God damn, it's been a while since I clicked on a Spike Bits post. Still a garbage website.
Long story short: 3D printing will not replace people buying models. It will have a nominal impact. People are already 3D printing heaps of stuff (hell, Titans). Here's the kicker...much like people who buy recast resin items, those people were likely not going to pay the money for the product anyway, so GW isn't actually losing a sale. This is not a defense of the practice, but a fact considered by manufacturers.
Better quality "lower end" printers are still only doing about 85% of the quality of normal HIPS without investing a good chunk of money in it. There are high end printers who are printing about equal with HIPS but they're still pretty expensive. That painted Sister of Battle from a few weeks ago at the GW show? 3D printed. You can see it on the model.
Everyone is using 3D printed stuff for rapid prototyping. We're not that close to picking up a super reliable $200 printer off Amazon and printing HIPS-quality items (nor in a timely fashion).
Yes, 3D printing will have a big impact on the market, but it's not going to bankrupt anybody. Loads of people won't bother. Some can't be bothered with the tech. Some don't have the time or money. Hell a lot of people don't have the space for a 3D printer, etc. Some people can't be bothered with the software, apps, updates, etc. Some won't want to spend the time doing it.
The Best Outcome
In my opinion, the best thing that can come from 3D printing is for GW and other companies who charge way more than is reasonable for their kits...to dial it back. No offense, but regardless of the quality of plastic production nowdays, a 10 man squad is not worth $60 USD. There are other GW products which are even more egregious. Hopefully 3D printed alternatives actually give them a bloody nose and they realize that their pricing models are getting pretty ridiculous (what young teenager can afford to "get into" a GW game nowdays?) People will still buy kits, 100%. It'll still be easy to disqualify armies and models from tournaments if TO's deem it necessary.
Some people will still pay the price of a small car for badly produced resin Titans, lol. It'll have an impact, but it's unlikely to bankrupt anybody. I do think - however, as printers get better the "boutique" shops like Forgeworld will disappear. Their prices make even GW's prices look reasonable. The days of huge resin models being limited or special, are gone.
Yep, short of healthy financial support from a parent, they've gutted the "go to store with your allowance buy a miniature" market --- I'm sure it's simply not a big enough financial consideration for GW to worry about.
what young teenager can afford to "get into" a GW game nowdays?
The answer is none of them. Without a job you can't buy gak from games workshop, it's why I've moved off of 40k.
A young teenager alone cant, but one with parents and or those that get a yob for various reasons could.
though then again with the whole kill teams thing and soon warcry its honestly not that bad. still about as much as a new console system or half of a good gaming rig.
but 40k proper as a full on collection for an army no not even some young adults or current adults can handle that.
Honestly the only real effect 3d printing will have is a bunch of niche garage games and miniatures may pop out and a TON of 3rd party bits.
this may cause GW to reconsider the abysmal spread of special weapons in their kits or they double down and charge extra for separate upgrade sprues.
Assuming 3D printing reaches a point where it's got GW quality without the GW price, I think the best option for GW would be to start selling diecast and/or wooden models in stores, and selling the schematics for plastic models online. Or heavily reduce their plastic prices. Or both. I think a lot of folks would buy the metal and wooden models, if only for the novelty, while it would allow them to expand their market into "poorer" demographics. They *might* take a loss on the plastic models and schematics, but if they get more people interested in the hobby, they'll be able to make it back via book sales and hosting tournaments.
I worked for a miniatures company - we used the thinnest layer 3d printer on the market. It costs more than my life. The results still needed heavy manual work to have the level of smoothness and details that were needed for silicone molds. If you don't care about rough edges and layering effects, the raw prints are fine, but the desktop ones I've seen are much rougher than the super-fine one we used and their quality is still fairly low by my standards.
Some of the videos I've seen are honest admit that they spent a lot of time smoothing the model. Others aren't and try to pass off the result as something that came out of the printer. I did that work several years ago, so it's possible the gap has been filled and quality is better on some printers - but even in that linked page you can see the layering effect is pretty bad on the skitarii transport.
I don't have any skin in the game, so I really don't care if people 3d print their whole army. I personally wouldn't want to deal with the low quality nor would I want to spend hours sanding and scraping 20-30 infantry for my army. However, it may be worth it for custom bits like bionic legs and such - but I'd rather just buy that stuff than mess with printing it and fixing the print.
We have a guy here who studies at tech school in Elblang, and just uses the schools facilities after hours. Free very good machines and material, he just take from school. He does a ton of recasts of FW models or weapon parts he later sells to people localy and in other countries. They are very good quality, and the store owners around here hate him, but can't really do anything about him, as his painted FW stuff is unrecognisible from GW stuff.
Karol wrote: We have a guy here who studies at tech school in Elblang, and just uses the schools facilities after hours. Free very good machines and material, he just take from school. He does a ton of recasts of FW models or weapon parts he later sells to people localy and in other countries. They are very good quality, and the store owners around here hate him, but can't really do anything about him, as his painted FW stuff is unrecognisible from GW stuff.
That is interesting, If they know who it was they probably could just send the school with a stern letter and it could be a issue for him. If they really wanted to, or are the laws really lax on such things there? If a student was doing that sort of thing here they would be gone from the school in a weekend. Would not even be hard to investigate.
Guess it depends as well on a lot of things legally, but its kinda crazy if he is so open about it.
I thought i would add, i do not think 3d printing is good enough yet. Its still a bit too pricey for the avg consumer. And the time involved to how much you pay, at least when buying none GW minis here. Is not enough for the time and extra work, plus the equipment is worth it yet.
But its certainly finding use in the hobby, terrain i think is a big place for it. and the future will see what happens
Also, spiky bits seems to be why adblock exists >.< Seriously, too many adds and such its a pain to read.
Karol wrote: We have a guy here who studies at tech school in Elblang, and just uses the schools facilities after hours. Free very good machines and material, he just take from school. He does a ton of recasts of FW models or weapon parts he later sells to people localy and in other countries. They are very good quality, and the store owners around here hate him, but can't really do anything about him, as his painted FW stuff is unrecognisible from GW stuff.
That is interesting, If they know who it was they probably could just send the school with a stern letter and it could be a issue for him. If they really wanted to, or are the laws really lax on such things there? If a student was doing that sort of thing here they would be gone from the school in a weekend. Would not even be hard to investigate.
Guess it depends as well on a lot of things legally, but its kinda crazy if he is so open about it.
It's difficult to enforce or prosecute this kind of thing internationally.
I wouldn't be surprised if laws around this sort of thing get toughened up as the technology progresses. But typically the law lags way behind tech, so it could take some time.
Ultimately I'm very much of the position that selling 3D prints of other people's IP without permission is theft. Of course it's cheaper, they don't have the design overheads, amongst many other costs.
All that said, I think we're still some way off this being a serious problem for GW. Most of the people who buy recasts/prints weren't going to drop serious dollar on GW anyway.
That is interesting, If they know who it was they probably could just send the school with a stern letter and it could be a issue for him. If they really wanted to, or are the laws really lax on such things there? If a student was doing that sort of thing here they would be gone from the school in a weekend. Would not even be hard to investigate.
Guess it depends as well on a lot of things legally, but its kinda crazy if he is so open about it.
Well they would have to catch him first, plus everyone does stuff like that, at work so if they would send a commission to check stuff at his school everyone would be in trouble. I mean, I have a ton of stuff at home to train, I don't leave school gym backs at school, I use them everyday. Everyone does it anyway. Trying to stop people from doing it, would mean they would have to help most students to get stuff. And we already have to pay the teachers to get better grades at exams, because school doesn't teach well enough, and the difference between someone from a small town, like me, and someone in the same school that came from a big city can be huge.
My dad says it is a left over from communist times, where pay was bad and taking stuff from work was considered part of the salary. Plus from what I know some of the Polish companies that make parts for GW models were created by people who first did recasts, so in the end it aint that bad. People have to learn how to use stuff, to be good at making good cheaper GW stand ins to begin with, someone is going to have to replace GW at some point, no companies exist for ever.
Karol wrote: We have a guy here who studies at tech school in Elblang, and just uses the schools facilities after hours. Free very good machines and material, he just take from school. He does a ton of recasts of FW models or weapon parts he later sells to people localy and in other countries. They are very good quality, and the store owners around here hate him, but can't really do anything about him, as his painted FW stuff is unrecognisible from GW stuff.
That is interesting, If they know who it was they probably could just send the school with a stern letter and it could be a issue for him. If they really wanted to, or are the laws really lax on such things there? If a student was doing that sort of thing here they would be gone from the school in a weekend. Would not even be hard to investigate.
Guess it depends as well on a lot of things legally, but its kinda crazy if he is so open about it.
It's difficult to enforce or prosecute this kind of thing internationally.
I wouldn't be surprised if laws around this sort of thing get toughened up as the technology progresses. But typically the law lags way behind tech, so it could take some time.
Ultimately I'm very much of the position that selling 3D prints of other people's IP without permission is theft. Of course it's cheaper, they don't have the design overheads, amongst many other costs.
All that said, I think we're still some way off this being a serious problem for GW. Most of the people who buy recasts/prints weren't going to drop serious dollar on GW anyway.
Using school equipment to make things to sell would be enough here like that, And if they know its going on then they would be taking responsibility. So i find it very interesting Even the idea that he was putting the school in a legal position would be enough to cut him off from that. Unless its for school work, would not be worth the risk.
That is interesting, If they know who it was they probably could just send the school with a stern letter and it could be a issue for him. If they really wanted to, or are the laws really lax on such things there? If a student was doing that sort of thing here they would be gone from the school in a weekend. Would not even be hard to investigate.
Guess it depends as well on a lot of things legally, but its kinda crazy if he is so open about it.
Well they would have to catch him first, plus everyone does stuff like that, at work so if they would send a commission to check stuff at his school everyone would be in trouble. I mean, I have a ton of stuff at home to train, I don't leave school gym backs at school, I use them everyday. Everyone does it anyway. Trying to stop people from doing it, would mean they would have to help most students to get stuff. And we already have to pay the teachers to get better grades at exams, because school doesn't teach well enough, and the difference between someone from a small town, like me, and someone in the same school that came from a big city can be huge.
My dad says it is a left over from communist times, where pay was bad and taking stuff from work was considered part of the salary. Plus from what I know some of the Polish companies that make parts for GW models were created by people who first did recasts, so in the end it aint that bad. People have to learn how to use stuff, to be good at making good cheaper GW stand ins to begin with, someone is going to have to replace GW at some point, no companies exist for ever.
