Blog

Good & Bad

Eventful past few days:

Bad: I had to flake on a freelance assignment. I wrote an email to Chaosium, informing them that I cannot continue with my work on Cults of Law and Chaos. There are many reasons, not the least of which is the day job, and my disgust with the quality of the material I had written to date (I found that writing about someone else’s canonized material, using someone else’s rules system, felt like plagarism). The upshot is that there was no way that I keep going with a project that was already way too late. I told them that I would take public responsibility in whatever form they wished, and that if they decided to re-assign the book, I would provide my work to the new author as source material. I just don’t want it to appear under my name.

I hate letting people down, especially folks as nice as Charlie and Dustin. Even worse, though, is the realization that freelancing on projects of this size is pretty much over for me. The day job simply takes too much out of me…I can’t write to someone else’s deadline any longer, because I can’t consitantly count on being able to write “X” number of words per week. The amount of time that I have, from week to week, is way too variable now. So, it feels like a door closing. I’ve been freelancing since 1995, and now, unless I set my own deadline, write a product completely on spec, and submit it that way, that part of my life is over.

Good: Just because I can’t write for anyone else doesn’t mean that I can’t write for myself…setting my own deadlines and adjusting them when I have to. In other words: I’m not dead yet.

GMS

A Solution

A number of folks offered me a solution to the problem I went into in my last entry. It’s a good solution, and I decided to write it up, so I can refer to it again whenever I feel the same depression creeping up on me:

Make your games for your target audience. The audience that you had in mind when you wrote it– The ones that “get it.”

To hell with the rest. You’re never going to make them happy, and it’s futile to try.

Part of this is recognizing that not all games are automatically for all gamers. This realization needs to occur on all sides. If gamers realize that a game that doesn’t appeal to them doesn’t automatically make it “broken” or worth bitching about, then the level of venom will drop. If game designers realize that not everything they design is going to be lauded by every gamer, and that the gamers that are bitching don’t need to be convinced, because it was never intended for them anyway, then the level of defensiveness will drop.

Less venom. Less defensiveness. Less conflict.

Not every game is intended for every gamer, and there is no point in trying to make all gamers happy. That way lies ulcers.

Design your games for the ones who get it. They are your customers. The customer is always right–but the ones who weren’t your target…the ones who don’t get it…the ones who will attempt to beat the joy of creation out of you with rants and insults…they are not your customers, and never were going to be. As such, Fuck ’em. They’re not worth worrying about.

At our scale (i.e. Non-WOTC), we can afford to specifically target a particular niche, and be fulfilled by it:

Design the games you want to play, for gamers who you’d like to play with.

The rest can go hang.

GMS

At Low Ebb

Time has come ’round again for the cyclical “Let’s lynch the game-designer” mood to strike over at RPGnet . By now, I’m more than familiar with the drill:

1) I make a harsh response to someone who is being less than civil to me.

2) Some yutz, previously uninvolved in the situation (and usually a non-registered, anonymous user) gets all huffy and put-out about it, and lambasts me for being “unprofessional.”

3) The usual suspects jump in and pile on, gleefully tearing into me with the relish usual reserved for wrapped Christmas presents. Same names every time, too.

4) One or two “industry professionals” (occasionally some pdf-basement-press wanna-be, but from time to time one of the more sanctimonious, self-righteous varieties of a genuine published professional) sounds off about how they would NEVER act that way, and hence aren’t they so much cooler than me, and worthy of praise.

5) Repeat ad nauseum, until any joy I have in writing for this field is beaten out of me for another couple of months.

I know that I shouldn’t let it get to me. I know that the ravings of a bunch of borderline Asperger’s Syndrome social misfits don’t matter at all, and I shouldn’t let it get under my skin. But after years of dealing with it again and again, it’s never failed to frustrate the living hell out of me.

Most of the professionals that I respect in this industry tell me that this is the main reason they don’t participate in the various forum boards, despite the potential to interact with the audience. I have always wondered, though, why, if the fans of this industry are such a burden to have to deal with–if, as has been said to me time and again, they are often beneath contempt and something to be avoided–then WHY bother to write for them at all?

This doesn’t apply to all of them, of course— some of the folks that I’ve interacted with on-line have been normal, well-spoken, respectful people who enjoy the dialogues that access to creative professionals afford them. What bothers me is that more of them don’t take umbrage at the behavior of their stereotype-reinforcing peers, who result in the image of fandom being as bad as it is. I know that I, for one, am tired of the Simpson’s Comic Book Guy being the image of fandom which is more often accurate than not.

I can think, off the top of my head, of at least a dozen game industry professionals who have gotten so tired of dealing with internet fandom that they have either sworn off the internet forum boards, or, in some cases, have gotten so jaded as to quit the industry entirely. They’ve asked themselves the question of whether or not the fans of the role-playing field are worth dealing with, and the answer has been, time and again, a resounding “No.”

That’s a question that I now find myself asking, yet again.

Or, if I may wax a little Carrie Bradshaw-ish to close with a posed query: Is it worth continuing to produce material for an audience comprised largely of the sort of socially-retarded, obsessive oddballs that you’d be embarrassed to be seen with in public?

GMS