Runester

Last week was very hard. I stayed up late on Wednesday night at my D&D (e3.5) game – and we had a blast! I stayed at work very, very late Thursday and didn’t get home until almost 11:00 pm. I was able to have a pretty good Friday but still didn’t make up enough sleep and Saturday morning I was up bright and early at 5:00 am so I could get over to Tresi’s and pick him up and drive us to JiffyCon. We made it on time!

I was tired, but JiffyCon was still fun. During the morning session I played in Tresi’s Paranoia game. It was the first time I’ve ever played that, even though it’s been out for many years and consistently makes various “games you must play before you die” lists. So, I was eager to try it out and get the whole ‘paranoia’ experience. “The Computer is Your Friend!” etc. It was fun, and the amount of mayhem we (the players) were able to create by being completely paranoid of each other while bootlicking the Computer every time it appeared; it was a total blast! I’m not sure you could really run this as any kind of extended campaign, but boy does it shake the RPG cobwebs out of your head and get you thinking very differently about your character and your characters place in a setting and a PC group.

For lunch we went to a Thai restaurant, and met a few new people from the con. Then during the afternoon session Tresi played “Misspent Youth” and I played “Labyrinth’s and Lycanthropes.” The L&L game I was in was interesting, sort of an exercise in minimal set-up, fantasy dungeon crawl. The players and the DM work together to generate the monsters, using playing cards that specify the type and level. Then they work together to draw a fantasy map and add cities and towns, and finally one dungeon/maze/castle/labyrinth per player. So, we had four total, that’s four labyrinths. The game is supposed to be comedic, but all of the comedy has to come from the players, and we were tired. The comedy ran thin rather quickly, but the game system itself was still interesting. We ran through a single labyrinth (Office Space themed with file-cabinet golems, and attacking secretaries in wheeled office chairs). It was fun to see how a clever system could turn some ordinary decks of playing cards into an afternoons game of bashing monsters and looking for clues. I, personally, think this game would be great for kids or people not interested in the full 350 pg D&D experience, or are only likely to play once. For example, at a Thanksgiving Day family get together.

I felt pretty terrible on Saturday, due to seasonal allergies. My head was stuffed up, my sinuses were constantly draining, and I felt tired and winded. I kept taking Benadryl, but this gave me cotton mouth and made me drowsy. I feel that if it weren’t for the antihistamine I probably wouldn’t have been able to make it through the whole con, but because of it I didn’t have the energy to really socialize and make the experience everything it could be.

Today, Lisa and I went to see 2012, the end-of-the-world movie. I liked the beginning and the special effects were pretty damn special. The movie didn’t fall apart, for me, until the end. They spent way too much time creating arbitrary suspense, where none was really needed. On the other hand, they spent almost no time exploring any of the hard questions that this plot made available. Questions like, how much are people willing to sacrifice to see that humanity survives? How desperate will people become to survive? What kinds of hard choices have to be made to allow anyone at all to survive? Most of these issues were only mentioned in passing, or glossed over. Then, everyone the audience was groomed to care about survived. The ending had no teeth, and it cheapened the feeling of “this is the end” which any good apocalypse is supposed to have.

Oh, and the science was such utter crap I won’t even mention it.

Today was a quiet day, and not too much happened. Certainly nothing worth reporting here. I did get to see another photo album worth of pictures of my Brother, Sister-in-law, and Nephew. That was great! I’ll be able to see all of them in person when Lisa and I visit Michigan in a couple of weeks.

In other news, I’ve added a couple of new podcasts to my list, including several from Joseph Selby. Remember him from that time I met him over lunch down in Boston? Well, he’s started a podcast network, Game Locus,  and five (5) different podcasts! The one that I’ve listened to and enjoyed the most is SemantiCast – a gaming podcast, of course. Though Impolitic, a podcast on all things non-gaming, also sounds interesting once it gets going. So, congratulations, Joe!

Finally, it’s that time of year, again … for JiffyCon! It’s coming up this Saturday in Greenfield, MA. I’m already registered and have arrangements to drive up with Tresi who’ll be running a game of Paranoia. The two times I’ve attended JiffyCon I’ve had a blast, and expect no less this time. Though it may feel different, being hosted in a UU Church! I’ll try to snap some photo’s and write up the experience, if nothing else.

