No Money, No Problems

Or, in other words, how companies or people can make money while providing a product to an audience for free. And no, the answer is not going to be advertising. Advertising may help, but, honestly, that's a cop-out answer. And since when did 'Wayward Letters' ever do something half-assed*? So, I'll be looking at three different things that are free to anyone, but still survive or even make a profit. Specifically, I'll be looking at Wikipedia, webcomics, and League of Legends. In that order. I was going to do a thing about League of Legends compared to Battlefield Heroes, and how the former thrives while the latter starved, but apparently BFH is going strong, somehow. Don't get me wrong, it's a fun game, but I think it messed up its pricing system a while ago. Anyway - I'm ranting. Go to the next paragraph*.

Wikipedia is the most-used encyclopaedia in the world today. This is a fact. Do I even need a source? Probably not. Am I going to give one anyway because it's just good scientific practice. Yes. Moving on. Not only is it the most-used encyclopaedia, it is the biggest by a huge margin - being 50 times bigger than the second-placed Encyclopædia Brittanica, which you may remember stopped releasing print editions because they just stopped being cost-effective. To top it all off, it is impressively accurate, with reports regularly showing its accuracy comparative to other encyclopaedias - and even textbooks! It's also free, and user-edited.

Think about this business model for a second. Almost anybody can generate content for Wikipedia, and people can access it just as easily. It's surprising that it hasn't just been taken over by trolls - but at the heart of Wikipedia is a genuine love of knowledge and information. Wikipedia has become self-sustaining and ubiquitous: it's the 6th biggest website on the internet, losing out only to Facebook, Google, YouTube, Yahoo, and a Chinese search engine, Baidu. It's rather remarkable, considering it doesn't used ads.

So how does a website sustain itself without resorting to ads or selling things? Well, if you've ever been on Wikipedia, you'll see them semi-regularly asking for donations. And it works. The internet is a curious thing - it loves getting things for free. I believe much of this stems from people pirating things they can't get for free. That's the reason Steam and iTunes and Netflix got so popular; the service is as good if not better than many pirating sites, and you get to actually get it all legitimately. That's why people like Wikipedia - it's free, but because people like it, it makes money. This leads me to my rule of free things: Their real product is goodwill. What they provide is just a way of producing goodwill.

Let me go into this now, to explain. Take Coca-Cola. Their product is not goodwill. It's Coca-Cola. They get goodwill by making their product. If people stop liking the drink Coca-Cola, their sales will plummet. If they start giving out Coca-Cola for free, their profits will plummet. They rely on selling their product. They gain their goodwill and profit by selling a product. For Wikipedia, they give out information for free. People can just use the information and not give a single cent to Wikipedia. Wikipedia requires goodwill outside of the created product. As such, they live off that created goodwill. And you know what - now they're essentially the best general encyclopaedia, not just in the world, but I would argue, human history.

I'm going to continue to use this goodwill idea in my next example: webcomics. Before the internet was even a twinkle in Tim Berners-Lee's eye and the superinfo highway was still drifting out in space*, comics were syndicated in newspapers and the like: the authors would sell their hard-earned work to newspapers, and thus make money. Now, with webcomics, people put their webcomics out into the world, without any particular expectation that they'd make a cent. I've mentioned before that the internet is just good at allowing people to create and distribute content, and this is what webcomics are for. People like showing other people what they've created*.

But how do webcomic creators make money? Well, some from advertising, but that's not what all webcomics do. xkcd sure doesn't. So how do they make money? Well, Randall Munroe, creator of xkcd, has a store that yours truly may have bought from on occasion. But I didn't have to. xkcd is free. So how does Munroe keep making money?

Well, he provides an excellent product that people enjoy. It's the goodwill of creating something so enjoyable that keeps him in business. It's the goodwill of people who like his comic enough to want to buy things from the store. Some may say that webcomics are only used to sell things from the store, and while that may have a kernel of truth in it, most, if not all, webcomics are created in a spirit of fun and a willingness to share content. The ability of the creator to provide a great product drives the store to creation as people demand to buy things from the webcomic.

