72 Hours of Boinging - the full-text abduction of paul czege

72 Hours of Boinging -- 03/14/2008

On Tuesday, Patrick Dugan posted a review of My Life with Master to Greg Costikyan's Play This Thing blog. The review was picked up by Cory Doctorow's Boing Boing blog (within an hour if I'm guessing the time zones correctly). Boing Boing was at one time the world's most popular blog, according to Technorati, which rates such things. (It's currently ranked no. 5.) The title of the Boing Boing post was "My Life With Master: 'As seminal to RPGs as Frankenstein was for literature,'" a quote from Patrick's review.

And then people started buying it. A lot. Mostly the pdf at first, and then increasingly the book. It's only now, 72 hours or so later that things are pretty calm.

So, I can guess your question. How much is "a lot"?

Check out this year-over-year chart of My Life with Master sales I posted to halfmeme.com about this time last year:

year over year sales chart

Note how sales have tapered off year-over-year since I first started selling the game in 2003. 237 units from July to the end of 2003. 364 units in 2004. 295 units in 2005. 223 units in 2006. And I haven't done my 2007 Half Meme Press taxes yet, but I roughly estimate 2007 sales of My Life with Master at around 183 units (maybe 46 of which were the pdf version).

In the 72 hours since My Life with Master appeared on Boing Boing I've sold 71 units (39 of which are the pdf), plus two copies of the Acts of Evil ashcan, and one copy of Bacchanal.

Pretty damn cool, to be sure, but actually not the coolest part.

Huh? Well, back in 2003 when I first put the print version of the game up for sale the best rate for shipping it internationally via the U.S. Postal Service was "Air Letter Post". But there was significant cost variation across the various destination "zones," which I didn't understand well, and I wasn't particularly wise in the ways of PayPal buttons anyway, so my order page asked international buyers to email for a shipping and handling quote (which, knowing the weight of a packed copy of the game from past experience I could easily calculate via the USPS website, no knowledge of zones required). More recently the most economical rate is First Class International, and it has less cost variation across destinations. But having come to enjoy emailing with prospective international buyers about shipping and handling and how they heard about the game, I haven't bothered implementing a button for international orders. So when My Life with Master appeared on Boing Boing on Tuesday I started inquiring of international buyers requesting shipping/handling quotes whether they were "active (or lapsed) RPGers," or just curious from hearing about the game online.

And yeah, I only had the conversation with five or six buyers, but they were board gamers, and graphic designers, and WoW players, and only one was an active RPGer. Think again about that year-over-year tapering off in the chart; getting attention beyond the self-identifying RPG community...now that's cool.

Posted by Paul Czege at 12:11 | Comments (4)

Comments

Now that IS cool! Shows that REALLY there are people out there interested in telling and playing great stories!

#1 timeLOSS (Homepage) on 2008-03-14 13:16 (Reply)

Actually, when BoingBoing links to us, we normally get 3000-4000 hits. But the My Life with Master review on the site is now up over 20,000 hits. According to Google analytics, most of them are coming from Stumbleupon -- so basically, enough people coming off BoingBoing "stumbled" the review that it hit some critical number with Stumbleupon, and started generating a lot more traffic. Social networking/metafilter sites are very powerful. Anyway, glad it's translating into some sales for you.

#2 Greg (Homepage) on 2008-03-15 11:47 (Reply)

Very cool, Paul! And utterly deserved! the game is a jewel. Tried it with friends of mine and enjoyed it immensely. Thanks!

#3 TomasHVM (Homepage) on 2008-03-16 11:40 (Reply)

It is indeed cool. Way cool.

#4 Matt (Homepage) on 2008-03-17 07:30 (Reply)

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"My own personally significant take-away from the Dancey interview was the realization that the frustrations of indie publishers at the traditional hobby games publishers are as mis-applied as the frustrations of traditional hobby games industry notables at indie publishers. We aren't the market disruption that's hurting them, and they and their customers aren't a stony ignorance that thwarts us. The community of gamers has fragmented under the "good enough" distractions of video games and other entertainments. We are designing for the "challenge and create" community that's left incompletely satisfied by these other entertainments. And because, as Dancey says, the partake and reinforce gamers have always been the decider of what games get played, nothing we design warrants the approbation of the traditional hobby games publisher, because nothing we design can bring partake and reinforce gamers back from their other entertainments. So the traditional hobby games publishers are left to their fight for the attention of the shrinking partake and reinforce community. And our adherents can only get a game to happen with non-gamers or others also in the smaller challenge and create community."

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