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Keep in mind that's just tooling (and I think it might ultimately be low). You still have to pay for press time to run them, resin to shoot, shipping of product to wherever you're warehousing it (or warehousing costs if it's staying where it's made), brokerage if that's across the border... there are a lot of costs beyond the straight manufacture of the tooling itself. Plastic injection tooling is wildly efficient for large production runs - GW's costs on its trooper miniatures are likely pennies per figure - but how many is the Pod going to sell after the Kickstarter? Like I said before, if this was another, healthier company, I wouldn't think much of it, as they'd probably be able to absorb some of these things. The Pod? Based on other recent signs I'm not convinced that's the case. I think every last dime is going to have to come out of what they've raised.

The other thing about the $CDN is they can get hit in both directions. It may have fallen right before they need to pay for tooling, but if it then rises before they can sell product, it'll hurt all over again.

Yeah... we'll see.

Oh no doubt there is the actual production, but that should be less expensive than the tooling. Thing is, the counts are low, only 2,000 or 4,000 copies for most models; 1,000 for the last few models.

I'm not sure the Pod has a big future reach to recruit new players. HG is still a really gakky and clunky ruleset compared to anything else out on the market with anywhere near the proposed model count. I have never gotten a potential new player to say that they liked the way HG rules worked.

I keep looking at this and thinking the same $90 USD would be better spent against Conan or Blood Rage, or even Ninja All Stars (when that launches) - all of those campaigns are going to be larger and more likely to deliver.

Whoops! Exalted my own post by accident.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Oh no doubt there is the actual production, but that should be less expensive than the tooling.

Production costs (all other costs, really) are way cheaper. That doesn't make them insignificant. Again, if it were some other healthy company with solid cash flow, no problem! The Pod? We'll see...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
So is anybody frequenting this thread actually playing any version of Heavy Gear these days?

bobloblah wrote:
So is anybody frequenting this thread actually playing any version of Heavy Gear these days?

Yep, I still play 2nd edition and the RPG. Hopefully the new edition of the rpg will be good.

 Albertorius wrote:

bobloblah wrote:
So is anybody frequenting this thread actually playing any version of Heavy Gear these days?

Yep, I still play 2nd edition and the RPG. Hopefully the new edition of the rpg will be good.

If we ever see that... man, I sound negative even to myself! I like a lot of what Arkrite is saying, but they've also talked about some extremely ambitious plans, in terms of number of books. Hopefully they'll be ready for their playtest soon; I'm currently running an ACKS (a D&D neoclone) RPG campaign, but Heavy Gear (a mishmash of 2nd and Silicone, barring Arkrite being ready) is at the top of my list of games I'd like to run next.

What are you running in terms of the RPG? What kind of campaign?

What about Tactical? Minis? No minis? Hexes? Skirmish?

Apologies if this is old news in the community but I came across something this weekend when doing some image searches for a Tau conversion that pertains somewhat to HG.

http://ukitakumuki.deviantart.com/art/Black-Library-The-Shape-of-the-Hunt-440917248

Ghislain Barbe( NOT because he is coincidentally now the art director on Eternal Crusade at BHVR :p , but because when I was a kid I played a PC game called Heavy Gear by Dream Pod 9/Activision, and along with it came a printed game manual with wonderful mecha illustrations and diagrams that blew my little mind, and he was the illustrator of my favourite designs in the book.),

I don't know if that is common knowledge for all you facebookers out there (or members of Brandon's FB group) but I found that suprising. Eternal Crusade is the aborted then resurrected Warhammer 40,000 MMO on PC.

Oh man, that Heavy Gear PC concept art, that is some really truly fugly stuff. One could only hope that the actual 3d Model doesn't look that bad. I'm fine with altering the models, they really shouldn't look exactly like hte tabletop ones, which have to be designed to be recognizable on a tabletop, and tend to have exaggerated features, but MWO has managed to at least make their updates still recognizable. Those things are just weird abominations that I could never guess what they were. I think they need a new concept artist really badly.

bobloblah wrote:
What are you running in terms of the RPG? What kind of campaign?

Well, right this very moment nothing, but we finished not long ago a campaign loosely inspired by Rideback, in which most of the characters were rich kinds from Erech and Nineveh by day and underground Gear racers by night.

What about Tactical? Minis? No minis? Hexes? Skirmish?

