Due to email troubles, I can't send this until three days from when I write
it. I _hope_ that the flames have died down by then, and we can discuss the
principles.
Maggie's point: like it or not, the current marketing mechanisms for games
are niches that appeal to a select few and actively turn off a rather
closed-minded majority. You can scream about the unfairness of their
perceptions if you like; but it won't change those perceptions. Take it from
one who has tried: the more you get justifiably outraged, the more those
prejudiced against you will assume their prejudice is justified, using your
outrage as "proof" that you are weird.
This is not exactly unprecedented. Like many things in gaming, it has a
precedent in the world of computers. In my youth, the computer stores were
truly a geeks-only club. We hung no signs to that effect; but we didn't have
to. Our unusual habits, our confusing jargon, and yes, our questionable
hygiene were all the sign we needed to keep out the mundanes. I doubt Maggie
would have seen us as potential rapists; but I equally doubt she would have
accepted a date with any of us. (Sorry, Maggie, if I've misjudged you. And
thanks for suffering the slings and arrows for being so honest about the way
you thought then. It was an education.)
But that changed over time. Today, CompUSA runs a pretty professional store,
along the lines of what Maggie suggests. Best Buy and similar electronics
chains have lots of computers. Office Max and Office Depot carry them. And
the one time I visited Frye's electronics... Well, it's gadget heaven!
But there have been some changes along the way. The geeks-only club is gone
(or has moved onto the Internet) in many towns. The small little store could
not compete with the big chains for price and selection. Very few customers
recognized (or even NEEDED) the extra services provided by the small stores.
And we lost something along the way, too. I still remember an epiphany I had
one time: there I was, standing in CompUSA, a store with more computers than
I had ever seen in one place -- a store that would, in some ways, have been
the fantasy store from my youth -- and I could not find ONE decent compiler
in there. Suddenly I realized that this store was not for me, the guy who
would rather write a game than play one. This store was for the masses who
would never, EVER write their own programs. I could shop there; but it would
never be the store I would want it to be.
And that's... just... too... bad. There aren't enough of me to make the
computer industry the healthy industry it has become.
I suspect the same is true of RPGs: there aren't enough of us to grow the
industry. And the computer industry did not grow by making more people into
computer geeks; it grew by making computers appeal to the non-geeks. If
gaming is to grow, it will have to do the same thing.
How did the computer industry accomplish that growth? I dunno. It just sorta
grew, like topsy. But I can identify some key factors:
1. Image.
Take Maggie's past perceptions to heart, folks. If computer stores were
still holes in the wall (honestly, most comic and game stores are larger
than the computer stores were then), no one would go in. If there IS to be a
great big profitable RPG industry, then the day RPG-USA moves in next door
to your hole-in-the-wall game store, your store is dead. Complain all you
want about the megacorps and the homogenization of American culture. Vow to
fight to the last polyhedral. Swear to be so much better that no one will
take the megacorp seriously. It won't matter. Unless you beat them to the
punch by cleaning up your image, they will win all the new customers, who
vastly outnumber your customers. And vast numbers mean volume discounts. And
volume discounts will slowly seduce away your own customers. Soon you're
waging your battle all alone. WotC is already waging the image war in their
stores. If they succeed, they will set the new standard.
2. Location.
This is closely related to image. My favorite game (and comic, and used
book) store is in a quaint little business district on the edge of a quaint
little neighborhood. (Free plug: Argos Books in Grand Rapids. Tell Jim I
said, "Hi!") Or maybe it's in a quaint little neighborhood on the edge of a
quaint little business district. Whatever. This is, in some sense, the artsy
part of town. So there's a small but steady stream of customers. That has
allowed their name to spread by word of mouth over three decades, and
allowed them to build up loyal customers like myself who will drive 40 miles
to get there. And absolutely none of that matters when it comes to industry
growth. Why? Because only a tiny fraction of the local populace will ever
visit that quaint little neighborhood; but EVERYONE in the local area of
nearly 1,000,000 people visits the malls once in a while. And there in one
of the malls is that bright, shiny, image-conscious WotC store. Again, hate
the modern American mall culture all you want; it won't change the fact that
this location is right on the intersection of the two biggest shopping
streets in town, AND right in the same building with Sears, Penney's,
Waldenbooks, Leather Loft, The Gap, Victoria's Secret, The Disney Store,
Natural Wonders, Radio Shack, Marshall Fields, Babbage's, Hallmark, etc. All
these big names are a draw. No, CompUSA and Best Buy aren't in the mall; but
sure as shootin', you can see the mall from their parking lots. So the big
names can attract the curious; AND the big names make it convenient for the
loyal customers to be seduced away. If I need to buy comics and games, I'll
go to Argos. But if I need to buy books and power tools and greeting cards
and also want to look at some games while I'm out, it's Wizards that gets my
business.
