On freedom and money

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Erundil
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On freedom and money

Post by Erundil » Sun May 26, 2013 01:51

I did not write this in the other post, because it's not strictly concerning game rules.

The idea of having the freedom to print cards and play, without spending a tonne of money is great. However, part of the thrill for CCGs is that you can't get all the cards you want istantaneously. Tournaments and trades become an important matter, because they are money-related.


1 - Printing cards may not be handy for many (lazy) people. I think having the ability to order from the official site, would be a great boost. Cost-wise, they would pay expedition and printing costs, and a 'donation fee' that will go in the projects fund. I think Debian does something similar with installation CDs/DVDs.

2 - I think having some pictures of actually printed cards would be great!

3 - Tournament-wise, will wtactics.org play a major role? After all, is the games' makers, and every respectable CCG has national and world leagues.

Lastly, I have learned that money is power, and in the last years much more than before - as such, while taking none remains a noble act, it is almost impossible to do something without it; money is not inherently evil, it is its use that makes it so.
Creating a CCG requires an incredible amount of manwork: developers, testers, artists, writers, translators, tournaments organization.
So, rather than having people give their time for free, and people receiving the game, giving nothing in exchange, wtactics might take something from people, without becoming expensive, and reward the efforts of those who worked on to it.
A non-profit organisation might do much better than an open one.

This last part especially is for the future and for snowdrop.
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snowdrop
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Re: On freedom and money

Post by snowdrop » Sun May 26, 2013 02:53

Erundil wrote: The idea of having the freedom to print cards and play, without spending a tonne of money is great. However, part of the thrill for CCGs is that you can't get all the cards you want istantaneously.
Yes, for some people I'd agree it is. For others not, they wouldn't focus on collecting, just on playing. I'm not sure not getting something is part of the thrill even for thise that do collect. The thrill seems to be there when they get. ;)
Tournaments and trades become an important matter, because they are money-related.
For active players of games where there is artifically created scarcity, aka "rarity" of cards, trades are mainly important as a means of acquisition of the cards you desire but lack. For some of course it could also be a way to make a buck, but these are a minority of the total pool of people involved around the game and they'd be better of buying/selling whatever else if they are really in it for the cash alone.

Likewise, most participants in tournaments in 90% of the games are not in them mainly for the prizemoney as almost all board/card games played have modest prizes. Most are in tourneys because it's fun and/or they want social recognition or to test their skills.

All in all I agree that both trades and tournaments have a role on a CCG scene, for different reasons.

1 - Printing cards may not be handy for many (lazy) people. I think having the ability to order from the official site, would be a great boost. Cost-wise, they would pay expedition and printing costs, and a 'donation fee' that will go in the projects fund. I think Debian does something similar with installation CDs/DVDs.
We'll probably offer something like that and try to keep it near self-cost prices and low "profit" margins that will have to be reinvested into the project anyhow.
2 - I think having some pictures of actually printed cards would be great!
Such pictures were put on our facebook page and, at the time, our blog some year ago. They were developed as digital photos and are of great pro quality. Needless to say they also need to be sleeved to last and be handable. Once the game goes to print we will show additional pictures so people can get an understanding of the quality.
3 - Tournament-wise, will wtactics.org play a major role? After all, is the games' makers, and every respectable CCG has national and world leagues.
The WTactics.org domain and server(s) will function as a "hub" for whatever we believe should be officially associated with the game. World leagues/ladders and tournaments is a goal, but all that kind of work starts on local levels, in local game stores, among friends around a kitchen table or on the internet.

All that said, if people want to host/arrange tournaments, leagues etc on other sites or other forms than the ones we will declare official we won't interfere: The players should always be free to play the game wherever and however they want. All such initiatives are good in the long run, but only after the game has gotten a playerbase that has first agreed on some kind of central meeting ground, being us probably, else the community will be too fractioned and splintered up and people will have a hard time to get in touch with other players, finding games etc, leading to the demise of the game.
Lastly, I have learned that money is power, and in the last years much more than before - as such, while taking none remains a noble act, it is almost impossible to do something without it; money is not inherently evil, it is its use that makes it so.
It's true that money can open open the possibility to do some things and is indeed outright needed: We need to pay for servers, need to pay for art and so on. That said, money in and by itself will never buy true dedication or true interest in a project where a person only gets involved in it because he/she gets paid to participate in its development or community. Once the money ends or the person gets a better salary elsewhere, the person is gone.

There is no statement anywhere on WTactics where we claim that money is bad. On the contrary we recognize the need of it, hence we ask for donations. Currently we get about 10 USD per month, from one person, and some random 2 - 5 usd/month from flattr. Everything else is more or less paid by myself.
Creating a CCG requires an incredible amount of manwork: developers, testers, artists, writers, translators, tournaments organization.
So, rather than having people give their time for free, and people receiving the game, giving nothing in exchange, wtactics might take something from people, without becoming expensive, and reward the efforts of those who worked on to it.
A non-profit organisation might do much better than an open one.
There isn't any contradiction between openness, community driven, open source and commercial interests or economical self-sustainability for a project.

As it currently stands we can't make any money to help put a "turbo" on the further development of the game since the game isn't ready for release. It isn't ready for release because not enough people have the possibility or interest to spend enough time on it's development, which isn't strange considering the handful of people that choose to be active also have full time jobs, studies, families and so on. Summed up progression is much slower than we prefer it to be, but it's there nevertheless.

Once at least two balanced factions have been released it will be more meaningful to try to make money from related sales. Those sales will however not cover all the costs and expenses that has gone into the project up until then, nor the coming work. They will contribute to financing parts of the project but will not be enough to hire even a single full-time developer of any kind, be it coder or rule developer.

Furthermore, once you start paying a person for creating card ideas, playtesting and so on you also create a very strange situation when you take something that the community, the players, suggested/created and incorporate that into the game. One guy posts an idea, he gets replies from 24 other people, 10 of the 24 really do have lengthy discussions, and a month later a dev sees the thread, takes whatever was suggested, tweaks it somehow, and puts it into the game. Now, who should get paid, how much, for what work, and why? Needless to say all such equations are impossible to pull of in the long run, and they tend to create more bad blood, conflicts and a crappy attitude within a community than they actually stimulate work or creativity.

I believe we should create a game where we should be as little restricted as possible by the commercial powers and peoples individual greed or other need of cash. Don't get me wrong - I'd be happy to throw surplus money on people that have devoted hundreds of hours on the community or the game development somehow and that do an extraordinary work and it would be nice to show some appreciation in that way as well - I just don't see that happening anytime soon unless somebody magically demonstrates to us how to pull that of. Most of the time though and the initial period there won't be such funds to waste on such things. Financing art and perhaps code will be more pressing for the games survival in the long term.

As a game we have a far greater chance of succeeding with market penetration by being truly free and also offering quality. By combining those two factors we will, in theory, have a chance to actually reach people and create something that will be played. Once that has happened to some extent there are plenty of ways to "make money" without restricting the game, taking it away from the players or turning it into a false "free" game.

To ever get where we need to arrive we can't be focusing on money-issues all of the way. All those discussions are secondary. Only thing that helps now is manpower and donations.
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