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DoomOnYou72 wrote:Dont neccessarily think it was a flawed idea, just one that was too far ahead of its time. When items such as ipads are in more common usage then it maybe it might have some potential. For the most part many people said the same thing about games being released on pdfs 10 years ago and now look at it. There are entire companies that exist off making or distributing PDFs.

People print out PDFs if they want to so you don't need to carry around a computer/tablet or whatever.

The advantage of digitising rulebooks is that you can distribute them cheaply online, and have lots and lots of them in a small package. Most people, when they go out to play a game, only play one game and don't need to carry craptons of books from other games with them.

In that situation the laptop/tablet/iPad becomes a liability -- it's just an extra piece of expensive equipment to drop off the edge of the table or get stolen or run out of batteries.

Rackham went down after years of screwing over its fans. Heldorado got withdrawn - a European firm trying to break into the US market and failing. GW announced falling turnover and reduced profitability (with the implication of poorer than expected sales of 8th edition which received a radical overhaul which spectacularly cheesed of existing players of the game - although arguably being more attractive to new players). WF got diddled by their Chinese partner (an if reports are correct were run by a "naive" founder, who didnt really understand the globale market). Ex-illis is struggling with the same Chinese partner and an untried business model.

Yet, Privateer Press successfully negotiated a tricky transition of its flagship games. Mantic appear to be growing after a much better than expected first year of sales allowing them to accelerate their production schedule. Warlord Games and Perry Miniatures continue to expand their ranges and have sufficient surplus to plough back into new products....

Sure the UK and US economies are poor at the moment, and miniature gaming companies are not immune to that (much as Mr Kirby would like his shareholders to believe otherwise), but the signs are that what brought problems to the first list of companies was bad business plpans and poor management, not the "decline of the market". The latter list of companies (and the fact that GW *only* suffered a 4% decline in sales and their Dark Eldar and Tyranid releases last year actually broke previous sales records - or so Fireman Guy reported on TEW the other week) indicates that the market is still there for the "right" product. There are still a large number of gamers out there, adn they are still prepared to buy stuff they like. It is just that companies with jumpy banks, predatory Chinese suppliers, overoptimistic/market-ignorant management and lots and lots of good competition from other manufacturers out there, it is inevitable that *some* companies will fail.

In a booming economy, any idiot can make money. In a declining economy, it just takes talent, brains and a fair bit of luck.

At least that's my reading of the "industry wide" implications of these recent events.

Either that or our Chinese Overlords are about to take over the planet....

Yet, Privateer Press successfully negotiated a tricky transition of its flagship games. Mantic appear to be growing after a much better than expected first year of sales allowing them to accelerate their production schedule. Warlord Games and Perry Miniatures continue to expand their ranges and have sufficient surplus to plough back into new products....

Do these companies have:

A). A close relationship with their customer base and an open attitude to developing their rules/products.

-or-

B). A closed off attitude to their customers and a business model that prioritises secrecy over advancement and collaboration.

Here is the discussion thread on the Ex Illis forum, with no official comment yet:
http://forum.ex-illis.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3362

Reecius wrote:You had to pay a monthly fee???!?!?!
.

No. Where did you get that idea?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ouze wrote:

groundedcontrol wrote:Anyway, That's my first post on these forums. Maybe I'll pick up something else, but not likely. I'll probably just stick to playing board games instead.

There are other great tabletop games. You could let this be your wargaming epitaph, and it's understandable, but it also could be how you learned about some of the other great games that are out.

Oh, I know. I sold them for years from my shop. Frankly I never found any real interest in any of them. I stuck mostly to "bite sized" stuff like board games. Spend sixty bucks and entertain a table of six for twenty hours each over a game's lifespan, It's certainly the best value for my gamer hours. I tried 'nids way back when, then Cygnar. I don't like spending six hours resolving a big battle, nor three resolving a skirmish. I just spend too much time waiting at the table, and I'm not too hot on that. Never mind that Wargames are generally so expensive. For just the money I spent on Ex illis (one of the less expensive systems to get started with) I could have purchased six great board games.

Well, anyhow, the point I'm trying to make is that I already know about all those other games, and I'm generally disinterested in them. They're fine games, to be sure, but so far they really aren't my thing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

BloodQuest wrote:

groundedcontrol wrote:It was the first wargame that my wife would even touch

That piques my curiousity. Any particular reason why?

