Customers who want the RPG industry to continue to thrive and grow outside of a handful of bigger publishers able to weather the storm of hugely increased prices on print products are going to have to become comfortable paying realistic prices for digital products. $5 PDFs aren't going to cut it.
Comments
A good TTRPG, with friends that enjoy playing it, can last for years.
You don't need to buy a new one every week. Or every month. You may not need to buy pre-written modules; your GM may like to make them (and have time).
Your average gamer is not going to spend $50/week on games. (And probably not $20.) And there are thousands to choose from.
Would I buy more if I skipped the bundles? No, because I wouldn't be spending hours clicking around https://itch.io looking at other games.
I have over 3,000 ttrpgs I'm pretty sure I'll never play. Probably more like 6,000.
You get together with a pack of friends and play a game you all enjoy.
The weekend hobby doesn't have a subscription cost.
Typically we price a PDF at half the hardcover price. (Distro math vs DTRPG math suggests this gives about the same revenue per sale)
Thought should be put into what those differentiating bells & whistles are.
Wargame publishers frequently do a black and white 100 page book for 20 USD in PDF and people have no issue with it, but for RPG folks, they expect double the page count in full colour for that price (and then still ask if theres a Pay What You Want)
I won't take a chance on indie TTRPG PDFs because my money is already going to the games I know for certain my table and I will enjoy.
That's the reality, I'm afraid.
That's how the market works
Either sell for less or cut your costs
It's a really complicated relationship between reach, saturation, reputation, etc.
There's a catch 22 where I can't reduce costs because people expect high production value, and I can sell for less because of the costs.
People expect too much for too little.
The problem here isn't all the people not buying your game the problem here is your game, you need to figure out why relative to the rest of the people selling these games you're producing it at too much of a cost
That's why marketing is so important. Your product might not be the problem at all. People just might not be seeing it or knowing what it is.
If you know you're not going to have good marketing, and know that it's not going to be out there as much as a lot of other products you have to sell cheaper than those other products to get people to even look
The content is the same digitally or physically and that's still the majority of what you're paying for.
You don't get to whine about the market when your a business owner because it doesn't help you
And blocking people that disagree with your pricing is a terrible idea
Like literally the only difference between the two is the cost of the paper which is not really THAT big a portion of the overall cost of a book anyway...
RPGs don't grow on trees, folks.
I've no idea how I'm going to continue to afford production, never mind setting a realistic price point...
I can't afford to even make a living anymore 😭
Like I suspect 99% of purchases are something like "wow! looks neat!" and then just browse it a few times and never read or play it.
If you want indies and even big label games to survive AND want them to pay human talent what they deserve - you need to be willing to pay more for it.
PDF versions also need - NEED - both screen/full color and ink saving versions. No fecking backgrounds on the ink friendly ones!
At the end of the day, you're buying a book to read. If you buy the book and read it, you still got the product. The writer can't make you enjoy it, they can only write it. It's up to you whether you like it or not. It's the same with all printed media.
I'm Australian, so $20 for me is like $12-15 US.
But if I agree $20 usd isn't a small amount of money.
But also, plenty of people can afford it and will still ask for the price to be lower, simply because other games did it.
I'm willing to pay for the work they put in. I'm asking for enough insight into their game so I have a reasonable expectation that it's something I'll enjoy
The formatting shouldn't have to be stated but it does
I understand wanting to enjoy the stuff you purchase. I just feel like people won't know if they'll enjoy something until they actually experience it, rather than just a snippet.