This is why I don't sell my RPGs

[Rob Lang]

[koipond]

I understand this sentiment completely and can see where people are coming from.

However, I do sell games and I get a sense of accomplishment when I actually finish a product. It's still a new feeling, despite having four books out that I've either had a hand in or wrote directly and another one that I wrote but didn't publish. When I sell the product, for me, what keeps it from become a chore is that I feel that I'm not selling books to make a bajillion dollars. My hope is to break even on the money I've invested into the project.

Critical! is going to be a challenge for me because I feel that I should support it more than I usually want to. Usually I'm done making the game, and I want to move onto the next project rather than sit back and stay with the same one. We'll see how this goes. I really want to have fun with this one.

[Onix]

The wordpress plugin Akismet has an interesting tactic. It's free for personal blogs but they ask you to make a donation but the donation is part of the download form. It's a slider that starts off at $36 a year with a little smiley face. As you move the slider around the smiley face changes. Slide it to $0 and it' frowns at you. It's saying "Okay you can use this but we're not happy with you for it." Check it out .

That may seem heavy handed and it would sure reduce the downloads, but is it really wrong? Even for an RPG, if the game is something you want, isn't it reasonable to support it? $36 a year is too much (or is it really?) for an RPG but a lower suggested value ($3 per download?) might be reasonable.

It might not be a bad model to emulate. Yes it's free but please feed the childrens!

[koipond]

Well, being here has totally made me decide to release all the rules for any of my games under a CC-BY-SA license. Not that anyone has tried to hack or use anything yet, but that's really not the point. What I have noticed is that I've got about 10x the downloads of the free rules than I have purchases. Not that I think this is a bad thing, mainly because that means there are about 600 people walking around with the free rules in their pocket and that there are probably about 600 more people who read Geasa than would have had it just been a "NO BUY, BUY ONLY!" kind of thing.

[Thought]

From my own experience as a freelance writer, the most fun I had was when I was trying to develop myself professionally, while the least fun I had was when I was trying to support myself through those activities. When I was doing the former, it actually didn't matter if I was paid or a piece or not (which is good, because it was usually not).

To relate that experience to selling games, I suspect that if you aren't selling your games in order to survive (that is, if you are acting like you have that base $75,000 that the article mentions), then payment's influence on your satisfaction with the activity should be minimized. If, instead of pocketing any money you do make, you pump it into "professional development," it might actually be a legitimate motivator. For example, perhaps you'll devote any money you make towards buying a fancy-pants image program to up the quality of graphics in your game. Or perhaps you'll use that money to buy ad space in Obscure Game Quarterly, to expand your market and get more people enjoying your awesome game (it is awesome, isn't it?).

Not that I have anything against fans buying you some kosher bacon salt or some popples, mind you.