Play time, ease of entry, and she liked the fact that it used zone movement. She's a serious board gamer, and she liked those elements which fit with what she's come to expect from good game design in tabletop board games. It didn't take very long, however, to suck her into the deep strategic elements which were present. She spent weeks whooping my ass, while I ineffectually tried to make my small army do things it wasn't meant to do.

Mmmmmm coconut, arrrrghurgle!

Dammit now I want to eat a bounty bar!

Here's the official statement:

http://forum.ex-illis.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3368

What does this mean for the game? I've not been a player of a game when this sort of restructuring happened, so I haven't got much of an idea what to expect.

If you want any indication that the health of the industry overall is still good (especially in this economy) go over to the New Heresy Dragon thread and see how many users are willing to drop $400 on a 12" dragon mini.

insaniak wrote:

Buzzsaw wrote:I'm genuinely curious, what prompts you to remark that "times have never been better for the hobby"?

The things I mentioned in the preceding paragraph, for starters.

You wrote;

insaniak wrote:While WF is doing strange things, and Ex-Illis never really got started, Privateer is still plowing along despite all the knocks, small miniature manufacturers are popping up faster than you can say 'Sculpt me something with boobs!', print-on-demand services and sites like Kickstarter are making it easier all the time for that guy with the idea to get it out there for the public to enjoy... or not, and the slowly growing public perception of wargaming (fueled admittedly in large part by the growth of GW) means fewer strange looks from Joe Notawargamer when you try to explain to him just what it is you do with your spare time.

Sooo... your remark is prompted by;
a) Several smaller companies going "splat" (WF, Bastion, and the unmentioned Rackham),
b) Privateer Press not going "splat", and
c) The ease with which, aided by new technology and especially the power of internet sales, new firms can enter the market.

The two industry specific things (a and b) would seem to be more along the line of neutral, while the third factor (c) is unrelated to the hobby, merely a tangential application of technological development from other industries. Certainly it's a good thing that the barriers to entry into the marketplace are lowering, no question. But the barriers to entry are only half the issue: the barriers to becoming a seller of buggy whips are almost certainly less then becoming a start-up hobby company, but I would hesitate to describe that market as "never been better".

As for "the slowly growing public perception of wargaming", all I can do is shrug and say "Wha?"

I do apologize if the above sounds a bit surly, but here's a case where I was really hoping you were going to prove my supposition wrong with a blizzard of financial stats. I was hoping that the rejoinder would be "oh, Privateer is showing steady growth with Q4 revenues up 3%, Wyrd is going great guns and just inked a deal with Diamond, etc etc."

insaniak wrote:GW's sales being a little flat, or people being grumpy with them, are not at all indicative of the health of the hobby market. GW has been having flat sales periods, and people have been complaining about their behaviour, for decades.


There's a difference between something failing because the market can't support niche players, and something failing because it's just not particularly attractive to potential buyers.

Coconut chocolate bars sell regardless of your personal liking of them because enough other people like coconut to support their sales. That doesn't automatically mean that a chocolate bar of some other flavour won't fail... and that failing won't in itself be indicative of the overall health of the chocolate bar market. It would quite possibly just be because people didn't want to buy that particular flavour.

Hmmm, I think someone put it better as;

there is a significant difference between companies failing because they cannot find an audience, and companies failing because the marketplace they are entering into is undergoing contraction. As I should have made clearer in my first post, my impression is that (separate and in addition to Ex-Illis' failings whatever they may be) the marketplace itself is suffering.

The issue isn't about one particular new flavor failing; the question is whether all the new entrants are failing and the old guard are taking losses, or are select poorly thought out products failing while other new entries prosper. The former would seem to indicate a market in decline, the latter a healthy action of supply and demand. That said, my use of GW figures is like the drunk looking for his keys only under the streetlights; it's not necessarily helpful, it's just the only information I am aware of.

All this said, the post by Osbad would seem to provide the information that I'm looking for; the industry is in trouble and undergoing contraction as a function of global economic decline, but there are bright spots. That more or less conforms to what I had supposed, but I was hoping Insaniak had some secret store of happy news.

ancientsociety wrote:If you want any indication that the health of the industry overall is still good (especially in this economy) go over to the New Heresy Dragon thread and see how many users are willing to drop $400 on a 12" dragon mini.