The webcomic itself is what people flock to the website for. It's what people love. They buy the merchandise, like shirts or books, that they think is cool. It supports the creator, and you get an awesome thing. Everybody wins!

I do want to clarify here that goodwill is not always the pure reason people support free things. It's often people buy something cool related to the free thing. But it's the goodwill created by the author and their primary product that gives that cool, yet secondary, thing its value.

This is epitomised by the game League of Legends. For those who don't know, League of Legends is a MOBA style game where 10 people battle it out on 5 by 5 teams using champions and abilities - it's difficult to explain, but TotalBiscuit, the games reviewer of note, did an excellent video describing it. It's somewhat outdated, being over two years old, but it's a nice little introduction to League of Legends (which I will henceforth refer to as League or LoL, just because, come on, that's a whole three words I can't be bothered typing out).

It's also incredibly popular, reportedly becoming the #1 most played game in the world, outstripping World of Warcraft and Modern Warfare 3. It's also, if you wish, entirely free to play. If you want to give it a shot - and I highly recommend it, it's a very exciting and a very fun game. In fact, if you live in North America or Australia (where I live), then may I provide my referral link, which gives me some bonuses if you get to Level 10. Or, just go to League of Legends' official website and sign up from scratch, but, this way I can get a little something out of it on top of everything. Help a blogger out, you know?

In all seriousness though, for those who don't know, LoL has an interesting pricing system. Like many free-to-play systems, it has two currencies. It has IP, or Influence Points, and RP, or Riot Points. Influence Points are only earned by playing matches, whether they be against AI opponents or human opponents, and Riot Points can only be bought with real money. Like many free-to-play games, there are things you can buy only with one currency. Unlike many other companies, however, Riot Games - the company who makes LoL - has put in place an interesting system: everything competitive can be permanently bought with IP. Not rented, but yours. Forever. The only thing RP buys that IP can't that can even be considered slightly competitive is IP boosts, and these are not efficient things.

So what does RP get you? Well, it can get you champions - but these can also be bought with IP, and often more efficiently than RP can. So what can RP that IP can't? Skins. That's pretty much it. Also name changes, and rune pages* are remarkably inefficient to buy with IP, but apart from that, it's skins, which are just ways of visually changing your champion. To take one more prominent example: there's a popular champion called Cho'gath; a red demon monster from what is essentially hell. His primary goals are destroying the world and killing other champions. He is not a particularly friendly champion. However, you can buy a skin that turns him into a gentleman with a top hat, monocle and suit and makes him speak in an upper-class faux-British accent instead of some reverberating demonic scream. It's a popular skin.

So how does Riot get people to buy skins even though they are completely visual and in no way competitive? Well, firstly, they're almost universally damn awesome. But secondly, and just as importantly: Riot makes people want to play League, and it makes them want to play their favourite champions. It hooks you on certain champions by having a weekly rotation of champions that you can use completely free, without needing to buy them. They also consistently have sales on champions and skins. So for one, you find champions you want to play, and then you get hooked on them, and then you want to differentiate yourself from the crowd, because this is your champion. Also, on top of that, you see champions and skins you were thinking of getting, and are on sale - but only for a limited time*!

They also make pretty much all the champions unique, and at the very least playable. At the professional level, there are, of course, champions that are used much more than others, but at the level most people play, almost all champs are usable, and usable well. They all consistently buff and nerf champions in order to try and keep them all on that level of fun and usability. As a result, people enjoy that Riot are constantly involved in making every champion viable and fun, and feel involved with the company. This is an action that both improves League of Legends gameplay and generates goodwill. I think the fact that Riot does this is underrated, and I think Riot made a very good decision by doing this.

