John C Welch is a compelling read. Bynkii is both represented in my Google reader account as well as on my desktop RSS reader (which is the one I mainly use). It’s that good. Maybe it’s because he’s like the anti-Scoble or something and his liberal use of profanity means that he could, accent aside, easily pass for a local here in Northern Ireland but it must also be because, like him or hate him, he’s usually right.
The latest tirade is all about online content theft as someone rips off YML wholesale and pushes it as their own. How can people think this is okay? Worse – how can they remotely think they’re going to get away with it.
A few years ago when I was writing, we attended conventions in order to get some copies sold that would hopefully pay for our tickets, take in some games, buy some new games from other exhibitors and generally try to enjoy ourselves. We’d set up a trade stall, lay out the games and have someone sitting behind the desk to rake in the pennies. It more or less meant we made books in order to have a reserved seat at a convention and have somewhere to put our stuff.
At the time, we got a lot of people coming to talk to us. Some people told us they were trying to get started in making games and I did my best to help their realism out. The reason I bought a round of drinks was because of the day job. It paid for the accommodation and the car. And the books I bought. The “writing roleplaying games thing” barely paid for itself even though none of us were salaried from it. As long as you accepted that, things were cool. We’d also get a stream of people wanting to tell us about the games they ran with our books or wanting us to run sessions. Great – I was always a little apprehensive but if you pried me out of the shadows, I enjoyed myself. And lastly there were a few people who wanted to get their books signed by the authors.
Now, it may be surprising to some but I’m actually a pretty shy and retiring kind of guy. Sure, I play the boisterous, loud idiot a lot but that’s not the real me. I usually had to be coaxed into signing books because, well, I was shy. The thing that angered me was how many other people who had not contributed a single word to the content, nor art, nor handed in proofreads, nor done any work on layout would be first in line to sign the books. More fool me for allowing my own work to be “shared” that way and for not speaking up at the time but then I’m not really into conflict that way (and I’m even less into direct conflict now than I was then).
It annoyed me to the extent that it was a primary factor in my ditching of Crucible Design and starting up LateGaming. I just could not justify writing another word which would be shared in that way around workshy slackers. And as the years went on, it seemed the number of slackers increased. I viewed it as people taking credit for the nights I slaved at the keyboard. Taking credit for the work I put in. And compounded by the fact that when the book was finished, printed and in the hands of the group, they were often first with their criticisms – criticisms that should have been aired long before the book went to print. In that way they failed to do their jobs (proof), managed to get what they wanted (the fame?) and managed to get a dig in too (look, you spelled that work wrong…)
I’ve relinquished my anger about it now but still retain some bitterness about the events. Changes in my life have meant that I no longer see the people involved in Crucible Design – some I miss, and some I don’t.
That’s my rant over.
John also writes:
Sidenote the second: He’s charging 50 fucking pounds sterling an hour to help set up a firewall!?! I hope there aren’t that many suckers in GB, but if there are, I’m emigrating!
It’s a very different market here in the UK, John, and while the exchange rate might indicate a brilliant return (due to the US Administration ruining their own economy so that dollar paper is worth less than quilted toilet paper, sheet for sheet), the cost of living here is much higher and the population is very small. C’mon over.