RPG R&D & Development Notes / Why Buy?
I showed a prototype for my role-playing game product to a local game store.
The feedback was that nobody is gonna buy it because nobody knows me. A suggestion that I come into the store more often, so that people get to know me.
I identified the guy recognises the role-playing games industry is about people, as in, individuals.
I did start to go into the store more often, where I was told by the same guy there’s no point sitting in the store distracting people, I might as well be painting miniatures. This would involve purchasing miniatures from the store.
Clever store owner.
Attempting to arrange sessions to play the game in the store, his advice was they don’t like miniature-free, imagination-based group rpg sessions because although it brings a lot of people into the store, most of them are not buying anything. Also, it means they have to keep the store open later. It’s a hassle for them.
They can charge per-seat-at-the-table which in my experience is 1) at an extortionate rate and 2) the demand outweighs the service, resulting in game-lag due to too-many-players.
It’s boring waiting an hour for your turn to roll a combat dice taking up the whole session. No actual character-based roleplaying can develop in those conditions.
Going back to the original point. “Nobody is going to buy my product because nobody knows me.”
I’m willing to bet most people who read this will have heard the name Gary Gygax. Some fans of old school might even have heard of Dave Arnoldson, and almost all original oldschool generation will know the names Larry Elmore and Tracy Hicks and Margret Weiss. There is a large list here who all deserve mention.
None of those names know me and why would they? I do not use my real name for the purposes of this of anyway because I am reclusive and prefer anonymity.
That’s not my point.
The point is this:
How many people who bought role-playing games industry products this year, off the top of your head name the person who created that product.
I am willing to bet the answer is within one percent. Even were at 10 times that Number, 10% is a minority, not the vast majority.
On this principle, the vast majority of people who buy role-playing game products do so not because they are loyal fans of a name of an individual person who created it, but for other reasons.
What those reasons are is very much worthy subject matter for more than one dedicated blog. Suffice to say it, the reasons are many.
So, why do people buy RPG products?