Deus Ex Machinatio

Publishing, Self-Promotion, and Amazon v. Macmillan

It's been a fabulously interesting weekend in the publishing world. The Cliff's Notes version: Amazon pulled all print and digital editions of Macmillan's books from sale when the two reached a negotiating impasse regarding the pricing of Kindle editions of Macmillan titles. Macmillan is one of the six big publishing houses, so this was a big deal; basically Amazon removed about a sixth of their stock. If you're interested in the comprehensive details, check out these analyses written by John Scalzi, Scott Westerfeld, and Charlie Stross.

A fun time was had by all. Or actually, now that I think about it, by nobody.

There is, however, a tangential issue I would like to address. I've seen a common refrain bubble up over this hullabaloo: "Soon, the entire publishing chain will collapse, and an author will be able to sell to readers directly!" Or a variant: "When the iBookstore comes, authors will be able to publish their own work and set their own book prices!"

Oh god, I think. What a nightmarish future that would be, indeed, in which every author is reduced to self-publishing. Why would anybody think such a thing is desirable, much less inevitable? Even aside from the stigma of self-publishing, let me explain just why this is a dystopian endgame.

First, as a reader, I look to the publisher as providing a sort of affidavit of quality. If I weren't interested in quality, I could buy books indiscriminately on Lulu or iUniverse. I do not do this. And if you look at the numbers... nobody else does, either. This teaches us two important lessons: First, promoting a self-published book is really hard. Second: Nobody is going out on a limb to try out cheap but potentially lousy ebooks. There's a reason people get paid to read slush, and not the other way around.

It's also no big secret that I'm trying to claw my way up the ladder into the treehouse of traditional publishing. Hopefully it won't fall out of the tree first (or at all). As a writer, if the traditional publishing model ceased to exist, if your only choice as an author were to put your work out there and promote the hell out of it your own self, you know what I'd do? I'd probably stop writing novels. 

I have a trait that is not rare among writers: I loathe promoting myself and my own work. 

In the golden world that exists only in my head, I make stuff, and then somebody else hands me cash for it. I at no point need to hustle for clients, network, chase payments, or any other pesky administrative task. In reality, these are necessary evils to keep my freelance business running. But I only need to successfully market myself to a handful of people in order to be successful as an ARG writer. Those are the creative directors, project managers, team leads, etc. at the agencies I look to work with. 

After that, the marketing muscle and know-how of wiser heads than mine combined with the quality of the experience I am designing work together to build an active and engaged audience. The people hiring me have the dollars to put up commercials, billboards and posters; the designers to make them interesting; and the savvy to know where they should go. They attract attention. My job is to keep it and build on it.

If I were completely on the hook to build that audience all by my lonesome, I'm sure I'd do a pretty miserable job. I know this because I have done a miserable job many a time before! The participation and readership numbers I get for my personal projects - this here blog, My Super First Day, what have you -- they aren't in the same ballpark as my big games, not by multiple orders of magnitude. I frankly don't think I could build an audience of several thousand or more for a book without any marketing support. And it's not because I think my work isn't pretty great. It's because self-promoting is hard, it's expensive, it takes time away from creating, and just plain isn't the talent I've spent my life honing. 

I'm curious to know where other people see the future of publishing heading, though. Think I'm wrong-headed, misguided, pessimistic? Go ahead and comment. I'd love to hear what you think.

Doing Your Best, No Exceptions

I just read a brilliant post on always aiming to do your best work by ann_leckie at LiveJournal. (Found via the wise and talented Elizabeth Bear, who has an ongoing habit of posting things that make me think harder and write better.) Go read it yourself. 

It dovetails nicely with a couple of the bullet points I wrote in my March post, Some Things I've Learned About ARG Design. Particularly this one: 

• Content is a reward. Make sure the content you provide is worth the effort you're rewarding. Even an autoresponder should be worth the time it takes to read it. 

And this one too: 

• Each discrete piece of your game should be independently entertaining in its own right, even if the player never sees another piece of it. 

It's getting at the same thing: Always try to do the best you can. Make sure you're making every possible piece of content that your audience will see is the best that you can make it. 

But this is an ideal -- or to be more specific, it's my ideal -- and it's really, really hard to do. It made me think about doing your best and trying your hardest. Comparing it to my many years of hair-raising tales from behind the curtain, I thought: "But Andrea, if you were really trying your best, why did you...?" 

