On 10/14/2012 7:04 PM, Chris Lee wrote:
> Yes, the lists are doing inexplicably well. Your comments mirror exactly what I have been experiencing. I started doing this as a sort of joke with other game developers I know. "100 people who are too uncreative to come up with this stuff on their own" was said many times, along with "If you can make a living with this, I hate you."
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> I attribute the success to the low price. Maybe there are enough people trying to redeem a gift certificate or meet a price threshold for a discount on another product, and just looking at the cheapest items and adding whatever looks interesting for a dollar. Or maybe this is actually a thing. For sanity's sake, I'm going to keep believing the former.
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Chris,
OMG! That's totally coolish bizarre! I was hesitant to say earlier but I also, no kidding, started doing the 100 lists back in the day (2006 or so) also as a joke! I'm not lying, for real! I thought to myself, "Oh what the heck, rpgnow might kick me off for this but I'm tempted to release a 1 page product of 100 items and see if people would actually buy it". They did... tons of it. So much, in fact, that during the last of my days of running Top Fashion Games before turning it over to my old publisher I made quite a bit of cash off of it.

You know, its so strange, and wonderful.. yet it sucks also. I have a ton of really needed, useful system generic gaming ideas that I intend to get out there but it almost seems like a waste of time, money wise, because I can make more off of 100 lists... and the profits never seem to stop coming. Even crappy stuff, like the 100 first names for savage humanoids that I released for 70 cents (because I couldn't bring myself up to charging $1), people really get into and buy.
Who would have guessed?
My old publisher, Neal Levin, of Dark Quest Games, admitted the bizarreness of it as well when I was turning over the interests of TFG to him. For all the money he has spent on top rate artists, outsourced editors and layout people, writers, etc. etc., I was actually beating him on monthly profits from 100 lists that I could often throw together in an hour or so with zero overhead.

Anyways, thinks for the publisher insight share. Peace out to you man, hope you do well, and hope that together we lure a ton of people into stuffing those three ring binders with our joint efforts at creating 100 lists.

Dave

By the way, if you are interested in a wee bit of history with my own veteran efforts of the 100 lists, I'll tell you where I got the idea. Back in the day, and I mean totally back in the day (insert old times, half blind blues player here with his harmonica sitting on a Louisiana front porch (granted, I'm listening to Bukka White at the moment).... I was a teenager back in the late 80's/early 90's, ordering my geek out products from a company called Wargames West. In a shipment they sent me was this one page advert for an upcoming product that had a 100 list... it was something like 100 people you would meet in a fantasy marketplace I think. The idea was that they gave this concept to you in hopes you would submit possible equal quality 100 lists. The winners got included in a published book of such lists. I remember that while at the time I didn't have enough talent or nerve to send in my own ideas, I found the list useful never the less. And used it quite a bit in gaming. Years later, after being published multiple times under different companies and having my own in house, "slap it out and send it out" pdf company (Top Fashion Games), I decided to revisit the idea, 1 page for $1, as a joke (as I said in last email), just to see if one sucker would actually buy it... I was really, really wrong. Waaaayyy more than one sucker bought it, A LOT of customers bought it. And thus I found it hard to write longer, serious products after that when the idea of green cash tempted me so bad. Money.. its the cocaine of game design writers. LOL!

Anyways, thanks for sharing ideas, I'm on Facebook as Dave Woodrum and Argo Buckbane as well as Fishwife Games and Tree Dweller... like and I'll like back if you are on.

Dave