So, that’s not bad for a Monday, huh?

I was pretty shocked at the news revealed on the latest Kicked in the Dice Bags. Part of me knows that break-ups, infidelities, and heart-breaks happen. But I always want to assume the best, because each time a relationship ends like that … it feels like “another one gone.” Something valuable, rare, and precious was lost.

Also, parts of the story hit close to home, with certain similarities between Jonathan’s story and a close friend or two.

Apart from the actual topic of the episode in question, is the side topic of privacy in the new age of mass publication. Jonathan and Chris chose to share something that is usually considered private. What they did is not new, nearly every memoir dishes dirt on affairs, drug use, infidelity and other ’sordid’ events. The tabloids make their profits by exposing these details in the lives of others. So, why shouldn’t modern publishers – bloggers, tweeters, podcasters – do likewise and share everything (or near enough)? Besides, hasn’t most of the shame already been rubbed off? Is there really much embarrassment left when a couple has a child out of wedlock, or a man admits to a long standing affair, or when in-the-bedroom matters are discussed and shared? The answer is no. For better or worse, we live in an age in which privacy is shrinking, at least among a certain age/class and this loss of privacy has nothing to do with Big Brother putting a camera in every TV and everything to do our innate desire for attention and voyeurism facilitated by a technology that lets us publish anything … even our dirty laundry.

On the other hand … how many secrets should have been told? How much unhappiness is the result of keeping a secret; of not admitting that we are unhappy with a relationship, or that someone has suffered abuse, or that a close friend/family member has an addiction problem? In other words, if there is any silver lining to this trend (which I’m not convinced there is) then I’d look for it there – the shedding light on those secrets that corrupt and corrode by being kept.

But, still. Modesty evolved along side human civilization for a reason. Maybe it’s archaic and withering as no longer necessary. Maybe it allows the social lubrication, the ‘illusion of goodness’ that let’s us form peaceful social groups and accomplish great tasks. Maybe, without this illusion we won’t be better off, but so jaded by ourselves and our fellow’s that we’ll turn away from congress with them in disgust.

Wouldn’t that be ironic? If the bitterest poison was not lies or propaganda or secrets but the raw truth?

First, let’s be honest here. I’m a technologist. I’m not a marketer and I’ve never (successfully) started a business with, you know, actual customers. But, that’s why I’m so fascinated by marketing and business models. It’s interesting because it’s so different than what I do! Marketing people can look on in fascination while I ‘fix’ their Excel by hitting the [Scroll-Lock] key. I look on in fascination while they spread the message of their client and motivate real people to spend real cash. Compared to what I do, they might as well be sorcerer’s.

Second, as I’ve recently blogged about, the book publishing business is going through a weird revolution. [From other online articles and blog's, it appears to mirror music and news, as well.] While from a consumer choice perspective, this is a ‘golden age’ – very few people are making any money from it. It turns out that without the few large publishing houses able to sell mass appeal books (and act as gatekeepers, which is a downside) that the half-a-million new books published every year garner very littler per-book attention. For every one Stephen King or John Grisham, there are literally tens of thousands of small time authors who will make nothing but the advance on their book. They will never see a dollar or dime of royalty money. Further, their publishers cannot afford to publicize or market their books! The author must, themselves, market and spread the word and organize book signings and arrange for all of the travel and even build and market the web site associated with the book, etc. etc. etc.

So, what does the publisher actually do? Well, there’s the ‘gatekeeper’ thing, which is supposed to be a type of intrinsic guarantee of quality. There’s also the editing, printing, and distribution through well established sales channels. There is certainly value in getting your book published through a traditional publishing house. But, if you thought that it would be it and you could just go back to writing your next book … think again.

The kicker is, even with the author having to shoulder the marketing, the average book only sells about 3,000 total lifetime copies! [Obviously, some more and some less, thus the average.] That means that no one is getting rich writing books, unless they happen to be the top 1% of 1% of authors. The other way to riches is to hope that auxiliary properties based on your work will generate real money, like a movie or video game. A comic book would be great publicity, but probably not garner you any great amount of money. And, for every book published in every year, only 1/1000th of that number of movies are made in Hollywood – and not all are based on current books. So, the odds of getting your book turned into a movie just aren’t that good.