So, to sum up: players find the champions they like, whether they be in the free weekly rotation or otherwise, then learn the champ, enjoy the champ, start to use the champ in matches with players, and customise their champ to show it is your own, not necessarily in that order. Riot Games makes that happen. I could also go into the availability of RP (you'll find RP cards in pretty much every game shop nowadays) and the increasing popularity of online competitions (the winners of League's Season 2 Championships got a million dollars - Riot probably made that back in advertising and RP sales), but, that's the pricing system in a nutshell. This all adds up to a game that is nominally free, but gets you to consistently spend money anyway. This comic by Penny Arcade* really sums up the experience.

Now: we come to our conclusion. Companies that offer free content are in the business of producing goodwill, for it is the goodwill of the consumer that keeps the company in business. Wikipedia provides what is pretty much the best encyclopaedia out there, and stays in business with donations just because of how awesome and available it is. Webcomics make content that people really enjoy, and provide supplementary merchandise like shirts that the comic's creators will know their customers will also really enjoy based on the webcomic. Riot Games creates an awesome game with League of Legends, makes pretty much every champion in the game fun and viable, then gives you the chance to customise the champ and make it yours.

 

And, as you can guess, that's the end of this post. Do I regret waiting over three weeks to post this? No. It's 'Wayward Letters.' You should be used to this by now. As always, I hope this was entertaining for you, and that it was just a little enlightening. Cheers.

 

AB

CPS Theory

Please note, before you read any of this and then proceed to accuse me of "acquiring" this theory from somewhere else: this is indeed my own idea. However, this idea is pretty much mostly common sense; I'm just trying to codify it, in a sense. Writing stuff down makes things make sense in my own head. OK, enough introspection: on to my unveiling of CPS Theory*!

So what is CPS Theory, and what does it stand for? Well, CPS Theory is my way of looking at how narratives should work, and why narratives that break CPS Theory fail. CPS Theory stands for Character, Plot, and Setting. They're the three crucial ingredients of story-telling, and each one is dependent on the other. When writing something, I believe that if you neglect CPS Theory, you will fail. As a side note, the acronym CPS isn't special - it's not catchy, just descriptive. You could just as easy change the order of the letters or stylise it as ^C_P^S or even try PPP - People, Plot, Place*. I personally like the stylised CPS since it doesn't implicitly prioritise any of the three elements - they're all on an equal footing. Anyway: to the explanation.

Here's how one might naively imagine how writing a story works: characters act out the plot in some setting. I think that's misguided - it implies that the three elements aren't inherently connected. You could change the setting and the characters and plot wouldn't change. Here's my take on it: characters create the plot in response to themselves and the setting. They are all connected, and changing one necessarily means changing the others. That's another reason I like the stylised CPS: each one is adjacent to the others.

Now, how are all these elements connected, and how do you use CPS Theory to improve your writing? I'll go through the element easiest to change: setting. By and large, you can change the setting - make it as fantastic as you possibly can - and people will accept that. People, as a rule, don't mind an unrealistic setting. In fact, that's a lot of why people read novels or watch movies. It's the power of the human imagination. And I will not stop reading a book because the setting is awful. I don't really care that much about the setting once I start reading; for a lot of genres, the setting is the hook, the setting is what starts you off. Plot and characters keep you reading. Take, for example, Twilight. I don't care if you have a problem with the vampires sparkling - vampires didn't even die in the sun until Nosferatu in 1922. A lot of traditional vampire folklore has fallen by the wayside; you don't hear about vampires not being able to cross running water or being forced to count grains of rice if dropped on the ground anymore. Twilight is generally maligned because of its characters or plot - setting is just the most available thing people can point out. You want to know the setting of Twilight? Vampires live in secret, have superpowers, and are run by what is the equivalent of the Mafia. Superpowered vampire Mafia? Sign me up! Do I care about sparkling? Heck no! I will come back to Twilight later, because it's admittedly an easy example. I will attempt to speak about it objectively though - you will not hear me unfairly malign things just because that's what's in at the moment.

