Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
EP 77 - A Creative Process: Part 3 - Production
0 Playsin 1 day
This is part 3 of a multi-part series about the creative process. We’ll cover my thoughts on how this process applies to creating & publishing works, and how it applies to games, fiction writing, other creative endeavors, and our professional careers.
For more info & to download a free PDF of today's episode notes, visit: www.chriskreuter.com/CDWI
Join the Kreuter Studios mailing list: https://mailchi.mp/810367311f3d/ksbulletin
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Aspirations
00:00:08
Speaker
On Chris deals with it, I talk about the frameworks and methods I use to clear personal, creative, and professional roadblocks. My goal is to help others bridge the gaps between where they're at now and what they want to achieve.
00:00:20
Speaker
If you're new to the show, I'm an engineer, writer, parent, game designer, leader, and reader who leverages that experience to develop creative solutions to problems. First, an AI statement, that all elements of this episode are products of the author, Chris Kreuter, and made without the use of any AI tools.
The Creative Process Series Overview
00:00:40
Speaker
This is part three of a multi-part series about the creative process. We'll cover my thoughts on how this process applies to creating and publishing works and how it applies to games, fiction writing, other creative endeavors, and our professional careers.
00:00:54
Speaker
As always, the views expressed in this podcast are mine. What works for me isn't likely to work for you exactly the same way. The usefulness of these various pieces of advice will depend on your project, experience, tools, and more as I'll get into.
00:01:08
Speaker
The goal of this series is to share my frameworks, mindsets, strategies, and experiences that have led me to this point of my creative journey. This is an ever-evolving process as it should be for everyone.
From Projects to Productions
00:01:19
Speaker
let's talk about production. This is turning a project into a production, service, or experience. It's being clear on the form factors and cost structure of your creative work. It's evaluating your non-negotiables and how the work can evolve during its production.
00:01:34
Speaker
We'll cover the spaces in which we create things. And we'll finish with my thoughts on the impact of AI on creativity. Depending on the project, this stage may require occasional revisits to the scaffolding stage as you evaluate the usefulness of production factors as you start making the thing.
Iterative Design and Collaboration
00:01:52
Speaker
For example, many of the early prototypes of Masquerade games didn't survive their initial playtests. My design partner and I had many meta discussions about our design process and game philosophies.
00:02:03
Speaker
Over time, these conversations gradually improved our ideation, scaffolding, and production skills, which shortened our development time and improved the overall design choices that we were making.
00:02:14
Speaker
You get better at making things by making things. Is it a physical, analog product? Or is it going to be digital? What formats, devices, services are needed to interact with it?
00:02:26
Speaker
If you're planning a performance, what are the potential venues? What's the price point of the final project? Is there a need to limit the number of components, packaging, actors, et cetera?
Financial Breakdown of Creative Works
00:02:37
Speaker
Consider what it takes to publish work.
00:02:40
Speaker
You want to be clear on how pricing works before you start spending money making something. I'm going to have a lot of charts in the show notes. so You definitely want check those out for this episode. But give a general cost breakdown of a board game.
00:02:52
Speaker
Roughly 50% goes to the retailer who has rent, payroll, sales. They're taking on the inventory risk. You have your distributor who's doing the warehousing, logistics, and sales. They typically take around 10%. Your printer does all the materials, setup, assembly, packaging. They're typically around 20%. You'll another 10% for royalties, which are paying your artists, writers, any intellectual property rights.
00:03:15
Speaker
Lastly, the last 10% goes to the publisher. They're doing all the development, playtesting, promotion, and project management. Now, if you are the publisher, within that 10% sliver of a sell price, that's $1 out of every $10 a game is valued, that has to pay for marketing, supplies, giveaways, returns and refunds, payroll, software licenses, professional services like insurance, accounting, finance, fees, your business formation a administrative costs, and finally, profit.
00:03:42
Speaker
Oh yeah, don't forget the taxes. If you control the sales channel, you can capture that 50% retailer margin, but you're taking on all of the marketing, infrastructure, and time requirements of those tasks.
00:03:54
Speaker
Also, going direct to consumers will limit the degree to which retailers are going to want to support your game. You want to make sure you don't undercut them. Now that chart and that description is specific to retail goods.
00:04:06
Speaker
Things look a lot different depending on the type of creative work you're doing. Video games are more direct to consumer and have more infrastructure costs to produce. While performance art, you have ticket agents, ushers, performers, audiovisual, insurance requirements.
00:04:23
Speaker
For books, you have physical, you have ebooks, and there's lots of different charts that I'll include in the show
Crowdfunding Strategies and Challenges
00:04:28
Speaker
notes on that. I don't want to get too much into it on the podcast. Now, crowdfunding is a popular method to front load the financials for a project, but it takes a ton of social media effort both before and during the campaign.
00:04:40
Speaker
It's very hard to achieve funding now if you don't have the pump primed beforehand. And you need to be clear up front before that Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign on cost, tiers, bonus content possibilities, timelines.
00:04:55
Speaker
And there needs to be a certain level of work already performed and invested in order to start a viable campaign. You need to have transparency about the creators, companies, and risks involved.
00:05:06
Speaker
There's also the accountability after funding, providing regular updates and engagement with your followers, the commitment to deliver what you promised. Now, success there comes of many benefits, but such as front-loading your financials, but you also need to be mindful of any retail expectations after funding.
00:05:22
Speaker
You might have already hit most of your target audience.