Catching him would not be a issue if they cared. If he is making even a small amount of the volume needed to make all the stores hate him.
My dad works for a company that does adds for TV and Radio. He also does freelance, I haven't seen or heard him buy any programs, but I don't live with him either. My mom and her husband work at local school, they also do work after class, my mom uses her laptop from work for it. Stuff like printing stuff, including entire books is normal here. That is also why the store owners are so stingy, I think, about people needing a real physical copy of a book to play at stores, otherwise no one would buy a single one, and they have to order them from GW.
Stuff like printer papers, pens, sheets for school, everyone takes them. Heck some extrem people take toilet paper from work to have it at home.
But I guess the example comes from the top. When the head of a party "writes" a book which an institute buys from him every year, and the institute is funded by the party, which is funded by the state, and then for "security reasons" the party buys out houses around the party leader work place, with party money, but then turns the work place in to a mension where he lives, with state paid security protecting him, doing something like printing a few models at school becomes kind of a irrelevant. Not saying that 100% of people do it, in every situation, but because of stuff like that we have some strange rules sometimes. For example when my mom made her post degree diploma she always got angry every year, because some professors made it so that to pass an exame, you had to buy their book, they would sign it. And if you brought a book for exam that was signed already, as in you bought it from second hand, they would fail you. It was a known thing, and considered normal , if annoying.
Catching him would not be a issue if they cared. If he is making even a small amount of the volume needed to make all the stores hate him.
See the thing is, the dude who owns a store in my town makes recasts himself. He snitchs on someone, they snitch back. And they will just get a slap on the wrist, while he has a store that can get closed. Police ain't going to care what some student is doing, they slam him a 50$ fine to pay, at best. Someone with a store could get his license pulled. You know it is like everyone who sells food, also sells unlicensed alcohol and cigaretts from Belarus without tax.
All in all it is probably not the time to worry about people casting their whole armies right now. But in 5-10 years, who knows. There are ton of examples of companies that thought they had total monopoly and a choke hold on an industry, and now they are gone. Like that nordic cell phone company for example.
A friend of mine has some Deathcorps of Krieg models that he printed himself on a home printer. You don't see the difference once its painted between it and a real FW version.
3d printed models are already here and you won't know it when you see them.
The convenience factor will probably mean that there are simply more recasters, and you might have “community printers” where one guy or gal is smart on the system and prints for everyone in the club. Assuming there is in fact a major cost savings (because after machine+materials there might not be) the time/effort savings will have to be worth it for the individual printing models...the existence of painting services shows that people are willing to pay to avoid certain hobby tasks. Put another way, if people can print a unit for $30 but it takes 2 days of their time and effort they might still just buy the unit for $60.
An anycubic photon 3D is affordable and makes good quality 3d prints. But the downsides are smell, print duration, and the toxic resin. Once these issues are sorted out GW will have a hard time. I prefer to print out a complete mini, instead of assembling it the way its now. There is only one weapon in the box, but i want five of them ? Screw you GW, i will build one mini, have it 3D scanned, and print the entire mini myself. Or just check the internet if someone already did that.
3D printing will make GWs job hard in the future (it will take a couple of years, though), and thats a good thing. Now they can do whatever they want, charge whatever prices they want, and thats never a good thing, when a company has no competition.
p5freak wrote: An anycubic photon 3D is affordable and makes good quality 3d prints. But the downsides are smell, print duration, and the toxic resin. Once these issues are sorted out GW will have a hard time. I prefer to print out a complete mini, instead of assembling it the way its now. There is only one weapon in the box, but i want five of them ? Screw you GW, i will build one mini, have it 3D scanned, and print the entire mini myself. Or just check the internet if someone already did that.
3D printing will make GWs job hard in the future (it will take a couple of years, though), and thats a good thing. Now they can do whatever they want, charge whatever prices they want, and thats never a good thing, when a company has no competition.
They do have competition. Other games. This isnt a monopoly, this is a luxury product which people don't have to buy, and which legal alternatives exist for.
Many if not most people still choose to pay for GW over its competition though. That's not because they are 'forced' to, it's because people want to.
It's certainly not a good thing anyway, because if it stops being profitable then you stop having the investment in the design in the first place.
Karol wrote: My dad works for a company that does adds for TV and Radio. He also does freelance, I haven't seen or heard him buy any programs, but I don't live with him either. My mom and her husband work at local school, they also do work after class, my mom uses her laptop from work for it. Stuff like printing stuff, including entire books is normal here. That is also why the store owners are so stingy, I think, about people needing a real physical copy of a book to play at stores, otherwise no one would buy a single one, and they have to order them from GW.
Stuff like printer papers, pens, sheets for school, everyone takes them. Heck some extrem people take toilet paper from work to have it at home.
But I guess the example comes from the top. When the head of a party "writes" a book which an institute buys from him every year, and the institute is funded by the party, which is funded by the state, and then for "security reasons" the party buys out houses around the party leader work place, with party money, but then turns the work place in to a mension where he lives, with state paid security protecting him, doing something like printing a few models at school becomes kind of a irrelevant. Not saying that 100% of people do it, in every situation, but because of stuff like that we have some strange rules sometimes. For example when my mom made her post degree diploma she always got angry every year, because some professors made it so that to pass an exame, you had to buy their book, they would sign it. And if you brought a book for exam that was signed already, as in you bought it from second hand, they would fail you. It was a known thing, and considered normal , if annoying.
Catching him would not be a issue if they cared. If he is making even a small amount of the volume needed to make all the stores hate him.
See the thing is, the dude who owns a store in my town makes recasts himself. He snitchs on someone, they snitch back. And they will just get a slap on the wrist, while he has a store that can get closed. Police ain't going to care what some student is doing, they slam him a 50$ fine to pay, at best. Someone with a store could get his license pulled. You know it is like everyone who sells food, also sells unlicensed alcohol and cigaretts from Belarus without tax.
All in all it is probably not the time to worry about people casting their whole armies right now. But in 5-10 years, who knows. There are ton of examples of companies that thought they had total monopoly and a choke hold on an industry, and now they are gone. Like that nordic cell phone company for example.
I mean this is the perfect spiderman meme insert right there.
Somehow sad and funny at the same time.
As for gw/fw, their "upgrade sprues certainly will get either alot cheaper or they will provide an evergrwoing market of recasters.
In fact a lot of their issues with recasting in my opinion has to do with the unreasonable pricing policy, making it in the first place possible and more accepted overall due to it beeing that way.
They do have competition. Other games. This isnt a monopoly, this is a luxury product which people don't have to buy, and which legal alternatives exist for.
Many if not most people still choose to pay for GW over its competition though. That's not because they are 'forced' to, it's because people want to.
It's certainly not a good thing anyway, because if it stops being profitable then you stop having the investment in the design in the first place.
They dont really have competition. Nothing is as iconic as 40k. No table top wargame gets played as much as 40k. I dont mind buying GW stuff, i want to support them. But introducing a new weapon, giving it good rules, and only include one of these in a new box is fething stupid. Do they really expect anyone will buy 5 boxes to get that weapon 5 times ? They would have sold hundreds of upgrade sprues with 4 or 5 of them, but they didnt make them. Thats idiotic. Hopefully 3d printing will make them reconsider their position when it comes to this.
It’s funny, I was talking with my gaming buddies about this last night.
We have garages, so the smell and such from the resin of a resin printer wouldn’t be a real issue. We figured that split even 3 ways, our costs for a shared printer would be less than 2 boxes of minis each, or less than one Knight.
I don’t know for certain, one friend had just started looking into it, but... I’d consider it. I feel pretty priced out anymore, and 95% of my games are in a garage. I seldom buy new product. I guess I’m one of the “customers” GW isn’t worried about losing.
We've had viable pre-painted models for years and yet that hasn't harmed GW sales of unpainted models; heck GW launched a new range of paints (costing people even more hobby budget) and they are selling really well.
I think 3D printing will be much the same, it will have an impact but it will be limited to a niche of the market. I think the greater impact is that it will cheapen masters and proofs to make it easier for smaller companies to get a foothold; but otherwise I think plastic injection is going to remain at the top for a long while yet.
Don't forget operating a 3D printer is not without skill nor technical aspects. Indeed its much the same as people having home printers for paper. The vast majority who do own them own a low grade printer not a top of the line one; they don't really know how to debug it if there's a problem and even changing the ink can be a challenge for some - esp when it comes to setting the ink heads etc..
So basically just like the home printer hasn't shut down printing firms; the home 3D printer won't shut down injection mould casting and product sales.
Heck most gamers hate dealing with 1 mould line so lots of layer lines is a near nightmare. Fine for masters where you only have to clean 1 model and then cast from it; but for a whole army of marines? Cleaning loads of casting lines off dozens of them would sound like a nightmare.
I’m still a long way off spending thousands on a decent printer, then waiting 19 hours for my skitarii model to print. Until you can do this with printers costing low hundreds and they can be done in under an hour, I think enough people will still buy models out of convenience, not to mention avoiding piracy.
There will be a time when you click "print" and 30 minutes later a pro painted mini, ready to play, will come out of a 3d printer. We will probably have to wait for another 20 years, but it will happen. I dont think mould injection will be widely used in 20 years. 3d printing quality will improve, print time will come down, printing process will get easier, 3d printers will get cheaper.
p5freak wrote: There will be a time when you click "print" and 30 minutes later a pro painted mini, ready to play, will come out of a 3d printer. We will probably have to wait for another 20 years, but it will happen. I dont think mould injection will be widely used in 20 years. 3d printing quality will improve, print time will come down, printing process will get easier, 3d printers will get cheaper.
Eventually it'll probably be like Netflix! Where for most people it's less hassle to pay GW a monthly subscription to access data files for printing that it is to pirate them!
p5freak wrote: There will be a time when you click "print" and 30 minutes later a pro painted mini, ready to play, will come out of a 3d printer. We will probably have to wait for another 20 years, but it will happen. I dont think mould injection will be widely used in 20 years. 3d printing quality will improve, print time will come down, printing process will get easier, 3d printers will get cheaper.
Question is will it replace GW at all.
Consider that Starwars is prepainted and yet if Battlefleet Gothic came out in all its classic style it would still sell really well. Even though the Starwars is all prepainted pre assembled.
Creative hobbies I can see sticking around because the building and painting is part of the hobby experience. Much in the same way that kit cars and model planes have stuck around for the same reason. The main issue would be GW advertising enough to keep it popular to keep the culture built up around it going. That's the main weakness and even without a "superior" product (or just an easier product) those creative hobbies can still die off. Hornby, Mechanno etc... have all dwindled even though no "superior" toy has replaced them like for like.
