, design methods and gaming formats that already make more money than RPGs for digital publishers, but receive little attention from Tabletop RPG publishers

Yes.  There are people who can and do make money.

Let me be clearer.

Monte Cook Six figures isn't impossible in the tabletop game industry, it's just difficult and not a good goal. But it sounds like that's not your goal. And happiness is waaaaay more important than money

But that gives you a two year plan for deciding if the industry is really for you.

Some additional useful links (and yes, these are somewhat random, designed to get you thinking, not designed to provide you answers):

• http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/7/28/235328/642
• http://www.homebrew.net/games/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabletop_role-playing_game#Business_models
• http://redwaspdesign.wordpress.com/ (for an example of the new alternative publication style)
• http://www.lumpley.com/dogsources.html
• http://www.rpg.net/
• http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forge/index.php

Feel free to add advice in the comments.