Setting Project Non-Negotiables
00:05:25
Speaker
Let's talk about non-negotiables. really want to be wary of establishing these in your project too early. This has to have X. Limits can be powerful tools for ensuring high quality work.
00:05:35
Speaker
They can help prevent unnecessary bloat or complexity, but they also risk limiting the ways and number of people that will be able to interact with your work. because limits can create logistical or distribution issues down the road. I'm going to give a very pertinent example to me, which is EpiGo, which game we produced over a decade ago.
00:05:54
Speaker
We really wanted to make sure we didn't have a folding board. This resulted in many knock-on effects. Our publishing partner asked us several times if we really wanted to go without a folded board, pointing out some of the issues I'm about to mention.
00:06:07
Speaker
But we treated this as a non-negotiable, since the game was all about sliding and pushing multiple pieces around the play surface. So this resulted in a 12.5 by 12.5 inch non-standard box size, which is difficult and expensive to ship individual copies.
00:06:22
Speaker
Plus, the 2,500 copies we produced resulted in 11 pallets of product, which is about a quarter of a shipping container, and back then that was over $1,500 in freight costs coming from Germany.
00:06:33
Speaker
Now again, this is we're talking 2011 values here. But we also had additional warehousing and distribution costs. That was about $10 to $11 per pallet per month, plus picking and packing fees.
00:06:45
Speaker
Recall the cost breakdown I mentioned earlier. If you're paying this out of the 10% profit off a $30 game, which is $3 per game profit, this means after pre-selling some copies at release, we needed to sell more than 36 copies each month just to pay our warehousing costs.
00:07:02
Speaker
It was a lesson very hard earned. The less transportability of the game also equated to slower spread of the game. Shipping outside of the US became really prohibitive, and we had a lot of popularity outside the US s too.
Adaptability in Creativity
00:07:14
Speaker
But it sure made pushing pieces a better experience.
00:07:19
Speaker
So when you have a solid scaffold for the project, it's time to start making the thing. You have to put in the work. Utilize specific times of the day, dedicated notebooks or tools, and unique locations to help stay focused on your project.
00:07:33
Speaker
You want to allow the work to evolve and change if necessary. Think of the work as a feedback loop. The more you develop it, the more it develops you and your ideas. Those enhanced skills and ideas continue to develop the work, and this becomes a virtuous cycle.
00:07:47
Speaker
And you don't have to be married to your scaffold. If a project reveals an opportunity to change tack or add in a plot twist, explore it.
AI's Role in the Creative Process
00:07:56
Speaker
Lastly, I want to talk about the impact of AI on being creative.
00:07:59
Speaker
There are legal and ethical concerns here. How much is actually your work? Are you only cheating yourself? What about your audience? Also recognize the rampant IP abuses that have trained many of these large language models.
00:08:12
Speaker
It's theft of other people's works, likely your own as well. And there's no denying the power these algorithms have. There are powerful, useful applications of them, such as the successes of radiology scan evaluation, which significantly boost detection rates compared to human review alone.
00:08:29
Speaker
But in my opinion, rampant AI use creates this regression to the average. This can cut both ways. For those with the skill and resources to make great art, they end up missing an opportunity to transcend average into greatness.
00:08:43
Speaker
But for those lacking the technical ability or resources, it allows them to bring an idea into the world that's more passable far faster and cheaper, but the best it'll ever be is average.
00:08:54
Speaker
For me, using AI creates a depth of personality and uniqueness of voice and art. And AI-generated works are flooding markets that were already too saturated. It's very difficult for unique work to be discovered.
00:09:08
Speaker
Personally, I push back against any talk of AI inevitability. Sure, the genie's out of the bottle, but it doesn't mean we have to engage with it. Ultimately, I desire to make the best work I can.
00:09:19
Speaker
I don't want to settle for average. Case in point, the AI statements I include every episode of this podcast now, that all elements of this episode are products of the author made without the use of any AI tools.
Positive Uses of AI and Hard Work
00:09:30
Speaker
There are some niche use cases in the creative world that i think may have some merit. One is ideation. It could be a brainstorming buddy to help work through plot options or analyzing flaws in your thinking.
00:09:41
Speaker
It can do some research with greater breadth and depth of access. Accuracy is obviously a concern there. And lastly, prototyping. It could lead to faster developments to test ideas in early stages to see if they're working.
00:09:54
Speaker
Listeners have heard several quotes from Shane Parrish's awesome Farnham Street Brain Food newsletter over the years. I have a link to that in the show notes. so This gem gets to the heart of what it means to put in the work to make things.
00:10:07
Speaker
What looks like skill is often just a lot of work that no one sees. Long nights, early mornings, sweat, tears. If you want remarkable results, you need to work remarkably hard.
00:10:19
Speaker
Professionals go all in. They don't leave at five every day because that's eight hours from when they show up. They grind for small insights. Knowledge accumulates and drips and gets leveraged in buckets.
Audience Engagement and Resources
00:10:29
Speaker
And with that, have a great day.
00:10:39
Speaker
If you feel that Chris dealt with it, I'd appreciate your support of the show by sharing it with someone who might benefit. Ratings on your favorite podcast player are also helpful in growing the audience. Visit chriscreuter.com for free downloadable PDFs with notes and resources from today's episode.
00:10:54
Speaker
Sign up for the CDWI mailing list or to send in your problems or requests for future shows. That's chriscreuter.com or use the link in the show notes.