Point/Success of Publishing Without Community?
greyorm:
One of the most oft repeated pieces of advice heard around the Forge regarding getting people playing your game (and hence getting your game sold) is that in order to get people interested in your game, you need to get the word out, specifically by getting people to play the game at conventions, thereby driving sales and interest via word-of-mouth and personal connections with the author. But if you can't make it to conventions, if you're lucky to have one group play your game with you once ever, is there any point to trying to publish your game and hoping you can otherwise make do with the internet?
For example, ORX has sold 120-150 odd copies (mostly to gaming stores), and has received a few reviews (four or five, as I recall). Yet I've never heard of one group (that didn't include me) actually playing the game, or even mentioning it in discussion. ORX has been out since 2005 and I doubt anyone but me, even in the "indie scene", really remembers it, let alone has played it. I'm aware of a good number of other games/designers who are in the same sort of limbo. All the games I do see being played and being talked about being played are games where the creator (or someone else with an interest in the game) is regularly able to go to conventions and promote the game through play, not just by talking about it on-line or maintaining an on-line presence.
I personally began thinking about this when I started working on incorporating the feedback I've received on eXpendable into the current document -- wondering if I should. Given that traditional publishing is discovering, as we have, that in order to sell you have to utilize your community, and will generally only be able to sell to that community, and that authors have to be their own publicists these days...and that I might make it to one convention a year. So another way to put it might be: if you can't grow your own network (ie: community) from the ground up, for whatever reason, is there a real point in creating and publishing a game in the modern climate (if your purpose is having others purchase and play the game)?
But then the other part of this question is thus: is the accepted chestnut about the necessity of convention play true?
Eero Tuovinen:
Well... I live in Finland, so I never do American conventions, either. Here in Europe we don't usually go to conventions outside our own country, so I haven't promoted my games at European conventions aside from Finnish ones. Zombie Cinema has sold around 400 copies after its first year, I think. Some people have apparently played it, too. I believe that the game could do better through active marketing, such as conventioneering, but that's geography and motivation for you.
(I could also discuss Solar System, but that's tainted by the fact that there is a pre-existing brand and community supporting that one.)
I do agree that not hearing anything about people playing a game is a pretty bad sign. And my experience towards ORX concurs with yours in that it hasn't sold much here, either (0-1 copies I've sold, I think). I don't think that this is so much the lack of convention presence, though - rather, I usually ascribe this sort of thing to bad luck and a lack of Internet noise; if the game had more visibility in the Internet, then it'd attract more people and more buzz, and then its sales might better reflect its quality. A part in why the game hasn't built up an audience could be related to how difficult it is to learn from the text (as I've said previously, ORX almost rivals Capes in incomprehensibility), but ORX is by no means the only underappreciated game in this scene, so it could be just bad luck in timing the publication or something like that.
In summation, I don't think that conventioneering is mandatory to get your game to people's hands, but in all likelihood it's a great help. I wouldn't consider it crucial, as it's lots of work and bother - in principle nothing is preventing me from travelling around Europe conventioneering with Zombie Cinema, but for the fact that I'd rather spend the time writing new stuff. I might be more keen about the matter if my sales were worse, I suppose.
guildofblades:
Two points:
1) Games are social. They require more than one person to play as a group. But that is as much a "community" that is required to make a game commercially viable. If you can market and sell it to "group leader" type personalities, then you will have placed your game at the center of a bunch of local gaming group (ala, micro communities). That can be enough to drive brand recognition and word of mouth propogation that can lend itself to more sales.
2) If you are apt to builder a larger, all connected community around your game (which may or may not in the end be a more overall successful marketing strategy), the Internet is more able to offer that opportunity that play at conventions. Conventions are merely a front line location where you get an opportunity to make a great sales pitch by showing the product in action. Its a sales methodogy with a secondary branding opportunity. I think it tends to be a favorite method by small companies because its straight forward and can be done with good ol elbow grease rather than needing more capital, coding or resources more involved marketing and sales systems may require. But I don't think anyone should walk away witht he idea that conventioning is the "only" way to market a game. As an example, GOB Publishing has not attended a convention since 2002. Back then we were a two man outfit, part time operation, with no one pulling home a paycheck. Today it is has a staff of 5 between part and full timers and generates many multiples of what it did back in 2002. So convention appearances had zero to do with our growth.
Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Retail Group - http://www.gobretail.com
Guild of Blades Publishing Group - http://www.guildofblades.com
1483 Online - http://www.1483online.com
Ron Edwards:
I only used cons a little bit during my first few years publishing, and those were tiny local ones anyway.
At that time, "community" for me meant various zines, webrings, and my email list, and that was it. It worked out very well.
Best, Ron
Callan S.:
Kind of thinking "Selling 'just' 120 copies is pointless??"
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