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My cherished neopatrons and I were discussing how corporate studios’ refusal to make products normal people like is black pilling the masses.
Cue the indie lament “There’s plenty of great new stuff out there. You just need to look for it!”
But maybe we’re looking at it wrong.
A handful of cartels used to control access to the audience. If you wanted to make a living in the arts, you had to play ball.
Then new tech wrested control from the gatekeepers and gave it to the artists.
Now neopatronage lets artists share control with customers.
But there’s trouble in paradise.
Indies still complain they don’t get any support from backers or influencers. They’re sure they could take down Tor, DC Comics or Disney with a fraction of corporate IPs’ funding and reach.
They may just be right.
But …
Notice the assumption implied by the premises.
Indie vidya wants to be the new AAA. Newpub wants to be oldpub. Yet the same advances that birthed indie make legacy models unworkable.
Here’s what I’m saying …
There’s no monolithic “Industry” anymore; neither is there a unified audience. That’s what’s killing the old paradigm. And we’ve known it for years.
We’ve passed peak pop star. Oldpub can’t make another Stephen King. Tom Cruise is the last A+ lister.
Is that black pilling? No. But what does it mean for us?
It means what I’ve been saying for a while now: Pro artists, authors, and musicians will live next door to lawyers and plumbers. Comfortable, not rich.
The paradigm changed – twice – but creators still expect old model results.
So what?
So, the old way was trying to get in front of as many eyeballs as possible to make the maximum number of people want to buy the art you (or your handlers) wanted to make.
That’s less feasible by the day. There’s no more Elvis money.
What there is subsists inside the new paradigm – the return of patronage. That means sharing control with your audience, remember?
And it means the script’s flipped. Now they come to you to commission art they want.
That’s not black pilling on sales and marketing efforts. It is suggesting that indie creators might want to rethink where and how they’re focusing those efforts.
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Another way to look at this:
There’s no more Elvis money, but getting Elvis money was the symbol of “making it”.
Now with neo-patronage and technology, the bar for “making it” has been significantly reduced. You won’t need 200,000 screaming fans to live the life you want, you may only need 20 and that’s something to be hopeful about.
I can empathize, the more means better mentality has been around for so long it’s in our DNA and will take an act of God or sheer stupidity to remove it from our systems.
The mainstream culture at large will lag behind tremendously because creative jobs will still want to see who you worked for and if it’s no one of prominence, then they won’t hire you. Most artists won’t have the confidence to be in the position of a small business owner (which is what neo patronage is) because they’d rather the pseudo security as an employee working for someone else.
Running a business is difficult, but it’s easier if you’re producing a product that you enjoy making, are good at making, and people want. It takes 90% of the business technicalities out of the equation if you can do that.
“Running a business is difficult, but it’s easier if you’re producing a product that you enjoy making, are good at making, and people want. It takes 90% of the business technicalities out of the equation if you can do that.”
That used to be the core of oldpub’s pitch to authors: “Sign with us and handle the art while we handle the business.”
Even though their whole model went down in flames 2 paradigms ago, it’s not hard to see the appeal. As years of personal interactions can attest, most aspiring authors are terrible at business.
Aside from obvious financial obligations to a business, the other (major) part is sales/marketing. These days with social media and technology, an individual seems to have an easier time connecting with their would be audience. People are attracted to those with passion, talent, and likeability. Social media gives the megaphone to the creator and even their own space to display their wares. Old pub ran aground because they were the gatekeepers to mass media which modern marvels made obsolete.
Sure it takes some work, even hard work at times, but with some luck and networking with the right people, you can go far. Some of the best, most generous people I’ve known are business owners. They take joy in helping out others. They are a wealth of knowledge and experience too. That kind of influence rubs off on you, you know?
Indeed I do. Joe Konrath’s “Always have one hand reaching up for the next rung of the ladder and the other reaching down to help the next guy up” mantra has stuck with me.
The thing that is nice, is that Palworld is evidence that people want things that interest them, not the AAA Slop that Blizzard and Naughty Dog put out. It’s especially funny, when the interview with the CEO of the company that made Palworld revealed that he basically was doing everything wrong, and had no creative vision other than games he and others would like to play.
Gaming Ground Zero has been described as fallout from devs switching from making games that players want to play to games that devs want to make. It’s nice to see those axes align.
One cannot say there’s not a baseline appeal to having your pokemon just pull out an AR in the middle of a fight. Or building a factorio style production assembly line staffed with monsters you capture.
The #1 criticism of Palworld (aside from the Pokemon bruhaha) is that it is a “product” and not a piece of art with a vision. This mistakes the purpose of games in the first place, which is built on defined rules and specific challenges to test the player.
What the game journos complaining about is the same thing they’ve been complaining about since the N64. They feel embarrassed playing Super Jump Man IV and think hackwork like Naughty Dog’s recent output will make them look like Real Adults. It’s a very juvenile way of living, but these people are very juvenile.
Pretty much every argument for changing an artform from its roots these days is for that reason. It clearly doesn’t work, but they hardly care. Their self-hatred runs really deep.
Best thing to do is continue making art the correct way. There’s nothing else to be done.