Why RPGs Can’t Be Crowd Sourced, Yet

Recently my brain has been mulling over Crowdsourcing by Jeff Howe. In which the author, with the breathless excitement of Wired writers, explains how “the power of the crowd” is going to eventually produce everything and change the shape of business. While I do agree with the points made thus far (I’m about half way through) I can’t help but apply it to my business of choice. While there have been some attempts to crowd/open source some RPGs it seems that the projects never quite get off the ground in any significant way; no one can seem to develop the Firefox of RPGs.

The Need for Change

Let’s face it, Dungeons and Dragons is not going to go anywhere any time soon, but why is that? Beyond the brand recognition we have a game that has gone through multiple incarnations, various parent companies and just keeps on going strong. What we don’t want to admit to ourselves, there just isn’t anything that wrong with the game. Sure it has its quirks and needs constant rule tweaking to make work the way we want it to, but there isn’t a driving need for something better. While I am a huge Savage World fan, I still play D&D; it’s like a comfortable pair of shoes. It’s easy to slip on and off when I want it. Without the driving need for change, it’s hard to get projects off the ground. We need a clear definable problem and the people to drive the change.

Lack of Brown Socks

In his book, Crowdsourcing, Jeff Howe cites a study that shows that given two groups the more diverse group will end up creating a better product. The study basically mathematically used a hyper smart, hyper focused group that they called Mensa. They then put it against a group that could have been picked from a collage facility lounge comprising of everyone, who in that room, happened to be wearing brown socks. The Brown Socks proved to be better decision makers then the Mensa group. Howe uses this study to prove his case that crowdsourcing yields better products. The problem with using this in our industry is that we really lack Brown Socks. Everyone who would be interested in a crowdsourced RPG would be put firmly in the Mensa category. In fact I would go as far to say that every one of our loyal readers would be put in this category. I mean, you are reading an RPG blog. It’s not to say that we can’t put out a good product, I know a number of savage licensees read this blog and make wonderful products. It’s just the community at large is to hyper focused to put out as good of a product if we were to get more casual interest in the project.

Good Writing is Hard to Source

Many years ago there was an article in Wired that discussed the idea of crowdsourcing news articles. The writer put out an idea for an article, and watched as the community tweaked it and expanded upon it until it became a full article. He then used it as a base for his article on examining the process. His biggest gripe was the fact that the writing was dry and informative but lacked voice. It got the point across without being compelling enough to print in the average news publication. Writing is tough job, getting across feeling, voice, and information in an interesting manner is something few can do. When too many hands are in the pot it makes the job nigh impossible. Too many different ideas can lead to boring and uninteresting work. Crowdsourcing works great for software development and problem solving when the objective and solutions can be clearly defined. As such I think it would be a great source for developing rules for a game. I’ve seen countless pages devoted to the art of tweaking a rule set to do what the GM wants and some are really great. Developing game content though, needs to be done on a much smaller scale.

With repositories of knowledge, advances in the field of science, and new daring ideas being take on every day it’s hard not to see the points Jeff Howe makes. Even his breathless excitement gets my mind racing from time to time, but it just can’t be used for everything.

I’d like you to prove me wrong. Tell me how crowdsourcing can be used for RPG development, and how it’ll eventually become the biggest game on the market. If there is a project heading that direction I would personally devote some of my spare cycles into its development.