I was pleased with how the system works, and my girlfriend who’s not big on character generation seemed to enjoy the process.

–JR

Taylor/Transcon seems to be the footing that Hero Games is on right now, for example (and I do layout/art direction for them), after trying a Chinese printer for Hero 6th Ed. The short version of how that went: a couple bucks less per copy ain’t worth language barrier issues, 3-month customs/shipping delays, and the occasional bizarre business practice.

no, not really. not at all, actually. just pointing out that i didn’t want to get bogged down in the merits of Capitalism and production ethics, whereas labor and pay were specifically dissonant within the original post. so, i wanted to sidestep the one and address the other particularly.

Regarding scale, i agree that you’re not rolling in “hookers and blow” money at present… there’s no reason to think that you’re not going to continue to trend upward with Evil Hat and that the award winning AND highly playable games won’t continue to go in-and-out of print and increase the company’s profit. You (E.H.) and say somebody like Luke Crane aren’t on the same scale, nanoscale, of the one-off, two-off unprofitable independent game publishers.

the difference between people earning pennies a day and people earning dollars a day, I think there’s still a clear difference here.

Sometimes dollars are pennies. It would be sad/amusing/interesting to see a quality of life assessment on what game industry people make. I’m just saying that you acknowledge that game companies pay poorly to outsourced talent (to say nothing of the owner-operators and their sweat equity, but then you’re the owner.)

With this game, you have the luxury of domestic printing because of the license, scale of the project, prioritizing press control, but also with respect to ethical production. Which peoples get favored? Do you favor printing locally and shoring up the domestic economy; or do you print overseas and take that extra 20%-30% of production costs and share it with the artists and editors that worked on the project domestically?

I like you. I like the E.H. people I’ve met and played with. E.H. seems to be a great company all around. I get a bee in my bonnet when i generally hear people defend the abysmal pay that writers and artists receive within the gaming community. I think you guys ARE the good guys; and I would like to see gaming companies that are profitable address this issue.

Congrats on wrangling this game.

Best,

E.

I’ll address the rest of your comment backwards:

“Evil hat isn’t a tiny” etc etc — well, no, it’s not tiny, it’s microscopic. We’re still tiny. If we sold no more books beyond this point, paid for the printing of the DFRPG, paid off the $60,000 loan (over twice what we had in the bank at the time we took it out) we took out in order to be able to pay for the printing, we would right now be well inside the five-figure range as far as the company’s liquid assets go. So that’s something to consider here.

“But, I’m curious about the dissonance between foreign labor and domestic labor” — when we’re talking about the difference between people earning pennies a day and people earning dollars a day, I think there’s still a clear difference here.

When I say that people are underpaid in the gaming industry, I mean things like writers hitting 3 cents a word, editors hitting 1 cents a word, when something more like ten times that would be more appropriate given the effort that goes into those words.

But practically nobody pays at that sort of level, whether you’re talking about a microscopic company like Evil Hat or a larger company with several hundred thousand dollars in assets and the ability to pay people regular salaries. Salaries are nice, and if we become a million-dollar company at some point we can start to consider doing that. (At present I work around 30-hour weeks on keeping Evil Hat going. For that I draw a stipend of $450 a month. Evil Hat still can’t afford to do more than that right now; presently the expenses of our production obligations outstrip the ability to pay the founders of the company — myself and Rob Donoghue — much more than that. And for several years prior I drew nothing.)

When people use phrases like “the inevitability of profit”, what’s inevitable is a lot of rueful laughter. People get into jobs in the game industry because they want to work in the game industry. Money is not a perk that comes with those jobs, typically.

Part and parcel of the situation with the folks who’ve worked on this game with me is that they are now a part of the Evil Hat family. That means that their own projects have a home. We’ll be publishing Ryan Macklin’s Mythender. We’ll be fielding whatever project Lenny Balsera feels he needs to do. We’re already the new home for Chad Underkoffler’s projects with Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies. Services are being rendered in addition to cash payouts. The entire team has already been paid a bonus when Evil Hat had a strong quarter about half a year ago, and I made sure what I paid was an amount that hurt a little (totaling around 20% of the company’s cash assets at the time). Evil Hat looks out for its own; that’s always been there in the math.

It’s likely that you should be commended for printing locally and environmentally. However, As part of your production consideration you site labor concerns in printing overseas. Further down in disclosure you go into a discussion about how the worker bees and freelancers for Evil Hat just have to deal with being underpaid via some “labor of love” contract inherit in gaming.

Now, everyone gets underpaid in the game industry. No job in the hobby industry gets done without a little bit of “I’m paid in loving what I do”, whether that’s expressed explicitly (as it was with much of my team) or implicitly (by the rates and the paychecks simply being what they are when they’re offered). Sweat equity happens. All that stuff. I do plan to pay out more if we smash through some of the bigger financial goalposts beyond simply “break even on costs”, and I’ve done everything I could to do right by the Evil Hat family throughout the process.

I’ve met most of the Evil Hat people and I know that you’re a tight lot and close friends. But, I’m curious about the dissonance between foreign labor and domestic labor and why you haven’t moved towards better pay – or more in keeping with your entrepreneurial spirit… moving towards offering the talent some percentage of the project/points/profit sharing however that would manifest. Unlike many other gaming companies, Evil Hat isn’t a tiny, fly-by-night operation and the inevitability of profit might prove a compelling and ethical response to below-market-rate fees for intellectual capital.

So true and well put! Thanks, as always, for the insight.

(How long is the pre-order open by the way? It implies that it would end once books start shipping, but that could be June or July. It doesn’t explicitly state the length of the offer. Thanks. Budget is budget….)

And thanks for the breakdown. It’s awesome to see that Evil Hat’s positive, grass roots publishing model that focuses on making sure people know what they’re getting into and have a great experience with your games (from free FATE to the SOTC SRD to this) is working out and growing exponentially.

I count myself lucky to have had your layout skills early in this process for Beast Hunters, because I’m sure you wouldn’t have anywhere near enough spare time nowadays

I think it works *because* it’s low tech, too. Not much of a barrier to entry, just the ability to sign up for a dropbox.com account and use email.

So far we’ve gotten around 20 retail stores on board.

If only I didn’t have seven hundred pages to read on my computer before I could post a review, I could start getting out the word more (did do a small shout out on my rather neglected blog), but I am going to savor every page.

Thanks Evil Hat dude!

Perhaps somewhere like Milsilms might be an option? They already stock Penny, DRYH, and SotC, so it doesn’t seem like much of a stretch for them, and the postage from Melbourne is almost certainly cheaper.

We’ve been supplying PDFs of our products to retail customers on request, but nothing formal like this.

[Then again, the "L" in this instance is roughly 723km. The Store where L is 720km less doesn't want to carry small publishers at all, even if you pay for the goods up front. So I suppose you can remove the "F" part from that store.]

I can wait.

I’m proud to have paid for my pre-order at EndGame this past weekend.