No offense, but that's like saying (for example) the auto-industry must be doing fine, because the Bugatti Veyron has been sold out. Or, perhaps more familiarly, consider that even in the dark times of the late 90's, mint condition copies of Action Comics #1 still sold for a fortune, even as the market imploded. These anecdotes make for fine vignettes, but they're just not a good general barometer, as the very highest end of a market can often be insensitive to downward trends at the more modest reaches.

Buzzsaw wrote:

Sooo... your remark is prompted by;
a) Several smaller companies going "splat" (WF, Bastion, and the unmentioned Rackham),
b) Privateer Press not going "splat", and
c) The ease with which, aided by new technology and especially the power of internet sales, new firms can enter the market.

The two industry specific things (a and b) would seem to be more along the line of neutral, while the third factor (c) is unrelated to the hobby, merely a tangential application of technological development from other industries. Certainly it's a good thing that the barriers to entry into the marketplace are lowering, no question. But the barriers to entry are only half the issue: the barriers to becoming a seller of buggy whips are almost certainly less then becoming a start-up hobby company, but I would hesitate to describe that market as "never been better".

As for "the slowly growing public perception of wargaming", all I can do is shrug and say "Wha?"

I do apologize if the above sounds a bit surly, but here's a case where I was really hoping you were going to prove my supposition wrong with a blizzard of financial stats. I was hoping that the rejoinder would be "oh, Privateer is showing steady growth with Q4 revenues up 3%, Wyrd is going great guns and just inked a deal with Diamond, etc etc."

Actually I would agree with Insaniak. In the last few years a bunch of companies have either grown or really broken through:
Warlord
Perrys
Mantic
Wyrd Miniatures
Victrix
Immortal Miniatures

So that is six rather impressive success stories as compared to two pretty large failures. Sounds like a pretty good net gain for the hobby to me.

Holdenstein wrote:

asmith wrote:Ghost studios was the manufacturer for both companies. To early to tell, but the two announcements might be related.

I am making this up, but maybe a chinese molding company wants to get directly involved in selling minis?

I suspect they are. Not because of any conspiracy, but because if you make a massive number of minis in China and they don't sell, then you've got them in your warehouse and nothing in your bank account to pay the manufacturer. If you make the minis yourself, or locally, then if the game doesn't sell you can just stop making them and not have a massive debt hanging round your neck.

The cost of purchasing the manufacturing equipment is much higher than the amount of money you would have tied up in unsold product in a warehouse. The cost of bringing manufacturing in house is more than most companies will be able to handle.

Sure the UK and US economies are poor at the moment, and miniature gaming companies are not immune to that (much as Mr Kirby would like his shareholders to believe otherwise), but the signs are that what brought problems to the first list of companies was bad business plpans and poor management, not the "decline of the market". The latter list of companies (and the fact that GW *only* suffered a 4% decline in sales and their Dark Eldar and Tyranid releases last year actually broke previous sales records - or so Fireman Guy reported on TEW the other week) indicates that the market is still there for the "right" product. There are still a large number of gamers out there, adn they are still prepared to buy stuff they like. It is just that companies with jumpy banks, predatory Chinese suppliers, overoptimistic/market-ignorant management and lots and lots of good competition from other manufacturers out there, it is inevitable that *some* companies will fail.

Almost makes you wonder if GW is shooting themselves in the foot w/ this stream of marine book releases. People aren't necessarily buying the faction specific models, indeed I know more than a few people that have basically said "Well, I'm fielding Green Blood Angels" or "My Space Wolves are Ultramarine Blue", using an existing space marine army to field a new chapter. This easily explains the decline in sales despite the 2 Xenos books doing better than expected.

Actually I would agree with Insaniak. In the last few years a bunch of companies have either grown or really broken through:
Warlord
Perrys
Mantic
Wyrd Miniatures
Victrix
Immortal Miniatures

So that is six rather impressive success stories as compared to two pretty large failures. Sounds like a pretty good net gain for the hobby to me.

Indeed. And you'll notice some key differences between the companies that succeeded and the ones that failed. The ones that succeeded provided quality product, be it miniatures, rules or both. Contrast this to the two that failed, that provided sub-par or questionable product and had a history of difficulty running their businesses. WF has been in trouble for a long time now, plagued by a slow release schedule, delays etc. from almost the very beginning. Bastion had been dealing with poor/struggling sales from the very beginning. Its not surprising or unexpected that they went out of business.