But, I'm digressing. What I'm trying to say is that setting is the most malleable of the three elements, because of the range of what you can do with setting. With everything from real life to grand galaxies with futuristic technologies to magic in medieval times, you can make almost anything your imagination creates and your audience will enjoy the ride. This, however, comes with a downside: if you do it wrong, it is awful. If your setting is obviously broken or self-contradictory, or if it's full of negative values for no reason, then you pretty much set yourself up to fail from the get-go. It can lead to things like MacGuffins - objects obviously put in to drive the plot - or Unfortunate Implications - where the setting creates unintentionally offensive messages. That's not to say you can't have settings that the audience detests - but only if you are supposed to detest them. 1984 is an excellent example of an amazing setting that we are not supposed to like - and that's the point of it. In fact, 1984 is one of the rare examples where the characters and the plot are secondary to the setting - it's usually the other way around. But, apart from those rare gems, setting is the malleable background to the heart and soul of the narrative.

Now, on to the next element, the hardest to change: the plot. Now, you might be thinking to yourself, 'but plot is easy to change!' No. No it is not. A plot that doesn't organically arise from interactions between characters and the setting will seem forced and people will not feel involved. A plot that doesn't arise from the interplay between characters and setting will lead to things like plot holes or out-of-character moments. You can't make the plot do something. You can only change the characters and the setting to get the plot the way you want it. A plot that seems forced, disconnected, or artificial, will not pull your audience in and entertain them. Either your characters will do something out of character, in which case your audience will start empathising with them less, or you will get things like plot holes or plots that just don't make proper sense. Remember this: your plot is unmalleable. Your plot is unyielding. If you try to bend it, it will snap. The only way to change what you want your plot to be without breaking it is to change everything else.

So, with plot and setting finished, we have one last element - characters. Characters are the reason we read books and watch movies. We empathise with these characters, if written properly, and hope they succeed in their endeavours. We experience what they experience, and share their emotions. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the very fact that characters exist is one of the greatest magics humans can weave - these simple words on a page, when we read them, create people that we are almost friends with, people that we know intimately, people that we might even shed a tear about if something happens to them*... that's the magic* of writing.

It is extremely imperative you don't screw this step up.

Writing characters is the hardest thing about writing in general. But why is that? Well, for one, the best characters seem like real people, whereas the best settings aren't necessarily real. Characters have to be relatable. Settings don't. Now, there are two ways to write a character your audience will feel connected with, and one of them is wrong. The first way is to create a fully well-rounded, three-dimensional character, with their own unique qualities and flaws, who the audience can relate to, almost as if they are meeting a real person. If you write this character well, then your audience almost becomes friends with these people. This sort of character solves problems that are thrown at them (as a result of interaction with the setting or other characters!) by what you would expect a real person to do - by doing things their personality dictates, while using what the setting gives them. Harry Potter is an excellent example: he seems real. He has his own flaws - he's impulsive, and moody, and sometimes a slave to his emotions - but he also has a lot of positive character traits; he's kind, loving, courageous, loyal, strong-willed... in short, he seems like a real person to us. We connect with him. The downside to this sort of character is that they are organic, and they will not necessarily obey your rules or what you want your plot to do. There's an excellent quote by Laurell K. Hamilton* that really sums this up: "My characters surprise me constantly. My characters are like my friends - I can give them advice, but they don't have to take it. If your characters are real, then they surprise you, just like real people."

The second way is to write your character as a blank slate, with no real discernable character traits. This lets the audience project themselves on to said character, in an attempt to create something the audience can connect with. This sort of character solves problems by... well, since they have no real character traits to speak of, either the plot moves the character along, or, if the character is actually actively affecting what's happening in the narrative, then they are often given some sort of incredible superpower by the setting in order to solve said problem. Now, Harry Potter is not this sort of character just because he has magic. To quote the sixth book, "The trouble is, the other side can do magic too." This is a sort of superpower which is obviously and inherently overpowered with respect to the powers of other characters in the setting. If a character is creative with their power, which then becomes overpowered, this is less of a problem; that's using their personality. I'm talking about simple point-and-click overpoweredness: you don't need a personality, you just use the power.