This is where I think transmedia as a performance art has a particularly soft, weak point, where it hurts if you poke us too hard. We get a lot of our ideals and standards from related but distinctly different disciplines. With a novel, for example, you generally have the liberty to look at the story a month later to see if it still makes sense. With a play, you can rehearse every day for six weeks before your premiere. 

But you can't revise an ARG. You don't get much time to rehearse, either. The show must go on, even when something doesn't go according to plan, even when you've missed a deadline, even when something has broken. In my experience, an ARG is by definition never, ever the best you could have possibly made it, if you had had a little more time, or a little more money, or or or... 

Sometimes you craft an amazing piece of content or game mechanic, and it gets cut or unrecognizably altered or is simply never built for cruel but undeniable reasons like timing or budget. Or maybe that perfect idea conflicts with a throwaway line you shoved into the first week for color, and now you can't do it without breaking the story. No take-backsies! And sometime the implementation of an idea isn't as shiny as you'd hoped; maybe there are bugs, maybe there are typos. (And I promise you, there are always bugs and typos.) 

You could fix these things, sure... in a perfect world, with unlimited resources and development time. But you know, we don't get that. Not even close. Probably never will, either.

So I do try to live up that lofty ideal, to always, always do my best work. But at the same time, I wonder if I couldn't be more forgiving of myself during all those coulda-shoulda-woulda moments. Like the actor who falls on their face during their big entrance, it's not that I'm not trying my best, it's that sometimes my best isn't perfect. And maybe... maybe that's OK, too, as long as I'm always striving and always getting better.

See You in Austin!

I am thrilled, boggled, amazed, and other combinations of excited-plus-surprised to say that I'm in the first batch of speakers for SXSW this year, announced today. My topic is ARGs and Women: Moving Beyond the Hot Brunette, and I find the more I think about this subject, the more I have to say about it. 

This will also be my first time at SXSW, so I feel like I need some mentoring. Anyone have any SXSW-related advice for me?

An Open Letter to the Person on IM Last Night

Launching a game is hard. I get it, trust me. Finding an audience of receptive players and approaching them in a novel way is lots of work. Keeping them interested is even more work. Sometimes you want to be blunt and just tell people where to look. 

And that's OK. More than OK, it's great! I am all about telling people that you have a game on.

There are a lot of ways to do this, but let me tell you what not to do: Don't randomly approach somebody on IM with a new/unfriended account and send only a URL. Because you know who does that? People who want to sell me ¢14l|$, that's who. If I get an unsolicited IM from an unfamiliar account and it's just a URL, do you know what I do? I block that account so it never bothers me again. 

You know what I absolutely don't do? Click on the link. That's because, given its dubious source, it's likely to be an eyeball-stabbing fiesta of horrific web design at the very best, and thoroughly infested with malware at worst. 

But there's another reason not to take a blanket approach to pinging people on IM that you should consider. Know your audience, dude. If you're taking the time to reach out to people one at a time -- or however many you can IM with at once -- then you have time to figure out who those people are, and whether they're receptive to what you have on offer. Let me give you a hint: if you are considering IMing me from an in-game account by way of introducing me to your game, I am not receptive to your advances.

If you are a friend or well-known colleague of mine, you will get a warm response from me if you approach me as yourself and say, "Hey, Andrea, I made this thing, take a look." I promise this is both cheap and effective.

If you don't actually know me, you probably need to rethink your approach to launching. I'm not a marketing vehicle, I'm a person. More, I'm a person who hasn't been an active or vocal player for any game in years, literally years, and who has already made my wishes regarding unsolicited trailheads very clear in the past. I've written about this exact problem with email before, and less than a year ago. (There must be something about September.)

But hey, if you want to be friends, then hop on in to the ARG SIG chat room and say hello. Once I get to know and like you, I'd probably be perfectly happy to help you launch your game.

Indy Film Wisconsin, Here I Come!

I'll be a guest on the Indy Film Wisconsin podcast tomorrow, talking about alternate reality games in general and their relationship with the film industry in specific. The live cast is at 11am Eastern time. There's even a call-in number!

I'd love it if you'd tune in to give me a little moral support. See you then!

Hot Brunettes at SXSW

It should come as no surprise to any of you that gender in gaming is something a spend a lot of time and thought on. And in fact it's the topic of my proposed talk at SXSW this year: ARGs and Women: Moving Beyond the Hot Brunette.

Let's cut and paste my description, shall we?