I think the hobby gaming industry has been inundated with new product over the last few years, and the ammount of success has been surprising.

There have been plenty of awesome (and terrible) games/miniature companies go out of business before, but more and more are sticking around now-a-days because the market is finally getting big enough to support them.

You've got a bunch of people scrambling for a place to stand and until the island is big enough, some companies are going to drown. And when a new company finds purchase, that's going to affect everyone else too.

ancientsociety wrote:If you want any indication that the health of the industry overall is still good (especially in this economy) go over to the New Heresy Dragon thread and see how many users are willing to drop $400 on a 12" dragon mini.

I'd rather wait and see how many actually spend said money.

If wishes were kisses and all that.

Buzzsaw wrote:I do apologize if the above sounds a bit surly, but here's a case where I was really hoping you were going to prove my supposition wrong with a blizzard of financial stats. I was hoping that the rejoinder would be "oh, Privateer is showing steady growth with Q4 revenues up 3%, Wyrd is going great guns and just inked a deal with Diamond, etc etc."

To be fair, you're basing your "the industry is in dire straits" standpoint heavily upon the demise of two companies that were either mismanaged or did not have a user friendly business model, and who are both linked by use of the same manufacturer. While I don't believe the industry to be "booming," it's also clearly in a pretty strong position right now given the quality and variety of models that we're seeing come out of new companies. Any man can starve to death in a grocery store if he spends all of his time in the section with the mops and the Drain-O. Just because Bastion and WGF have reached their corporate demise doesn't mean that the landscape of the industry right now is primed for failure (or no more than it usually is for a niche market).

ancientsociety wrote:If you want any indication that the health of the industry overall is still good (especially in this economy) go over to the New Heresy Dragon thread and see how many users are willing to drop $400 on a 12" dragon mini.

The problem though comes from having enough of the OMFG I AM GETING ONE ! one 111! and other expressions of interest converted into sales and a sale is only complete once cold hard cash is in your grubby palms less expenses, taxes, marketing postage, materials etc.

Andy has only just sold his limited (1000) run of Hurn and they were announced in the mid part of last year. Looks good, but consider that he has been struggling for cash and you see how difficult it is.

What's gone wrong with wargames is that a number of companies are trying to copy GW's success and build a business that ties the customer into a proprietary set of rules using proprietary models.

GW achieved this successfully because it grew out of a more general offering which involved licensed products, RPGs, boxed games, character figures, and other things. This was like the first stage booster on a big rocket, it got the business high enough that they managed to ditch the other crap (Specialist Games, etc) and carry on flying with the two core products. LoTR was the second stage booster that propelled them into the stratosphere.

They also had the momentum of 25+ years of sales to veterans, who helped to sell the core products through word of mouth.

GW itself has not been doing too well for a few years, so maybe their business model has flaws.

Anyway, a number of other companies have tried to follow the same trajectory, and not reached the same altitude, because they launched from a different location and didn't have the powerful boosters.

If you look away from the GW wannabe companies, things are pretty good. There's more ranges, in more scales, in more materials, than ever before. On top of a wide range of paid for rules, many of which are professionally published, high quality books, there is a crapton of free rules, and a good selection of rules available as downloads.

The number of historical and fantasy/SF figures is better than anything I remember in 35 years of wargaming. There are loads of shows, loads of clubs, loads of websites and loads of small companies.

Way I see it, it's going full circle.

When GW kicked off, lots of manufacturers, not much in the way of rules. So out comes Warhammer, a single, generic Fantasy Ruleset. This does pretty well, over time becoming a self defining Fantasy setting, complete with countries, empires, races etc. GW effectively redefined the market, and thanks to the popularity (and arguably availability I suppose) of their rules, came to dominate it. Without GW, we simply would not have the Hobby Wargames Market as it is now. Yet thanks to GW's success, the market is so big (well, for a niche market) that they cannot fill it all in a cost effective manner (hence the relative sidelining of SG). And what happens? Those gamers brought into the fold by GW at a young age still enjoy their particular niche, and set up companies of their own to fulfil said niche they know and love.

I guess this is the natural way of things. GW maintain their dominance through sheer market presence. Go into a GW store, and unlike any other Hobby Games store, it's a single unified brand, and a lure like no other into the wider Hobby. Most people continue with GW games for the duration of their involvement. Some marry this with other games and indeed styles of games. Fewer even abandon GW altogether, finding a particular niche within a niche that is really their style.

