A few months ago I had a minor rant on social media about the perceptions many gamers seem to have about how the industry works. I was surprised (and a little humbled) at some of the gaming writers and publishers that clicked ‘like’. It seems these perceptions are all too common, and a source of not only annoyance but in some cases outright despair among many industry professionals. In many cases they actually damage the relationship between the creators and consumers, even though the line between both groups is often blurred in gaming.

So it seemed worthwhile to post my ranting once more, a little more politely this time, in the hope of dismantling these myths of the industry for everyone’s sake.

Before I start I should point out I love working for the games industry. This is not a bitter growl from a frustrated creative, a rejected writer or a seething gamer. I’ve been all three at some point but I still have a reasonably successful second career as a games writer and producer and I still love gaming. Seeing your work in print, or better yet seeing other people enjoy the work you’ve done is fantastic. The industry and hobby is full of intelligent imaginative people and it is a wonderfully creative place to work in.

Having said that, here are the five myths that make it a lot more stressful:

“I’ve been a gamer for 20 years so I know the business”
The first thing I learnt (after 20 years of gaming) when I started writing was that I knew nothing about the industry. That’s right, nothing, nada, zip. Having got your fighter to 20th level teaches you nothing about publishing, deadlines, distribution and commissioning. No matter how close you are to the creators on forums and playtest groups, you are learning little about the actual business of producing games. So many times people rant on forums that ‘it cannot make business sense to do X’ or ‘not doing X is just lunacy’ and it is rare for these people to actually have a clue what they are talking about. There is a lot going on behind the scenes, and sometimes the company might have already tried doing X and Y and found they both failed to work.

There is almost no standard business model for gaming. Publishers argue (sometimes quite heatedly) about their way being the only sensible course of action. However, when you think about it, almost every game requires a different business strategy. They range from books to board and card games, and each one often appeals to a different genre and demographic. Gamers are a very diverse group, even if a few stereotypes persist, and what markets well to one will completely fail to interest another. Couple that with the differing sizes of each company and thing change again. You can’t compare Fantasy Flight’s business model with Pelgrane Press and claim one of them is doing it wrong. They are both gaming companies but very different sizes with very different products and customers. There is no easy answer, if there was they’d all be doing it the same way.

Granted, games companies could often be more transparent about their plans and keep their fans up to date, but seriously, why should they? Offering you business details and amending release dates is nice but wouldn’t you rather they got on with making the game? Few games companies have marketing departments or customer relations agents. It’s a group of people trying to share out far too much work between them. Everything they don’t do relating to getting a game released is taking time from getting that game released. Even companies in other industries who do have whole departments dedicated to marketing don’t detail as much about product releases, so why expect it of games producers?

One of the wonderful things about gaming is that the customers can become invested in the game. When they buy it they can adapt and change it to create their own games, and that’s great. But many gamers see this investment as entitlement, wondering what the company is doing with their game. Be invested by all means, but if you want to decide how the game is going to be produced, produce it yourself. Remember: It isn’t your game until you’ve bought it.

“They just can’t be bothered to release that game”
We should be really clear about this one; the company in question wants the game to come out more than you do. They are not sitting on piles of the product, lighting cigars with $50 bills declaring that their customers haven’t waited long enough. Most, if not all, gaming companies are tiny cottage industries and their mortgage payments depend on games being released. They are often eking out a month by month existence hoping they’ll make enough to pay the bills. Gaming is a very risky venture as you have to pay for writing, art and printing before you can even make a dime. Sure, if you invented Magic – the gathering, or were selling Vampire in the early 90s there were a few more bucks to be made. But in general, only a couple of RPG companies are really secure in their finances (and even then I may be overestimating). No gaming company is ‘the man’ producing games purely for the wealth it will bring them. There is little money in the business, but there is a lot of love. Many of these people have mortgaged their house to see the game they love in print, how many of their customers can say the same?

The game you are waiting for is not being ignored, it is probably subject to a delay from failed printing, cash flow problems, licensing problems or writers or artists flaking out. Often the company is contractually obliged not to talk about aspects of a certain release, especially with licensed products. Another part of the problem is that games producers need to tell retailers and distributers about their new releases at least 3 months before the due date if they want them to be stocked. So your Christmas releases need to be on offer to retailers by late September at the latest. This means the book may not be sitting waiting in the warehouse when they have to do this, and if it isn’t there is still a lot that can go wrong. Product schedules are worked out months ahead of time so the company can plan their finances. This often forces them to make quite tight plans to ensure cash flow, meaning that any problem sets back production, even though they will usually have some built in leeway. All the time the release date looms like an oncoming train.

