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There are so many miniature games available these days, but you rarely see anyone talking about them or about playing them. Games like Dark Age, Wild West Exodus, Bushido, Hell Dorado, Freebooter's Fate, Saga, Deep Wars... and TONS more on the way, either from Kickstarters or regular release. But surely they can't all survive on Kickstarters alone, at least not in the long run? How do all these games manage to keep going? How small can a player base become before a game ceases to be profitable?

Two things:

First, the games you've listed aren't really that obscure. They aren't in the top five most popular games, sure, but they still get plenty of attention.

Second, they're all skirmish games, which means a low initial buy-in price. No hobbyist only plays WWX, or Hell Dorado, or Deep Wars. But, there's almost certainly someone who plays all three. Low buy-in cost means you can easily get a playable force together for one of these games while still spending on other games you can play more often.

Small games have a couple of advantages (as long as they are not pushing too hard to get big fast)

1. They only tend to have to pay the wages of a few people, no giant warehouse operations, big teams of designers and model makers here, just a small group (often friends) who may even have other full time jobs, perhaps selling out of a garage of front room

2. As the majority are small scale (skirmish) games they are relatively cheap to pick up, so the often appeal to people as impulse buys (Wow I can get everything for super bandit wars for $100), so while players come and go sales are usually decent

3. There is a limited secondary market so people who are interested will buy new to try it out rather than borrowing a GW army from a friend or buying one second hand from a store.

Other than that they just take things much more slowly than a big game, fewer releases (which mean people who are committed are much more likely to buy them)

It may not make the owners rich, but it can pay enough to feed their families

It's also all about the internet these days (and some trade shows). If you only have 1000 customers worldwide but sell direct, you can have $100,000+ in revenue. After expenses and whatnot, you might end up pocketing a bit more than minimum wage for your region at that size. While it's not a lot of money, it's possible to have enough left over after expenses to make ends meet or to supplement income from another job.

From what I understand, especially in the UK, the trade shows are also a huge source of revenue and exposure. You can sell a lot of product and get new customers.

The other way the games survive is that people approach them like board games where they get everything they need to play. This is the opposite approach of where you buy your own army and hope to find someone locally who happens to also like the game enough to build an army. Instead you buy two small armies, paint them, make terrain and bring the game out like a board game to play when the interest is there.

The short answer is that most games fail, which I define as no longer being actively produced and rarely played. This is true no matter how long a run of success they enjoyed.

When was the last time you saw anyone playing Warzone, VOR, Starship Troopers, Confrontation, et al. ?

Most of the games entering the market this year will be dead in two years. Which just means gaming companies are just like every other small business.

They (like all the independent miniatures and rules manufacturers) are largely sustained by the hundreds of thousands of gamers around the world who do not game, shop or often even live near a game store.

Those who do play in stores often have a hard time grasping that they are in the minority of the general gaming population - and games like those listed above (which I wouldn't consider obscure BTW, most of those are somewhat frequent products in B&M stores) get played with family and close friends on game nights.

That - and it really doesn't take that many people to make a living selling games. The 1000 customers listed above would normally balance out to around $50K per year - which isn't horribly money (you won't have a private jet - but you can live comfortably).

For many games, it ends up being closer to 5000-10000 or so players in maybe 2000 or 3000 different game groups. They play regularly, along with a half dozen or so other small games. They buy miniatures from the company that sells the rules, though more often from a mix of companies (as most the small games don't have a line of miniatures that go with them). Those miniatures are also used to play other games as well (a pirate, is a pirate, is a pirate).

So, the small rules companies make up for it with a different approach. Two Fat Lardies for example has 20 different games. As opposed to selling 1000 of one game a year, they only need to sell 50 of each. Same goes to miniature manufacturers. When you have a catalog that spans dozens of genres and hundreds of SKUs each individual figure only needs to sell one or two a year. If you only have one specific set of rules that you are selling though - you need to move more of those figures.

 frozenwastes wrote:
From what I understand, especially in the UK, the trade shows are also a huge source of revenue and exposure. You can sell a lot of product and get new customers.

You're correct; trade shows are great for suppliers and customers, as they get to reach a lot more people. Most of the newer companies seem to be 1 or 2 guys creating stuff in their free time and dragging family along to help out. Obviously once they gain traction they can expand further, but the good ones seem to start cautiously, and if they keep producing new stuff they'll usually get enough trade for it to be worth their while.

Whilst there are games that appear on the scene and die off quickly, those companies often have multiple ranges, and other games stick around for much longer. It's a lot easier when you can get everything you need to play in a single case for under $100 and you can interchange mini's and rules; so for instance company A's game fails to gain traction, but gamers use the mini's to play company B's game, both companies still do fine.