The issue is will GW abandon all its production staff, all its factories and distribution and move to a printing licence model. Heck the question is if that model can even work for wargames. Would customers stomach purchasing "5 marines for £4" to be printed at home or would they expect to pay once for a "no limits" file. If so then how could GW or indeed any business stay in business. Thus far the "print at home" models seem to be mostly focused on very small one-man-band companies where the small sale profits and limited resale per customer don't really affect them because its a side project and not their main income and their overheads are tiny. GW, Privateer Press, Reaper - all those companies really could not rescale to that kind of approach. The brand name and manager might, but the whole rest of the company wouldn't unless it had too by force.
Eventually it'll probably be like Netflix! Where for most people it's less hassle to pay GW a monthly subscription to access data files for printing that it is to pirate them!
I wouldnt mind paying GW for a data file which i can print at home, multiple times, even if i have to pay more for it. But i dont think it will happen, those files would get hacked and get printed illegaly. GW will probably 3d print themselves and ship printed minis.
p5freak wrote: There will be a time when you click "print" and 30 minutes later a pro painted mini, ready to play, will come out of a 3d printer. We will probably have to wait for another 20 years, but it will happen. I dont think mould injection will be widely used in 20 years. 3d printing quality will improve, print time will come down, printing process will get easier, 3d printers will get cheaper.
As someone who primarily paints, rather than games, this is rather unappealing. I also enjoy building the kit. A lot of people in the hobby like the build/paint aspect, so 3D printing offers them nothing aside from maybe cheap bits. Then there's the personalization of each model prior to painting - poses, extra gubbins, putty work - much of which is way harder to implement on a finished model, so unless you're good at 3D rendering you're stuck with whatever the person who rendered it created. To be fair, GW is going in the direction of monopose anyways, but we're not quite there yet for the kits that aren't big box/ETB.
My kids got some 3D printed Santas from their teachers awhile back, and while I certainly noticed the ridges, I was actually surprised that they were articulated. I don't think it'd be out of the question to be able to print out full models, but leave the joints and other places loose enough to pose the models before putting a touch of glue onto the seam to hold it in place.
That said, there ARE a lot of folks who enjoy building and painting. So, it's kind of a mixed thing for me. If GW had reasonable prices for their models, 3D printing probably wouldn't even be an issue. These are relatively small pieces of plastic, that you build and paint yourself. They shouldn't cost you (in some cases) a quarter of a paycheck for a single model.
Elbows wrote: God damn, it's been a while since I clicked on a Spike Bits post. Still a garbage website.
Long story short: 3D printing will not replace people buying models. It will have a nominal impact. People are already 3D printing heaps of stuff (hell, Titans). Here's the kicker...much like people who buy recast resin items, those people were likely not going to pay the money for the product anyway, so GW isn't actually losing a sale. This is not a defense of the practice, but a fact considered by manufacturers.
Better quality "lower end" printers are still only doing about 85% of the quality of normal HIPS without investing a good chunk of money in it. There are high end printers who are printing about equal with HIPS but they're still pretty expensive. That painted Sister of Battle from a few weeks ago at the GW show? 3D printed. You can see it on the model.
Everyone is using 3D printed stuff for rapid prototyping. We're not that close to picking up a super reliable $200 printer off Amazon and printing HIPS-quality items (nor in a timely fashion).
Yes, 3D printing will have a big impact on the market, but it's not going to bankrupt anybody. Loads of people won't bother. Some can't be bothered with the tech. Some don't have the time or money. Hell a lot of people don't have the space for a 3D printer, etc. Some people can't be bothered with the software, apps, updates, etc. Some won't want to spend the time doing it.
The Best Outcome
In my opinion, the best thing that can come from 3D printing is for GW and other companies who charge way more than is reasonable for their kits...to dial it back. No offense, but regardless of the quality of plastic production nowdays, a 10 man squad is not worth $60 USD. There are other GW products which are even more egregious. Hopefully 3D printed alternatives actually give them a bloody nose and they realize that their pricing models are getting pretty ridiculous (what young teenager can afford to "get into" a GW game nowdays?) People will still buy kits, 100%. It'll still be easy to disqualify armies and models from tournaments if TO's deem it necessary.
Some people will still pay the price of a small car for badly produced resin Titans, lol. It'll have an impact, but it's unlikely to bankrupt anybody. I do think - however, as printers get better the "boutique" shops like Forgeworld will disappear. Their prices make even GW's prices look reasonable. The days of huge resin models being limited or special, are gone.
I dont think the impact will be people at home printing their own stuff. I think its going to be people at home that invested in a few quality printer producing their own alternative bits/ models and selling them. There is a solid market for people who would gladly pay 15 bucks for 5 good looking models that cost some dude .50 to print instead of 40 to gw.
This reminds me of Napster and Limewire. What frequently gets overlooked in the discussion of those things by the pundits and that the record industry still doesn't seem to have grasped is that those things wouldn't have existed at all if the price of a CD at the time hadn't been frankly extortionist. What killed Napster and Limewire wasn't legal action by the RIAA or changes in legislation or enforcement, it was the industry finally figuring out that it was more profitable to just sell music on-line for cheap themselves.
The video game industry went through a similar arc with download services, and also hasn't entirely learned the lesson.
Whether GW will be one of the companies that figures this out is anybody's guess, but usually it's new businesses started with the new tech in mind that get it right.
The Newman wrote: This reminds me of Napster and Limewire. What frequently gets overlooked in the discussion of those things by the pundits and that the record industry still doesn't seem to have grasped is that those things wouldn't have existed at all if the price of a CD at the time hadn't been frankly extortionist. What killed Napster and Limewire wasn't legal action by the RIAA or changes in legislation or enforcement, it was the industry finally figuring out that it was more profitable to just sell music on-line for cheap themselves.
The video game industry went through a similar arc with download services, and also hasn't entirely learned the lesson.
Whether GW will be one of the companies that figures this out is anybody's guess, but usually it's new businesses started with the new tech in mind that get it right.
The problem with this analogy is that downloading music and games is 1) fast and 2) a perfect copy. 3D printing is not. The tech never will be fast - there is an inherent physics limitation in the current 3D printing technologies. And a perfect copy? Only if you have a resin printer. And then you lose the cost benefit of 3D printing because the resin material is hella expensive, unlike plastic SLA printing.
If there is a new type of 3D printing invented which is a) fast, b) cheap and c) produces perfect quality copies then this analogy might fit, but that technology doesn't exist (yet, at least).
The other thing is that something like music to hear from a CD or a download is basically identical so long as the digital quality is the same. The actual element of the product you interact with most is the same.
This is made more true when modern systems allow you to move that file around like it was a CD - playing it on the go in your phone, computer, home music player, car etc...
With games and music there are still physical copies; but for many games they are now collectors editions with extras, whilst for music they've kept vinal records.
In addition both markets still have regular physical copies and there's still a market for them. Part of that is about "ownership". Many people still prefer to "own" something and hold it in their hands. Of course the big names can keep this up, whilst smaller companies can more easily get into the market without needing the physical distribution or only doing it ad-hock or on special releases.
For models its very different because the product itself is physical right from the start. Another aspect is that its harder for a company to protect their digital assets if part of that markets retail is the sale of identical products to the same customer. You don't buy the same digital game 5 times over if its identical; but you do want 4 boxes of termaguants. etc... So whilst for music its easy to just go digital, for something like warhammer that could massivly impact their profits, esp if the tech to limit printings per purchase didn't work out so well (either in practical application or in the case of the market accepting the idea of buying a limited-use digital download - which I'm guessing they likely won't).
Suddenly GW goes from physically selling multiple products per customer to at the very best one per customer. Like I said earlier I can see new companies (one man bands) doing this, but I can't see the financial incentive for established companies doing this. I'd more expect GW to outsource production to china long before they'd abandon production. though I could see them doing it for terrain - writing the cost off basically as a marketing move to make for more cooler tables and focusing on models only for core revenue.
I actually expect 3D printing to eventually spell the death of companies like GW in the long run. I know some guys who run a 3D Printing discord and they've already got the ability to make models peer/superior to most GW models; the only issue is one of time. But in the end you don't even need GW to make the 3D models because there's probably millions of warhammer nerds and out of that selection group you're always going to find some who mess around with CAD and are happy to upload their work for free.
And in all honesty it wouldn't be a bad thing either. The best thing that can happen to creativity is if the industry holding the IP is essentially butchered and all means to enforce IP control at all is lost. It enables greater artistic freedom of the collective fanbase.
If GW can't adapt, it'll definitely die. Which is a shame, obviously. As was pointed out, the companies that have survived pirating are the ones who, instead of "fighting the inevitable", were able to change their practices. As I said above, if GW was to make a switch to producing cheap plastic minis, as well as more expensive pewter and/or wood minis, they'll probably do fine. Warhammer is a major IP, so even if they just fell back to selling rulebooks, novels, producing videogames, and the like (much as WotC has done), they'll still turn a good profit.
Being respectful to other opinions, I can't help but feel most people who think 3d printing replacing GW ... don't have 3d printers themselves lol.
The average home 3d printer doesn't hold a candle to GW models. The weight and detail are different when you hold them.
Even if you owned a high end printer, they're a pain for most people to keep up with. Maintaining, misprints, leveling, etc. Then theres 3d modeling itself, which most don't know how to do at the level needed. To be fair, thingiverse makes that an almost non-issue.
To be completely honest, I only see 3d printing helping GW. People who are originally put off by their prices (me for one) will try their hands at 3d printing some of their army. Eventually they'll replace it for the real thing. That or maybe 3d print some models/parts that they hardly sell anymore or look horrible by today's standards, which will encourage GW to push out newer models quicker.
One thing I do see GW having issues with is Terrain though. That's already taken off like crazy and will continue to do so.
Disclaimer - My opinion is extremely bias to my own story. I got into this hobby ONLY because of 3d printing as I was doing that before. Wanted to sell my own terrain and what not. Got hooked lol. Originally I'd 3d print some tyranid parts to make double the models of certain kits, for example making Zoanthropes and Venomthropes from 1. Or 2 Hive tyrants from 1. But honestly even with that I stopped.
And in all honesty it wouldn't be a bad thing either. The best thing that can happen to creativity is if the industry holding the IP is essentially butchered and all means to enforce IP control at all is lost. It enables greater artistic freedom of the collective fanbase.
