🧵I gotta be honest. W/ the *entire* economy being a spiderweb where, when you pull on one strand all the others are immediately affected by the vibration, it seems virtually impossible for the #TTRPG or #IndyFilm industry to come to any tangible fixes for wages/profitability/etc...
To increase the wages of all involved in the creation process (a noble intent, mind you) it means that the product (book, film, app, whatever) has to be more profitable to support that level of pay.
Unfortunately, it cost more now to produce anything than it ever has. The price of all the component parts has risen dramatically in recent years (price per page to print, shipping, equipment rentals, craft services, etc...)
So who absorbs the cost increase to support all the costs associated with making "the thing"? The logical answer is the consumer, right?
Problem there is that the consumer is in a place where everything about *their* life has also gotten increasingly more expensive.
So asking them to support a 50% price hike in your product... a product that is almost always undervalued to begin with... is bound to fail.
I can hear the cries now, "$100 for a #TTRPG book?!?! Are you crazy?"
So what's the answer?
Thing is, I don't think there is one. I think the industry was already dying... too many cooks, not enough people dining (even with the recent TTRPG boom IMO)... and the only way to save it is if the consumer is able to absorb the cost of production.
And that is not a problem we, as creators of #TTRPGs or #IndyFilm, have the ability to fix.
So while it is great to keep calling for better wages, to value art and the creation of it, to ask for fair compensation for a product, you have to understand that nothing else in the economic spiderweb allows for it.
Anyway, on a completely related note, where's my guillotine?
Jeffrey S. Mueller