3. Advertising.
This has been mentioned before. It bears mentioning again. Two bits of
advertising folk wisdom:
There's an old joke in the advertising business: A man will wake up
on his advertised bed, eat advertised cereal for breakfast, put on some
advertised clothes and drive his advertised car to work.
But, when his business fails because no customers came, he'll take out
his first ad in newspaper: A bankruptcy sale in the classifieds, and sell
off his assets.
And...
THE KEYS TO SUCCESS IN BUSINESS
Early to bed,
Early to rise,
Work like hell,
And advertise.
Some people are put off by the geeky image of your product. But some people
are unaware of your product, geeky or otherwise. Make them aware, and you'll
get some of them before they get prejudiced.
4. Ease of use.
When I was young, computers were PAINFULLY difficult to use. You had to have
some sort of geeky fascination to persist past that painful introduction.
There is no way that computers would be as popular as they are today if they
were not as easy to use as they are today. Now you can be a UNIX power-geek
if you want, and moan about how people just don't get how much more powerful
UNIX is. Again, moaning and wailing doesn't change the market's behavior. At
the age of 3, my nephew was navigating his way around Windows 95. Since he
couldn't even READ yet, there's no way he could have done that with a UNIX
command line. And ease of use doesn't JUST mean a GUI; it also means some
measure of consistency across many applications. In fact, consistency is a
MAJOR key in making people comfortable with trying new things with a
computer. With D20, WotC may just be handing us consistency and ease of use
on a silver platter. You may not like their system; but it's easy, it's
ubiquitous, and it's slowly becoming the lingua franca for a number of game
products.
One more thing for ease of use: pregenerated characters. Some people just
want to play. "You mean I can do anything I can imagine?" "Sure, anything."
"I can cast a spell, and jump on a flying carpet, and swoop in among the bad
guys and snatch the jewel right from their hands?" "Sure!" "Cool! Let's
play!" "OK. First, roll these four dice. Now, take the top three, and add
them up." "Why?" "Because that gives you slightly better then average stats.
If you wanted to play an average character, you'd just roll three dice. Now
roll them five more times. OK, now assign them to these stats." "What are
those?" "Those are numbers that describe your character." "But what's a good
number?" "Well, that depends. See, you want a high CON, so you get more hit
points. But if you want skills, you want a high INT." "Hmmm... When do I get
to cast a spell?"
Show of hands: how many people played a character somebody else built the
first time they played? A lot of you, I'll bet. You have to have lots of
pregenerated characters. A LOT of games are doing this these days, with
template characters. Follow their lead.
5. The killer app?
Ah, the famous "killer app" that everyone in computers dreams of: the app so
compelling, it makes people buy computers just to run it. Well, looking
back, I don't believe it really exists. I think that's a simplistic way of
thinking that doesn't reflect the reality of the way the computer industry
grew. It's the sort of one-step, silver-bullet answer that managers and
marketers love, but doesn't reflect reality. In reality, I think there have
instead been a lot of little "wounding apps", but no killer apps. The
Internet? Nah, most people who buy a computer for that are already hooked.
Windows? Easy to use, but it doesn't do anything by itself. Email? See
Internet above. Each of these grew the market somewhat, but none was the
so-called killer app. The computer business has been in a bit of a positive
feedback loop, where anything that draws in more customers spurs more
competition for those customers, and thus spurs innovation and new features
and new software. Those new features and new software then draw in more
people; and the cycle continues.