ARGs are often trotted out as a shining example of woman-friendly games. They boast unusually high rates of female developers and players, and a slew of kick-ass female leads. But if you dig a little deeper, are they just the post-Buffy version of Princess Peach, always needing to be saved?

If that sounds like something you'd be interested in hearing, then please, go to the SXSW panel picker and give me a big ol' thumbs up.  

 

I'm by no means the only interesting panel submitted, of course. My friends at Six to Start have some proposals in, and Brooke Thompson has a fantastic and selfless write-up of several panels beyond her own submissions.

It's going to be a great conference this year, any way you slice it. Hope to see you there!

The Institute for Human Continuity

Several weeks ago, I was given the opportunity to join a truly amazing project. I'm incredibly excited to tell you that I've begun consulting with the Institute for Human Continuity.

This tremendous responsibility began with a bang -- as some of you may already know, the IHC is conducting a search to find the Leader of the Post-2012 World. The entry phase of the election isn't that far away, so if you hope to be the Leader of the Post-2012 World, sign up now, before time runs out. 

Meanwhile, my work at the IHC is only just beginning. I'm tremendously proud of the plans I've made with the IHC. I do hope you'll join me on this journey.

Another Step Toward Global Domination

I've got a guest post on the blog over at Luxurious Animals. If you've been reading me for long, very little of it will be new to you, but I'm proud of the piece because it contains the most succinct description of what the heck an ARG is that I've ever come up with. 

Check it out and let me know what you think. I'm sure there must be at least one or two of you out there who don't quite agree with me. 

Tribute to Dave Szulborski

A moment of silence to mourn the passing of Dave S., game designer, author, and all-around warm, wonderful human being. 

We'll all miss you. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, there's more information here.)

Some Things I've Learned About ARG Design

In no particular order. Design goals, best practices, aesthetic principles. Some things I find myself striving toward, talking about, doing. It's categorically untrue that I always do all of these things, of course. But maybe you can see what I'm reaching toward.

Feel free to add, elaborate, or dispute in comments.

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Content is a reward. Make sure the content you provide is worth the effort you're rewarding. Even an autoresponder should be worth the time it takes to read it. 

Never, never let effort go unrewarded, even if the effort isn't what you expected or wanted. 

That said, don't excessively reward players heading in the wrong direction -- the volume with which you respond is an indication as to whether they're barking up the wrong tree. 

Each discrete piece of your game should be independently entertaining in its own right, even if the player never sees another piece of it. 

If you want to make a game for a mass audience, there should be something for every level of involvement, if possible, and for as many kinds of players as you can manage: explorers, achievers, socializers, killers; more than just spectators, speculators and solvers. Read up on Dr. Bartle. 

Try to make an experience that would make sense even to a single player who is too shy or otherwise unmotivated to find or join a community. 

Be aware of trolls. Consider interactive elements of your design from the perspective of somebody who has the most fun when defecating into somebody else's swimming pool. 

Reference new content streams from within a known-in-game source as soon after discovery as possible. Once firmly established, this habit both supports the players' effort by acknowledging it and helps to prevent gamejacking. 

Again, for a large-scale game, whenever possible, keep all communication in the open. Do as little as possible through private IM and email. This scales much better and will save you time and headaches. 

Consider structure. Completely open-ended games can lose players who miss a road sign and get lost. Structure can mean a guide through the experience (often a cute brunette girl). It can mean a central website acting as a story clearinghouse. Just make sure players know where to look, and when, rather than guessing.

Make sure it's obvious to your players what their current goal is. Uncertainty isn't that much fun. 

Use your structure to provide clear calls to action from time to time. It's helpful to get everybody on the same page now and again. 

Provide rolling recaps. This serves two purposes: It allows existing players to attend to an urgency (vacation, term paper, conference) without risk of losing the thread of the story. It also allows new players a simple way to jump in, even late in the game. 

Value your players' time and attention as much as they do. Don't release a lot of content solely for the sake of having a lot of content; don't create a lot of puzzles solely for the sake of having a lot of puzzles. It's surprisingly easy to overwhelm players with more information than they can process at once. 

Manage expectations carefully. Don't commit yourself to a volume of content you can't realistically do, like live IM around the clock, or fifteen updates every single day. 

The players will generally care less about plausibility than you do. Still, you need to put in the footwork on the motivations and actions of your cast. Make sure you understand how all of the parts of your game fit together, or the gears will grind instead of spinning. 

Never let realism get in the way of fun.