Usually when we go down to play tactical we break out the minis and the hexes, because we all like them. When doing tactical battles for the RPG, though, I tend to use the Tactical Dramatic system, no hexes, no minis, more or less full theatre of the mind stuff.

So.. I went to the DP9 site today to take a look at some bits for the first time in a while after checking out a blog I'm following and I saw that the Fleet Action stuff is back in production for April (almost missed it!). Since I posted earlier that I was interested (however fleeting) in getting a northern gear counter pack, I put one in my cart and estimated the shipping...

Gear Counter Pack $19.99
Shipping for one blister using the only USPS option: $12.65


Wow... The webstore charges almost as much to ship a single blister as they charged to ship the entire KS contents. Just wow...

Don't forget that nowadays is basically the only place anywhere you can buy DP9 stuff, too! Anyone from out of north america that wants stuff is more or less hosed unless they buy very significant amounts.

Yeah, I wonder how many spur of the moment sales those shipping costs 2-3x the competition (since they ship from the US) cost them. Eh, it was just an idea that I had given up on a few months ago and revived for a few minuites. I'll just wait on ebay and/or amazon and check there if I remember (which frankly I haven't been for the two months since).

This is something that has been rattling around in my head for a while now, and I debated sharing it because.... well to put it bluntly, it's rude. But..... Well hey. This isn't how I normally am about Heavy Gear, and I am, after all, posting this on Dakka and not the mothership. So make of that and me what you will, but, it's how I feel.

I think the best thing that could happen to the HG community (and this will sound moronically obvious, but hang on a sec) is a huge influx of players. Not for new content, necessarily, or even the financial success, but to completely overwhelm the old guard. We the critical contribute nothing because we are not listened to. They the devoted contribute nothing because they can't say no. More than for the game's sake, the community needs to get itself torn a new one by angry new players.

I don't know what will attract that new influx of raging newbs who can shake things up; I certainly don't see anything that is going to bring in many people, but, hey, I'm jaded. Obviously. But the - and I hate to use this word - culture (shudders) around HG is NOT healthy right now. And it's also mostly dead. How did it die? We've got 60 pages talking about that right here. Lots more elsewhere. How did it get unhealthy? Harder question, but the answers are in those same threads. Maybe the answer is the tone of those threads. In the names that stop appearing.

Heavy Gear desperately, dying man in the desert, charge the paddles and clear, don't you die on me, breathe damn you - needs new players. But those new players need to come with voices and arms raised, demanding and asking and arguing. New people alone won't save this game. Financially, perhaps. They will certainly extend the life of the game. But the money that comes needs to come with people to take up the talking.

Because we're done. There's simply nothing left for any of us to say, and there's no one to listen.

That won't happen, and you know it.

The latest HG KS was designed to retain existing players. That's why the rules are basically the same as before, without any real innovation or necessary radical simplification a la X-wing. It's also why the models are were selected to focus on those things that the Pod finds too expensive to produce in metal / resin, or things that they know they sell a lot of.

For the Pod, the HG KS will be its last hurrah.

To have attracted newbies, the Pod would have had to launch a true new edition that moves to plastic starters and streamlined rules, with models that take full advantage of HIPS. That didn't happen. That's why they only raised $150k CAD ($135k in real money).

In my case, I put down a $1 marker, but have not been impressed by the Pod to the point that I'll order a full pledge. I still have 2 cadres of metal Milicia that I have been thinking of making rules for, but I would very gladly cash out for what I paid and simply walk away.

Well, no, I don't think it will happen or even can until DP9 goes under and someone else buys the lisence. But there's no denying new people tearing up the forum would help change attitudes, and right now, that could only be for the better.

How so? It's not like the Pod wants change. Heck, I don't even know if they understand that their KS failed.

I'd almost argue that the KS wasn't a failure, because it wasn't ever meant to accomplish anything other than keeping the lights on...but that would be far to cynical of me.

I guess I'm not really sure how it would change things. I'm not advocating we go and spread the good word, here. This isn't on us to be ambassadors. Not anymore, not when the Pod's own website gets updates second. But there's not many left, and maybe I just hope that if enough new people started saying the things that have already been said for years, or even things we've never even thought of...maybe something at all would happen. ANYTHING at all.

OK, sure.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
The latest HG KS was designed to retain existing players.