Ehhh. . . And then community fractures because there's nothing holding it together anymore, and the game dies because there's no business propping it up.
Creative freedom is great, but it's hard to have any sort of cohesive community in without structure. The business provides the structure, and the IP allows the business to exist.
I'm not saying this is absolute, but it's definitely something to be wary of.
And in all honesty it wouldn't be a bad thing either. The best thing that can happen to creativity is if the industry holding the IP is essentially butchered and all means to enforce IP control at all is lost. It enables greater artistic freedom of the collective fanbase.
Ehhh. . . And then community fractures because there's nothing holding it together anymore, and the game dies because there's no business propping it up.
Creative freedom is great, but it's hard to have any sort of cohesive community in without structure. The business provides the structure, and the IP allows the business to exist.
I'm not saying this is absolute, but it's definitely something to be wary of.
The breakdown is what's good. Instead of having one game system lording over all everybody splits off into their regional group, likely developing their own stuff and messing around with older editions instead of religiously following anything GW puts up. My main critique of the hobby overall is how everybody ultimately just devours whatever crap GW throws out with each edition instead of taking it as inspiration to develop their own ruleset and experiment with improvements. And every edition is readily devoured without protest or boycott even those same people spend years complaining about GW's poor rules.
If there's ever going to be an improvement, the current system of how the community works needs to end.
The Newman wrote: This reminds me of Napster and Limewire. What frequently gets overlooked in the discussion of those things by the pundits and that the record industry still doesn't seem to have grasped is that those things wouldn't have existed at all if the price of a CD at the time hadn't been frankly extortionist. What killed Napster and Limewire wasn't legal action by the RIAA or changes in legislation or enforcement, it was the industry finally figuring out that it was more profitable to just sell music on-line for cheap themselves.
The video game industry went through a similar arc with download services, and also hasn't entirely learned the lesson.
Whether GW will be one of the companies that figures this out is anybody's guess, but usually it's new businesses started with the new tech in mind that get it right.
The problem with this analogy is that downloading music and games is 1) fast and 2) a perfect copy. 3D printing is not. The tech never will be fast - there is an inherent physics limitation in the current 3D printing technologies. And a perfect copy? Only if you have a resin printer. And then you lose the cost benefit of 3D printing because the resin material is hella expensive, unlike plastic SLA printing.
If there is a new type of 3D printing invented which is a) fast, b) cheap and c) produces perfect quality copies then this analogy might fit, but that technology doesn't exist (yet, at least).
I disagree with this entirely. The fact is the vast majority of the people who play this game are not going to tournaments or official events and don't get their models checked to see if they are official. They are just some people playing a game and all they care about is having good looking things to play the game with at a cost they can feel comfortable paying.
In that respect, 1) it doesn't matter if it's perfect. 2) The time it takes to print is irrelevant to the person who is buying the models.
The only things relevant to a purchaser about a store selling 3d printed models is 1) does it look good and 2) cost.
In that respect the impact of limewire and napster are very relevant to the conversation. GWs prices are high and 3d printing can make stores with custom models/bits cheap. As long as GW is selling their models "20 dollars for a cd with only 1 or 2 song that you have heard out of 7-9 songs total", but this guy over here is selling a perfectly serviceable, good looking stand in at ".99 per song" then GW is going to be impacted. 3d printing is not limewire and napster for the masses. It's limeiwre and napster for independent store fronts.
That thing is nowhere near the quality of the GW one.
Now its not terrible, but you can definitely tell that there is a significant difference in the fine details. I don't have an issue with people having knockoff models, I have a few myself. But most of the time you get what you pay for.
3D printing still has at least a decade before it can compete with regular cast models for detail, and probably even longer for it to compete on volume. 3D printing is slow as molasses.
Lance845 wrote: Yeah. 3d printing is fully capable of making injection molded quality models if you get the right machines.
Machines which are prohibitively expensive and take a long time to finish the models in question. You'd never be able to mass produce those models in a cost effective manner. Nor would it be justified for the typical gamer to have a 3D printer for that purpose.
Its nice if you've also made 3D printing a hobby, or maybe are selling a few models on the side. but you wouldn't be able to run a real business off it.
For an example of what I mean by 3D printing already having coming a long, long way.
What printer was used for those models ?
Higher end. Don't know the specific model but it's a home printer made by a fellow on a discord server who designs and prints all of his stuff. But it's not an industrial grade model.
GW will make models out of materials, and use some sort of sysem to verify that there models are legitimate GW plastic. People will rather buy that then fake i think.
Like, there will be some thing you scan with your phone or some thing to confirm its legitimate.
Yeah, they could probably put some sort of chip (like Amiibos have) into their models, but honestly that would only affect the tournament scene. The vast majority of players aren't gonna hafta worry about the GW police kicking down their door to check the legitimacy of their models.
Stormatious wrote: GW will make models out of materials, and use some sort of sysem to verify that there models are legitimate GW plastic. People will rather buy that then fake i think.
Like, there will be some thing you scan with your phone or some thing to confirm its legitimate.
1) no they wont. Gw will not invent a technology that does not exist or embed a rfid chip into every bit they produce.
2) no people wont. People will buy the most convenient for cost thing in the easiest way possible of the thing they want. The ebay market is thriving for 40k because many find the discount worth the wait of it being shipped. Gw has no inherent value to the vast majority of their customer base.
Stormatious wrote: GW will make models out of materials, and use some sort of sysem to verify that there models are legitimate GW plastic. People will rather buy that then fake i think.
Like, there will be some thing you scan with your phone or some thing to confirm its legitimate.
1) no they wont. Gw will not invent a technology that does not exist or embed a rfid chip into every bit they produce.
2) no people wont. People will buy the most convenient for cost thing in the easiest way possible of the thing they want. The ebay market is thriving for 40k because many find the discount worth the wait of it being shipped. Gw has no inherent value to the vast majority of their customer base.
Lance845 wrote: Yeah. 3d printing is fully capable of making injection molded quality models if you get the right machines.
Machines which are prohibitively expensive and take a long time to finish the models in question. You'd never be able to mass produce those models in a cost effective manner. Nor would it be justified for the typical gamer to have a 3D printer for that purpose.
Its nice if you've also made 3D printing a hobby, or maybe are selling a few models on the side. but you wouldn't be able to run a real business off it.
Those were printed on an Anycubic Photon, routinely on sale for ~350 USD. Each model costs around a dollar to print(including wear & tear on the machine), less if you buy your resin in bulk when it goes on sale. It will typically finish a job in 2-5 hours. Postcuring and cleanup is a couple of minutes of effort.
Producing cost effectively? For a small miniatures company, running a print farm of Photons now makes more financial sense IMO than resin casting. For a start, as a DLP type machine it cures the entire layer at once by projecting UV light through a masking image created by the LCD screen under the vat, meaning that you can add anywhere up to a full squad of 28-32mm infantry and it will print them just as quickly as a single miniature, so producing multiples of the same thing is actually very efficient. Secondly, the level of knowledge required to operate them successfully is much lower - you can become familiar with a resin printer in an afternoon, it can take months of practice to get good at making production molds for resin casting. Thirdly, the equipment isn't actually any more expensive - you don't do production resin casting without vacuum chambers to degas your mold rubber and pressure chambers to cast the resin inside, and all in(pumps & compressors, hoses, fittings, the actual chambers) even just one of each can cost twice as much as a Photon. On top of that, printers don't require you to store molds, your entire catalogue can be digital and stock produced on-demand.
As for a typical gamer, that depends what you mean by typical. Little Timmy? No. The type of folks who buy everything in a GW store and use Official GW Clippers because Peachy & Duncan say to do that in their videos? No. The moment you start talking about people who's selection of hobby-related tools goes beyond a few brushes though, I'd say it's absolutely justified.
The Newman wrote: This reminds me of Napster and Limewire. What frequently gets overlooked in the discussion of those things by the pundits and that the record industry still doesn't seem to have grasped is that those things wouldn't have existed at all if the price of a CD at the time hadn't been frankly extortionist. What killed Napster and Limewire wasn't legal action by the RIAA or changes in legislation or enforcement, it was the industry finally figuring out that it was more profitable to just sell music on-line for cheap themselves.
The video game industry went through a similar arc with download services, and also hasn't entirely learned the lesson.
Whether GW will be one of the companies that figures this out is anybody's guess, but usually it's new businesses started with the new tech in mind that get it right.
The problem with this analogy is that downloading music and games is 1) fast and 2) a perfect copy. 3D printing is not. The tech never will be fast - there is an inherent physics limitation in the current 3D printing technologies. And a perfect copy? Only if you have a resin printer. And then you lose the cost benefit of 3D printing because the resin material is hella expensive, unlike plastic SLA printing.
If there is a new type of 3D printing invented which is a) fast, b) cheap and c) produces perfect quality copies then this analogy might fit, but that technology doesn't exist (yet, at least).
I disagree with this entirely. The fact is the vast majority of the people who play this game are not going to tournaments or official events and don't get their models checked to see if they are official. They are just some people playing a game and all they care about is having good looking things to play the game with at a cost they can feel comfortable paying.
In that respect, 1) it doesn't matter if it's perfect. 2) The time it takes to print is irrelevant to the person who is buying the models.
The only things relevant to a purchaser about a store selling 3d printed models is 1) does it look good and 2) cost.
In that respect the impact of limewire and napster are very relevant to the conversation. GWs prices are high and 3d printing can make stores with custom models/bits cheap. As long as GW is selling their models "20 dollars for a cd with only 1 or 2 song that you have heard out of 7-9 songs total", but this guy over here is selling a perfectly serviceable, good looking stand in at ".99 per song" then GW is going to be impacted. 3d printing is not limewire and napster for the masses. It's limeiwre and napster for independent store fronts.
I think you misunderstand me.
I was talking about the overall quality of the miniature, not whether it's a carbon copy of an existing GW miniature or making them official. The overall quality of a miniature DOES matter. Some people are fine with playing with awful minis saddled with print artefacts, but I bet the vast majority aren't.
You can't dismiss time as a factor. There's only so much that someone printing minis can do and that's limited by the inherent speed limits of the technology. Yes, you can leave things printing overnight (and over several nights), of course you can. But you can still only print a certain amount per week. It's not a Star Trek replicator. If your FLGS switched over to providing 3D printed models, they wouldn't be able to satisfy customer demand even with a massive bank of a dozen or more 3D printers.
