![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
You Should Probably Not Sell Your First Published Game Pay What You Want
You should probably not sell your first published game pay what you want. This is my free advice to you, first time tabletop rôle playing game designer. Free advice is worth what you pay for it, etc, but I have seen time again new designers cheat themselves out of attention, money, or most likely both by choosing to offer their games as pay what you want rather than affixing a price (even if that price is "free.")
I think this is a problem. I think that you, new tabletop RPG designer, deserve every last ounce of money and attention you can get.
Setting prices for your products is anxious work. I mean, it's just this thing you made up! It doesn't seem to you like it has any value, or perhaps if you've more self-esteem than the median artist it's value is so high as to be incalculable. By choosing "pay what you want" you opt out of having to set a price for your product, and thus of the whole process of having to figure out what it's worth. That this is a cop-out is not, itself, a problem. The problem is that, if you're an unknown quantity as an artist, most other people are going to assess the value of your work at zero.
Art is everywhere; most of it is bad. Games, in particular, don't tend to show their value until they are played, which for tabletop RPGs is a serious commitment of time and social energy. Not having any experience with your work, and asked to value it on their own, they're going to assume it doesn't have value. It's not an unreasonable assumption. But once they've decided it has no value, what are the odds that they're going to put in the substantial investment to play it are much, much lower.
Setting prices is hard. You have my sympathy and my compassion. But I think it's a necessary part of the work of publishing, and you're not doing yourself or your game any favors if you refuse to do it.
--
But what about free games? I think that "free" is tangibly different than "pay what you want." Free takes a lot of different forms, so I'm going to talk about the most successful (to my mind) presentation: when you say that this game has value and you are offering it free to them. If you're going to do this, it helps to have a very sharp presentation and high production values: you need to put a lot more work in convincing someone that this is a real game that has real value. But, if you can, that's great. Even though you're not charging for it, you've raised the assessed value of your game.
Wait, don't I use a pay-what-you-want model? Yes, but only after years of publishing games. At the time I started using it, I had already well established that "a game by Ben Lehman" is a thing with value that someone might want. Even so, I don't think I benefit in terms of money or even necessarily play. Rather, the benefit to me is weird and particular to my interests and ideology.
First, although I haven't had these conversations in public in some time, I like talking about RPG theory a lot (if there are good theory conversations happening in public somewhere, I'm not privy to them). But a huge amount of my theory work is in my games. By charging pay what you want I can point people at a game where I made a particular case without interrupting the conversation for a sales pitch. This is valuable to me, and probably makes up for the money i lose. Secondly, I have some strong ideologies about affordability which are totally irrational. Honestly, if I could charge on a sliding scale based on net worth and annual income, I would. But I can't, so, pay what you want is a somewhat unhappy compromise.
Both of these are pretty particular to my situation.
How are you so confident in this? I'm not. This is my opinion. It's an informed opinion (informed by watching many many new game designers over the years, including direct personal involvement) but ultimately it's just an opinion. I will never have the experience of starting as a new designer in 2014, so I will never have full information on this topic. Nonetheless, I've been doing this (both game publishing and pay what you want sales) for quite a while, and regardless of whether you agree, I think hearing it will probably help.
So what should I do? Only you can answer that. That said, here's my thoughts on best price points for attention and cash: If your game is small, like 2-4 pages small, charge $2-5. If your game is medium sized, like 10-50 pages, charge $5-12. If your game is large, like Polaris sized and up, charged at least $10. This is prices for eBooks. For print books, a decent rule of thumb is "take your print cost, double it, and add your eBook cost) but print pricing is a fairly complicated thing and really a subject for its own post.
You should probably not sell your first published game pay what you want. This is my free advice to you, first time tabletop rôle playing game designer. Free advice is worth what you pay for it, etc, but I have seen time again new designers cheat themselves out of attention, money, or most likely both by choosing to offer their games as pay what you want rather than affixing a price (even if that price is "free.")
I think this is a problem. I think that you, new tabletop RPG designer, deserve every last ounce of money and attention you can get.
Setting prices for your products is anxious work. I mean, it's just this thing you made up! It doesn't seem to you like it has any value, or perhaps if you've more self-esteem than the median artist it's value is so high as to be incalculable. By choosing "pay what you want" you opt out of having to set a price for your product, and thus of the whole process of having to figure out what it's worth. That this is a cop-out is not, itself, a problem. The problem is that, if you're an unknown quantity as an artist, most other people are going to assess the value of your work at zero.
Art is everywhere; most of it is bad. Games, in particular, don't tend to show their value until they are played, which for tabletop RPGs is a serious commitment of time and social energy. Not having any experience with your work, and asked to value it on their own, they're going to assume it doesn't have value. It's not an unreasonable assumption. But once they've decided it has no value, what are the odds that they're going to put in the substantial investment to play it are much, much lower.
Setting prices is hard. You have my sympathy and my compassion. But I think it's a necessary part of the work of publishing, and you're not doing yourself or your game any favors if you refuse to do it.
--
But what about free games? I think that "free" is tangibly different than "pay what you want." Free takes a lot of different forms, so I'm going to talk about the most successful (to my mind) presentation: when you say that this game has value and you are offering it free to them. If you're going to do this, it helps to have a very sharp presentation and high production values: you need to put a lot more work in convincing someone that this is a real game that has real value. But, if you can, that's great. Even though you're not charging for it, you've raised the assessed value of your game.
Wait, don't I use a pay-what-you-want model? Yes, but only after years of publishing games. At the time I started using it, I had already well established that "a game by Ben Lehman" is a thing with value that someone might want. Even so, I don't think I benefit in terms of money or even necessarily play. Rather, the benefit to me is weird and particular to my interests and ideology.
First, although I haven't had these conversations in public in some time, I like talking about RPG theory a lot (if there are good theory conversations happening in public somewhere, I'm not privy to them). But a huge amount of my theory work is in my games. By charging pay what you want I can point people at a game where I made a particular case without interrupting the conversation for a sales pitch. This is valuable to me, and probably makes up for the money i lose. Secondly, I have some strong ideologies about affordability which are totally irrational. Honestly, if I could charge on a sliding scale based on net worth and annual income, I would. But I can't, so, pay what you want is a somewhat unhappy compromise.
Both of these are pretty particular to my situation.
How are you so confident in this? I'm not. This is my opinion. It's an informed opinion (informed by watching many many new game designers over the years, including direct personal involvement) but ultimately it's just an opinion. I will never have the experience of starting as a new designer in 2014, so I will never have full information on this topic. Nonetheless, I've been doing this (both game publishing and pay what you want sales) for quite a while, and regardless of whether you agree, I think hearing it will probably help.
So what should I do? Only you can answer that. That said, here's my thoughts on best price points for attention and cash: If your game is small, like 2-4 pages small, charge $2-5. If your game is medium sized, like 10-50 pages, charge $5-12. If your game is large, like Polaris sized and up, charged at least $10. This is prices for eBooks. For print books, a decent rule of thumb is "take your print cost, double it, and add your eBook cost) but print pricing is a fairly complicated thing and really a subject for its own post.
