08-23-2019, 02:37 PM
(08-21-2019, 02:15 PM)Davin Wrote: I think that professional artwork looks and attracts much better, but a $0 budget of course means that's out of the question. I'd rather see something than nothing, and you sure have to fill in the corners with something, so I don't have a problem with the repurposed cartoon art.
I agree, Davin, that professional artwork tends to look better, and perhaps even attract the human eye better than refurbished comic art from comic books that have fallen into the public domain. Also, I agree with you that various sections (and not just the corners) need to be filled with something, and not just left as empty space. It helps to provide more balanced visuals for the reader.
In fact, part of the reason that I have offered free ads, to date, is to try and have some ready mechanism to break up the mass of text that the magazine otherwise would be without having any imagery. The amount of imagery available in the form of PBM advertisements of old is substantially limited. The refurbished comic book are allows me a mechanism to inject imagery of some kind, in the absence of a large repository of PBM-related artwork from the PBM industry and individual game moderators. Plus, if I removed all comic style art from the magazine, this would eliminate all of the front cover art for the magazine - in effect, it would kill off Suspense & Decision permanently.
Granted, I could move to some kind of business model for the magazine, but if I did that, then free ad space might disappear, as well. And if I started charging for ad space, I suspect that most remaining PBM companies and individual game moderators would not buy ad space, which in turn would be counter-productive to the magazine's ability to try and grow the overall PBM player base.
For me, PBM is a hobby interest of mine. While it wouldn't be unduly difficult transition from a hobby-interest to a business model, it would involve me having to deal with headaches such as taxes. I have not concluded that is an additional headache that I want to contend with, even though it would allow for certain opportunities to manifest themselves. Even if I were ever to transition to a business model for the magazine, I would be very disinclined to eliminate all free advertising opportunities. After all, some GMs simply do not have an advertising budget to advertise their games with. Since PBM is a hobby interest of mine, I tend to be sympathetic with individuals interested in running a PBM game of their own, and who do it for the love of the hobby more so than to try and make money off their games.