I’ve been thinking about the two assumptions usually made about the business of hobby games in general and tabletop RPGs in particular:
1. A game that isn’t supported with expansions is dead.
2. Dead games can’t make any money.
One of the suppositions underlying those points is that the thing holding a game together is the commercial hub of the game store. But that’s clearly becoming less and less true as clumps of fans — fans of particular games and of games in general — congeal online.
The question for publishers is the extent to which these online communities can be directly tapped, economically, in a sustainable way.
Careful: The question isn’t whether publishers can sell games online. Because, you know, no shit. It’s whether an online community’s door can be open wide enough that new people will come in. What the FLGS is (allegedly) good at is putting the unknown, fresh, and new in front of known gamers, and pulling them into new games. The (alleged) shortcoming of games where the community is overwhelmingly online is that there’s no similar front door. New people don’t enter, and since you can’t stop people from leaving (marriage, kids, World of Warcraft), publishers wind up in a position where exactly one fan remains. Will the last Rolemaster player to leave please turn off the light?
The question I’m interested in answering is this: What are the (a) many and (b) best points of new player contact for a game whose community is overwhelmingly congregated online?
Spout your conjecture in the comments, naturally, but I’m most interested in actual examples — Actual Play, if you will — of online communities based around commercial products that are not related to gaming with which you are involved, and how you got involved in those communities, and how — if at all — the creators of those products wind up with your money in their pockets.
Amber Diceless is a product whose online presence continues to thrive even after the viability of the product (and now, sadly, after the demise of its creator). Mostly it lives on in the form of various play-by-web or play-by-email campaigns, and there’s a looseknit community of people who play in multiple campaigns and sometimes meet at local conventions. I think those conventions are the key: people meet there, and stay in contact online afterward. My first exposure to the game was at a GenCon in Milwaukee, where Amber players would hijack a skybridge with unofficial game events. That got us started in the community, and then we attended some AmberCons, but still wanted to play in-between conventions: therefore, we played online. As for how money wound up in Erick’s pocket, I’m sure that people playing online led to book sales, but I think he actually lost money on the AmberCons.
Way back in, oh, 1999, I got involved with the In Nomine community long after the game line was basically dead at SJGames. There were a few books that trickled out, but the fan community was thriving by the time I lost contact with it in 2004 or so. Largely this fandom had converted into a fandom in the style of Amber or Harry Potter. Few people were running campaigns strictly by the rules, which were widely agreed to be broken/terrible, but everyone loved the setting and would write adventure seeds and stories all day long.
I got involved in the community by picking up one of the books in the discount section of my game store, so it doesn’t quite fit your online-discovery model, but I imagine similar things could happen today.
For both of these examples, it sounds like an online outlet for either actual play or play-related creative was involved. In the case of Amber, play-by-web or -by-email. In the case of In Nomine, writing adventure seeds and stories.
I imagine a component/outlet like this is critical in game-based community building.
Yeah, I would say that you need some way for people to become creatively involved in an online community of people who continue to provide ‘support,’ both in the sense of additional material to get your brain going (whether you end up using it to spark play or not), but also a social environment that encourages you to maintain interest.
Well, the online strong fan communities for the D&D fragment properties like Ravenloft and Dragonlance kept people into them going for years until they later became licensed properties, making money for the 3ps and fees for the originator. Without the community, they would not have been good licensing bets. (Like no one licensed Spelljammer.)
I’m afraid most of the other “online community” things while nice for the players haven’t directly led any money for the creators. Except potentially in building confidence in the publisher in general, leading to more sales of whatever they put out next.
I don’t know from the online, latter-day Ravenloft and Dragonlance communities, but it would surprise me a lot to learn that a significant number of new people discovered those properties in those latter days because of their online communities.
But then again, if they did, that’s exactly the kind of thing I’d love to learn.
After reading your two points, something clicked for me. I was browsing the dwarvenforge website (after reading a 4th Ed. article by Will) and then read your entry.
On dwarvenforge they actually sell dungeon tiles for my favorite game Space Hulk. And I thought, the game isn’t making money for GW, but it is making money for someone, indirectly.
Even though I am not addressing the online point of interest, I wanted to remark that a game like Space Hulk, which hasn’t had an expansion in at least 15 years, is still being played. I have no doubt, that if GW at least published it, they would sell it (make money, I have no idea, but the product would move).