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June 29, 2004
Freebies and Shareware
This is a question where I honestly have no answer, so I'm looking for some honest discussion on the topic.
Chad Underkoffler was kind enough to post his numbers for Monkeys, Ninjas, Pirates and Robots: the Roleplaying Game on his livejournal. This spurred some interesting discussion about what he could do to increase his brand and his visibility. One of the topics placed on the table (by Heliograph Inc.) was the concept of freeware and shareware gaming.
Part of the argument is that the game industry mostly runs on word of mouth. It did not always run on word of mouth -- it used to run on "whatever was cool and appeared in the stores." But with the Net and blogs and discussion boards and the incredible explosion of small press games, the only way to rise to the top of the small press niche with everyone fighting for dominance is to get people talking about your game. Talk leads to sales, sales lead to play, which, in turn, leads to more sales. One argument (well, mine) is that the pay to play model for someone just sticking their foot in is a barrier to getting people exposed to your product, your name, your brand, and your style. You are not WotC or White Wolf, you're The Guy in the Garage, so you need to have some way to get exposure.
I know the freeware and shareware business models for software. I understand the concept of giving it away for free or for tip-jar until it becomes popular and then offering support/professional editions/upgrades for the for-pay version. However, I do not know how well this would work for small press games.
What do people think? Any experience?
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Comments
I don't know how widespread shareware support is, but I've bought a game under that model.
Lester Smith used to sell his Yummy Games as shareware. I picked up his fencing game, Clashing Blades, and then sent him a fiver by Paypal.
Posted by: steve at Jun 29, 2004 11:03:12 AM
You know, I have no idea why you insist on making the names in the title of the game plural. :)
Anywho, to further expound on what I've been thinking about on that thread, I've been seeing a lot of talk about shareware games and "hostage model" payment systems for games and whatnot.
The biggest datapoints I recall in this vein are almost always the Baen Free Library, Heliograph and Forgotten Futures, Atlas' Ars Magica 4 experiment, and the Stephen King book-by-subscription/hostage example.
Baen and Heliograph are successes.
Atlas and King weren't.
All four of these examples are not easily forced into apples to apples comparisions, but there's one basic commonality that seems to be true:
They all offer "a taste" as an inducement to buy the product.
But the concept breaks down immediately.
Baen offers a whole book. . . but the product they're selling is really an entire list of books by that author.
Heliograph offers the whole product, and then counts on those that like it to support it. I agrue that the product is actually neither game nor fiction, but a combo of both. . . and I think people are paying for the fiction.
IIRC, Atlas offered AM4 as a free download (much like Baen) hoping to spur supplement sales, but they went down. However, a new edition is on the way, and the system had already been out for years.
IIRC, Stephen King and RIDING THE BULLET. See this link, under Riding the Bullet Publishing Review:
http://members.tripod.com/~charnelhouse/ridingthebullet.html
Just plain weird. Also, it's been a cliche for years that King could sell his laundry list to a sizable proportion of his fans. . . which puts him in an economy of scale way, way, way above even Baen, much less the itsy-bitsy gaming industry.
I've said before that Atomic Sock Monkey Press is an experimental crucible. . . but, honestly, I haven't yet seen a ***compelling*** experiment in payment worth trying.
Keep 'em coming, though!
CU
Posted by: Chad Underkoffler at Jun 29, 2004 11:15:26 AM
By what definition of the word would Forgotten Futures be considered a success?
Posted by: Jere at Jun 29, 2004 11:44:25 AM
I gave puppies away for "if you like it, send me a fiver" for maybe a year. I gave away maybe a copy a week. Five or six people sent me money and another ten people or so sent me toys or cds or whatever.
Now I sell it. I sell over a copy a week, better than I used to give away, only now they're all for money (almost - I still take barter).
So "give it away until you have an audience" worked for me - I mean, given my modest goals for the game.
I was on a panel at a con in February. The audience didn't seem too moved by my message of hope: "yes, you too can sell literally dozens of your game, without distribution or marketing!"
Posted by: Vincent at Jun 29, 2004 12:02:24 PM
One thing I've been considering for my new game, Argonauts, which is an OGL product, was to include 2 files with every copy of the game. The first one would be the entire game; the second one would be just the OGL material (which is almost 2/3 of whole book), along with an encouragement for buyers to send the OGL portion to whomever they like: potential players, friends, strangers, whatever. Additionally, the OGL portion would also be available on my site for free, for whoever wanted it.
My hope is that this will both increase exposure and audience familiarity (for the game and for myself and my company) even among those who don't choose to buy the full version of the game. I don't have a clue if this semi-shareware marketing approach will have any impact, but I'll let you guys know once I have figures.
Posted by: Jonathan Walton at Jun 29, 2004 12:53:49 PM
By what definition of the word would Forgotten Futures be considered a success?
Whatever definition Matt Goodman was using here; I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt.
In short, though, I'm not sure if he was calling DI's 5 month sales feeble, MNPR:RPG's 1 month sales feeble, or both.
I choose not to address the point that FF's been out for many years, and we're comparing it to stuff that hasn't yet been out six months -- the topic's a minefield between the "90 sell cycle" and the "multi-year presence" issues.
CU
Posted by: Chad Underkoffler at Jun 29, 2004 12:54:58 PM
Monte Cook did something like this with his Arcana Unearthed PHB replacement. He first released several PDF files covering the races, skills, and magic systems. Enough to play with ... not enough to give the full flavor of the game. If the folks liked the changed mechanics (which we did), they would hopefully buy the books (which we also did).
That said, my gaming group is resistant to change. Before we go off on a different gaming system, we feel the need to playtest the rules. For those "experimental" games, even ones ridiculously cheap, that don't offer some insight into their mechanics ... we just don't pick 'em up.
D
Posted by: Doccus at Jun 29, 2004 1:44:05 PM
I find myself attracted to the model that I believe Clinton Nixon is using. Offer the plain text of the game for free, then charge for the pdf with all the pretty art, nice formating, etc.
This pleases me from both a consumer and designer standpoint. As a consumer, I very rarely purchase an rpg that I haven't had the opportunity to play first. As a designer, I'm allowing people to test drive the game and eliminate any hesitance towards purchasing. I would think that having a free text file available would also increase exposure.
At the moment I'm mostly of the opinion that if they just download the free file but don't purchase the pdf then they were never going to purchase it anyway. That's generally my view on most file sharing/piracy debates.
At any rate, I'm enamored enough with the idea that I will probably give it a try when Doomchaser is completed.
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