Interesting thing here of course, is given another 30ish years, will we see a serious competitor to GW, and lots of little companies, or something like a mixed bug Nid list of a market, with everything from tiddlers up to a single mahoosive Bio-Titan.

Kilkrazy wrote:What's gone wrong with wargames is that a number of companies are trying to copy GW's success and build a business that ties the customer into a proprietary set of rules using proprietary models.

GW achieved this successfully because it grew out of a more general offering which involved licensed products, RPGs, boxed games, character figures, and other things. This was like the first stage booster on a big rocket, it got the business high enough that they managed to ditch the other crap (Specialist Games, etc) and carry on flying with the two core products. LoTR was the second stage booster that propelled them into the stratosphere.

They also had the momentum of 25+ years of sales to veterans, who helped to sell the core products through word of mouth.

GW itself has not been doing too well for a few years, so maybe their business model has flaws.

Anyway, a number of other companies have tried to follow the same trajectory, and not reached the same altitude, because they launched from a different location and didn't have the powerful boosters.

If you look away from the GW wannabe companies, things are pretty good. There's more ranges, in more scales, in more materials, than ever before. On top of a wide range of paid for rules, many of which are professionally published, high quality books, there is a crapton of free rules, and a good selection of rules available as downloads.

The number of historical and fantasy/SF figures is better than anything I remember in 35 years of wargaming. There are loads of shows, loads of clubs, loads of websites and loads of small companies.

...So, what you're saying is that Privateer (makers of Warmachine/Hordes) and Wyrd (Malifaux) are unsuccessful? And companies like Peter Pig, Resistant Rooster, Old Glory, Old Crow, etc. are more successful? You need to re-examine the market I think. The 'wannabe' companies like Privateer Press and Malifaux are the ones that have been successful. The other companies out there that have released minis of limited appeal, or historical miniatures in various scales have not seen the same level of success. Indeed, most gamers haven't heard of most of these companies, while Wyrd/Malifaux and Privateer/Warmahordes are fairly well known in gaming circles. This is in part because of the huge overlap in offerings between the various manufacturers. There is nothing to set one apart from the other. Likewise, most of the rules which you claim are 'professionally published' are not. They are usually printed at Staples or Kinkos and held together by a spiral binding or a trap binder. And again, most people haven't heard of those free rules. If I walked into any of the 5-6+ local gaming stores on any day of the week, and ask if anyone was up for a game of Johnny Reb III, none of the gamers would know what it was, and thats one of the more popular ACW rulesets. Contrast this to me asking about Flames of War, Warmahordes, Malifaux, Uncharted Seas, Firestorm Armada, Dystopian Wars, Anima Tactics, etc. and I would get more than a few hits.

The small companies only exist because they are small. Run by a couple guys out of a garage, things made to order, because they don't have the volume of sales needed to conduct business otherwise.

If I might be so bold, I think that's the very point he's making.

Single Property Games, like Malifaux, GW, PP are the minority with the majority share of the market. If you want to get ahead, you do more genetic models, such as your ACW, where although competition can be arguably fiercer, it's still an easier market to break for rules and models, than creating your own world from scratch.

brettz123 wrote:

Buzzsaw wrote:Sooo... your remark is prompted by;
a) Several smaller companies going "splat" (WF, Bastion, and the unmentioned Rackham),
b) Privateer Press not going "splat", and
c) The ease with which, aided by new technology and especially the power of internet sales, new firms can enter the market.

Actually I would agree with Insaniak. In the last few years a bunch of companies have either grown or really broken through:
Warlord
Perrys
Mantic
Wyrd Miniatures
Victrix
Immortal Miniatures

So that is six rather impressive success stories as compared to two pretty large failures. Sounds like a pretty good net gain for the hobby to me.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but you're being rather selective in your reading; first, you'll note the mention of 3 companies in the post you quoted (WF, Bastion, Rackham), so which 2 are the "two pretty large failures"? Moreover, your statement exists in a vacuum, where you're arbitrarily setting the number of failures and comparing it against an equally arbitrary number of successes. Does anyone actually have figures on companies that have tried to entered the market and failed? What metric is being applied to push companies in the "success" column? In the end the flaw in the above comment dovetails into the comment below;

SkaerKrow wrote:

Buzzsaw wrote:I do apologize if the above sounds a bit surly, but here's a case where I was really hoping you were going to prove my supposition wrong with a blizzard of financial stats. I was hoping that the rejoinder would be "oh, Privateer is showing steady growth with Q4 revenues up 3%, Wyrd is going great guns and just inked a deal with Diamond, etc etc."

