What's New On StartPlaying.Games? (New art!)

Your pro GM update

Hey y’all! I recently posted in opposition to SPG’s policies concerning AI art for use in their marketplace and consequently had a brief meeting with Devon Chulick, the co-founder of Start Playing Games.

NEW SPG ART ASSETS

AI art has been all the rage if you scroll through the marketplace on SPG, despite there being a lot of licensed art made available by SPG. Some of which are actually… really fucking good. Check out a couple of these royalty-free Shutterstock licensed pieces that are now available whenever you click on the art link in Game Templates.

Or click the link here.

SPG Policies on AI Art

Devon has stated that “a policy that you cannot enforce is not a good policy.” When asked about integrating an AI detection tool like Hive into their process, Devon did not want to begin developing an entire system around software that not only makes them dependent on another company, but that may become less accurate over time. Instead, the SPG team would prefer to focus on the things they can do to positively impact their GMs.

An Artists Program where pro GMs who are also illustrators and graphic designers are highlighted has been floated as a new initiative they are working on. This would potentially bring more work to those working GMs who also belong to the art community.

“These [Artists Program & more stock art] are the action items that came out of the original AI talk back in February/early March!” - Devon

New SPG Projects

• Email to email messages

  • Perhaps soon you won’t have to struggle through logging into your SPG account on your phone when you get a new join or message.

  • Some users may find it’s easier to just email someone than log into the site, so that may soon be available.

• Required GM Onboarding

  • SPG wants to give people the tools to succeed.

  • GMs who take the onboarding are 400% more likely to run paid games than those who do not.

  • Most GMs who have negative reviews are those who didn’t take the onboarding.

Thanks so much to everyone who has supported our Kickstarter! If you know of any friendly local game stores who you think would be interested in backing our KS, please email me their contact info! I’d love to get in touch. I understand the Retailer Tiers are pretty tight on margins for FLGS, but I’d be willing to give out some absurdly low priced deals to those retailers once we start shipping.