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Since today seems to be the day where I get involved with twitter discourse, I think it's worth talking about the late-stage-capitalism in the room. [Thread}
When you get down to it, there is a very simple formula to figure out if an industry is viable. Can this industry pay for all of the labour required to live. This absolutely isn't the case in the contemporary hobby game industry but goes deeper than that.
In the hobby game industry, our lack of sustainability largely focuses on the fact that our products are priced far too low relative to the value produced, and I am just as guilty as others for it.
The publishers who produce nearly every game you know are very likely only surviving thanks to financial assistance from spouses, social security, or a traditional job on the side.
One of the reasons for the frequent turnover and bankruptcies in FLGS's is that the only consistent money-maker for most stores is Magic: The Gathering. RPG margins and fans are too few, and board games can be expensive inventory to hold.
Distribution is working on thin margins and is dominated by a single, overwhelming company. They typically get about 10-15% of the cover price and have the highest fixed costs in terms of real property & labour costs, even before looking at shipping.
In the "good old days" before 2020, conventions were either funded by company sponsorships, paid advertising, or subsidization by rich nerds. Missing a single year could (and will likely) sink a ton of conventions due to the pandemic.
Let's be brutally honest here; much of the analog games industry is not viable according to my previous definition. It's been propped up by passion and sacrifice by the professionals working within.
We have three options to move forward. Maintain the unethical status quo and broken system, increase prices, or cut on other costs somehow.
Cutting on costs can come in two forms; decreased production values, or moving to a pure digital model. If I can produce a 48 page zine with minimal art and sell for a quarter of the price of a 250 pg hardcover full-colour book, that is a win for sustainability.
If you can dodge the printing, distribution, and retail costs, then the publishers can get paid better (yay!) at the expense of the other two layers of the 3-tier system (Distributors and Retailers).
If you want the existing industry to be healthy and to pay folks enough to live, the only real way I can see is for us to collectively raise our prices to better reflect the real costs of production. We are all afraid of customer backlash though.
All of us in the industry are also passionate about games and want to keep the barrier to entry as low as possible so that everyone can enjoy them. We don't want real-world economic pressures to keep storytelling from those who need it.
Maybe there is another way. Maybe we can increase the _volume_ by getting more people playing and buying games on a whole. Get those economies of scale to help everyone. (see. Critical Role discourse)
Practically everyone in the industry _wants_ the folks working in the industry to be paid well, but struggling to find a sustainable way to make that happen in the absence of a boom in audience size.
There is another, even messier element that most of us don't talk about. In an industry dependant on creator subsidization and poverty, the only folks who can reliably produce games are those who have other sources of funding.
I have a full-time day job that pays me well, which means I am not dependant on my RPG income to keep me fed. Nearly every product I have published has been a labour of love and I have not paid myself for my work. You know what demographic can afford that luxury?
Cis people. White people. Able-bodied people. Straight-presenting people. People with citizenship documentation. People who already have all the privilege in the world.
This means that the stories from _my_ demographic get privileged and normalized. Anything with my biases or political ideas will be promoted.
People from underrepresented groups not only have to struggle with the challenges of daily life, but also with an unfair playing field thanks to the passionate hobbyists of privilege.
The honest goal from a lot of the progressive, left-leaning existing publishers is to try to hire as many underrepresented creators and professionals as possible. Give them the spotlight and the industry connections they need to succeed.
The problem is that the harsh economics of our meager, underpriced industry is that we can barely afford to pay people minimum wage and ask them to do the jobs of 3 people at a time.
One could argue that no-one can ethically work in our industry and this is doubly so for economically-disadvantaged folks. The problem is that cedes the field to the affluent mediocre white cis-dudes and there are enough of us as is.
As an industry, we need to open more doors and forge more paths for under-represented folks to move into the industry. There are a number of companies such as @EvilHatOfficial @MagpieOfficial @MonteCookGames and @PelgranePress who do their part to try to move things forward.
Do the established publishers need to do a better job? Do we make mistakes from unintended bias or personal disagreements? Of course. And we try to learn to better forge this path towards a better industry.
I am not saying that you should cut the existing folks slack or let us normalize terrible pay rates, but please know that most of us are eager to listen to constructive criticism and learning how to do better.
As someone looking at the business fundamentals, the analog hobby game industry is not viable or sustainable under late-stage capitalism. As an artist and a human? Fuck Capitalism. Let's make some art, together. [/Thread]
