Creator Burnout in the Age of Pandemic

At this point in time it's been more than a year since Covid-19 began sweeping across the United States, drastically altering the way society functions. In the past, I've written about the changing face of conventions, distribution and online roleplaying. Today, I want to focus on another challenging aspect of being a game designer: burnout. Specifically the kind of burnout that comes from desperately trying to keep a business afloat during one of the worst worldwide crises of our lifetimes.

I've mentioned before that Drowning Moon Studios has a large digital catalogue, so we were largely able to avoid distribution issues when warehousing and shipping were hit hard. However, thanks to the lack of in-person conventions and demo games in 2020, sales are still frighteningly low, regardless of our participation in online cons. In an attempt to keep business active during this difficult time, I've had to raise my online engagement significantly, so that my work remains in the public eye.

As someone who is introverted by nature, this has resulted in frustration and burnout, and has even begun to take a physical toll on my body. It is genuinely hard for me to be constantly available online, and I've found that, for me, it takes more energy to run online games, rather than demoing at a physical convention. Add to this the fact that running games over Discord for online conventions has barely made a blip in retail sales, and I'm left with expending a remarkable amount of effort for very little reward.

Now that we're staring down the barrel of another year with few physical conventions (there are some scheduled for the fall, but these are mostly tentative, and likely wouldn’t be safe for me to attend as an immunocompromised person--even after being vaccinated), I'm having to determine how much I'm able to adapt to this new reality, while still maintaining my physical, emotional and mental health as a designer.

Given how things went last year, I'm likely not going to participate in online conventions this year, unless my only responsibility is to show up and play. Instead, I'm going to turn my limited energy into building Drowning Moon Studios' brand, and hoping that, with the success of our first small Kickstarter, I'll be able to cultivate a community of players who are consistently excited about our games. I've also decided to put my focus back into design, and intend to spend more time developing one or two properties each year. My previous MO was to simply put out games whenever I was excited about them, relying on demo games at physical conventions to drive sales. 

Hopefully this new approach will allow me to conserve my energy, while putting it back where it needs to go--into the games themselves. With Mage to Order's Kickstarter recently funded, I have a chance to start this year with a specific project in mind, and will hopefully be able to build off that foundation when it's time for the Follow Me Down Kickstarter later this fall.