Plus GW is all about cheap entry point at present. Right now you can get into 40K for the cost of one box of marines and a hobby starting box (paints, clippers, brush etc). Playing at the club or local store in killteam - you don't even need your own book as others will teach you and let you borrow theirs; but even so the book is pretty cheap too.
Now flip that around and tell parents that they've got to get their kid this 3D printers that costs £100s (which is likely more than the "house hold" one that they use to print free cups and plates if 3D printers become a "household item"). And then they've got to buy the resins and set the thing up to a high standard all before they can print off the models.
Sure it might be cheaper in the long run, but the initial outlay requires a competent skill level and high investment. In fact for the same cost as one machine you can buy a good 2K+ points for a single army. So that's already a good number of months of collecting building and painting in one big cost.
The Newman wrote: This reminds me of Napster and Limewire. What frequently gets overlooked in the discussion of those things by the pundits and that the record industry still doesn't seem to have grasped is that those things wouldn't have existed at all if the price of a CD at the time hadn't been frankly extortionist. What killed Napster and Limewire wasn't legal action by the RIAA or changes in legislation or enforcement, it was the industry finally figuring out that it was more profitable to just sell music on-line for cheap themselves.
The video game industry went through a similar arc with download services, and also hasn't entirely learned the lesson.
Whether GW will be one of the companies that figures this out is anybody's guess, but usually it's new businesses started with the new tech in mind that get it right.
The problem with this analogy is that downloading music and games is 1) fast and 2) a perfect copy. 3D printing is not. The tech never will be fast - there is an inherent physics limitation in the current 3D printing technologies. And a perfect copy? Only if you have a resin printer. And then you lose the cost benefit of 3D printing because the resin material is hella expensive, unlike plastic SLA printing.
If there is a new type of 3D printing invented which is a) fast, b) cheap and c) produces perfect quality copies then this analogy might fit, but that technology doesn't exist (yet, at least).
I disagree with this entirely. The fact is the vast majority of the people who play this game are not going to tournaments or official events and don't get their models checked to see if they are official. They are just some people playing a game and all they care about is having good looking things to play the game with at a cost they can feel comfortable paying.
In that respect, 1) it doesn't matter if it's perfect. 2) The time it takes to print is irrelevant to the person who is buying the models.
The only things relevant to a purchaser about a store selling 3d printed models is 1) does it look good and 2) cost.
In that respect the impact of limewire and napster are very relevant to the conversation. GWs prices are high and 3d printing can make stores with custom models/bits cheap. As long as GW is selling their models "20 dollars for a cd with only 1 or 2 song that you have heard out of 7-9 songs total", but this guy over here is selling a perfectly serviceable, good looking stand in at ".99 per song" then GW is going to be impacted. 3d printing is not limewire and napster for the masses. It's limeiwre and napster for independent store fronts.
I think you misunderstand me.
I was talking about the overall quality of the miniature, not whether it's a carbon copy of an existing GW miniature or making them official. The overall quality of a miniature DOES matter. Some people are fine with playing with awful minis saddled with print artefacts, but I bet the vast majority aren't.
You can't dismiss time as a factor. There's only so much that someone printing minis can do and that's limited by the inherent speed limits of the technology. Yes, you can leave things printing overnight (and over several nights), of course you can. But you can still only print a certain amount per week. It's not a Star Trek replicator. If your FLGS switched over to providing 3D printed models, they wouldn't be able to satisfy customer demand even with a massive bank of a dozen or more 3D printers.
Heres the thing. Right now if I go to ebay and order a box of whatever I ill get that box in the mail in like... 3 to 7 days? Especially with the aforementioned resin printer that takes the same time to produce 1 model as it does to make 5, can I make the models faster or the same speed as the shipping wait times?
If yes, or even if no but it's only a little more time, then it's still a pretty solid deal.
4 hours to produce an entire unit per machine isn't bad.
The Newman wrote: This reminds me of Napster and Limewire. What frequently gets overlooked in the discussion of those things by the pundits and that the record industry still doesn't seem to have grasped is that those things wouldn't have existed at all if the price of a CD at the time hadn't been frankly extortionist. What killed Napster and Limewire wasn't legal action by the RIAA or changes in legislation or enforcement, it was the industry finally figuring out that it was more profitable to just sell music on-line for cheap themselves.
The video game industry went through a similar arc with download services, and also hasn't entirely learned the lesson.
Whether GW will be one of the companies that figures this out is anybody's guess, but usually it's new businesses started with the new tech in mind that get it right.
The problem with this analogy is that downloading music and games is 1) fast and 2) a perfect copy. 3D printing is not. The tech never will be fast - there is an inherent physics limitation in the current 3D printing technologies. And a perfect copy? Only if you have a resin printer. And then you lose the cost benefit of 3D printing because the resin material is hella expensive, unlike plastic SLA printing.
If there is a new type of 3D printing invented which is a) fast, b) cheap and c) produces perfect quality copies then this analogy might fit, but that technology doesn't exist (yet, at least).
I disagree with this entirely. The fact is the vast majority of the people who play this game are not going to tournaments or official events and don't get their models checked to see if they are official. They are just some people playing a game and all they care about is having good looking things to play the game with at a cost they can feel comfortable paying.
In that respect, 1) it doesn't matter if it's perfect. 2) The time it takes to print is irrelevant to the person who is buying the models.
The only things relevant to a purchaser about a store selling 3d printed models is 1) does it look good and 2) cost.
In that respect the impact of limewire and napster are very relevant to the conversation. GWs prices are high and 3d printing can make stores with custom models/bits cheap. As long as GW is selling their models "20 dollars for a cd with only 1 or 2 song that you have heard out of 7-9 songs total", but this guy over here is selling a perfectly serviceable, good looking stand in at ".99 per song" then GW is going to be impacted. 3d printing is not limewire and napster for the masses. It's limeiwre and napster for independent store fronts.
I think you misunderstand me.
I was talking about the overall quality of the miniature, not whether it's a carbon copy of an existing GW miniature or making them official. The overall quality of a miniature DOES matter. Some people are fine with playing with awful minis saddled with print artefacts, but I bet the vast majority aren't.
You can't dismiss time as a factor. There's only so much that someone printing minis can do and that's limited by the inherent speed limits of the technology. Yes, you can leave things printing overnight (and over several nights), of course you can. But you can still only print a certain amount per week. It's not a Star Trek replicator. If your FLGS switched over to providing 3D printed models, they wouldn't be able to satisfy customer demand even with a massive bank of a dozen or more 3D printers.
Heres the thing. Right now if I go to ebay and order a box of whatever I ill get that box in the mail in like... 3 to 7 days? Especially with the aforementioned resin printer that takes the same time to produce 1 model as it does to make 5, can I make the models faster or the same speed as the shipping wait times?
If yes, or even if no but it's only a little more time, then it's still a pretty solid deal.
4 hours to produce an entire unit per machine isn't bad.
Or you can drive off and buy them in a local store today and have them home. Which is probably the angle GW would look at it. Plus don't forget there's always going to be avolume you can buy "more of" in a box than you can make at home in the same time frame. Of course both reach a point beyond your ability to "keep up" in terms of building; but one certainly scratches that "spend money" itch faster.
Sure it might be cheaper in the long run, but the initial outlay requires a competent skill level and high investment. In fact for the same cost as one machine you can buy a good 2K+ points for a single army.
What ? For $400, you can get an entire 2k army ? Not really. A 2k ultramarine army with calgar, tigurius, 3x10 intercessors, 10 hellblasters, 2 contemptors, 2 repulsors is $595. Thats an elite army, those are cheaper. Now, lets see how orks do. 10 ork boyz are $29. You need at least 90, so thats already $261, more than half the cost of a printer. 90 boyz are only ~630 pts.
Sure it might be cheaper in the long run, but the initial outlay requires a competent skill level and high investment. In fact for the same cost as one machine you can buy a good 2K+ points for a single army.
What ? For $400, you can get an entire 2k army ? Not really. A 2k ultramarine army with calgar, tigurius, 3x10 intercessors, 10 hellblasters, 2 contemptors, 2 repulsors is $595. Thats an elite army, those are cheaper. Now, lets see how orks do. 10 ork boyz are $29. You need at least 90, so thats already $261, more than half the cost of a printer. 90 boyz are only ~630 pts.
That's not how most people collect 40k though. A $400 lump sum is not feasible for most people.
Normally you'd have a modest monthly hobby budget, build up your army slowly and paint as you go.
Needing to put it all down as a lump sum will be a big problem for many, and put them off getting involved at all.
Wyzilla wrote: I actually expect 3D printing to eventually spell the death of companies like GW in the long run. I know some guys who run a 3D Printing discord and they've already got the ability to make models peer/superior to most GW models; the only issue is one of time. But in the end you don't even need GW to make the 3D models because there's probably millions of warhammer nerds and out of that selection group you're always going to find some who mess around with CAD and are happy to upload their work for free.
And in all honesty it wouldn't be a bad thing either. The best thing that can happen to creativity is if the industry holding the IP is essentially butchered and all means to enforce IP control at all is lost. It enables greater artistic freedom of the collective fanbase.
Which is utterly useless to the large component of people whose primary concern is playing the game. Free models for everyone would likely see GW(and other companies) stop support for their games.
If the companies DO stop support for their games, it leads to one of two outcomes, one: People keep playing the same edition with the same rules forever OR everyone who can hold a pen makes their own homebrew edition. Either way the game at any kind of meaningful scale (read: Tournaments) dies.
At that point I personally just chuck everything. Not even worth the hassle of ebaying it off.
Lance845 wrote: Yeah. 3d printing is fully capable of making injection molded quality models if you get the right machines.
Machines which are prohibitively expensive and take a long time to finish the models in question. You'd never be able to mass produce those models in a cost effective manner. Nor would it be justified for the typical gamer to have a 3D printer for that purpose.
Its nice if you've also made 3D printing a hobby, or maybe are selling a few models on the side. but you wouldn't be able to run a real business off it.
Those were printed on an Anycubic Photon, routinely on sale for ~350 USD. Each model costs around a dollar to print(including wear & tear on the machine), less if you buy your resin in bulk when it goes on sale. It will typically finish a job in 2-5 hours. Postcuring and cleanup is a couple of minutes of effort.
