John Wick is an interesting character, he designed the fairly well known Legend of the Five Rings and 7th Sea role-playing games, both RPG and card games, for Alderac Entertainment Group, and has received Origins Awards for his work. He’s another one of these hyper-productive game designers who is able to turn ideas into games with remarkable speed.
But what I wanted to talk about right now was his business model. He has an interesting approach in that he sells PDFs for all of his games, regardless of size, for $5.
We’re talking Wilderness of Mirrors, his 20 page spy game, and we’re also talking Houses of the Blooded, his $45 RPG/LARP of political intrigue: both $5 PDFs. It’s a great way to sample a game by dropping $5 on it and then deciding if you want to buy the printed version, plus you have the PDF for easy reference at the table.
His most recent production, The Big Book of Little Games is a 250-page collection of ten of his short-form games in one print edition for $35. Preorders closed in early December, so hopefully I should be getting my copy soon and I’m really looking forward to it. He recently completed The Aegis Project, which explores the insanity of being a mecha pilot and being mentally-bound with a multi-ton robotic death machine. It should be quite interesting, I’m hoping that he’ll be done with the final edits soon.
He gives good interview, I most recently heard him on The Game’s The Thing Episode 94.
High Altitude Game Design 