I am the Warden!!
After reading fellow OTGD Fraser Ronald post about his Kickstarter endeavor on the Black Gate site yesterday, this particular paragraph caught my eye, travelled along its corneal pathway and began feasting on the cognitive processes of my brain. In this post, Fraser's comparing his success to the success of another OTGD member, Jason Pitre, and his Spark RPG Kickstarter.
Publicity is a bitch. Or an asshole, depending on your preference. It's all fine and dandy to have created something, but it needs to latch on to the public's attention to grow, fester, and mature to become noticed, then appreciated, and finally applauded. It's a concentrated game of chance unless you have any combination of natural charisma, connections, money, and more importantly, time. This is something Jason Pitre had plenty of for his Spark RPG Kickstarter and kudos to him for it.
Of those four lucky charms, I have one. Time. And even then, I don't. It's the curse of hindsight to look at someone else's achievements and kick yourself for not aiming in the same direction and I try not to get caught up in doing things exactly like others. However, there are great lessons to learn from others and I'd offer no service to myself and my work if I didn't look at what these two have done (yes, Fraser, even you) and make notes.
After reading fellow OTGD Fraser Ronald post about his Kickstarter endeavor on the Black Gate site yesterday, this particular paragraph caught my eye, travelled along its corneal pathway and began feasting on the cognitive processes of my brain. In this post, Fraser's comparing his success to the success of another OTGD member, Jason Pitre, and his Spark RPG Kickstarter.
Compare the success of Centurion with the success of Spark. The difference? Jason Pitre has spent four years not only perfecting his game (puts my year to shame . . . head hanging over here) but also being heavily involved in the RPG community. That pays off when it comes time to release. He knows lots of people, and those people know his game, and they will proselytize for him. Now, I doubt Jason was only involved in the RPG community with the expectation of drawing on the community to help pimp his game, and I further doubt that his community ties were the only differences between our campaigns – Spark is a very different game than Centurion– but it helped to get the word out to people to whom his game would interest.
Publicity is a bitch. Or an asshole, depending on your preference. It's all fine and dandy to have created something, but it needs to latch on to the public's attention to grow, fester, and mature to become noticed, then appreciated, and finally applauded. It's a concentrated game of chance unless you have any combination of natural charisma, connections, money, and more importantly, time. This is something Jason Pitre had plenty of for his Spark RPG Kickstarter and kudos to him for it.
Of those four lucky charms, I have one. Time. And even then, I don't. It's the curse of hindsight to look at someone else's achievements and kick yourself for not aiming in the same direction and I try not to get caught up in doing things exactly like others. However, there are great lessons to learn from others and I'd offer no service to myself and my work if I didn't look at what these two have done (yes, Fraser, even you) and make notes.