Third, there’s been a great deal of discussion and blogging and tweeting and the like on different ways for people to market in this crazy new landscape. One school of thought is that the product should be ‘free’ but with a monetization model based on one of the following three tried-and-try patterns: 1) Advertising. This is how Google gives away free search results and email, then sells ad space and is very profitable. 2) ‘Freemium’, a portmanteau that refers to the premium-for-pay upgrade many services offer. Like how FlickrPro costs money but Flickr is free. The pro subscribers subsidize the free users. That is also the model the Drop.io is attempting to use; everyone can make as many drop’s as they want with 100MB of storage and a max connection count of 10 – but if you upgrade you can get more space or a subscription for a premium version of their product. We have yet to see if their model will work, but in order to work the upgrades and the premium service would have to more then make up for the resources they’re spending on giving away the free version of their service. 3) Loss-Leader, as in Verizon FiOS is giving away a free netbook computer if you sign up for their FiOS service. That’s crazy! A free $300 netbook, just for becoming a subscriber? Well, they’ve obviously calculated the average lifetime value of their customer and know that value is much more then the one time cost of a netbook. Even with churn and people who just want to take advantage of the offer, they will more then make up for the cost of those netbooks. [It still boggles my mind that they are now giving away laptop's for for free ... even if they are just 'netbooks' ... but in my day, those were valuable and not considered tchotchke's.]

There’s a fourth pattern, not discussed in the original essay I read, which I call “building a valuable network.” This is basically what Monster.com does. They give away their job search service, because they need the enormous list of potential employees to sell their actual for-profit service, which is an employee search feature sold to businesses. In other words, Monster only needs the applicants to make their real product valuable. Their ability to offer applicants to employers doesn’t mean much if there’s not hundreds of thousands of applicants available to offer and the best way to get those applicants is to offer them the “find a job in your area” service, for free! [Monster also advertises to applicants and offers premium for-profit services for those applicants that want to pay. They have an affective multi-path marketing plan that makes their 'free' service quite profitable.] Another example would be a free service that gathers user data and uses this database as a resource they can resell. This may be problematic with the way users feel about having their information sold, but it’s still done all the time. Again, the free product or service is simply a way to gather or generate the actual product or service that is then sold for a handsome profit.

So, can we put all of this together? I think we can. I believe that there are already people out there that make money as “writer’s” but not from selling books. They use their free or near-free book sales to distribute their message and market themselves. They then offer a ‘freemium’ service, such as a weekend seminar or an onsite presentation. They may also use it to subsidize other, premium products and/or subscriptions. They use their customer information as a marketing list for other products, even products owned by other publishers. They write, publish, and market a book .. but the book isn’t their product. In any case, they’re making money.

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In a previous blog post I asked whether or not having a non-profit as an RPG publisher wouldn’t further the general goals of having a long lasting entity hold the intellectual property of something like a game, and act to foster the community of players and publishers that have a stake in the survival and even success of that game. Here, I’m going to ask whether or not one of these monetizing schemes can turn something that’s hard to profit on, an RPG, profitable.

I’ve already seen the ‘freemium’ method used. Several companies will give away an electronic edition of their core rules for nothing or very close to nothing ($1 or $5). Then, they hope that if you like the core rules, you’ll come back for supplements and settings, which they sell at a nice mark-up. This probably has some success, but I’ve never seen a huge response to this. I’ve only seen an actual subscription model used once or twice, and I believe the publisher already has to have a well known property and/or author before they can successfully sell a subscription. In a way, a subscription is like a promissory note. They promise to produce something of value at regular intervals, and you promise to keep paying for what they produce. If it’s a new author or new company or even a new product, the public may not believe or trust the promise and will not be as willing to pay in advance for it.

I’ve also seen two new models come forward in RPG’s but not other fields, like books or music. One is the ransom; in which an author writes a product and than says that until he raises a fixed amount, say $2,500, he’s not going to release it. But, that once he does raise that sum, he’ll give it away for free. Again, if the author and product are known they can be expected to be good and an audience will gather knowing their money isn’t wasted. Interestingly enough, the initial investors are subsidizing all of those that will subsequently download the product for free … so it’s a kind of ‘freemium’ service, inverted, and with no special price for those that actually pay the premium. A related model is the patronage, where a small group of investors are gathered with a minimum entry fee, and they not only get special access to the product but have an intimate hand in directing it’s growth and production. In this case, the patrons usually get a beautifully printed hard-bound copy of the book (or at least the ability to purchase such) and then the product is sold for less as an electronic copy only to the non-patrons. In the patronage model, not only is the special access being sold as a premium service, but the special relationship with the designers and the ability to influence the final product.

