Turning Obsession into Success
Turning Obsession into Success
Finding inspiration for game design is as simple as reflecting on what content you love, then being bold enough to make more of it!
Jason Ward, Accidental Cyclops Games
Content Everywhere
We live in the most content-rich environment that humanity has ever known, and the firehose of words, images, and videos is only going to get more powerful in the coming years. Every time I hear about a new way to ingest this content, my head starts hurting. It might be too much!
The bad news is that much of the content we are consuming is garbage…it’s bad for our brains, our relationships, and our emotional states. We divide ourselves based on the content we consume. We develop opinions of and feelings about others based on the content that appeals to them. We make the content we consume part of our identities. This further fractures potential audiences and makes them harder to reach.
The good news is that it has never been easier to be inspired by other peoples’ ideas! The sheer mass of ideas floating around the media landscape may be overwhelming, but there are great ideas and content to be found if you know where to look. Chances are that some of those great ideas will lead to even better ideas—your ideas! Inspiration is out there, we have to stop ignoring it!
Field of Dreams Lied to Us All
Pardon the baseball metaphors I’m pitching. They may fall short of the plate.
“If you build it, they will come.”
No, probably not…at least not enough of them to make your project a homerun. The problem with the glut of content is that most of it never gets seen by the people who might like it most. There are a ton of strikeouts in game design. For every homerun Kickstarter campaign there are several base hits. And for every base hit there are at least a few strikeouts. There is just too much for people to swing at.
Until you develop a fanatical following of your own, it will be difficult (nigh impossible) to put your original creations out into the world and have the world notice them. You need to prove you are a creator worth following first. So, how do we do that?
Inspiration from Obsession
<Body> Most of us have great ideas. Some of us have great ideas that we pursue. A few of us have great ideas that we pursue and that get traction. But what is the difference between the ideas that get traction and those that don’t?
Luck plays a huge role, for certain. Hard work goes a really long way, of course. Experience and innate talent are both factors. Having a good network to help with promotion is always helpful. But there is another way that one can greatly increase the likelihood of a successful game launch…dropping your content into an existing fan base!
Marrying your idea to existing intellectual property (IP) can greatly increase the potential purchasing pool for your game. As noted above, there is no shortage of well-loved content out there. Much of that content has obsessive and fanatical followings. Chances are that you are a fan of some of that kind of content and that you know people like you.
Fans of writers, musical artists, video games, and visual artists have enormous communities online already. These fans spend tens or hundreds of dollars on artifacts and experiences related to their chosen obsessions. I’m one of them. I just can’t help it. This fanaticism makes me feel like I am part of something big, yet intimate. I am in the club and I am willing to give others in the club some of my time, energy, and trust.
So, what are your obsessions, and can any of your ideas be married to them? Do you have a game system that you can adapt to an existing sci-fi or fantasy world? Are there artists that inspire you to create? Can you pay homage to a specific IP and thereby appeal to that IP’s fans?
The Real Thing
I have been fortunate in my young career as a game designer. My first project went off in a big way. Some of that was luck. But—and I know that I am biased in saying this—some of it was the result of a plan coming together nicely. The Real Thing RPG came about as an outlandish idea while I was doing dishes and listening to Faith No More. I was so struck by the thought of making a game based on the themes from one of their albums that I stopped doing the dishes and called my buddy so he could talk me out of it.
He didn’t. In fact, he made me feel like it was the best idea in the world! Then I went back to finish the dishes. Months later, we were co-writing the game.
I had been toying with the idea of a game that resulted in character creation (rather than starting with it) for years. I loved the idea of flipping RPG character creation on its head. What if I didn’t need a backstory to get rolling? What if I got to create the backstory as a result of what was happening in the current story? What if that generative process yielded a complete person that was not only deeper and more real but also more fun to play?
The album entitled The Real Thing by Faith No More turned out to be the perfect existing IP to which I could marry my hair-brained idea. Even better, I am a huge fan of the band and I knew where to find many, many more fans. Moreover, I knew that there was an overlap between gamers and Faith No More fans. I know dozens of them in my personal circles!
My friend and I put together a few pages of concepts, and I roughed together a Powered by the Apocalypse rules set in just a few weeks. Everyone we talked to about it thought it was a great idea. (Turns out we live in an echo chamber just like everyone else.) This gave us the confidence to do something truly outrageous. Instead of making the game “based on” Faith No More’s work, why not see if the band wanted in?
Well, it worked. Their manager actually responded to us. He even got on the phone with us a couple of times. He channeled the band’s feedback and concerns. We listened and incorporated them. Fast-forward two years and we have an indie RPG officially backed by a band we love. Best of all, it is commercially successful, due in large part to the fact that we married some of our original ideas to an IP that just happened to fit the concepts.
It’s Not Over Yet.
In 2023/24 we are launching follow-up content for The Real Thing. We fully anticipate it will be even more successful (because now we know what we’re doing). Additionally, we are following a similar model with Surviving Strangehollow (also in 2023), which will leverage existing IP from an amazing creature artist who is partnering with us to make her ideas into a fantasy roleplaying game. It’s a model that works, and it will help us develop our fan base so our original content can have a strong launch in the years to come.
This IGDN blog article is brought to you by Jason Ward of Accidental Cyclops Games. If you want to get in touch with the contributor they can be reached at ward@accidentalcyclops.com or visit their website at www.accidentalcyclops.com.