I'm going to digress shortly here to go into how thrilling plots require challenges. If it's obvious the protagonist is going to succeed, and it's obvious how they're going to succeed, then we don't really care what happens: we know what's going to happen. Similarly, if it seems impossible for the protagonist to succeed, and then they use some power the audience has no idea about and could have no idea about, it will seem to your audience that you had no idea how to continue the narrative without the protagonist dying. If you want your audience to be emotionally involved in the story, then the characters need to face challenges of some description, and they need to succeed or fail in these challenges wholly using the resources available to them that the audience is aware of. To quote Eliezer Yudkowsky, who just knows things: "You can't make Frodo a Jedi unless you give Sauron the Death Star." In a less jocular saying, "The premise of a story is a conflict and its resolution."

So now I've gone into what makes a setting, plot, and character, let's look at an example of a way a story does not take CPS Theory into account: Twilight. Firstly: Bella is a Mary Sue. This is not me talking, this is Stephenie Meyer talking. And I quote: "I left out a detailed description of Bella in the book so that the reader could more easily step into her shoes." This is the complete opposite of how you deal with character creation. People also don't like Twilight because of the rampant Unfortunate Implications in it, but the main problem, I think, are the Mary Sues in the series. This is especially heinous considering Twilight is a romance series - it doesn't just need three-dimensional characters we can relate to, it depends on them. You might be able to get away with more two-dimensional characters in, say, the action genre, where people like the genre because of the plots rather than the characters, though I will say I think entrancing plots come from an emotionally involved audience, which comes from relatable characters. In a romance, it's characters that matter. Moreover, it is a foregone conclusion: once Bella becomes a vampire, she automatically falls irrevocably in love with Edward. There is no real romantic conflict in Twilight because we know that once Bella becomes a vampire, there will be no more conflict. It's over: they're in love forever. What this leaves us with is a series that may be entertaining, but in the same way a kiddy pool is: it's a shallow book series, with no real depth to speak of. There's nothing really below the surface in Twilight.

So how could you improve Twilight? Well, the first and most obvious way is to get rid of the Mary Sue-ness of the characters and have us become emotionally attached to them. The second way is to remove it as a romance genre, since we know the conclusion is foregone. You could make it an action series or a suspense series or an adventure series, but it's in need of the bartender mantra: I don't care where the series goes, but it can't stay here. I've already said the setting is solid. And, I have good news: such a story has already been written, and is surprisingly fantastic. I present to you, Luminosity - a re-imagining of Twilight in a similar style to Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, where major conflicts are solved by the main character thinking about things. Let me quote directly from the first page of the narrative: "My favorite three questions are, What do I want?, What do I have?, and How can I best use the latter to get the former?" If you aren't already convinced that this narrative is both a) very different stylistically from Twilight, and b) amazing, I suggest you go read that quote again. Interestingly, this story also succeeds when it comes to CPS Theory, where the Characters are relatable, the Setting is interesting, and the Plot, without giving too much away, is created as a direct result of the interaction between the former two elements. Is this where I say that a Twilight fan-fiction is genuinely good writing? Yes. Yes I do. And I humbly invite you to read the book before you (admittedly justifiably) label me an idiot with no idea of what good literature is.

 

Well, I believe I've fairly comprehensively explained my take on how narratives should be written, and provided some examples on how to put my theory into action. I hope that I have inspired you to start thinking about how narratives should work, and, if you are a fledgling writer, that I have improved your writing in some way. Happy New Year!

AB

Boxing Eve 2012

Hello, readers! I hope you all have a happy Boxing Eve. My gift to you is Portal 2 pixel art! Enjoy!

 

Merry Christmas and a great New Year to everyone!

AB