One problem I see in the evolution of the RPG market is that over time I assume that the ratio of digital material compared to print material will eventually lean heavily on digital material, and print material will take up a smaller niche portion of consumption.  Right now tablets are still fairly expensive but give it enough years and the price of a tablet will drop to levels where they will be ubiquitous.  Further, there is going to be a demographics shift as younger consumers will enter the market from a background where digital consumption is the norm.

At a certain point (perhaps five years, more likely ten years from now) I'd expect that getting paid through printed material will have shrunk to the point where charging for digital material will be essential if costs are to be recouped and incentives gained to create more material.

What I'm wondering about is if the market will be able to adjust to a ransom model through crowdsourcing as a standard method of getting creators paid for their work?

There are a few dynamics at play here:

Will the market accept funding not only production costs but also development costs?  That is, not only are elements such as artwork, layout, editing and the like being paid for, but also paying for the time to design, write and playtest the product?  This would require higher funding goals to factor in these costs.

Will the market accept that only a portion of the consumers will pay for the product and the rest of the market will get the product for free?

Would some kind of standard formula be able to emerge that the market could accept for creator compensation?  That is, something like a cent-per-word cost that would try and capture the development costs of the creator?

We already have a preorder system in kickstarter. As for the rest, reputation will play a big part in blank sheet productions coming to light. And not just in-crowd knowledge, but an actual official rating system like Amazon has. I'm surprised it doesn't already exist to be honest.

The answer is yes. You front load the bulk of your profits before there's anything there to "fileshare".

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That will leave me out. No big loss.

-clash

Quote from: harpy;637839One problem I see in the evolution of the RPG market is that over time I assume...

I think we already here. Digital products ARE outselling print. By a lot.

Tablets are expensive? There are plenty of $200 or less options out there with great screens and functionality.

Will the market be able to adjust?!?!?! I think perhaps you've been out of the loop, so let's bring you up to speed.

Kickstarters have raised MILLIONS of dollars for RPGs in the last several years. Once more for the kids in the back row.
Kickstarters have raised MILLIONS of dollars for RPGs in the last several years.

There's the right way to do it and the wrong way to do it. Having a name in the industry helps. Clearly showing the rewards and stretch goals so your potential supporters can buy in without confusion helps.

Quote from: harpy;637839Will the market accept funding not only production costs but also development costs? That is, not only are elements such as artwork, layout, editing and the like being paid for, but also paying for the time to design, write and playtest the product? This would require higher funding goals to factor in these costs.

The current success of KS proves to me that customers accept paying for development costs. Look at the Numenera Kickstarter as an example. Look at the Dwimmermount or e20 Evolved Kickstarters as bad examples. In both cases people have pledged for development AND products. Kickstarters frequently include the need to acquire art (the most expensive part of putting together a print book outside of the printing itself) but several have included up front the reality that the product is somewhere between "no where near done" to "somewhat done".

Quote from: harpy;637839Will the market accept that only a portion of the consumers will pay for the product and the rest of the market will get the product for free?

Why would the rest of the market get it for free? I would KS a game, give out my supporter rewards, and then take the remaining stock and sell it for retail on my personal web site. Maybe put some into distribution if I was feeling generous. It's so easy to find a market online these days and there's absolutely NO reason to give away your products for free, unless you want to get your game out there. For instance, Sine Nomine gives out Stars Without Number free, but there's plenty of supplements you can buy in PDF form. Good ones too. It's a great model, so I could see giving away a free core book to retain long-term repeat customers. I can tell you that the initial KS money generated will (in general) pay for a print run that easily DOUBLES the print run owed to the initial supporters if the creator so chooses. It's how you budget it.

Quote from: harpy;637839Would some kind of standard formula be able to emerge that the market could accept for creator compensation? That is, something like a cent-per-word cost that would try and capture the development costs of the creator?

The formula is simple. We don't care how much you're compensated. Give me a great deal for the pledge level I can afford or want to contribute and you can take my money. That's how it works. The supporter does not care what you're compensated they care about how THEY are compensated. And of course supporting your project. That's the whole point of KS.

I don't see much of a rating system coming to fruition. I think reputation and (even more importantly) presentation will play the biggest roll in funding a KS. Also, if you're not as widely known, people are less likely to support your development efforts. A person's/company's first KS should be something already written and you should PROVE it. People feel more comfortable supporting something that just needs art, layout and printing than waiting on you to suffer a family tragedy/get sick/lose focus/be abducted by aliens while your great work is still being penned.