One of the big advantages of the patronage and ransom model, is that the consumer testing is built in. There’s no need to through a product out there and hope that someone, somewhere wants it. In both cases, if there is not sufficient interest then the author is free to move on to something else. If there is sufficient interest, then the audience is built-in and marketing is successfully happening before the product is even ready to be shipped.

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I now imagine a hybrid, in which an author or small group of authors, form a not-for-profit company as caretaker for a set of intellectual properties tied to a game. The authors then use patronage and ransom (or some hybrid variation) to profit, up front, from the production of their product. After the price has been paid and the product produced and all of the special version/access/service agreements satisfied, then the not-for-profit get’s the rights to the work so that it can be kept available and actively advocated for. The back catalog then acts as the free product that markets both the authors and their IP, while advertising the next project they’re working on. It can even be stated in the contract that certain rights are reserved by the author, such as movie or video game rights. That way, just in case one of the IP’s goes big, the author will still see the lions share of profit. But, there will never be an ‘abandoned’ property, because even if the author walks away from it, the not-for-profit can continue to make it available and assign those rights that it has.

I bet something like this may even work for traditional fiction, as well. How many fans clamour for a book that the author spends years and years and years ‘working on’ but never produces? What if the fans could directly pay for it, and act as patrons for the project? The author gets much needed feedback from the very consumer he needs, and he gets an infusion of cash well before the books sells.

Anyway, these are some of my thoughts on how to do the (seemingly) impossible: make money by writing gaming books.

So, the big news today is that Lisa & I got married! We had a small ceremony at Dedham Town Hall, and were married by a local Justice of the Peace. We exchanged vows and rings and had him snap a few photos (forthcoming).

So, eight years after we first met, we married!

Afterwards we went out to breakfast at a little diner, amd then to work. Sounds crazy, I know but Lisa needs to save her vacation days for our Michigan trip, and I wasn’t just going to hang around the house alone! Besides, we’ll have all weekend together and our nice (small) reception, Thanksgiving week, in Michigan.

Oh, I also received my offer letter from BC. So, for those playing at home, that’s “sold the condo” and “got married” and “got a regular job” all within the space of two weeks. I mean, it took years for some of these to come to fruition, but when they did – it was all at once.

Well, I’ve finally watched the first episode of “V” the new series airing on ABC. It’s a re-imagining of the classic sci-fi series from the early eighties. Here’s some links to anyone who needs the details.

“V” – 1983 (IMDB Entry) … “V” – 2009 (IMDB Entry)

(2009)

(1983)

And, just for fun, please let me present some made-for-TV-in-the-80’s schlock.

(1983, Jane Badler & June Chadwick)

So, what did I think about it? It was OK. The first episode was only one hour long, but it already established that the Visitors are only pretending to be our friends, that they have a nefarious ulterior motive, that they’ve been on Earth for years infiltrating key positions, that there is a human resistance movement, and that some of the Visitors have formed a fifth-column to aid the human resistance against their own race. That is a lot! It took significantly longer to establish all of those details in the original mini-series / full series. Even the revelation that they are lizards under a genetically grown skin mask was a big reveal in the first series and kind of a gimme in this one.

On one hand, perhaps they went too fast and should have revealed at least some of this slowly, over the next few months. On the other hand, many, many people remember the first series and already knew these details. It wasn’t going to be a surprise to us! So, they got these details out of the way, so they could get on with the story they actually want to tell. (Maybe.)

The thing I remember the most about the first series was that it was a thinly veiled metaphor for fascism. They wore read uniforms with a very Swastika looking emblem in black. They had giant flags and a strict military hierarchy. And, once the mask was revealed and the kit gloves came off, they took over and ran the world like a puppet nation under the heal of an oppressive fascist state. They even had “brown shirts” in the way of a youth core, in brown V-like uniforms, no less. The metaphor was strong!