To be fair, you're basing your "the industry is in dire straits" standpoint heavily upon the demise of two companies that were either mismanaged or did not have a user friendly business model, and who are both linked by use of the same manufacturer. While I don't believe the industry to be "booming," it's also clearly in a pretty strong position right now given the quality and variety of models that we're seeing come out of new companies. Any man can starve to death in a grocery store if he spends all of his time in the section with the mops and the Drain-O. Just because Bastion and WGF have reached their corporate demise doesn't mean that the landscape of the industry right now is primed for failure (or no more than it usually is for a niche market).

First, my initial supposition, rather then relying on these two incidents directly, was far more heavily influenced by the statement in the news account linked in the first post that pondered "It leaves me wondering what the financial state of the industry is as a whole." In retrospect I have no idea if that statement was prompted by anything more then the incidents mentioned, but at first glance I presumed it was (and Osbad's statement would seem to confirm).

Second, I realize the problem here is more an issue of "failure to communicate" and, again, looking where the light is rather then where the answer is: I'm looking for financial information, which it's pretty clear no-one really has. So people (as above), trying to answer, are supplying their own metrics. The only problem, of course, is that the metrics being used are not ones that I'm looking for!

Since at this point I seem to just be pointing out logic errors, I'll wait for quarterly financial time to investigate the situation further and for now bow out and just reiterate one point;

Like them or not, this is a real pity for the industry, as we would like to see more risk-taking like this, not less. My gut tells me that it could be a while before we see a similar conjunction of talents and skills, have a crack at something like this again.

yeah,
I'm not interested in a TableTop game that wants to be locked down tight like a board game but keep the money making aspect of a CMG... and forces you to use a computer to track your purchases in game.
Imagine if the EVIL GW only unlocked parts of your codex (the book you already bought) once the model was released and after they confirmed online that you bought it!

I mean Bastion let you use Emissarius for free for a month...
So they basically said "you can use a proxy, we'll unlock him on your account for now, but you have to buy him later..." WTF.
They basically are admitting that the actual models are not a important bit of their game, a he-man action figure will do...

..

and while I wasn't interested in their game, some of their models look cool, I thought Emissarius looked cool but flawed but would make excellent conversion fodder for a massive GUO...
I'd still like one if anyone see's a company yard sale!

Panic...

Buzzsaw wrote:

brettz123 wrote:

Buzzsaw wrote:Sooo... your remark is prompted by;
a) Several smaller companies going "splat" (WF, Bastion, and the unmentioned Rackham),
b) Privateer Press not going "splat", and
c) The ease with which, aided by new technology and especially the power of internet sales, new firms can enter the market.

Actually I would agree with Insaniak. In the last few years a bunch of companies have either grown or really broken through:
Warlord
Perrys
Mantic
Wyrd Miniatures
Victrix
Immortal Miniatures

So that is six rather impressive success stories as compared to two pretty large failures. Sounds like a pretty good net gain for the hobby to me.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but you're being rather selective in your reading; first, you'll note the mention of 3 companies in the post you quoted (WF, Bastion, Rackham), so which 2 are the "two pretty large failures"? Moreover, your statement exists in a vacuum, where you're arbitrarily setting the number of failures and comparing it against an equally arbitrary number of successes. Does anyone actually have figures on companies that have tried to entered the market and failed? What metric is being applied to push companies in the "success" column? In the end the flaw in the above comment dovetails into the comment below;

My point is simply to point out that there has been a lot of growth in the industry in the last two or three years. Increased diversity and availability. You can include Rackham in the failure list if you want and we still have a much more diverse and growing hobby than we had three years ago. Either way it doesn't look dire to me at all. It seems that smart businessmen can create new and successful miniature companies.

To me it looks like Bastion had a pretty atrocious idea and failed and frankly Wargames Factory was just run poorly and overextended themselves and ran into money trouble. I don't see either situation as pointing towards the hobby in general being in dire straights at all. I certainly could be wrong but it looks like we are already in a new golden age of miniatures.