If I had to pick one generic killer app, actually, it would be games. Most
home systems get most of their use for games. People buy these things
largely for recreation. (So if I had to pick THE killer app, I would pick
Castle Wolfenstein and Doom. They kicked off the new generation of
interactive games that really seemed to drag in a ton of new players.) Now,
hmmm... I wonder if there's ANOTHER industry that could trade on the
public's love for recreation to make a once-geeky pastime into a popular
obsession? It would seem like it ought to be something to do with games...
In other words, I think our killer app is simply more and better games.
Sorry if that's too simplistic. If I knew what THE killer app was, I'd be
selling it, not telling you about it on this list. But I think the real
answer is a range of games for a range of tastes, marketed in ways to catch
the attention of the current mass of non-gamers. And no, I'm not telling you
how to do that marketing. Again, if I knew that answer, I'd be selling
games. But I can see some steps to help. 1 to 4 above are a good start. Then
think of ways to be outside the box. I think Max's stereotypes of "female"
game products would be horribly offensive to the female gamers I know; but
what about female (current) non-gamers? Maybe Max has an idea that will
appeal to them. Think about different genres. Fantasy and SF are popular
genres of films and books; but they're not the bulk. Maybe it's time to try
detective games, or John Grisham-style law games, or romance games, or
comedy games. Look at the fiction bestseller lists or the box-office-leading
film lists, and see what's out there.
A pet theory of mine is that most RPG campaigns are like television series:
the same slightly-shifting cast of characters going through adventures week
after week. Well, TV has its audience, sure enough; but so do movies. And in
movies -- barring the occasional sequel -- you tell one really interesting
story of a bunch of characters, and then you're done. Next week, a different
cast in a different movie. Now this model may be too expensive for game
production: a game would have all of the production costs of a more
traditional RPG, but all of the reusability of a module (i.e., slim to
none).
But here's my idea, free to anyone who wants to explore it (I'm too busy!
and besides, it's an idea that more than one company could pursue without
stepping on each others' toes). Maybe it's a killer app. If it is, get rich
off it, with my blessing. The idea is this: a book of adventures in
different genres, with different pre-generated characters, all using a very
"lite" version of the D20 rules. The adventures would be compatible with
full D20 for those who want to go buy the rules -- say, if they were gamer
geeks and didn't want to use the pregenerated characters. But since the
characters would be pregenerated and would never go up in level (this being
their only appearance), this book would be D20-logo compliant: you never
once explain HOW the characters were created or advanced. Each adventure
might run 32 pages, including character sheets and maps. I've built
convention games that ran four hours and fit well within that space
restriction. Maybe 40 pages, so you can have some really good art to help
people to visualize. But you put eight or ten games in a book, so that you
can make it economical to produce. You market these books as, I dunno...
"Role-playing Party Games" (for those who remember the great "Rocky and
Bullwinkle Role-Playing Party Game")... "Improv Theater Games"... "Make Your
Own Movie Games"... Some title with mass appeal. Don't market exclusively
through traditional game outlets, by any means. Heck, DO send a copy to
Oprah. Do whatever it takes to get attention.
For traditional gamers, the appeal is in the chance to dabble in other
genres. I don't know that I want to run "Hospital: The Game"; but darn it, I
have one REALLY cool hospital adventure that has been nagging at my brain
for years. "Stock Market: The Game" would get boring fast; but one good
story about the intrigue of an attempt to manipulate the market (and the
murderous efforts to keep that attempt secret) could be great fun.
"Light-hearted Romance: The Game"? Give me a break! But one adventure of a
cross-country road trip where romance unexpectedly blooms would be a nice
change of pace. "Screwball Comedy: The Game" would get tiresome, fast! But
an "Animal House" one-shot would make the right group of gamers break apart
laughing.
And for the masses? I don't know. I don't know if this would sell or not.
The marketing matters a lot. But it's a light-weight introduction to RPGs
with an attempt to appeal outside the existing niche.
Oh, yeah: do a kids' version, too. Hook them early!
Martin L. Shoemaker
Emerald Software, Inc. -- Software Design and UML Training
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.EmeraldSoftwareInc.com
http://www.UMLBootCamp.com
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