DMMike wrote:Lord Dynel wrote:In the end, if a product needs to go the Kickstarter route to see the light of day, then I'm all for it. Fundamentally, I'm a gamer and more games is usually a good thing. I just feel that there's been a paradigm shift with Kickstarter that makes its original intent ironically null - big companies get tons of funding and unknowns and little guys go unfunded. KS could become the game store shelf of the 21st century, where the big company products get all the attention. When companies have put out products the traditional ways for years, decades, and then decide to go the Kickstarter route, it makes me question their motives.
These are my opinions only, and I'm not trying to pick a fight...honest!
I've got a love/hate relationship with Kickstarter at the moment, one I'm trying to reconcile.
Oh, I don't think you're wrong. I see it like this. If you run a small game company (and let's face it unless you are WOTC or Paizo you're a small game co.) you have 2 options in the current market.
1. Talk up your product, put it together, and put it out there. Hopefully people will buy enough to make it profitable; or at least break even.
Or...
2. You can do a Kickstarter, and get the money "up front". This guarantees you've at least broke even, and maybe even make a profit. If it doesn't make, well at least you don't have a garage full of copies of a game you can't give away.
If I ran a small game company, I'd go with KS even if I wish we could go back to the halceon days of advertisements and preorders.
Personally, I can't see that most RPG companies, the ones who still print product, have much of a choice. Of course, pdf only product is a whole different shebang!
Mike
I don't know about this, Mike. I do agree with you on the point that it most definitely seems that KS is the way to go these days.
Reaper, Chaosium, Frog God Games, Goodman Games, Green Ronin, Troll Lord Games, White Wolf/Onyx Path...these companies were putting out product for years the "old fashioned way" - when the market was much worse than it is now (that could be anecdotal, as I'm sure it's been up and down in the past). Advertising and marketing is so much easier now a days than it used to be, with the Internet and social media. Now, I'll concede that there's always been a much less margin of error with the traditional method of publication and delivery. But if you had a good product, and you could advertise and sell it well, it didn't seem to be a problem.
As I said upthread, and I'll elaborate a bit more, there's a paradigm shift (and not a good one, in my humble opinion) that seems to have gone from "Hey, RPG fans, we've put a lot of money and effort into
[insert RPG product here], and we think you'll like it, so please buy it," to "Hey RPG fans, we
want to put a lot of effort and money into
[insert RPG product here] but we would like you to pay for it first. If it's not 'funded' then you don't get it."
Again, I'm trying to be antagonistic. If I am coming across as such, please accept my apology!