Many companies don’t release games because they simply cannot get the cash together for a print run (thank God for Kickstarter!). Others may have had to prioritise a different game line with better sales as they can only afford to make one thing at a time. Often, they hope the big seller will do make enough money so they can release a smaller selling game. So the big game isn’t destroying the small game you love, it is actually financing it! The bottom line here is that if your game is late you just have to wait a while. If it’s late for the producer, they may be worrying where their family is going to sleep tonight. So however much you want the game, they want to sell it to you far more. While it may not be clear why it is late, you can guarantee the company is putting in serious overtime to get the game out.

Sure, sometimes the company is being rubbish. A lot of amateurs find a steep learning curve ahead of their first publication. Others don’t know what they are getting themselves into, and everyone has bad days. However, moaning that they shouldn’t be in business because supplement X is late isn’t helping anyone.

“It must be great to have a job where you play games all the time”
Games designers and producers don’t often agree on much, but one thing they do agree on is that working in the industry is a great way to reduce your gaming. When your work is also your hobby, it often feels like work to do your hobby. But that’s not the only reason.

Making games rarely involves actually playing them, and when you do you are looking to test aspects of them. No games company (to my knowledge) has weekly games days where everyone gets to play games instead of working for the afternoon. There’s the key right there, play games instead of working. Working at a games company involves packing orders, casting figures, phoning distributers, arguing with suppliers. Actually, it’s mostly what everyone else does in offices 9 to 5. Writing and art is almost always commissioned from freelancers. So, none of that creative part of gaming is going on in the office. When it does (such as playtesting) it is rarely done as part of the working day. It is either farmed out or done out of office hours (for no extra pay). Like any small business, there aren’t enough hours in the day to do all that needs to be done by so few people. So few full time games workers have time to do anything, such as seeing their families; let alone play some games in their few off hours.

“They are just looking to steal my idea.”
No matter how exciting or special your idea is, the truth is that they just don’t need it. For a start, most games designers have more ideas than they will ever be able to produce. I have a pile of game ideas I’d love to have time to work on but there aren’t enough hours in the day. The other reason they don’t want your ideas is that ideas themselves are no use to anyone. The skill of writing is not the idea but how to mould that idea into something useful. 10,000 words that expand and develop your idea might be useful, the idea itself isn’t. Look at any movie if you don’t believe me. The idea is essentially nothing. Alien – people in space chased by monster. Star Wars – farm boy turns into hero. Star Trek – people on a space ship have adventures. See what I mean, useless! All these films are great because of character development, plot twists, setting detail and a hundred other things that make that idea live and breathe. If you don’t have a living breathing idea, you have nothing.

You may also want to consider that your idea is either not very good, or painfully obvious. If you feel your genius has been stolen it may well be that you just realised what the designers were thinking. In the TV series MASH, the producers announced that the two main doctor characters would never operate on each other in the series. This was because they got hundreds of scripts using that idea, one they had thought of anyway, but they didn’t want to open themselves to claims of idea theft by writing such an obvious plot. It happens in role-playing too. Many years ago I thought of a great game called ‘Night’s Eye’ where your characters were domestic cats fighting evil on behalf of humans. Yeah, I know. I never finished it and much later John Wick wrote ‘Cat’. Cat is almost identical to Night’s Eye, but did John steal my idea, of course not. He just had the same one and got his act together and wrote it (and therein lies another lesson). Interestingly I jokingly chastised John for writing his game before me and he told me I wasn’t alone. Years ago he’d wanted to write a fantasy game set after evil had won the final battle, then Fantasy Flight produced ‘Midnight’. It is happening all the time. Ideas are gifts, but if you don’t use them they get passed on.

“Now I’m a games designer I’m part of the elite.”
Unfortunately, becoming a games designer, for all its tenuous glamour, does not ‘level you up’. It’s not a step up from gaming but a different path entirely. It won’t make you a better gamer, or give your opinions much more weight. It might open a few more doors, or grant you the contacts to hang out in bars with other games designers, but that’s it. There are no ‘industry only gaming sessions’. Games designers are so spread out that few play in the rare games any of the others might run. While there are plenty of groups I’d love to be part of that are run by other designers (such as Ken Hite’s Nobilis group or anything the Pelgrane crowd are playing!) it’s because they have great games, not because they are industry professionals. In my group I’m the only games writer, and if I tried to suggest that should somehow get me special treatment I’d quickly (and quite rightly) find myself looking for another group. I rarely even win when we play board games.

If you want to chat gaming to a designer you can do that already. You don’t need a secret pass. If you’re a cool and groovy person they’ll happily talk to you. But there are no secret meetings, VIP designer only bars or secret conventions you’ll get invited to. As with all creative enterprises, if you are not doing it to do the work you probably shouldn’t be doing it. Games designers love to talk about games, but they love making games. Praise for your game is nice, but it usually comes with equal amounts of ranting and hate mail. None of them are doing it to lord it over other gamers, they do it because they love games and want to make them. That’s really the only reason to get into this industry, and in most cases it’s the only reason people keep working in it.