Observations – Page 7 – The Designer Monologues

October 6, 2011October 6, 2011

Made on a Mac

The internet is filled with remembrance of Steve Jobs since the announcement of his death from pancreatic cancer yesterday. I posted on Twitter when I heard, but despite my intention not to join the flood of content about Jobs today, I found myself dwelling over the past 24 hours on just how much my life was affected by his work. It felt somehow churlish not to recognize it publicly.

That graphic up there: “Made on a Mac.” That’s pretty much my career.

My first home computer was a used Apple II — where, between bouts of Bilestoad, I did my first non-longhand writing. I went on from there to an Apple IIc, bought second-hand from a friend in 1990. More writing, and moving into graphic design and art. In the early-t0-mid-90s, I dabbled in Amiga and then in Windows-based PC — as I moved out onto the burgeoning internet and into the birth of the world wide web (whose code was written by Tim Berners-Lee on a NeXTcube, created by the company that Steve Jobs launched when he left Apple). Yet even through this dabbling, I continued to use Macs — at school, and with friends.

It was a Mac that provided the desktop publishing tools that allowed Aaron Rosenberg, Matt Harrop and I to produce our first RPG, Periphery, clustered around the Mac in Aaron’s bedroom. In the late 90s, I used Pagemaker (a program I had learned on the Mac) on my Windows machine to do graphic design and layout for other games — Hong Kong Action Theatre!, for example. The program was the same, but I never really liked the not-quite-right feeling of its use on my PC.

In 2000, I returned to Apple — and haven’t left since. Synister Creative Systems was run on Macs — G4 PowerMac with dual monitors as the graphic design desktop , and a blueberry iBook for me, able to be used in-office or remotely. Jobs was back at Apple, and the iMac and iBook were the first products in his new vision for the company. A vision that, as the Colorado Springs Gazette said today, liberated the creative class.

I am a part of that creative class. I create on products spearheaded by Jobs, that are consumed on products either spearheaded by Jobs or products emulating those he spearheaded. I reach my audience directly, via a world-wide network that was created on a product spearheaded by Jobs.

I owe the man a debt that is staggering in its scope. My life, my career, my calling — all of it:

Made on a Mac.

July 19, 2011July 30, 2011

Inclusion in RPGs

First off, spreading the Kickstarter love: Heartbreak and Heroines, a fantasy RPG specifically designed (in the words of the author) to be much more inclusive:

Heartbreak & Heroines is first and foremost a fantasy adventure game. It’s not preachy and it isn’t a textbook about feminism, but it’s written from a feminist point of view. It challenges some of our assumptions about the role of gender in gaming but at the heart of H&H, it’s about being a heroine (or hero) and finding your way to happiness in a dangerous world.

I think that this is great, a laudable goal, and also pretty much exactly why Kickstarter exists. Come up with an artistic project concept, tell people about it, and get the project funded if enough people are interested.

So naturally, there is a 200+ message thread on RPGnet, bitching about it. Now, to be fair, most of those messages are in defense of the project (or at the very least “WTF”-ing the detractors) — but still. The “conserva-gamer-libertarian-anti-‘political-correctness’-warrior” stereotype is out in FULL BLOOM, kids. Because making an effort at inclusion? “Extreme.” “Silly.” “Insulting.” “Condescending.”

I pledged just because they pissed me off. I want to see this game funded because it will stick in their craw like the ashes of defeat.

When the thread started, I saw that the designer had only raised $300 or so. She’s asking for $3K. I’m pleased to report that it’s almost to $1K now, less than a day later — and the Kickstarter runs for another 29 days. So please, consider chucking a pledge their way.

Couple of things:

1st, it seems that the original poster also has a problem with what he calls “the Kickstarter Gold-Rush” — I’ve seen him bitch elsewhere, terming it “the money-grab”, etc. The less-socialized corners of the geek community has always had a problem with people obviously enjoying something that they don’t, and therefore railing against it with as much vitriol as they can muster. Kickstarter must really push that button even harder, because the enjoyment of others now has a visible dollar-value tagged to it, making it more of an incitement to rage to these folks.

To which I say: Fuck you, grow up.

People like things you don’t, and sometimes they ‘like’ with money. Nothing to bitch about here (without waving the “I have problems with mature interactions in public” flag wildly, at least).

Second: Inclusion? Important. Just as important to those of us who have chosen not to make it an explicitly-stated mission statement of a project, in fact. I draw your attention to the artwork that we’ve presented from Far West:

We didn’t come right out and say it. We were sneaky. But everything we’ve done, we’ve done for a reason.

(So I guess now the Usual Suspects will grouse about our ‘political correctness’ and give us an upward spike in pledges, too!)

February 11, 2011

Money, Meet Mouth — an update

Yeah, I’ve pretty much sucked at the regular-blogging thing. The usual excuses: Busy, busy, busy. Not only with Adamant stuff, but also Real Life stuff (like prepping to move out of the place we’ve lived for the past 8 years — the wife and I decided that if we’re not leaving town, we should at least take advantage of those things we like about the town, and live closer to campus and downtown).

I’ve had a lot of requests from folks though, asking about how my “app-pricing” model is going. I’ve responded privately, of course, but rather than re-type the same thing over and over again, I figured I should just make a public post to explain. (“No. There is too much to ‘splain. I will sum up.”)

Short, sum-up version: I’m sticking with this. It’s no longer an experiment. It’s my business model.

Slightly longer, with some math (but not exact dollar figures, despite gamer demands for “openness”, as I prefer to keep income a personal matter) version: I started the “app-pricing” model on January 3rd. As of this coming Monday, I’ve been running on that model for 6 weeks. In the past, I have run sales where I’ve dropped prices to a dollar, and those sales generally have lasted a week to ten days at most. My concern for the new model was whether this was sustainable, or whether it was a temporary sale-driven behavior.

I think that 6 weeks, far longer than I have ever run any sale, is a fairly good initial indicator of sustainability. It’s long enough to view trends, to see if an initial spike was followed by a drop-off, etc.

The result: Sales for these 6 weeks have been more than double the sales of the same period last year.

More than double. 218%, actually. In what has traditionally been our worst sales period.

Even more interestingly, it’s been constant. An initial jump when we first announced (expected that) — but then it really didn’t drop. At all. It’s been sort of a plateau of constant sales a that level — slight upticks when new product has been released, but only slight.

So it looks like I’ve hit something here. Which is a really, really good thing — because I’ve also been dealing with the flip side of that equation over in the print-and-traditional-distribution side of things, where we were hit with a fairly large chunk of unexpected returns from the book trade (I’m looking in your direction, Borders), and that resulted in a massive hit on our income there (since we’d already been paid for those sales, and now needed to have our current earnings adjusted by our print partners as a result). Fucking OUCH.

Generally speaking, digital continues to surprise us, and the future looks bright, while at the same time, traditional print-and-distribution shambles along like a zombie, occasionally smashing us in the face. Or something. My metaphor generator is acting up — I should probably get it looked at.