That's certainly true, and it could be argued that most of the moves since HG2e (an RPG) were all made to extract additional money from the existing playerbase. If you look at the progression of miniatures rules, the basic premise has always been the same - remove some of the more esoteric edges, keep the bulk of the rules the same, add some new edge-cases to correct some perceived blemish, and republish. Most of the work was performed by fans of the RPG, which naturally 'leaked' RPG concepts into the wargame. And my changes (that would be refined by DP9 into the latest version) were largely mechanical, but retained the same concepts that have been present for some time.

It's worth pointing out that, ever since I've known the Pod, it's always appeared to be running on a shoe-string budget. I believe most people list HG2e as the high point; afterwards DP9 was flush with cash from the two videogames and TV show, but didn't appear to plug those into their products and instead were off doing work for the cinema I believe. As such they have always seemed to pursue a path that effectively becomes 'die as slowly as possible' rather than gamble on a big change that could make or break them.

I believe - without any backing evidence - that they were surprised by the success of Blitz! v1 and didn't quite know what they had on their hands. Their price point was more competitive back then and they were one of the few sellers of 'sci-fi' models. Battletech was really the only other 'mecha' game that was around to compete with them, and I feel like the scale helped them in that regard. Vehicles always seemed to be a decent seller for HG, proving that - surprise! - gamers like variety. And they had a fairly nice spread of model sizes between small mecha to large vehicles.

My perspective has always been that their problems boiled down to targeting a very narrow niche with their choice of rules and models. They were slowly moving towards battle-scale, but were trying to maintain the quality of a skirmish scale game. They created $60 squads that were effectively worthless at the scale being played, which became dead weight. So they priced themselves out of the market, because they cost too much to play at the size they wanted while other systems (WM, Malifaux, Infinity) were improving the quality of their sculpts and rules all the while. Hindsight is 20/20, but if they weren't able to move away from metal the better choice back in the BlitzV1 days was to skew more skirmish than battle and focus on 2-3 model squads as the core unit of play. But they focused instead of 4-5 model squads, which really hurt them.

I really wanted them to do well, but I'm too cynical at this point. At this point, I just hope they exit gracefully.

 Firebreak wrote:
But the - and I hate to use this word - culture (shudders) around HG is NOT healthy right now.

When even simple questions or statements of opinion get met by rhetoric if not outright head biting even for the subsidiary products, yeah, there is just a bit of a problem.


If anyone at all personally finds something in the fluff or a model to be contrary to their enjoyment of the game and/or setting, yet gets overruled by being told off or moderated just because someone else likes it, they are in fact being forced to either lie about their own conceptions or step aside from the community simply to likewise find the same level of enjoyment.


Quite a lot of those situations have been due to the company itself, which to say the least has not helped that downward spiral of ill feeling in the overall community.
That the current situation is considered acceptable should really be rather unacceptable, because clearly and demonstrably it isn't going to get better left as is.

_
_

 Firebreak wrote:
This is something that has been rattling around in my head for a while now,(...)

The diagnostic about the (dire) state of HG, DP9 and their community is accurate, the proposed cure less so.

The main reason DP9 doesn't listen to the "old guard", is the same reason they won't listen to new players. They don't listen, period.
Throughout the years, they've had many such influx of new blood, without any effect whatsoever. A small number of those new players end up becoming fans (ie. They join the cult), but most leave once they realize the game has... issues.

Palladium or DP9, it's really the same mindset.

 HudsonD wrote:
Palladium or DP9, it's really the same mindset.

This.

If you're not drinkin' the kool-aid, you might as well not bother.

I'm not proud of this. But.

More like FOOL-aid!

Wargaming gods forgive me.

I learned about heavy gear sometime around 2004. I've seen the cartoon once or twice, and maybe glanced over some of the first ed models before that. But I never had a name to put to it.

A few years later, I went to my local "Old Computer" shop, and picked up a complete copy of both Computer games. Popped them into my Windows 98/XP computer and tried to play these unstable things.

I went on e-bay and picked up a mini or two, had no clue what I was doing, any backstory or any plot. There was no one local who played. No one who knew about it or cared. Even my local Gaming Guru knew what the game was, that it used to be good, but nothing beyond the very basics of "It's a mini-fig game".

A few years ago, I picked up a box set and some extra books. ((which turned out to be the RPG game, not the Mini-Fig Game)). And I read, learned a bit about the North/South war. But same problem, no one to play with. ((I also sat through 90% of the CG cartoon, Hoping to understand more of the culture of the game. It was interesting, but not worth my time.))

