(So I wrote this yesterday, then I had a conversation with Chris that covered some similar ground to the end of it. I want to write more about that part, as well, but I think that’s for tomorrow, rather than today. I’m going to put Chris’s comment at the end as a foreshadowing thing.)
(Also, hi Adam, hi Lukas! Adam, Eero’s response sums up my feelings, but I do owe you a longer post in response once we’re done with this other topic.)
(This will eventually tie into Jake’s thing.)
Paul Czege posted something a few years ago, let me see if I can dig up the link, where he talked about the overjustification effect and how he thought it was critical to be aware of it and that it was going to be a negative influence on our community.
(found the post. Also, the overjustification effect)
At the time I was somewhat rankled by it, but I really do think that Paul is totally right about this. Furthermore, people keep talking about the hobbyist / semi-professional split in our community (here’s a link the Clinton’s blog, just as an example: in short, hobbyists are people who don’t need or use the money from their game design, semi-professionals depend on it as a source of income), and I think you’d expect to see the overjustification effect (wrt money) most present amongst the semi-professional designers, simply because the money is a bigger deal to them.
Right now I have an ideal opportunity to check and see if this hypothesis has worked out. Why? Because Bliss Stage has not had as good sales as Polaris. In fact, Bliss Stage’s release seems to have also slowed Polaris’s sales, which is something that I find amusingly puzzling (Chris proposed the theory that a potential customer, presented with two games by me both with B&W covers, will be confused and just buy a Dragon magazine instead. Presumably a back issue.)
(There are a lot of reasons for Bliss Stage’s weak sales. One is that I have done absolutely zero work to reach out the Bliss Stage’s target audience, whereas Polaris’s target audience I did a lot more work towards. Another is an absolute boon-doggle of early marketing. It is also possible that it is simply a worse game, although I certainly don’t have that assessment of it. But those probably belong in other posts.)
So, if I were falling victim to the overjustification effect with respect to money, I’d be really unmotivated to do any game work right now. Let me be clear. I totally expect that I would be prone to this sort of thing. If you asked me 8 months ago “so, if Bliss Stage doesn’t sell well, do you think that you’ll fall victim to the overjustification effect and lose interest in game design?” I’d have replied “yeah, probably. I hope that I’d be able to fight it and get back in touch with what was really exciting to me about game designing.”
In fact, though, I’m more excited about game design and publishing that I have been at any point since 2005. I felt bad about Bliss Stage not selling as well as Polaris for about a day, just after GenCon, then I got over myself and I’ve been cruising on an uptick ever since. Not a glimmer of monetary overjustification in sight.
That’s really, really, strange to me. I mean, I depend on the money from sales for a major portion of my income. I should feel bad about this. But, still, I haven’t.
This makes me think that there might be other, stronger external motivators at play. I mean, I totally would love to think that I’m a perfect artist only motivated by my own desire to create (and, you know, that is ultimately why I bother with this) but if I’m being honest with myself I know that I’m quite susceptible to disinterest, frustration, and depression, particularly with creative endeavors.
And, just today, something hit me. There are other forces amongst our communities that motivate people a lot more than the money does. In particular: attention, praise, fannishness, and group identity.
I want to talk more about the economy in all these things, which I think I’ll call “the attention economy” but I think that that’s enough for one article. I’ll leave you with Chris’s e-mail from yesterday, which is spot on.
Me:
> I worry sometimes that we’re becoming a peer-pressure motivated community.
Chris:
I think in many ways, we already are. I think this is also where you
see a big split between the “indie community” vs. say, the new folks at
the Forge. The former you see a XXXXtreme Street Luge effect and the
latter is someone who is trying to make a game, who being an unknown
name, gets next to no attention. The latter folks are basically the
folks designing because they want a game at the end of it.
It’s also part of the reason I have no concerns or trip over the lack
of schedule for the stuff I’m designing- if it takes 5 years to
playtest and produce, but it’s what I want, then I’m ok with it- I’m
not worried about pushing on hype, which is something I think we’re
seeing happen a lot here. Not hype just for sales, but more hype for
attention and approval.
There’s certainly games I’d like to see come out sooner- Galactic and
Stranger Things, for example, but if the creators don’t feel totally
comfortable with their games, I don’t want them pushed by my (or the
community’s) hype and excitement wave.
So I often tell people online that I am not designing games and will not design games.
This is crap. I design games all the time. I am even designing some games that are going to be for eventual publication and sale.