Producing cost effectively? For a small miniatures company, running a print farm of Photons now makes more financial sense IMO than resin casting. For a start, as a DLP type machine it cures the entire layer at once by projecting UV light through a masking image created by the LCD screen under the vat, meaning that you can add anywhere up to a full squad of 28-32mm infantry and it will print them just as quickly as a single miniature, so producing multiples of the same thing is actually very efficient. Secondly, the level of knowledge required to operate them successfully is much lower - you can become familiar with a resin printer in an afternoon, it can take months of practice to get good at making production molds for resin casting. Thirdly, the equipment isn't actually any more expensive - you don't do production resin casting without vacuum chambers to degas your mold rubber and pressure chambers to cast the resin inside, and all in(pumps & compressors, hoses, fittings, the actual chambers) even just one of each can cost twice as much as a Photon. On top of that, printers don't require you to store molds, your entire catalogue can be digital and stock produced on-demand.
As for a typical gamer, that depends what you mean by typical. Little Timmy? No. The type of folks who buy everything in a GW store and use Official GW Clippers because Peachy & Duncan say to do that in their videos? No. The moment you start talking about people who's selection of hobby-related tools goes beyond a few brushes though, I'd say it's absolutely justified.
Oh look, hobby elitism. In a thread about GW? How shocking.
We're all so deeply impressed by your ability. Truly.
Blood Bowl survived entirely on fan created content for a good decade or more.
On one hand, I can appreciate that GW is interested in model sales rather than creating a good game. Fans can fix the game without their input but they still buy the minis.
But on the other hand, once the product becomes more expensive than its quality demands (as a gamer-first hobbyist, I want nice looking game tokens that are easy to assemble and paint, and a good game to play with them) I have little issue with using alternatives to the “genuine article”.
As a garage gamer, I have no issue with non-genuine game tokens. If I were to go to a tournament, I would want/need to have legit product. Tournaments with prizes are, boiled down, gambling. People should have appropriate stake in the game.
And in all honesty it wouldn't be a bad thing either. The best thing that can happen to creativity is if the industry holding the IP is essentially butchered and all means to enforce IP control at all is lost. It enables greater artistic freedom of the collective fanbase.
Ehhh. . . And then community fractures because there's nothing holding it together anymore, and the game dies because there's no business propping it up.
Creative freedom is great, but it's hard to have any sort of cohesive community in without structure. The business provides the structure, and the IP allows the business to exist.
I'm not saying this is absolute, but it's definitely something to be wary of.
The breakdown is what's good. Instead of having one game system lording over all everybody splits off into their regional group, likely developing their own stuff and messing around with older editions instead of religiously following anything GW puts up. My main critique of the hobby overall is how everybody ultimately just devours whatever crap GW throws out with each edition instead of taking it as inspiration to develop their own ruleset and experiment with improvements. And every edition is readily devoured without protest or boycott even those same people spend years complaining about GW's poor rules.
If there's ever going to be an improvement, the current system of how the community works needs to end.
Imo that's a bunch of bull. You know what's great about 40K? It's played everywhere, and everybody understands the format. If I move, or travel, and want to get a game, that's an incredibly easy thing to do. The only way that happens is structure. Everybody knows where to get the rules, everybody is playing within the same framework,.
Breakdown of the structure is not good for the hobby. Feel free to protest or boycott, curse the name of GW, and make your homebrew variation, but if theres no centralized authority on rules, etc. thousands will leave the game, and recruitment into the game will be infinitesimal. 40k as we know it will die.
Wyzilla wrote: I actually expect 3D printing to eventually spell the death of companies like GW in the long run. I know some guys who run a 3D Printing discord and they've already got the ability to make models peer/superior to most GW models; the only issue is one of time. But in the end you don't even need GW to make the 3D models because there's probably millions of warhammer nerds and out of that selection group you're always going to find some who mess around with CAD and are happy to upload their work for free.
And in all honesty it wouldn't be a bad thing either. The best thing that can happen to creativity is if the industry holding the IP is essentially butchered and all means to enforce IP control at all is lost. It enables greater artistic freedom of the collective fanbase.
Which is utterly useless to the large component of people whose primary concern is playing the game. Free models for everyone would likely see GW(and other companies) stop support for their games.
If the companies DO stop support for their games, it leads to one of two outcomes, one: People keep playing the same edition with the same rules forever OR everyone who can hold a pen makes their own homebrew edition. Either way the game at any kind of meaningful scale (read: Tournaments) dies.
At that point I personally just chuck everything. Not even worth the hassle of ebaying it off.
Tournaments don't mean anything. The tourny going community is a miniscule amount of the community. The vast majority just play a game.
Lance845 wrote: Yeah. 3d printing is fully capable of making injection molded quality models if you get the right machines.
Machines which are prohibitively expensive and take a long time to finish the models in question. You'd never be able to mass produce those models in a cost effective manner. Nor would it be justified for the typical gamer to have a 3D printer for that purpose.
Its nice if you've also made 3D printing a hobby, or maybe are selling a few models on the side. but you wouldn't be able to run a real business off it.
Those were printed on an Anycubic Photon, routinely on sale for ~350 USD. Each model costs around a dollar to print(including wear & tear on the machine), less if you buy your resin in bulk when it goes on sale. It will typically finish a job in 2-5 hours. Postcuring and cleanup is a couple of minutes of effort.
Producing cost effectively? For a small miniatures company, running a print farm of Photons now makes more financial sense IMO than resin casting. For a start, as a DLP type machine it cures the entire layer at once by projecting UV light through a masking image created by the LCD screen under the vat, meaning that you can add anywhere up to a full squad of 28-32mm infantry and it will print them just as quickly as a single miniature, so producing multiples of the same thing is actually very efficient. Secondly, the level of knowledge required to operate them successfully is much lower - you can become familiar with a resin printer in an afternoon, it can take months of practice to get good at making production molds for resin casting. Thirdly, the equipment isn't actually any more expensive - you don't do production resin casting without vacuum chambers to degas your mold rubber and pressure chambers to cast the resin inside, and all in(pumps & compressors, hoses, fittings, the actual chambers) even just one of each can cost twice as much as a Photon. On top of that, printers don't require you to store molds, your entire catalogue can be digital and stock produced on-demand.
As for a typical gamer, that depends what you mean by typical. Little Timmy? No. The type of folks who buy everything in a GW store and use Official GW Clippers because Peachy & Duncan say to do that in their videos? No. The moment you start talking about people who's selection of hobby-related tools goes beyond a few brushes though, I'd say it's absolutely justified.
Oh look, hobby elitism. In a thread about GW? How shocking.
We're all so deeply impressed by your ability. Truly.
The hobby elitists are the suckers who fall for gwsbs.
SirWeeble wrote: I worked for a miniatures company - we used the thinnest layer 3d printer on the market. It costs more than my life. The results still needed heavy manual work to have the level of smoothness and details that were needed for silicone molds. If you don't care about rough edges and layering effects, the raw prints are fine, but the desktop ones I've seen are much rougher than the super-fine one we used and their quality is still fairly low by my standards.
Some of the videos I've seen are honest admit that they spent a lot of time smoothing the model. Others aren't and try to pass off the result as something that came out of the printer. I did that work several years ago, so it's possible the gap has been filled and quality is better on some printers - but even in that linked page you can see the layering effect is pretty bad on the skitarii transport.
You're talking about FDM printing, which deposits plastic in layers. The more modern technology is SLA printing, which uses UV to cure a photosensitive resin. It has some inconvenient aspects (toxic resin with a shelf life, smaller print volume) but has no discernible print lines. This is how a lot of small bits makers, like Reptilian Overlords, are making their parts; they 3D model the piece, print it on a SLA printer, and then cast it for mass production.
Wyzilla wrote: I actually expect 3D printing to eventually spell the death of companies like GW in the long run. I know some guys who run a 3D Printing discord and they've already got the ability to make models peer/superior to most GW models; the only issue is one of time. But in the end you don't even need GW to make the 3D models because there's probably millions of warhammer nerds and out of that selection group you're always going to find some who mess around with CAD and are happy to upload their work for free.
And in all honesty it wouldn't be a bad thing either. The best thing that can happen to creativity is if the industry holding the IP is essentially butchered and all means to enforce IP control at all is lost. It enables greater artistic freedom of the collective fanbase.
Which is utterly useless to the large component of people whose primary concern is playing the game. Free models for everyone would likely see GW(and other companies) stop support for their games.
If the companies DO stop support for their games, it leads to one of two outcomes, one: People keep playing the same edition with the same rules forever OR everyone who can hold a pen makes their own homebrew edition. Either way the game at any kind of meaningful scale (read: Tournaments) dies.
At that point I personally just chuck everything. Not even worth the hassle of ebaying it off.
Lance845 wrote: Yeah. 3d printing is fully capable of making injection molded quality models if you get the right machines.
Machines which are prohibitively expensive and take a long time to finish the models in question. You'd never be able to mass produce those models in a cost effective manner. Nor would it be justified for the typical gamer to have a 3D printer for that purpose.
Its nice if you've also made 3D printing a hobby, or maybe are selling a few models on the side. but you wouldn't be able to run a real business off it.
Those were printed on an Anycubic Photon, routinely on sale for ~350 USD. Each model costs around a dollar to print(including wear & tear on the machine), less if you buy your resin in bulk when it goes on sale. It will typically finish a job in 2-5 hours. Postcuring and cleanup is a couple of minutes of effort.
Producing cost effectively? For a small miniatures company, running a print farm of Photons now makes more financial sense IMO than resin casting. For a start, as a DLP type machine it cures the entire layer at once by projecting UV light through a masking image created by the LCD screen under the vat, meaning that you can add anywhere up to a full squad of 28-32mm infantry and it will print them just as quickly as a single miniature, so producing multiples of the same thing is actually very efficient. Secondly, the level of knowledge required to operate them successfully is much lower - you can become familiar with a resin printer in an afternoon, it can take months of practice to get good at making production molds for resin casting. Thirdly, the equipment isn't actually any more expensive - you don't do production resin casting without vacuum chambers to degas your mold rubber and pressure chambers to cast the resin inside, and all in(pumps & compressors, hoses, fittings, the actual chambers) even just one of each can cost twice as much as a Photon. On top of that, printers don't require you to store molds, your entire catalogue can be digital and stock produced on-demand.
As for a typical gamer, that depends what you mean by typical. Little Timmy? No. The type of folks who buy everything in a GW store and use Official GW Clippers because Peachy & Duncan say to do that in their videos? No. The moment you start talking about people who's selection of hobby-related tools goes beyond a few brushes though, I'd say it's absolutely justified.
Oh look, hobby elitism. In a thread about GW? How shocking.
We're all so deeply impressed by your ability. Truly.