It has become very easy for companies to be started up and with this increased ease of entrance into the market I think we are going to see a lot more successes and a lot more failures as people try different things to see how they work out. That is good news for us because we will continue to see more new ideas (both games and miniatures).

Oh and don't forget Spartan Games (I gave you Rackham so I want Spartan Games put on the success list ).

brettz123 wrote:

Buzzsaw wrote:Not to put too fine a point on it, but you're being rather selective in your reading; first, you'll note the mention of 3 companies in the post you quoted (WF, Bastion, Rackham), so which 2 are the "two pretty large failures"? Moreover, your statement exists in a vacuum, where you're arbitrarily setting the number of failures and comparing it against an equally arbitrary number of successes. Does anyone actually have figures on companies that have tried to entered the market and failed? What metric is being applied to push companies in the "success" column? In the end the flaw in the above comment dovetails into the comment below;

My point is simply to point out that there has been a lot of growth in the industry in the last two or three years. Increased diversity and availability. You can include Rackham in the failure list if you want and we still have a much more diverse and growing hobby than we had three years ago. Either way it doesn't look dire to me at all. It seems that smart businessmen can create new and successful miniature companies.

Buzzsaw wrote:Since at this point I seem to just be pointing out logic errors, I'll wait for quarterly financial time to investigate the situation further and for now bow out

While I realize that trying to point out a logical error on the internet is may be like preaching the Gospel at a bath house, I can't resist just one final time (then, seriously, zippin mah lip);

You're pairing "diverse" with "growing" as if the first is evidence of the second. To illustrate, in 1920, there were approximately 200 American Car manufacturers, today there three*. If were were to apply your logic to those facts, the obvious inference is that there must have been far more cars sold in 1920 then now. (Just to be clear, in 2007 there were 134.5 million cars registered in the US, in 1920, there were 106 million people as recorded by the census.)

I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying you can't get from your evidence to your conclusion. More importantly, don't let the number of games be confused with the really important issue: the number of players (and by extension, the amount of revenue). This is what really interests me, and one of the pieces of anecdotal evidence that gives me such pause: at least where I game, I'm just not seeing new players. But that's an issue for another thread I suppose...



*These numbers are very soft, with some pegging the number of "American" car companies at say 40, but some sources also claim there were around 1800 car manufacturers at the turn of the twentieth century. Sufficed to say, there used to be at least an order of magnitude more automobile companies then there are now.

Ok I get what your saying. I was not trying to make a purely logical argument just saying that based on anecdotal evidence it looks good to me. Now obviously it is very possible that some if not all of the companies I listed above may be doing very poorly.

With private companies there is just no real way of knowing. So I guess we are agreeing to agree at this point

This threads bring out the wackiest analogies.
So the US auto industry wasn't growing by leaps and bounds in the early 20th century? Given context, volume of sales is the real meaningless number there.

Healthy, growing manufacturers clearly indicates a healthy, growing player base.

Neconilis wrote:

Reecius wrote:You had to pay a monthly fee???!?!?!

Wow, what a bad idea.

Wow.

Wargaming is expensive enough, and you take overpriced minis that are of less quality and then try and charge a monthly fee on top of requiring a computer/iPad? The target demographic here is not a wealthy group.

What an incredibly bad idea.

I don't believe that's correct. That software is/was completely free, and I never remember that changing. You needed to register your purchased miniatures of course, but that was it.

Huh, I swear the last time I was on the website they were offering a 90 or maybe 30 day free trial, which suggests that eventually you'd have to pay, but then again, I never actually played, =/

from the BOLS article comment section:

"Apparently their distribution tier for discounts to retailers was based on how many players you generated for the servers to see and count to your store."


does anyone know if this is actually true? mikhalia, i know you commented early on in the thread but you're probably in the best position to answer this.

Cryonicleech wrote:
Huh, I swear the last time I was on the website they were offering a 90 or maybe 30 day free trial, which suggests that eventually you'd have to pay, but then again, I never actually played, =/

The trial allowed you to proxy units for up to 30 days, after which they became inaccessible until you purchased the models for said units. There was never a monthly charge to play.

interestingly, after you activated a starter, you'd get a bunch more trials that you could choose to activate for two weeks each to playtest new army ideas before purchasing additional stuff.