And yet I tell people these things because I want them to step the fuck off and stop thinking that they have a say over what I produce, or how, or when. I design games for my reasons, not for theirs, and I get very, very sick and tired of the assumptions, entitlements, and stupid over generalizations about “the right” ways to design games or make design communities.
I’m not going to design in public, and if you think I should you can fuck yourself. I am not going to design for your movement, and if you think I should you can fuck yourself. I am not going to design for social credit, and my “I don’t design” is really a way of telling people who I think put too much emphasis on that to fuck themselves too.
(Note: “You” is not Ben. You is the other you.)
Its also worth noting that there are a very few places in which I will discuss design and the stuff I’m doing — on a few blogs, in Google talk with a few people, and on private forums here and there. Any place where I’m dealing with folks that I have a relationship with that isn’t based on design = fan = attention = identity, basically.
Oh, and because it wasn’t clear above — this is in reaction to my own overjustifications in the past. There have been times when I’ve let extrinsic rewards ruin things I was doing for intrinsic reasons (poetry being a big example), and so I’ve a big “step off” response to times where it happens now.
Hi, Ben!
Actually, it seems to me that the hobbyist would be more susceptible to the overjustification effect than would the semi-pro. Since the hobbyist CAN just walk away if the money is disappointing, that loss of motivation might be all that it takes for them to give up game design entirely. Something akin to that “bummed for one day after GenCon” could easily extend into being the end of the whole operation.
It seems to me that the semi-pro has the additional motivator of financial need urging them to refind their joy in creation. Sort of “I better get my head on straight and design something great if I don’t want to eat ramen for the next six months.”
I’m closer to the hobbyist end of things, but my convention attendance has become closely linked to my game income. I’d like to get back to GenCon in 2009, but in order to do that I need to publish. Which means I’ve got to get my head on straight yet again.
Hi Michael,
I don’t know, I think the big difference is in how the two types are receiving their attention dividends.
The true hobbyist might just spew a few cool posts about ideas, and really unformed stuff that sounds cool, that generates excitement for a few weeks, or few months. Depending on how much the person can keep up the “I’m excited, I design, you’re excited, so I’m excited…” cycle, you might get a full game out of it, or it might die in the water.
The publishing for profit guy, might actually only be breaking even or even losing money, but for him or her, publishing the game is necessary before any kind of real hype or money will kick in. Even if they lose all their money, if the game has some kind of cult following, you’ll see it get hype payoff over time.
The difference is that overjustification kills the former before they’ve produced a game, while it kills the latter after they’ve produced a game. In either case, if the reward factor compromises the point of making a good game, you’ve got a bad situation at hand.
This is not different than the indie music scene, and I suspect, most other art scenes and probably a lot more.
So true.
I go in cycles, talk about a game, try to get it played, fail, put projects aside till I lose the angst, and repeat.
Hey Ben. This is the first time I read your blog. And that´s because I bought the Bliss Stage pdf from IPR.
I live in Buenos Aires. I like pdfs. I ask publishers to do pdfs of their work so I can buy 3 pdfs for the money it costs me to ship one physical book.
I have read about half of the book. The setting is surprising. I knew about the flavor of the game, but the actual setting shocked me. I think it´s going to be a much loved game with the group I play.
However, the book is lame. It really is. Three illustrations, all stunning, all setting inspiring, and all alone in the book. I don´t demand illustrations from some books. But Bliss Stage is so inspired by manga…
There are editing problems all over the text (and I speak Spanish, so they must be pretty obvious mistakes)
The cards for the game were not in the pdf. Was it that much trouble to include them? I mean, character sheets, please. They need to be in the book. I bought the book, printed it, took it with me to work to read on the bus, and I didn´t have access to the sheets till 10 hours later, when I went to TAO Games site.
Also, I find in a thread on The Forge that the pdf is lacking a chapter. A sample mission, if I´m not mistaken.
I repeat that I like the game so far, and the group I play with has been very receptive about every indie game I´ve introduced to them. We will play some Bliss Stage. But I don´t know if I´d recommend anyone to buy the book.
Dogui, it’s the “Ignition Stage”, even before it came out we knew there will be a better fleshed, with more art, version coming later.
But I have to say, I too am a bit surprised about the cards not being in the book.
Yes Guy, I understand that now. But like I said to Ben in private, I wasn´t aware of that. And if you go to IPR, and look at the games page, this info is not there either.
Ben, Clinton R. Nixon deleted his blog. The link to his post don’t work anymore.