I’m looking at two game world products on RPGNow. Both talk about nations, history, races, locations, NPCs, flora and fauna, etc. Both are titled “World of XYZ” where XYZ is the name of the setting. There are many other game worlds available at RPGNow. These are just two.

Now put yourself in the designers’ shoes. They probably enjoyed writing their product a lot. World building is fun. Could be one or both settings started out as a homebrew campaign world. Hours were poured into these products. Hopes are poured into them too, I bet.

Now put yourself in the customer’s shoes. They’re comparing these two products wondering which one to buy. The contents seem the same. One has great cover art, but the other speaks to simplicity. One has more pages, but is that a good thing? The customer has a difficult choice.

In this scenario, it comes down to a coin toss. Customers will buy one or the other for arbitrary reasons, or maybe they keep surfing because deciding seems like more work than checking out other products in the category. As neither product stood out, chances are the surfers won’t come back.

Now put yourself back in your own shoes as somebody who wants to create a great RPG product and sell it. Are you going to commit the same mistake? The internet offers a world of customer choice. It is critical you do everything possible to make yourself different and more attractive to customers as a product choice than your competition.

Let’s say you want to build a world. Are you going to create another game setting that’s just like all the others and hope the coin lands in your favour once in awhile? All that effort for such small return.

Did I mention one of the settings above is $20 and the other is free? With such choices, the customer is now firmly in control. They will search for what they want and need, and they will find it because so many choices are available. Build what you want, but you can’t make gamers buy your stuff. They don’t care it’s a 20 year old setting or that you put 200 hours into it.

I would buy neither game world. Not even the free one. Time is precious. I’m interested in products that solve my specific problems. My bookshelf and hard drive are full of only vaguely different products. We customers have learned our lesson.

The only hope you have is to create something that stands out from the crowd. What is unique about your offering? If you’re selling a game world you better not say it has NPCs, kingdom descriptions, flora and fauna. You have to position yourself differently from other products to earn gamers’ attention and purchases and loyalty.

I think the problem stems from all the products we’ve consumed over the years. Their nearly identical formats have embedded themselves into our subconscious. When we go to create that adventure or setting or system, we draw on our experiences, and without realizing it we create something that’s just like everything else on the market.

Lulu and RPGNow don’t care. They are happy to offer 300 similar adventures, or books of new feats, or PC races. They’ll make a sale. It’s you and I who will suffer if our product is just like our competition’s because we’ll make just 1 sale once in awhile.

Before you start creating your next RPG product figure out how it will be different and how the customer will know it. How will you serve gamers better than the bazillion competing products, both commercial and free? And how will you prove it to customers so they see you as the clear choice when shopping?