Friends, this is tough love. (And damn I wish I had a stern looking photo of myself as the avatar for it.) I know right now you're thrilled with the roll of cash you brought back from GenCon, but designers you need to learn about the Overjustification Effect.

Researchers played math games with children that the children seemed to enjoy. And then with one group they started giving a reward (coins, or gold stars or something) for the playing of the games. After a while they stopped playing the games with the children, which also ended the rewards to those that had been receiving them.

And what they observed is that the children in the group that hadn't been given rewards was significantly more likely to continue playing the games among themselves than the children in the rewarded group. The rewarded children generally lost interest in the games once the context of rewarding had clearly ended.

Social psychologists call the initial unrewarded enjoyment the intrinsic motivation, and they call the reward the extrinsic motivation. Their explanation is that extrinsic motivations will supplant intrinsic motivations so completely that when they're removed there's almost no intrinsic motivation left. And they have consistently demonstrated this same loss of intrinsic motivation not just in children, but also in adults of all ages.

So every year the successful young turks of the Forge booth come howling home from GenCon, geeked (with good justification) by their achievements, high as kites on the smell of Franklins, and announce plans to write and publish three or four games in the next year. And then...maybe they force one game out. Maybe. (And maybe they aren't too pleased with it.) But mostly they come to GenCon the next year with just the same game they were selling the previous year and a deeply buried knot of regret, confusion, and feelings of failure and inadequacy.

So designers, my advice is to hold on tight to the motivations that brought you to GenCon in the first place. The studies show it's possible to stay grounded in your intrinsic motivations if you recognize the extrinsic motivations for what they are.

Paul

As demonstrated by the ginormous stack of games I picked up at GenCon Indy, the rpg design community is on freakin' fire:

Contenders: A RolePlaying Game of Blood & Sweat, Pain & Hope
Death's Door
Dictionary of Mu
Don't Rest Your Head: A Game of Insomnia In the Mad City
Faery's Tale
Hero's Banner: The Fury of Free Will
Lacuna: Part 1, The Creation of the Mystery and the Girl from Blue City
Mister Lincoln Experiment
Mortal Coil
Noumenon
Perfect: An RPG About the Human Condition and the Criminal Spirit
Push: New Thinking About Roleplaying
Shock: Social Science Fiction
A Thousand and One Nights: A Game of Enticing Stories

I also picked up a resale copy of GURPS Goblins, and a set of Sicherman dice. And I only barely held off on a couple of other indie rpgs by assuring myself I could order them online.

Danielle bought:

Best Friends: A Role-Playing Game About Girlfriends and All Their Petty Hatreds
It Was a Mutual Decision
Kwaidan: Tales of Ghostly Japan
Letterflip
Mouse Guard comics
and a Züca

(Of the above, and based on demo experiences, Hero's Banner is the game I'm most wanting to play. And Best Friends gets my award for most awesome and elegant currency mechanic.)

Paul