1KM1KT Free RPG Community

After reading a discussion over on the big purple, I'm starting to reconsider making CI a fully free release. The general gist of it went something like: Such and such a game was nowhere while it was a free release, then they started charging for it and now everyone is talking about it.

Basically I'd like to put it out there for free to get the widest coverage possible, but am I actually shooting myself in the foot by doing so? Does free=valueless to most people? And what about conventions, how do free games fare there?

I might end up doing a rules lite version for free maybe.

If you could post a link, I'd like to see the context of the discussion.

Sounds like there was more changing rather than a pricing difference. Usually when someone gears up for a pay product, they are doing a few extra things and organizing it differently for a paid product in comparison to a free product. There are plenty of pay products that will never see a dime, just check a few online retailers that allow self-publishing. There are also many free products that'll never garner any interest... It's all about supply and demand. It doesn't matter what you set the price if there is no demand for it.

Many success stories are typically great luck with having the right product at the right time. Nothing more, nothing less. I've seen beautifully made, well crafted products never get any respect, but have seen plenty of crap sell like hotcakes. The public demand is strange and can only be predictable so much of the time.

Also, it might have to do with exposure. When they went to a pay avenue, they placed their product on a self-publishing site or other place that hosts pay products. This probably got them the exposure they needed to generate interest, where their choices when the product was free weren't the best.

There's more going on than simply changing the price. I've done a few experiments in self-publishing with a short story that pricing didn't seem to make that much of a difference, despite all the avenues I tried. But, I've seen people have success with similar product. It's just luck.

It may also be that the free product was building up attention and then at the right time when everyone was about to start jumping on the bandwagon, they started charging.

I do think there's something to the free = valueless however. When I get a free game I usually just look at it and see if there's something interesting to it's system or story. If I pay for a game I'm more likely to play it because I've invested in it. Still, there are probably a lot of people that doesn't apply to.

I think it all has to do with marketing. Look at Technoir, nobody knew anything about it other than it had a good promotional video. The dice mechanic hadn't even come out yet, it was all mood. Everyone was talking about it and the more people that talked about it, the more people got hyped up on it. Look at Badass, same thing. Sure it's got an interesting mechanic but it was everyone shouting it's praises that got people all talking about it.

I get about ten downloads of The Artifact a month. For two (maybe three?) months after Rob reviewed it I got 40 a month. I'm convinced that reviews all chiming off every few days is what made Technoir and Badass successful.

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?583 ... ia-Musings Thats the link there...

I don't think it's unusual to expect to receive what you pay for. So if something is free, you might think it's because it's not worthy of a fee. I believe it has to do rather more with how you market the product. No marketing and a fee? No sales. No marketing and no fee? Maybe some people are interested in it on a whim. That can get word of mouth moving the product.

Cross posting...

I think experience with free RPGs is part of the problem here. Free RPGs tend not to have the high production standards of full-price games. People's first experience with free RPGs might even be hundreds of pages of tables and text, poorly formatted and in an unfathomable order. The game hidden inside poor production quality might be excellent and precisely what the reader is looking for but they will never find out. Once that experience is had, it is unlikely to be tried again - we have little time on this planet and commercial products are a better gamble.

I agree that price dictates value and that's a difficult boundary to get around. However, there are some free RPGs that do very well (in terms of downloads) because they get a good amount of marketing. Yes, marketing. I hate to admit it but people raving about a game normally comes down to how much effort the author has put into the community. Take - it is nicely laid out and uses Creative Common art, the system is clever - I witter on more about it . However it's not a big game but in comparison, a huge amount has been written about it and I bet Michael's downloads are healthy. Some have retooled the core concepts to use it as a pulp game and there are source books out and in production.

This is because the author, Michael Wolf, puts huge amounts of effort into online relationships and runs a successful . His marketing effort for WR&M, bar paying for advertising, is flawless. I started the to fill this marketing gap and to give a bit back to the philanthropists, who I feel get very little love.

This thread has started something of a tizz on (perhaps the best free RPG community) where I'll be cross-posing this.

I still like Zenobia, it tastes right.

[I had another post that got eaten, this post is a bit less elegant but hopefully gets the same message across. This post is based on my own experiences and opinions of the indie roleplaying scene...]

I use free as an advertising tool for FUBAR.

The first bite is free but the supplements cost (a nominal fee).

After 12 months or so, I've had 2000 downloads of the game's core rules, with some weeks scoring a hundred or more hits (such as the week just after it was released for the Cyberpunk Revival Project, the week it first appeared on RPGNow, Rob's review on his Free RPG Blog and the week I released the updated "Director's Cut"). And a steady build up of sales is growing as I release the genre supplements designed to expand the game with new rules, new methods of play and new settings.

The game has now become self sustaining, it's paying for my website costs and covers my expenditures on other RPGs and hobby goods (such as miniatures). By the time I get out a few more supplements, it might even start making real money.

The important lesson I've earned here is that people become interested in a product while something is happening around that product.

Every time I release a supplement, there's a peak in page views and downloads. Each peak drops after a short time, but the drop decreases to a new level that was higher than the previous one.

TechNoir seems to follow this trend as well. The promo video drew in interest and a base-line was established, a few forum posts increased interest and the base-line was raised, a kickstarter project really sees a spike in interest....and I'm sure things will drop back down to a new raised baseline. As long as the author keeps up his interest in the game and keeps showing his work on it, the interest will stay high.

The problem with free games is that a lot of authors release their game then move onto new things. They don't keep up their interest in the product and therefore the public sees them as a dead product. People don't want to get in on a dead product.

Some free games have developed a huge cult following, consider Lady Blackbird, there seems to be a new thread about that game every week over on Story-Games, and this has been the case since it's release. I don't know if this is due to a "cult of personality" effect revolving around John Harper, it's production values, or the actual quality of the game (It seemed pretty standard compared to a lot of stuff I've run and it was just as buggy as similar games). But hoping you'll be that next big thing is a pretty hit-and-miss affair.

Free means more people will look at what you produce, but as earlier comments have stated, those extra people might be looking at the product but since they haven't laid down cash for it, they'll probably value a paid game more.

I'm starting to ramble here, so I'll stop the post before I lose everyone.