Yes, and that's the good thing. The monolithic nature of tournaments and other such dogmatic adherence to what is ultimately a godawful ruleset constantly pumped out by the same company and then loyally followed to the letter is precisely the problem with the game. The best thing that can happen to tabletop wargaming is if all of the companies go belly up and die to free their grip over the personal creativity of the players to allow competent well-made rulesets to manifest and eventually gain popularity, along with also freeing creativity of models and fluff with a rise of 3D printing or personal sculpting. Nothing of value will be truly lost for the fans and the art gets to flourish with the maximum amount of freedom.
If you're only playing the game because of Tournaments, I think it's more a problem of you needing a look in the mirror to realize you're not even in the hobby in the first place. Especially when the official rules have been hot garbage since 6e resulting in a degeneration of quality in tabletop games from GW's endless greed. The historical scene is far more healthy and ideally what 40k should become; models are made by everybody and their dog, rulesets are a dime a dozen, and everybody is shifting around to new things and trying them out. The ideal state of any art is when no party has any control, and it is allowed to develop in a state of pure chaos of ideas to create the best works. Look to how Lovecraft and his friends operated with their stories - that's how things are supposed to work with any form of art.
At the end of the day, we don't need Games Workshop for the hobby and if anything they are a leech. The fanbase by itself is fully capable of making movies, comics, novels, models, rules, campaign books, and videogames. We don't need the company anymore and if anything the company merely harms the fanbase, not uplifting it by restrictive NDA's and model releases/rulesets geared purely to reap a profit instead of creating a functional game. Anything that erodes GW's grip on the fanbase is not just alright, but good because the fanbase has long since outgrown the company.
Lance845 wrote: Yeah. 3d printing is fully capable of making injection molded quality models if you get the right machines.
Machines which are prohibitively expensive and take a long time to finish the models in question. You'd never be able to mass produce those models in a cost effective manner. Nor would it be justified for the typical gamer to have a 3D printer for that purpose.
Its nice if you've also made 3D printing a hobby, or maybe are selling a few models on the side. but you wouldn't be able to run a real business off it.
Those were printed on an Anycubic Photon, routinely on sale for ~350 USD. Each model costs around a dollar to print(including wear & tear on the machine), less if you buy your resin in bulk when it goes on sale. It will typically finish a job in 2-5 hours. Postcuring and cleanup is a couple of minutes of effort.
Producing cost effectively? For a small miniatures company, running a print farm of Photons now makes more financial sense IMO than resin casting. For a start, as a DLP type machine it cures the entire layer at once by projecting UV light through a masking image created by the LCD screen under the vat, meaning that you can add anywhere up to a full squad of 28-32mm infantry and it will print them just as quickly as a single miniature, so producing multiples of the same thing is actually very efficient. Secondly, the level of knowledge required to operate them successfully is much lower - you can become familiar with a resin printer in an afternoon, it can take months of practice to get good at making production molds for resin casting. Thirdly, the equipment isn't actually any more expensive - you don't do production resin casting without vacuum chambers to degas your mold rubber and pressure chambers to cast the resin inside, and all in(pumps & compressors, hoses, fittings, the actual chambers) even just one of each can cost twice as much as a Photon. On top of that, printers don't require you to store molds, your entire catalogue can be digital and stock produced on-demand.
As for a typical gamer, that depends what you mean by typical. Little Timmy? No. The type of folks who buy everything in a GW store and use Official GW Clippers because Peachy & Duncan say to do that in their videos? No. The moment you start talking about people who's selection of hobby-related tools goes beyond a few brushes though, I'd say it's absolutely justified.
Oh look, hobby elitism. In a thread about GW? How shocking.
We're all so deeply impressed by your ability. Truly.
No no, I'm the one who's impressed. It's not often someone manages to so spectacularly miss the point that they end up having a pop at someone for literally the exact opposite of what they were saying.
Wyzilla wrote: Look to how Lovecraft and his friends operated with their stories - that's how things are supposed to work with any form of art.
Poor, miserable and only popular/profitable after their death?
As an artist, I need money. Lots of that money comes in the form of jobs granted by companies that can only exist because they can protect their IP.
Which is interesting, given that at its conception IP law was as much about ensuring companies *couldn't* "protect their IP" indefinitely, because the ability of artists and businesspeople to access a rich and perpetually expanding Commons was considered at least as important as their ability to make back an initial investment in a creation.
I mean, imagine for a moment a world in which the present day attitude towards IP from some artists was fully present back in the 80's - 2000AD and the estates of Tolkein, Heinlein and Herbert would have sued GW into oblivion.
Wyzilla wrote: Look to how Lovecraft and his friends operated with their stories - that's how things are supposed to work with any form of art.
Poor, miserable and only popular/profitable after their death?
As an artist, I need money. Lots of that money comes in the form of jobs granted by companies that can only exist because they can protect their IP.
You don't need IP laws to protect yourself as an artist, only copyright. If your work is good and the quality is well done, it will thrive and you will get publishers interested in supporting your works directly. IP law however only exists to protect corporate interests by sealing off IP's for decades to even a century which hurts the creativity of the collective. Our greatest accomplishments in literature as a species did not come from conglomerates walling artists from even using material they bought up; it came from individuals building off of each other for decades or even centuries to refine a product to perfection. Continuity, IP, and 'word of god' are silly modern concepts derived from the way corporations control modern art. It didn't used to be that way. If somebody wrote a book, some people who really liked it might write alternative 'sequels' - that which was more popularly received would be the 'true' sequel although everybody would ultimately go their own way with their preferences.
Hoping that these new innovations give GW some incentive to lower their prices. I love their model ranges, but with the most recent round of price increases, I just can't justify buying from them anymore.
Not sure what I'm going to do when I'm done assembling/painting my current stock.
Wyzilla wrote: Look to how Lovecraft and his friends operated with their stories - that's how things are supposed to work with any form of art.
Poor, miserable and only popular/profitable after their death?
As an artist, I need money. Lots of that money comes in the form of jobs granted by companies that can only exist because they can protect their IP.
You don't need IP laws to protect yourself as an artist, only copyright. If your work is good and the quality is well done, it will thrive and you will get publishers interested in supporting your works directly. IP law however only exists to protect corporate interests by sealing off IP's for decades to even a century which hurts the creativity of the collective. Our greatest accomplishments in literature as a species did not come from conglomerates walling artists from even using material they bought up; it came from individuals building off of each other for decades or even centuries to refine a product to perfection. Continuity, IP, and 'word of god' are silly modern concepts derived from the way corporations control modern art. It didn't used to be that way. If somebody wrote a book, some people who really liked it might write alternative 'sequels' - that which was more popularly received would be the 'true' sequel although everybody would ultimately go their own way with their preferences.
Some works can only be accomplished by companies. The Marvel movies (like them or not) dont exist without IP protection. For certain creative works IP is necessary.
On the flipside, if you're an artist worth any salt you shouldn't need to use any existing IP to flourish.
For wargames, GW is doing absolutely nothing to stop you from making your own models and rule sets. They're not in your way unless you specifically want to use their IP. To which I say, any game designer worth their salt shouldnt need GWs IP to write their own sci-fi/fantasy universe rule set.
It's amusing that you bring up Marvel, since a lot of their parent company's (Disney) success can be attributed to using the IP of the past. Even the iconic Steamboat Willy is derived from prior creative works. In fact, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find any sort of fictional universe today that isn't based on something someone else created.
Not that protecting your IP is wrong. I actually disagree that "GW needs to go down so creative people can expand upon the universe." I DO, however, think that they need to adjust their business practices to 1)be more reasonable to the consumer and 2) adapt to a world where 3D printing is becoming more common, cheaper, and better in quality.
flandarz wrote: It's amusing that you bring up Marvel, since a lot of their parent company's (Disney) success can be attributed to using the IP of the past. Even the iconic Steamboat Willy is derived from prior creative works. In fact, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find any sort of fictional universe today that isn't based on something someone else created.
Not that protecting your IP is wrong. I actually disagree that "GW needs to go down so creative people can expand upon the universe." I DO, however, think that they need to adjust their business practices to 1)be more reasonable to the consumer and 2) adapt to a world where 3D printing is becoming more common, cheaper, and better in quality.
Yeah, let me clarify that I am in no way saying that the IP laws are perfect or even ideal, but they remain valuable and necessary for some creative works to be made.
TLDR: 3D printing is not the end-all solution for your miniature hobbying needs.
I was previously employed as a shop manager for a digital production facilities, and I can tell you this:
1. 3D printing models isn't necessarily cheaper than buying actual models.
3D printing isn't cost-enabling as much as people make it out to be. Sure, the cost of 3D printers dropped drastically and the quality of the prints were improved vastly over the last few years. But you're not taking into consideration that material/set up costs build up - this includes the printer, materials, post production set ups, maintenance etc. Unless you begin to reach thousands of prints, you're not making back your money by investing into 3D printing as opposed to just buying the plastic cracks directly.
2. 3D printing isn't without it's margins of errors.
Many of us here think 3D printing is this magical process where you press a button and presto! you have a perfect model ready to be painted. Even with the best printer money can buy (at which point, was it even worth buying a 3D printer instead of just buying the models?), you will have bad prints (which wastes materials). Apart from the machine error, there's also human error that needs to be taken into account. You have to learn to optimize how you make your 3D models and how you arrange them for the best prints. Yes, it may be worth it if you are planning on going onto really developing your skills with the 3D printer for other non-miniature related projects, but the time and the associated learning curve to 'perfect' your prints far outweigh the costs than buying actual models. Remember, 3D printing is time x money, and since time = money, so you're looking at money x money = money^2. thus, (square) root of all evil is money.
flandarz wrote: It's amusing that you bring up Marvel, since a lot of their parent company's (Disney) success can be attributed to using the IP of the past. Even the iconic Steamboat Willy is derived from prior creative works. In fact, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find any sort of fictional universe today that isn't based on something someone else created.
Not that protecting your IP is wrong. I actually disagree that "GW needs to go down so creative people can expand upon the universe." I DO, however, think that they need to adjust their business practices to 1)be more reasonable to the consumer and 2) adapt to a world where 3D printing is becoming more common, cheaper, and better in quality.
I wonder how much different do people really want their stuff to be. Stagnation is of course bad, but so is total changing of a setting. In sports for example a single change of rules can drive a ton of people, just because a rule gets implemented or removed. I feel that GW games could be the same, if they became too different from what they were in the past, and which assumed made them popular, they could drive a lot of people away. Same way DC did with their man of murder superman, and in revers how marvel made great money by keeping the core of their characters true to their comic roots.
