The place where art and commerce meet and have cocktails
I’ll tell you something, in the spirit of eventually sharing all of my pet peeves. I’ve got a problem with people who call any successful artist or enterprise a “sell-out,” and who seem to think that poverty, squalor, and/or obscurity are badges of honor and artistic merit. I’m not saying that some people don’t put the acquisition of material possessions or gobs of money over a job well done or a particular vision, but for the most part, people who put their energy into a novel, a song, a game, or a company, want their endeavor to do well. They want their work to be as good as possible. They want to be noticed, and they want to reach as many people as possible; hell, I want this blog to reach as many people as possible. And just like anyone else, people who do those things want to be rewarded, in terms of both recognition and the ability to pay rent.
Listen up, because this is important: profitability is the condition of continued existence. It is not, in any of the above examples, the reason for that existence to begin with. Someone for whom money is the primary motivation manages hedge funds. They do not publish science fiction, promote comic books, or work for an alternative record label. They certainly do not work in indy games or take a position with a start-up. Look, if you make a dollar less than your expenses, regardless of whether you’re a CEO, an installation artist working with light bulbs and kitty litter, or a waiter, you have a problem. If you’re a writer and your advances don’t cover the mortgage, you have a problem. And if at the end of a fiscal year, Manifesto Games (for instance) takes in a dollar less than we’ve spent, we have a big problem; there will be no more games, no more site, no more Manifesto the next year. If we make gobs and gobs of money, we can build a better site, offer more games, and develop our own. That’s capitalism, and it’s all good. Really.
This isn’t an abstract concept, or about museum art, or poetry, but about the lively arts. I’m talking about the economies of popular culture, and in case your etymology is rusty, that means the socially transmitted arts, beliefs, and institutions of lots of people, not opinions and arts for just a few. From a creator’s point of view, making money on a project means that they get to do another. From the point of view of a publisher, making money means you can publish lots more cool stuff. That doesn’t mean that every book or game is a bestseller; it means that if you have enough profitable projects, you get to take chances on other things, and at least in theory, the greater the profitability, the better the chance for diversity.
When I worked in fantasy and science fiction publishing, I attended numerous conventions and conferences, at which I was both prominent and accessible. People would talk to me, usually about my program. Sometimes they would tell me that I was a sell-out. They were at these conventions for love, and I was just in it “for the money and the power.” To this day, I’m not sure how to respond to something so risible without losing beverage through my nose; it’s like someone in the SCA telling a medieval studies Ph.D. candidate that they aren’t interested in their subject, are just looking for a cushy, glamorous life.
The problem with the “big boys” isn’t greed, per se. After all, while I don’t want a red Ferrari, I do want a red Voodoo laptop; it’s just a matter of scale. The 1000-pound gorillas of games need to eat more than the smaller animals, and they have a vision to maintain, and an economy of scale, as do we. And that's a ogod thing. At the risk of repeating myself, I’ll repeat myself: the more successful things you publish, the more you can publish, and the more chances you can take. Success can breed diversity.
I am unapologetic about being on the “business” side of things; in fact, I love it. The essence of what I do is to figure out how to communicate, well and memorably, the very cool thing I’m involved with to as many targeted individuals as possible. If I do it well, I get to keep my very cool job. The company makes money. The game designers and developers have a place to distribute their games. The gamers have interesting things to play. And I get to take in more money than my expenses and pay my rent. Sound good?
Profitability is the condition of continued existence, and good business and marketing is a crucial part of that.
Listen up, because this is important: profitability is the condition of continued existence. It is not, in any of the above examples, the reason for that existence to begin with. Someone for whom money is the primary motivation manages hedge funds. They do not publish science fiction, promote comic books, or work for an alternative record label. They certainly do not work in indy games or take a position with a start-up. Look, if you make a dollar less than your expenses, regardless of whether you’re a CEO, an installation artist working with light bulbs and kitty litter, or a waiter, you have a problem. If you’re a writer and your advances don’t cover the mortgage, you have a problem. And if at the end of a fiscal year, Manifesto Games (for instance) takes in a dollar less than we’ve spent, we have a big problem; there will be no more games, no more site, no more Manifesto the next year. If we make gobs and gobs of money, we can build a better site, offer more games, and develop our own. That’s capitalism, and it’s all good. Really.
This isn’t an abstract concept, or about museum art, or poetry, but about the lively arts. I’m talking about the economies of popular culture, and in case your etymology is rusty, that means the socially transmitted arts, beliefs, and institutions of lots of people, not opinions and arts for just a few. From a creator’s point of view, making money on a project means that they get to do another. From the point of view of a publisher, making money means you can publish lots more cool stuff. That doesn’t mean that every book or game is a bestseller; it means that if you have enough profitable projects, you get to take chances on other things, and at least in theory, the greater the profitability, the better the chance for diversity.
When I worked in fantasy and science fiction publishing, I attended numerous conventions and conferences, at which I was both prominent and accessible. People would talk to me, usually about my program. Sometimes they would tell me that I was a sell-out. They were at these conventions for love, and I was just in it “for the money and the power.” To this day, I’m not sure how to respond to something so risible without losing beverage through my nose; it’s like someone in the SCA telling a medieval studies Ph.D. candidate that they aren’t interested in their subject, are just looking for a cushy, glamorous life.
The problem with the “big boys” isn’t greed, per se. After all, while I don’t want a red Ferrari, I do want a red Voodoo laptop; it’s just a matter of scale. The 1000-pound gorillas of games need to eat more than the smaller animals, and they have a vision to maintain, and an economy of scale, as do we. And that's a ogod thing. At the risk of repeating myself, I’ll repeat myself: the more successful things you publish, the more you can publish, and the more chances you can take. Success can breed diversity.
I am unapologetic about being on the “business” side of things; in fact, I love it. The essence of what I do is to figure out how to communicate, well and memorably, the very cool thing I’m involved with to as many targeted individuals as possible. If I do it well, I get to keep my very cool job. The company makes money. The game designers and developers have a place to distribute their games. The gamers have interesting things to play. And I get to take in more money than my expenses and pay my rent. Sound good?
Profitability is the condition of continued existence, and good business and marketing is a crucial part of that.
2 Comments:
Bravo! Everything you said is true and necessary.
You seem to be defining "profitability" as "breaking even."
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