For some reason, comments aren’t working for me– I can’t seem to be able to comment, and I don’t know if this is a just-me thing or if it’s something other people are having issues with. (I think it must be a wider problem, because the spam comments have slowed down a lot.) Someone did manage to comment, however! This is what GBSteve had to say:

Do you have to pay for playtesting? I’m sure there will be volunteers for such an exciting project (like me).

Also, unless you think it supping with the devil, you might consider other sources of venture capital, arts grants or support from publishers/distributers. Some of these guys can be very flexible.

Here’s the thing, Steve. What I “pay for” when it comes to playtesting is, honestly, stuff I’d pay for anyway, 90% of the time. I love making a good meal for people when they come over to play. I like going to cons; I always go to JiffyCon, but I’m on the fence about PAX East because the tickets are $50. (That said, I am more than likely going to suck it up and go; it’s a new con, a break-off of one that’s extremely popular, and I want to get my games in front of new audiences.) So I posted playtesting to kind of acknowledge that it’s one of those invisible costs: I do these things to promote and improve my game, and they cost money– but they are things I’d probably still do for fun if I wasn’t working on a game. That said, I will take up every single playtesting offer I get, and hope to have a rough but mechanically complete playtest document ready soon after JiffyCon, November 14th.

As to other sources of revenue: it’s a fine line. Ultimately, I want people to give me money when the game is finished, because it will be more likely to become profit and not sunk into production costs. Also, this is approximately 20 times my starting budget for any of my previous projects, so I feel a bit silly saying “I need more money than this, guys.” That said, there are a couple of printers, etc. that I’m planning to talk to about cutting me a deal, and explaining the nature of my project to them, etc. It’s interesting, because the consumers of indie games are, I feel, far more likely to need the services of a quality POD printer than most customers that buy things that have been printed on demand, so perhaps there’s a promotional thing I might be able to work out with them. I’m going to go over print quotes in my next post, actually.

Filed under: Blowback, Dissolute Games by Elizabeth