I don't know if that was very clear, but I hoped it helped.

chaos0xomega wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:What's gone wrong with wargames is that a number of companies are trying to copy GW's success and build a business that ties the customer into a proprietary set of rules using proprietary models.

GW achieved this successfully because it grew out of a more general offering which involved licensed products, RPGs, boxed games, character figures, and other things. This was like the first stage booster on a big rocket, it got the business high enough that they managed to ditch the other crap (Specialist Games, etc) and carry on flying with the two core products. LoTR was the second stage booster that propelled them into the stratosphere.

They also had the momentum of 25+ years of sales to veterans, who helped to sell the core products through word of mouth.

GW itself has not been doing too well for a few years, so maybe their business model has flaws.

Anyway, a number of other companies have tried to follow the same trajectory, and not reached the same altitude, because they launched from a different location and didn't have the powerful boosters.

If you look away from the GW wannabe companies, things are pretty good. There's more ranges, in more scales, in more materials, than ever before. On top of a wide range of paid for rules, many of which are professionally published, high quality books, there is a crapton of free rules, and a good selection of rules available as downloads.

The number of historical and fantasy/SF figures is better than anything I remember in 35 years of wargaming. There are loads of shows, loads of clubs, loads of websites and loads of small companies.

...So, what you're saying is that Privateer (makers of Warmachine/Hordes) and Wyrd (Malifaux) are unsuccessful? And companies like Peter Pig, Resistant Rooster, Old Glory, Old Crow, etc. are more successful? You need to re-examine the market I think. The 'wannabe' companies like Privateer Press and Malifaux are the ones that have been successful. The other companies out there that have released minis of limited appeal, or historical miniatures in various scales have not seen the same level of success. Indeed, most gamers haven't heard of most of these companies, while Wyrd/Malifaux and Privateer/Warmahordes are fairly well known in gaming circles. This is in part because of the huge overlap in offerings between the various manufacturers. There is nothing to set one apart from the other. Likewise, most of the rules which you claim are 'professionally published' are not. They are usually printed at Staples or Kinkos and held together by a spiral binding or a trap binder. And again, most people haven't heard of those free rules. If I walked into any of the 5-6+ local gaming stores on any day of the week, and ask if anyone was up for a game of Johnny Reb III, none of the gamers would know what it was, and thats one of the more popular ACW rulesets. Contrast this to me asking about Flames of War, Warmahordes, Malifaux, Uncharted Seas, Firestorm Armada, Dystopian Wars, Anima Tactics, etc. and I would get more than a few hits.

The small companies only exist because they are small. Run by a couple guys out of a garage, things made to order, because they don't have the volume of sales needed to conduct business otherwise.

Yes, in essence PP et all are unsuccessful in challenging GW in the arena of big, proprietary wargames. I know War Machine is fairly popular in the USA, but not as big as 40K, and it's a lot less popular in Europe.

All the companies like GW and PP fail to provide consumers with a variety of interesting products and services. Look at GW, they are brilliant if you want to play Warhammer or LoTR, and useless for anything else. PP are useless if you don't want to play Warmachine.

The small companies, however, are doing very nicely, providing a wide variety of historical, fantasy and SF models and rules. The variety is much wider, and more accessible than 20 years ago.

At the same time, these small companies are successful in the terms they have set themselves.

I don't equate success with being "biggest company". Financially, GW although they are big are not doing well.

groundedcontrol wrote:Hello dakka,

I'm one of the forumites over at the Ex illis forums. No- no- no need for violence now. I'm not here to preach. While I personally thought the game had a lot of potential, I was always concerned about the bugginess of the software, the marketing hype, and the fans' seeming inability to recognize the flaws with their beloved game........

As an ex Confrontation player, I feel your pain. I hope you find something that you can enjoy as much in the future.

I found the Ex Illis minis very generic and bland, though the quality was impressive. I'm much more willing to risk getting into a new game if the minis show a unique style, so even if I don't end up playing I'll enjoy painting them or using the minis for another system. There was nothing there to fire the imagination.

And, purely anecdotely of course, I don't think this failure says anything at all about the overall health of the industry. I see a lot of companies having success with resin minis, allowing for cheaper startups and shipping. As long as new mini companies are jumping in to take the place of failing companies, the industry will be just fine. Hopefully some of these new owners will take a business class or two, and maybe even do a bit of market research.