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Because it has to be said again...

Since I just had to deal with this stuff again, I felt like today might be a good day to post the transcript of a talk I gave during the Play Festival last year. If you want, you can watch the talk here

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Hi everyone, my name is Eric, my pronouns are they/them and today I would like to talk to you about how videogames oftentimes hate poor people and what, if you run a an event, you could do to maybe not do that.

I’m 37 years old and I currently live in Germany. I taught myself how to make games in 2015 and since then have released about one game per year. So far, I have released two commercial videogames, Splinter Zone, a game about escaping eternal punishment, came out in 2017 and GB Rober, an action platformer about shooting your bosses and fighting for a better world, came out on October 13th (please buy it!). A bit more relevant for my argument today however, is the fact that I’ve been receiving welfare here in Germany since 2015.

For those who don’t know what this exactly means, here’s a short summary: I’m getting about 400€* per month, plus rent and health insurance. I still have to pay other bills (such as electricity, phone and internet) from that 400€*. I have to re-apply for welfare once every six Months, which involves filling out a bunch of forms about how much rent I have to pay, if I had any income and other things. Basically I constantly have to prove to them that yes I’m actually too poor to live on my own and therefore I’m “deserving” of financial assistance.

*It's actually is closer to 450€ the last time I checked, however it certainly doesn't feel like it...

Why are submission fees for events bad? It means I have to gamble about $100 per event, just for the chance of maybe being able to actually show my game there. Since most of those fees are non-refundable, that means I have to make a decision between eating trash for two weeks of each Month, or not submitting my game, just for one event. You can see that most likely I won’t choose the “eat trash option”, because the value proposition isn’t all that great.

But what about financial assistance models? Some events are aware of the issues that submissions fees bring with them and offer financial assistance models, or fee waivers. Which are better than nothing, but frankly not ideal either. Why? Because they usually involve a whole secondary submission process, where the person who’s asking for a fee waiver has to prove to some stranger that actually they are poor enough and “deserving” to receive financial assistance and are not just looking to score a freebie. This might just be, because of my personal situation and the fact that I have to do this whole ordeal once every six Months, but I find having to prove that I am actually poor enough to be eligible for help degrading. Especially considering that developers who can afford to straight up pay the fee don’t have to jump through these extra hoops to submit their work.

So if you run a videogames event, ask yourself the following questions: Do you want to fully represent what videogames are and can be? Do you believe that videogames are more than just products that you can sell to both investors and consumers? Do you think that videogames as a space should accommodate people from all kinds of different backgrounds and not just that can afford to exist in it? If you really believe all these things and don’t just consider them nice labels to distinguish your event, then please get rid of your submission fees. Otherwise all you’re saying is that you like diversity, but only if it’s commercially viable and represented by affluent people.

Now, maybe you can’t get rid of your submission fee, because you need the money to actually fund the event. Completely ignoring the fact that I still think that extracting money from poor people to run your videogames event is still not a very cool thing, I still believe there are ways to make this a bit less awful. The least you could do in that case is to build structures that don’t degrade people that can’t afford to pay your fee. So you should offer fee waivers, but ideally you should offer these waivers without requiring people to go through a secondary application process. Instead find ways that people who can afford to pay a submission fee are able to support those that can’t

One model that might work uses the same idea that exists behind the concept of community copies on itch.io. Basically some devs on itch.io, offer a limited pool of free copies that anyone can claim, with no questions asked. The number of free copies is tied to the total number of commercial copies that have been sold, or to a special edition with a higher price point. What I personally like about this concept is that it makes people who can afford to pay for something, also pay for those that cannot.

To summarize: Submission Fees actively reduce the overall breadth of games that are being submitted to videogame events and therefore limit the overall diversity of games that end up getting shown. Not only that, but you’re limiting these games down to only games that are made by people who are able to afford submitting their work in the first place. Ideally events should get rid of their submission fees, and should find other ways of funding, if they previously were reliant on fees to organize the event itself. If that’s not possible, the least events could do, is to offer low-barrier fee waiver, or financial assistance programs, that enable people with lower income to submit their games.

Thank you for your time, here's where you can find me on the internet and please go and buy GB Rober on Steam, or itch. It's a good time and I really need the money.