This is a response I wrote to a Dungeon Mastering reader who was wondering how to get noticed in the RPG industry.

How do you compete with free?

Here’s the thing about working in the gaming and creative writing fields: people do it for free.  With a little effort, WOTC could get free content for almost all their magazine articles. I know I get enough free articles sent my way to have 10 decent articles per month for free on Dungeon Mastering.

However, good game companies don’t want free stuff from amateurs. They are looking for writers with a unique voice. As a writer, the only to find your own unique voice is to write, write, and write some more. Do it for yourself. Do it for your friends.

Another thing to keep in mind when you write is the reader, the customer. We all write stuff for our campaigns which is fun and cool when we play it with our friends.  But the value of what we prepare is rarely in the writing. The value is in the flow of the game – we prepared our game by writing content so the story flows naturally – and the value is also in ourselves – our personality, our enthusiasm. We sell the story to our friends, in a way. They are a receptive audience and we have the benefit of using context, body language, and assumptions. This is impossible when you write for complete strangers.

So the first step is to do it for yourself, write, write some more, and find your own unique style and voice. Oh, and publish everything to a blog – it’s free and easy and makes your work available to everyone.  The second step, once you have found your voice, is to start writing with the reader in mind. Every word you write has to be about the reader. Do you think what you write is cool? Probably. You have to if you want to have fun writing. But it doesn’t matter what you think of your own writing. What matters is your reader, your customer. What does your work do for them?

Always keep your reader in mind. Make a difference in their game, in how they play, and you’ll get noticed. At first, hardcore gamers will find your blog. If you make a difference in their life, they’ll tell their friends. Word of mouth, FTW! It’s slow growth, but with consistent, regular work, people will take notice, Google will take notice, and you will grow your audience and eventually some gaming company might notice you. But at that point it doesn’t matter anymore.

By that point you will have found your unique voice, you will have built an audience, you will have new contacts – readers and other bloggers. It doesn’t matter what the big companies think anymore because once you figure out who you are, what you can do for others, and how to get people to pay attention to you, numerous opportunities will be there for you to seize.

Have fun on your journey.

4 Responses to “How do I get noticed in the gaming industry?”

  1. Tennessee Leeuwenburg Oct 30, 2009 at 6:41 pm #

    Hi there,

    I’m an RPG enthusiast, and I also have a background in computer science. Lately I’ve been working on a game world and system of my own, but I don’t know how to take it further. I’ve written about 6,500 words of world information, character archetypes and some system mechanics. I believe I have a few things in there to be really proud of, but I don’t have the time to build a finished product all by myself. I believe that what I’ve done could be turned into a great product, but I just don’t know what to do next! Any suggestions?

    Thanks,
    -Tennessee

  2. Yax Oct 30, 2009 at 7:59 pm #

    A good place to start is to figure out the benefits your product provides. What does it do for the customer? And especially, what does it do for the customer that other products don’t?

    Once you figure that out, it’s easier to pitch your idea to potential partner, or it might even focus your vision and let you tackle the project by yourself.

  3. Tennessee Leeuwenburg Oct 31, 2009 at 6:44 am #

    That sounds like very sensible advice. Some of the things I have which I think are unique are:
    — The ‘game universe’ backstory
    — About seven different character classes which are all substantially different without requiring any ‘crazy rules’ to make them so
    — An idea for character advancement rules which makes it very easy to play without metagaming

    I thought maybe I’d start small — write up one character class in detail, or a short story in my setting etc, but I’m worried about what I should release for free. Will it be a turn off for bigger games companies if some of the material is out there in the wild? Does releasing stuff for free devalue later products?

    Also, I’m worried that bigger companies will only be interested in things which are ‘their system’. Is that true?

    Thanks again for your comments! I don’t want to bombard you guys, but your advice is priceless!

    Thanks,
    -Tennessee

  4. Johnn Oct 31, 2009 at 9:11 am #

    Hi Tennessee,

    That is excellent thinking, offering a freebie!

    Unfortunately, bigger game companies do not usually buy game worlds. They prefer to incubate them themselves according to their specs. Smaller game companies might be interested, as creating worlds in detail is a lot of work, but likely as you say, exclusive to their system.

    Be sure to surf around RPGNow and the internet for game worlds. There are some amazing ones out there that you’d be competing against.

    Look at their descriptions to see what they’re claiming makes them unique to get some good ideas on how to position your product differently.