Today's variety of online RPG publishing platforms means that indie designers can share their games with big audiences easier than ever. It DOESN'T mean that any platform is superior, or that games on one platform have more merit than on another. That's reductive and elitist.

In the online publishing market, each venue has pros and cons WRT profit margins, advertising, audiences and markets, ease of use, etc. What cleans up on one platform stagnates on another and selling on that platform might mean most profit goes to the distributor, not the author.

Look at the two giants of online indie RPG publishing: DTRPG and Itch. DTRPG has brand-name recognition and AAA content next to 3rd party products, but poor creator UI and bad profit margins. Itch is newer but has incredible indie diversity, better profit margins, and better UX.

There's a false equivalence people establish between venue and quality because of the content on each. DTRPG is assumed to have higher-quality content because you can buy The Big RPGs there, while Itch is constantly mischaracterized as a place for lyric games and experiments.

This is patently false: I've seen (and bought) shovelware RPGs on DTRPG, and I own games from big "indie" companies (like Evil Hat's Fate of Cthulhu) on Itch.

The idea that Itch is ONLY a venue for untested "arthouse" games is misinformed at best and legit offensive at worst.

Is it hard to make a living just on more abstract games, especially ones that aren't tested? Absolutely! That's why most indie designers who make that content are ALREADY impoverished and making games in their spare time while working multiple jobs, or can't work for some reason.

Playtesting your games, whether you're a Coastal Wizard or a bedroom RPG designer, is a PRIVILEGE. It costs time, money, and energy. If you can afford to playtest all your games extensively, you have to recognize that others either can't afford to, or don't want to, do the same.

Plenty of indie designers playtest their work, whether they publish on Itch, DTRPG, or elsewhere. Plenty of indie companies do it too! Even big companies release Early Access games! Nobody got up in arms when Paizo released the Pathfinder Playtest Book in hardcover for $40.

EVEN IF your game is "playtested enough" (which is a nothing phrase and unquantifiable; all you can do is playtest enough to make sure it runs well 9 times out of 10), testers and designers won't catch everything. Extensive playtesting will never automatically make a game good.

How many AAA video games release each year that have Day One patches because of a catastrophic bug or issue? How many AAA TRPGs release to outcry about offensive content nobody did anything about during testing? How many pages/years of errata does 5e have to improve its rules?

I have learned more from indie RPGs with unusual mechanics and unconventional formats than any AAA release because of the sheer volume of indie games released in the last decade. That diversity of ideas inspires me because of how many people are unafraid to try something new.

Yes, sometimes unplaytested games are unsatisfying to play, but I never feel like I've wasted my time or money if I learn something new or get inspired by them. To cut one's self off from this slice of RPGs is to perpetuate the gatekeeping Big Names pulled on early indie devs.

To claim that Itch is only a space for unplaytested games, that those RPG devs don't care about balance/testing/only want to make "art" (as if all games aren't art, as if that's a bad thing) is so blisteringly ignorant; it invalidates all the Itch folx I know who test CONSTANTLY.

Literally NONE of the people who are making experimental games and publishing on Itch are telling companies (big or small) to follow their model! They aren't even saying that model is sustainable! Let's not insult each others' intelligence by pretending that's even an argument.

Here's my nuclear hot take about "Unplaytested Games Aren't Real Games" and "Itch is Only for Art Games."

This is the Forge debate all over again.

I'm not rehashing THAT but I am constantly disappointed that we're still fighting about who can belong in indie RPGs in 2020.

Fallout over the Forge has become a defining part of many older indie devs' identities, and I get that, but I will not sit idly by while "those who were here first" bully a newer generation trying to challenge the establishment and carve out a niche for themselves in new ways.

And get this: not everyone making this argument against Itch folx was there for the Forge! Some of y'all are new blood who happened to fall in with that crowd or heard that first. I am imploring you to reexamine what you've been told and what you're saying, and get right with it.

If you take anything away from this thread, let it be this: yes, lyric games and "arthouse" games are more common on Itch than DTRPG (for reasons outlined above and more). But RPG designers who publish on Itch and lyric game designers are NOT the same people. And we playtest too.