Will people pay to watch you play GURPS?

[jackcelso]

A lot of people are doing it in a LOT of systens... most popular and sucesfull is Critical Roll. They made millions in streaming and a lot more now with they serie in amazon video!!!

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by jackcelso

A lot of people are doing it in a LOT of systens... most popular and sucesfull is Critical Roll. They made millions in streaming and a lot more now with they serie in amazon video!!!

While true, Mercer is running a game that also made a significant chunk of a billion dollars last year. It's unlikely that a GURPS stream would make millions, or that any tabletop gaming stream would make orders of magnitude more than the game system itself does.

[Alden Loveshade]

Originally Posted by bocephus

Oh and I'll do sessions for a flat $40,000 up to eight hours!!! That's 90% cheaper than Aldan! :)

We need to create a GURPS GMs Guild so we'll have an organization that won't allow people to undercut guild members' prices....

[Farmer]

Originally Posted by Alden Loveshade

We need to create a GURPS GMs Guild so we'll have an organization that won't allow people to undercut guild members' prices....

"How to be a GURPS GM: GM Guild Charter and Enforcement Procedures"? :-p

[Alden Loveshade]

Originally Posted by Farmer

"How to be a GURPS GM: GM Guild Charter and Enforcement Procedures"? :-p

I wonder if I wrote that book if my royalties would cover my guild dues....

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Alden Loveshade

We need to create a GURPS GMs Guild so we'll have an organization that won't allow people to undercut guild members' prices....

I don't join unions.

[RogerBW]

Among the podcasts I'm involved with is Whartson Hall (also on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts); we do actual-play recordings, generally in 90-120 minute sessions, often including GURPS (I'm not even the only person in the group who runs it). A few people kindly send us money but it doesn't come near making a profit; we do it because we enjoy it. We have no interest in making video (indeed, when we listen to other actual-play recordings several of us strip the audio out of YouTube and listen to it as a podcast).

It's very much "a bunch of us like to get together and play games, and recording and publishing them is easy, so we do it". A seminar at Dragonmeet a few years ago on actual-play podcasts assumed a profit motive: they said you'd need to start with a popular game (AD&D, Pathfinder, Cthulhu) and have at least one "name" voice actor or you might as well not bother.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Alden Loveshade

I saw in the news that a sports player has accepted a 120 million dollar contract for six years. That's $20 million dollars a year to let people watch them play a game.

Sounds like a way to make money.

That kind of money is only available to people who've proven they are among the best in the world at something millions of people pay money to watch, follow and even pay to wear advertising for it, they care so deeply about it.

That's not going to be what the most popular roleplayers get, just for roleplaying in front of an audience, not unless market demographics change drastically. It might be somewhere near what an executive producer, showrunner, writer, director and star of what amounts to a hit TV show eventually gets, even if it is streamed on Twitch or something, not made by an established studio.

Originally Posted by Alden Loveshade

So how much money would you accept to let people watch you play GURPS?

I'd need 10,000 hours to learn to be good at producing, directing, acting and editing a stream and I'm not doing that work on spec. So, at my standard hourly rate, that's $2,000,000. Before taxes, so I never see most of it.

Maybe a good accountant could write off not only RPG supplements, but all library and research services I subscribe to online, as well as all books, fiction and non-fiction, I buy to familiarize myself for the background and culture of NPCs.

I figure each hour on screen represents roughly a hundred hours of research, prep, character work, costumes and makeup, so after the initial retainer of $2,000,000, each onscreen hour would be $20,200. I'd round to $20,000, neater all around.

In all honesty, though, I've never actually been willing to work this much in my real job, so the odds are that I'd politely decline. The only tme I actually do work for money is when my accountant is really serious about me needing to pay some tax or fee, the rest of the time it's a pretty poor motivator. I mean, I like bourbon, Coca Cola, electrolyte drinks, candy and a variety of foodstuffs, but most of those can be bought in great amounts with very little work. I don't care about status symbols; houses, cars, boats, new gadgets, new furniture or any of the really expensive stuff people buy.

[Alden Loveshade]

Some of these comments got me thinking about this.

I went to a college where they specifically paid one or more people to tutor sports players. I asked why? I was told that was because the players were giving time to the college in practicing, typically a couple times a week.

I was in theatre. We typically had three or four rehearsals in a week. Each of which lasted longer than a typical sports practice session. And in one musical production, we actually had rehearsals thirteen (13) days in a row! Did we have special tutors? No.

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by Alden Loveshade

Some of these comments got me thinking about this.

I went to a college where they specifically paid one or more people to tutor sports players. I asked why? I was told that was because the players were giving time to the college in practicing, typically a couple times a week.

I was in theatre. We typically had three or four rehearsals in a week. Each of which lasted longer than a typical sports practice session. And in one musical production, we actually had rehearsals thirteen (13) days in a row! Did we have special tutors? No.

Yeah, but a college can make money off its sports teams.