3D printing isn't cost-enabling as much as people make it out to be. Sure, the cost of 3D printers dropped drastically and the quality of the prints were improved vastly over the last few years. But you're not taking into consideration that material/set up costs build up - this includes the printer, materials, post production set ups, maintenance etc. Unless you begin to reach thousands of prints, you're not making back your money by investing into 3D printing as opposed to just buying the plastic cracks directly.
But if you get all those for free, it very much becomes a sort of an alternative .
Those were printed on an Anycubic Photon, routinely on sale for ~350 USD. Each model costs around a dollar to print(including wear & tear on the machine), less if you buy your resin in bulk when it goes on sale. It will typically finish a job in 2-5 hours. Postcuring and cleanup is a couple of minutes of effort.
Well considering GW wants me to just arbitrarily pay 35-40% more than they charge the UK (and dont get started on the poor Aussies). They can rightly feth off.... The cost to sell me a product in no way cost 40% more than your already over inflated profit margin you charge in the UK. Im saving right now for a 3d printer, got 1/3 of the cost of a dremel 3dHD saved...
Those were printed on an Anycubic Photon, routinely on sale for ~350 USD. Each model costs around a dollar to print(including wear & tear on the machine), less if you buy your resin in bulk when it goes on sale. It will typically finish a job in 2-5 hours. Postcuring and cleanup is a couple of minutes of effort.
Nah, 3D prints are no bigger a threat to GW than recasting, which can already do near perfect duplication without as much skill or investment in both printer, computer and design software.
No matter how much printers improve, they will never print faster than injection moulds - anyone trying to rip off GW IP will be earning pennies per hour of work.
Injection mould speed is needed if you're printing thousands of copies. Using lots of 3d printers as distributed manufacturing eeds nowhere near as much speed each. An individual will never need to print thousands of a particular model. Half a litre of resin appears to cost about the same as a single box set from GW and can print many more than the 5 or 10 models out of the same box. Getting set up to do recasting is also quite hard to do properly and needs specific consumables as well. A 3d printer also has the benefit of being a much more general tool.than a resin recasting kit.
Honestly the key question is if big business can make money out of home 3D printers. Right now a lot of people are all "cool 3D printers" because part of their attraction is super cheap to at-material-cost products.
That and unlimited use cheap 3D files ready to print made by "one man band" designers who basically have either no means or no easy means to market and thus are happy for low volume sales without DRM protection.
Could GW or PP or any of the big names survive in such a market? Would the market accept a £30 cost for a "print file" of 20 Marine models that expires use after 20 prints? Could the 3D printers print reliably in a home environment to allow that or would it be a continual disaster of customers complaining to get "free prints" unlocked because their last batch failed (printer ran out, something jammed, something else went wrong etc..)
A 3D print bitz service in GW stores could be cool though. Pick your bitz, pick a time slot to pick them up like with supermarket deliveries - that'd probably give me a reason to go into the shops rather than ordering online.
Tastyfish wrote: A 3D print bitz service in GW stores could be cool though. Pick your bitz, pick a time slot to pick them up like with supermarket deliveries - that'd probably give me a reason to go into the shops rather than ordering online.
Or a Games Workshop trademarked 3D Printer, for use with GW paints and hobby tools.
Edit: I also like how the same crowd that complains about monopose miniatures also thinks 3D printing will expand the hobby potential...it could, but only if you’re a graphics design wizard.
When there is a sufficiently critical mass of 3d printer users, i forsee generic digital dolly software requiring minimal 3d modelling skills to click andndrag around a few key anatomical points to allow the usernto create any pose they like. Similar to Anvil's Regiments system one can then choose how one wishes to dress ones dolly and which family of weapons to arm them with. Shouldnt take too long to whomp up a few nice poses and then sendnthem to your printer.
Given that Thingiverse already basically provides a fully free to use object library it can only be a short jump to software that pullsmit all together.
Well seeing as 3D printing hasn’t killed off any of the big model making company’s I doubt it. There are many other company’s that already manufacture plastic kits with fewer options than GW. Heck there’s no Copyright/IP protection for any plastic Tiger Tank kits and none of the manufacturers seem that bothered. Worst comes to worst GW has to rethink prices for their models and add extra in demand bits to upgrade sprues. People seem to only focus on Games Workshop and ignore the fact there’s dozens of other miniature manufacturers out there who have much more to worry about than the company with a store or supplier in every town.
Personally, I buy the bits rather than the boxes. Feth off, I'm not going to buy 3 more boxes of Allarus Terminators just to get the extra axe. I can 3d image the axe at my friend's workshop, and then just upload the plan to the printer. Easy axes and plasma rifles for my armies, for less than 5 cents per bit.
Flinty wrote: When there is a sufficiently critical mass of 3d printer users, i forsee generic digital dolly software requiring minimal 3d modelling skills to click andndrag around a few key anatomical points to allow the usernto create any pose they like. Similar to Anvil's Regiments system one can then choose how one wishes to dress ones dolly and which family of weapons to arm them with. Shouldnt take too long to whomp up a few nice poses and then sendnthem to your printer.
Given that Thingiverse already basically provides a fully free to use object library it can only be a short jump to software that pullsmit all together.
Pretty what Heroforge is for D&D characters, though they then print them off for you.
Flinty wrote: When there is a sufficiently critical mass of 3d printer users, i forsee generic digital dolly software requiring minimal 3d modelling skills to click andndrag around a few key anatomical points to allow the usernto create any pose they like. Similar to Anvil's Regiments system one can then choose how one wishes to dress ones dolly and which family of weapons to arm them with. Shouldnt take too long to whomp up a few nice poses and then sendnthem to your printer.
Given that Thingiverse already basically provides a fully free to use object library it can only be a short jump to software that pullsmit all together.
Pretty what Heroforge is for D&D characters, though they then print them off for you.
Heroforge is a good example of why it is not yet a concern to GW. Heroforge minis are really quite expensive for what you get - more expensive than GW if you want a decent quality print. And people still buy them.
Heroforge is a good example of why it is not yet a concern to GW. Heroforge minis are really quite expensive for what you get - more expensive than GW if you want a decent quality print. And people still buy them.
Its not yet a concern to GW. Heroforge is a company who wants to make money. Its expensive because a 3d printer that can deliver the quality they do is very expensive right now. Once print quality improves, and prices come down, heroforge will also come down in price. I can buy the file from them for $9.99 and print at home, once i have a printer that delivers the same quality for an affordable price.
Flinty wrote: When there is a sufficiently critical mass of 3d printer users, i forsee generic digital dolly software requiring minimal 3d modelling skills to click andndrag around a few key anatomical points to allow the usernto create any pose they like. Similar to Anvil's Regiments system one can then choose how one wishes to dress ones dolly and which family of weapons to arm them with. Shouldnt take too long to whomp up a few nice poses and then sendnthem to your printer.
Given that Thingiverse already basically provides a fully free to use object library it can only be a short jump to software that pullsmit all together.
Pretty what Heroforge is for D&D characters, though they then print them off for you.
Heroforge is a good example of why it is not yet a concern to GW. Heroforge minis are really quite expensive for what you get - more expensive than GW if you want a decent quality print. And people still buy them.
You are not factoring in that a big part of cost is time. Heroforge prints 1 model at a time (or at least sells them based on that assumption). The time it takes to print 1 marine is the exact same time it takes to print 10 with the right sized build area. The cost per model drops drastically under those conditions.
You can see it on shapeways. Items made as single pieces are prohibitively expensive. Kits made to snap off a sprue and alligned well to reduce wasted space are quite economic. Look at the cost of buying 1 shoulder pad vs the well laied out sets of 20.
3D printing, absolutely, will kill GW's sales, unless they dramatically cheapen their prices. All it takes is one high quality 3D printer and accurate downloadable prints.
_SeeD_ wrote: 3D printing, absolutely, will kill GW's sales, unless they dramatically cheapen their prices. All it takes is one high quality 3D printer and accurate downloadable prints.
Yes but its not quite that simple. For it to kill GW's sales that high quality 3D printer has to be owned and operated by every customer or at least every other customer or so. So to kill GW's sales every gamer has to go out and buy a 3D printer that costs probably as much as buying a full army from GW anyway. Only instead of spreading it out over a year or three its got to be paid up front in one lump cost. The other option is someone at a club or store having a bank of 3D printers to create things. At which point you're mostly just moving around production.
Also its important to realise that the money we pay for a model is only partly paid in the cost of its raw materials and production. GW's overheads get rolled into that cost so there's rent on stores, wages on staff, wages on multiple layers of staff who write lore, produce concept art, produce the models, part the models, produce sprue, design the box art, take the photos, produce white dwarf, run all the multi-media marketing they currently do, tax, rents, whatever sundries, work on new games, work on the rules, manage the company, produce the coffee etc...
Basically if we want GW to be GW then there's going to be a bare minimum price threshold for their product to support the company. 3D printers won't kick all that out unless we want to lose a LOT of it. So sure we can have our 20p box of marines from the 3D printer, but in sacrifice we'd probably lose the lore, rules, central development, artwork, magazines, podcasts, probably future products in many ways etc...
Remember cheaper products only works so far and so long as the market continually expands and grows. Once you hit a threshold point and once the existing market is satisfied with what they've bought you can hit a ceiling point by which your existing customers don't want more and there are fewer and fewer new customers to reach. It's a very attractive idea to have cheaper and cheaper product and I won't deny there might well (esp with overseas currancy conversions) be regions where GW can reduce their costs to their customers, but not dramatic ones. I think such dramatic losses would likely result in a very short window of massive sales, followed by a massive reduction. Heck we already have gamers who have wardrobes full of unbuilt models on the current prices - if prices got insanely cheap chances are that would explode out and we could see hobby burn out on many more.
As I've said before I can't see GW or PP or Reaper or any of the current big names embracing 3D printing to the level of cheapness that many seem to want without downsizing themselves into basically garage-run operation companies. Plus I don't think gamers even want that really. We like our garage operations don't get me wrong, but they can rarely service all the gamers hobby needs and interests. I've yet to see any one-man-band companies put out the lore, artwork, media, hype and buzz and models that GW or PP or Infinity can produce. Heck even middleweights can't even touch on the lore content in the same volume.
Even the idea that he was putting the school in a legal position would be enough to cut him off from that. Unless its for school work, would not be worth the risk. 
They would have sold hundreds of upgrade sprues with 4 or 5 of them, but they didnt make them. Thats idiotic. Hopefully 3d printing will make them reconsider their position when it comes to this.
