Online Exlusive RPG Content and YOU

Print is dead. This axiom has been stated going as far back as when the Radio was first introduced to the English by Guglielmo Marconi in the late 19th century. Yet for over a century, despite the advent of Radio, Television, Computers, and Computer networking Print media in its various forms has persisted as a preferred means of delivering information.

That said it is also undeniable that Print may finally be starting to decline. Newspaper and magazine circulation is at an all-time low, with such vaunted publications as national geographic and Readers digest culling their print runs from their bi weekly high, to bi monthly or quarterly. Major publishing houses are staring down the barrel of the Kindle, Nook, and iPad, and having to choose the embrace the technology or become extinct by it. The question is further exasperated with “print on demand” services largely cutting major publishers and editors out of the fiction publishing circle, and largely returning to an era reminiscent of the early days of the printing press where any schmoe could get anything printed so long as they had the money to do it.

Table Top gaming, my preferred passion, and why I come to you today, is stuck somewhere in the middle of this technological evolution. There will always be, at least for the foreseeable future, people who play with miniatures on tabletops. That will take the invention Holo-Deck to make extinct. But most tabletop games that are not “self contained” i.e. anything you need is all in the box with no expansions or customizations, fall under a peculiar conundrum. That is what to do about the vast majority of printed source-books, scenario books, plot line books, and just plain master rule books that are needed for play.

Catalyst Game Labs (my nerd crack dealer of choice) has been experimenting with publication of their rulebooks and other materials in digital form for the better part of five years, through their own website and a company called Drive Thru Rpg. In addition to new publications they have also experimented with products, smaller in nature, that will ONLY be published electronically.

Sales figures do not lie, according to Catalyst officials on their forums, the online exclusive products have been a roaring success. Being a smaller company in the middle of publicized financial issues, that statement is believable. After all, a company like catalyst can not afford to put money into products people are not buying.

That said, on Catalysts forums there is calls from the fan-base to publish these online exclusives in so called Dead Tree Format (.dtf). This brings me to ask two questions of the game play community. The first is why is it important to you to have these products in a hardcopy format published by Catalyst? The Second is if Catalyst does decide to print their electronic exclusive content, either individually or in compellation form, what advantage will those who have purchased the products electronically have? I admit I have my own bias on the entire issue, but that will be addressed as I attempt to answer these two questions.

As to the first question, “Why is it so vital for you to have these products in hardcopy format?” I think first we need to ask a corollary question. “Are you completely opposed to purchasing these products in electronic form at all?” If the answer is yes, that you are opposed to purchasing digital content for X, Y, or Z Reasons, I can not do anything for you. Trying to convince you otherwise would be pissing in the proverbial wind. And I do not need the reason either. If it is because you think online content should be free, have a pathological fear of losing digital content, or just flat don’t own a computer (in which case how are you posting on an internet forum?), I can not help you.

There is content for you game out there you do not have access to, and you feel left out. You fear that these special “whatever” is the equivalent of the “cool kids club”, and you are the one playing with the frog on the curb next to their clubhouse. I get that. Table top gamers are already a far too discriminated against sub culture of humanity. Whether the ignorance of others is do to disinterest, feeling of priority, or religious fear, we just don’t get along by and large with the outside world, so we want to stick together. I think that those who do not wish to or are incapable of downloading these items for pay, may fear being left out of the loop by their gamer friends.

In my humble experience though we as a sub culture are better then that. I have numerous life experiences where some kid I hung out with triumphantly held up a book of awesome he just got, and SHARED it with others. All this is doing is holding up an iPad and printing off pages rather then holding up a book and making photo copies.

Then there is the question of those of us who are not opposed to online content on any sort of principle. The best thing I have to offer is the nostalgia factor of flipping through a book. Again I get that, after all it is easy to not see a digital file as “Real” in any way. This is particularly troublesome for those of us who do not religiously back up our files on a regular basis. (remember kids, First Wednesday of every month is official Back Up Day!)

But these applications are real. Real effort goes into them, and the money you pay provides real support the company you love, be it Wizards, Catalyst, or other game producing companies that experiment in this form of distribution. This is not Vaporware in the Duke Nukem Forever mold. This is real stuff, and by not purchasing it until it meets a production standard you will be satisfied by YOU are missing out. And by purchasing them, you are in fact contributing to your gaming companies revenues, which allows them to produce more product both digitally and in hardcopy form.

Then there is what last thing that upsets me the most about the .dtf mafia that is out there. Hypothetically there are some who are OVERTLY saying they will wait for these products to be released in print form. I already addressed this prior. But I want to talk economic models with you.

If a gaming company takes a series of related digital products, like Battletechs Experimental Technical Readout Series, and prints a hardcopy for release, two things will happen. Other then cost to print, the development on the series of micro products has already been paid for. Thus any paper release of a digital product would be considerably cheaper then its cumulative digital cost. What happens when that sells like hot cakes?

The answer is that the early adopters will feel ripped off, and will hold off from the next big release of digital exclusives. Some might be loyal and buy the print version anyway, but many will not, partly because of product redundancy, but also out of feeling burned.

Because Digital exclusive revenues drop off sharply, what could have been a great constant trickle of game resources comes to a gradual stop, with nothing satiating the fans until the next big book release.

How do you counter this? the first thing is that if digital exclusive content no longer becomes exclusive, then there needs to be an incentive package for those who do buy them online. I am not speaking of something like a free print copy that would be far to expensive for the developers. Certainly a percentage off to print products price would be nice, or some sort of freebie like a years Battlecorps subscription.

Of course the whole issue is going be decided by the people that make this content, and it is a choice they will make based on what they feel the success of printing digital exclusive content will be. I just feel the need to contribute my voice to the greater whole, and hopefully I provided some context for people on both sides of the issue.