Well, in my case, I create my games as a hobby rather than a business. Some day I hope to turn that around, but I know I have a small audience so I produce products to support a small audience. I can't afford to do it any other way really. So rather than spending $50-100 a month on GW stuff I won't play with, I decided to spend that on artwork and new sculpts for my own games and I've been slowly building them up that way for the last 5 years, and will continue to

I don't really expect to ever quit my day job, and I imagine most other "small games" are done as side gigs as well.

 Guildsman wrote:
Two things:

First, the games you've listed aren't really that obscure. They aren't in the top five most popular games, sure, but they still get plenty of attention.

Second, they're all skirmish games, which means a low initial buy-in price. No hobbyist only plays WWX, or Hell Dorado, or Deep Wars. But, there's almost certainly someone who plays all three. Low buy-in cost means you can easily get a playable force together for one of these games while still spending on other games you can play more often.

There's also the fact that many of those smaller games have some awesome miniatures. I own a crateload of minis from Helldorado, Anime Tactics, Dark Age, Confrontation, Void... I have no intention of ever playing any of those games. But I buy minis that I like, either to sub into 40K or Necromunda, or just for something different to paint.

They survive by having low overhead costs which means you don't need a ton of revenue to keep going.

An old saying in the Small Business Community goes something like, "If you have a 1,000 fans, people that arewilling to cross the street to buy from you, then you will make money."

If your overhead and costs are low, you can make money and keep going with a relatively small customer base.

semajnollissor wrote:
The short answer is that most games fail, which I define as no longer being actively produced and rarely played. This is true no matter how long a run of success they enjoyed.

When was the last time you saw anyone playing Warzone, VOR, Starship Troopers, Confrontation, et al. ?

Most of the games entering the market this year will be dead in two years. Which just means gaming companies are just like every other small business.

All of those games were cancelled before their time for various reasons.
In any case, most of the games listed in the OP are produced by small companies with minimal overhead as a labor of love. The profit margins are slim, but they are more than enough to break even and continue producing new product at some non-zero rate. Also, in the case of Dark Age, at least, its one of many games being pushed by a pretty large company, so it doesn't necessarily have to be profitable so long as the company remains profitable.

Its really all about been sustainable with what you make, if a company gets enough money to be sustainable with the customers it has it can remain indefinitely, with some smart management and a good sense of restrain it can even grow to a good level.

Most of the companies you mentioned did not survive because of bad management, from red R which thought it is obviously right to sell books at a loss because ART! to void where Ikor's middle manager was stealing the companies products.... other met an end from reasons out of their hands like target/ hartbreaker were their rather successful games died because the parent company died taking their sub divisions with them.

I will admit I never really followed Vor, didn't catch my attention back then to follow it, Starship troopers on the other hand suffered the same fate ultimately killed R by abandoning an already established funbase and jumping to prepainted plastics (of socking quality) with a new game system on top of that, not a great idea I must say.

Other small game systems on the other hand are stable because their owners done their math and keep them survivable.

I suspect that some of the small games survive on account of the fact that they are not the sole source of revenue for their creators. They are more of a hobby/labor or love than a business.

semajnollissor wrote:
The short answer is that most games fail, which I define as no longer being actively produced and rarely played. This is true no matter how long a run of success they enjoyed.

I have always found it a little odd that so many miniature gamers seem to think that a game is only playable if it is still being actively supported.

I didn't stop playing Necromunda when GW dropped it. Hell, we still play Heroquest, and it's been an awful long time since that game was available in shops...

 insaniak wrote:

semajnollissor wrote:
The short answer is that most games fail, which I define as no longer being actively produced and rarely played. This is true no matter how long a run of success they enjoyed.

I have always found it a little odd that so many miniature gamers seem to think that a game is only playable if it is still being actively supported.

I didn't stop playing Necromunda when GW dropped it. Hell, we still play Heroquest, and it's been an awful long time since that game was available in shops...

No, but if there isn't an active community for small out of print games, it's much harder to start one if it isn't supported. Like you, I still play Necromunda. Problem is, no one else around here does...

Not sure about small "complete" games, but lots of folks make a living by specializing in one particular area.

Ganesha Games: Andrea makes a living writing games. He writes goodones and produces rules for himself, other companies and also partners with companies like Osprey.

-Small companies like Khurasan or Splintered light (there are many others) just make minis. They make good minis in a variety of scales that are useable for the many games that don't have minis with them.

-Some companes manage to do both. Rebel Minis mostly makes minis, but they also have some games that they have bought (not muchwriting to do) or hired known companies like Two Hour wargames to do.

Most of the companies above, folks here haven't heard of, but they're making a living and none of their success rests on one game or one particular line of minis doing well.