In Summary: You are in the digital Kickstarter cottage desktop vanity publishing era. Up to your eyeballs in it. No need for conjecture. You're here. Pull up a comfy chair and enjoy your future.

Quote from: flyingmice;638182That will leave me out. No big loss.

-clash

I don't see why. You have polished well presented products. Your website could use an update to web 2.0 standards, but your stuff is spiffy sir. I think with the right advertising, a solid intro video, a good quick start demo of the game you could put on a successful (profitable) KS just as any other of these various people have. For example, Star Cluster may not be the most widely known sci-fi game, however it hardly qualifies as being "obscure". With a great "intro demo" product, you could sell the game to interested supporters who've never seen or read SC before.

Will write more when not on cell but I think the FATE Core kickstarter is a good model of what we'll see in the future.

Editing in what I mean:

Right now most Kickstarters are one-offs to get a single book published and then maybe a grab-bag of side stuff. I think in the future we'll see less and less of that and more and more of a bunch of products being bundled together.

For example in the FATE Core KS I paid 10 bucks and I'm getting about 2,000 pages of content. That's a pretty good deal for me (even though I'm not so interested in FATE anymore) and it makes money for them since the marginal costs of giving me 2,000 pages of content are pretty much zero while the costs of actually printing that stuff and sending it to me would put them deep into the red.

Basically compare:

Option A: you have three books to sell, do three kickstarters for three different books with a goal of $5,000 each with PDFs costing $10.

Option B: you have three books to sell, do one kickstarter with the goal of the first book being $5,000 with bonus goals at $10,000 and $15,000 for the next too books. Then plan out some projects you can farm out to freelancers for additional reward levels. PDFs for whichever books get unlocked cost $10.

If your product is popular enough to get the ball rolling (as happened easily with FATE core) you'll hit through the first goal or two easily and then start generating some good word of mouth based on "oh my god, you can get three books for $10!" You get everyone you would've gotten in the first kickstarter and then a bunch of people as well who are only chipping in money because they can get a crapload of books cheap. And the more the ball gets rolling the more and more stuff you can offer for the same $10.

This is the same basic logic to how most porn websites work these days and porn companies are generally early adopters of new tech and new distribution business models. Sure you can get some people who like one kind of porn and some people who like another kind of porn, but you mostly make money by bundling together a gazillion websites together so you get all of the people who each web site caters too as well as people who are impressed by being able to get umpteen gazillion kinds of porn for a few bucks a month. This doesn't work with old kinds of distribution since if you bundle together a whole bunch of stuff (like of like old really really thick newspapers) you'll get killed on marginal production and distribution costs but it works very well online since you make about the same profit margin selling 10,000 people a bundle of 10 things for $10 as you do selling 1,000 people one thing for $10.

This (with various permutations) has been what's driven a lot of the biggest RPG kickstarters. It hasn't happened so much with OSR stuff since the market is so fragmented into a zillion separate one man companies. The closest thing is Lamentation of the Flame Princess modules which haven't quite caught fire with a big kickstarter yet since the product isn't popular enough (yet?) to get the ball rolling to the point where you get people thinking, "I can get HOW many books on PDF for $10? damn that's cheap, whatever I'll chip in" as happened with the FATE core one. But I'm sure some kind of bundled OSR goodness with catch fire and break $300,000 on KS in the next year or three and give people a shot at getting a umpteen PDFs for $10.

I think Kickstarter will definitely help small publishers, and the Fate Core KS is a really good example of how to do it right.

Beating piracy is pretty simple: Make a product or service that is better than piracy. The best ones have reward tiers that are unique and interesting, stuff like signed art prints, early access to drafts, that sort of thing.

I do worry a bit that enough failed Kickstarters could hurt the system. What I liked best about the Fate one was that I got my hands on plenty of material before it was even done. I hope other publishers take note of that.

Quote from: Chairman Meow;638283Beating piracy is pretty simple: Make a product or service that is better than piracy. The best ones have reward tiers that are unique and interesting, stuff like signed art prints, early access to drafts, that sort of thing.

Technically if your kickstarter is successful you've already beaten piracy, I mean if it's not there won't be anything to pirate.

Quote from: The Traveller;638302Technically if your kickstarter is successful you've already beaten piracy, I mean if it's not there won't be anything to pirate.

Precisely.

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