What are they going to do in this series? So far, I don’t see the parallel. They are not wearing uniforms, but a sort of grey/beige business suit. If they have a hierarchy it is not readily apparent (other than that “Anna” is their “leader”). In fact, the strongest parallel I can see in this episode is the involvement of the FBI in tracking a terrorist cell. So, is terrorism going to be the new socio-political metaphor for the series? And, how is that going to work when the “terrorists” are a technologically advanced invading force presenting themselves as peaceful? Weird, huh?

Unless the writers are going to play the “your terrorist is my freedom fighter” card and show that the aliens are waging a secret terrorist plot while the human resistance movement is labeled and treated as terrorists, though they are right. If this is true, I don’t think it will have the same impact of the first series.

Over all, the affects are light years ahead of the 1983 version – but this is only to be expected. None of the actors have really jumped out at me, nor their characters. I’m certainly willing to give it a chance and see if things progress better in the upcoming episodes. I have to say, though, that my hopes are not too high. I don’t think ABC is prepared to take this story where it needs to go, or go as edgy as necessary to really turn this into meaningful metaphor and therefore good fiction. I think, like in previous prime-time sci-fi major network shows, they will pull their punches and then fall back on “freak of the week” with “look what the aliens are doing now” and “hey, we have a human / alien hybrid doing something weird” and little else. That, of course, will sound the death knell of the series. Or, they’ll try to pull a “LOST” and create a multi-leveled story line with many characters and a slowly unravelled mystery. But I just don’t see it. The first episode didn’t really leave any meaningful questions to be answered. We know the humans are going to resist and we know the Visitors are going to use their influence to squash the resistance. Everything else, as they say, is just the details.

I know, this is an often mentioned, hackneyed topic by now. But, a certain Post Secret post, brought it up to me in stark relief.

PostSecret: I read my husbands email

What bothers me is not just the “I read other peoples emails” but the fact that she reads her husbands emails. Then, to make it even more intrusive, she sends replies. What emails does she reply to? Are they from people she doesn’t want him to meet? This really appears to be a case where she is going to monitor and control his relationships – and that is NOT ok.

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On my podcast project, I was able to get the artist that was recommended to me to produce the artwork. He did AMAZING work, and it didn’t cost me very much. Once I get the artwork integrated into my site it will look both unique and professional – much more than I could have hoped to do on my own. The artwork coupled with the custom intro/outro I received from Luke and this is going to be a great sounding podcast!

All I have to do is actually produce some episodes.

Lisa and I went to Town Hall to apply for a marriage license, it won’t be available for three more days.

Then work – which was OK.

Then Jeb’s GURPS Zombie game wrap-up. This was fun, despite me getting my character to a safe, and therefore boring, place. Finally we all died and blew up the oil rig with us! We’re pretty pumped to come back and restart his GURPS Psi game, albeit with different characters and in a slightly different version of the setting. I think it’ll be a lot of fun.

Both Luke and Matt expressed interest in running a game, each. Hopefully we can (eventually) schedule that in, too.

Hey! When I got home the stuff I ordered was here. This included my wedding band, some clothes, and a new pair of New Balance shoes. I immediately installed the speed-laces I’d bought so very long ago, and then tried them on. Cool! The shoes fit and the laces work as advertised and I now have comfortable black shoes to go with my black work pants.

I have a 6:00am change tomorrow morning, so I need to get as much shut-eye as possible.

Got up late; talked Lisa into making me a couple fried egg sandwiches. Then I went to our bulk shopping store and dropped around $500. Besides cases of bottled water and the protein shakes I enjoy for breakfast, I also picked up a new “all in one” printer from HP, the “OfficeJet 6500.” One of the features that caught my eye “besides double-sided printing” was that it is wi-fi compatible. So, hopefully, we don’t need a print server attched to it. Because, if we do, than I would be better off fixing Lisa’s old desktop and hooking her old printer up to it.

We’ll see.

In other news, Lisa finished addressing the invitations to our reception; she’ll drop them in the mail tomorrow. We go to apply for our marriage license tomorrow morning. So, while we’ve been dating dating for years, and engaged for a couple of years – the actual marriage is rushing up on us. Not nervous, just excited. Looking forward to accomplishing another important milestone we set for ourselves. Each success builds our confidence and brings forward momentum for the next; and we’ve got quite the list!

OK, enough for now. Time for sleep; the end of our weekend and the beginning of a brand new week!