1KM1KT Free RPG Community

You trying to tell me some thing?

In general I do beleave you've hit a good point here. I can't real find much to add, it seems to hit all the high points.

So lets talk about manipulation. When you read that it probably gives you the impression of something sinister going on. That would be true if we were in the business of cheating people, but we are really in an odd position. We need to sell, or manipulate to get people to take our product for free and play it. Yes it does take up their time but you're trading that time with the time that you spent developing and writing a game. The point is, yes we have to do some selling, but we're not bad people for doing it. In the end selling involves manipulation.

I am not a good salesman. It's not my nature to try to manipulate people but more and more I see that successful designers (in which people pick up their games and play) are proficient in selling.

So with that disclaimer as to my intentions I'd like to record some selling concepts.

Ben Franklin was an interesting character, there are his and the .

Some of these are covered in the link with the Ben Franklin Effect but there are a few more that aren't explicitly mentioned.

The real trick is using these principals and not looking like a complete idiot or a monster. What do you think? Would you use these tricks to get people to play your game? Other designers are, either intuitively or explicitly.

Wow, that's some weird stuff... Intriguing, though. I don't think I'm sneaky enough to ever consciously use those sorts of techniques. But it's possible I've used them before, ignorantly or intuitively. At the end of the day, I'm just happy to have found a nice, small forum where people are nice enough to take the time to look at my silliness.

Disclaimer: This is a cynical look at things, I'm not saying that anyone has done these things on purpose (if they did, then they're evil geniuses) only that it fits into some of these methods.

I've been thinking about hazing and RPGs. No I'm not looking at hazing my players, well on purpose but think about this. It takes a bit of effort to read an RPG, your brain has to struggle a bit just to get to the privilege of playing. In a small way isn't that like hazing?

Now think about a free RPG and a paid RPG. With a free RPG, I just download it. Maybe it looked interesting but I'm busy and so I stuff it away on my hard drive. Maybe one day I'll read it. With an RPG I pay for, I make sure I read it, even if I don't particularly like the system it (cough Palladium) I still play it because if I don't, why did I pay for it? Cognitive dissonance at work. Free games don't have that.

Now imagine a forum where, in order to engage in the conversations there, you have to read vague theories about how RPGs work and if you disagree, you are publicly quarantined by the site admin as he "convinces" you of the theories. You must engage in this conversation or you are reduced to a third class citizen no matter how poor a job he does of explaining things to you. Sound vaguely like hazing?

Then the admin of said forum puts out games and the people praise him because he uses his formula and theories. Since they have been conditioned to express things on his terms, they cannot say the game is bad because they have bought into the theories behind it. Sounds like counter-attitudinal advocacy.

Now another forum opens up. It says "we like the ideas, we just want a little freedom". Now this is brilliant because this forum picks up the third and second class citizens and maybe even some of the true believers who see people having fun. The same sense of elitism carries over though. "We have mastered the theory, therefore we are the elite gamers." This thought is officially denied but it still floats in the background (genius, although I can't imagine it's intentional). Now when a game is made according to the theories, others have to praise it and buy it because if they don't, they're dropping behind, becoming less elite and because they endorse and champion the theories it is founded on.

There you have cognitive dissonance going from slightly gray to really dark. I think we just look at things and say "that's how it works" and don't give it another thought. Kickstarters seem to be a nice friendly way to use some of these concepts in an "off white" way. I'll be using one in the next month or so, let's watch this potential train wreck with morbid curiosity and see what can be learned for free games. I just have to sell the kickstarter to enough people to get it off the ground. The question is how do I do that without being evil?

It's funny how these things almost work that way for people that have the knack. Me, I don't have it. I've tried using this stuff in sales jobs and if I really really concentrate I can pull it off for a short while but it's exhausting.