Last year I really got into Heavy Gear blitz, and I found one local player willing to play with me. Still trying to figure out the rules, it doesn't feel intuitive, and we are still trying to get every aspect of the game down.

I've been thinking of e-mailing the local DP9 rep in our state and asking him to run a demo for us, or to at least come and answer some questions. So really, I think the issue is exposure. No one has the figs, no one knows how to play this game (since the rules are CONSTANTLY changing), and their presence at LFGS seems low. But that's just my opinion.

As somebody who's had an off-and-on interest in trying HGB, and reading through this thread once or twice in the past (and keeping up with it still)...

DP9's reputation as explained in this thread will prevent me from buying into HG products from DP9. The "newest" HG game, I might buy into- but probably only after the 'official' public release goes live.

Ultimately, the issue is that DP9's reputation as a company is far less than stellar, and they can't really try and take a different business approach to make themselves successful- it would seem that the company leadership won't ever think of it, and they certainly wouldn't go for it anyways, IMO.

It's sad too, because the background seems very rich, and there's some great models, and it's a niche that's not really well represented in the market. I guess the best we could hope for is that DP9 goes under and the IP gets picked up by Hawk Wargames, Corvus Belli, or Privateer Press.

Personally hoping that Hawk would be able to pick it up.

While I certainly hope the Pod goes under, if Hawk were to pick up HG, they would buy it to bury it - prevent future competition with their existing SF universe and products.

Corvus Belli makes great stuff, but they're too small and metal-oriented to make a difference if they bought HG.

Privateer, OTOH, would do an amazing job moving HG forward as their 40k equivalent, much the same as Warmahordes is the WFB equivalent. Gears would probably be scaled similar to Jacks. If PP could have a 40k competitor driving comparable revenue to WMH, that'd really shake up GW and the industry.

Eh, most of the reason I'd like Hawk to pick it up is because they seem like they'd be best equipped to make it work as a skirmish game at the existing scale.

Back when GW did Epic Armageddon, I'd almost have argued that GW should be the ones to get it, but at this point I almost think that GW should find somebody else to do their ruleset for them and just focus on the models instead.

The other issue is that I don't really like PP that much; their models don't seem to be that good looking and the little I understand/have heard about Warmahordes mechanics is that the use of terrain is basically frowned upon and actively discouraged among many players.

Which bugs the hell out of me, since I personally think that terrain is absolutely essential to wargaming, with very few and small exceptions (it's not strictly necessary for BFG, for example).

Though if I'm really honest, CB, Hawk, and PP are pretty much the future of the wargaming industry, which is a shame IMO because DP9 has a great IP and GW has a great IP on top of amazing models (at least in terms of general quality).

FFG will probably help- they've pretty much got an instant fanbase with their various SW lines that they've been pushing, and I've heard a lot of mixed things about Spartan... though most of it negative.

FFG probably wouldn't be a good pick for HG, mostly since they've got all their SW stuff going, and you are right that CB is too small and invested into metal figures to really do anything with HG.

I don't know if Hawk would really bury it though; HG's doesn't really compete with their existing and projected products, given HG's emphasis on the Gears and the much small scale of combat, whilst DzC, if it focuses on any one unit, it's probably the dropships. I'd honestly say that HG and DzC only really appeal to the same people insofar as they're smaller scale (10/12mm) games that are focused on combined arms... or if an individual happens to like both stompy robits and massed dropship fleets conducting planetfall operations.

I really doubt that hawk would buy anything. They've got their hands full with their own universe expanding to a different tabletop niche (spaceships) for the forseeable future. If any of the company's would be in a position to buy it and were mentioned above, I'd say FFG would be the front runner in the never-gonna-happen 500 race. Someone a few years back posted on the dp9forum's a third or fourth hand story (so apply salt as needed) about a third party being interested in obtaining the jovian chronicles rights but that the company wanted a very unrealistically high amount for essentially a dead property that has been and will be generating no income for them. If that was actually true, I don't see why it would change with the demise of the company; the hubris is still there.

In any case, the kickstarter (for better or worse depending on your feelings) will keep DP9 in business for a few more years regardless of what happens. They've promised us a change of heart, rules, models, and business practices so time will tell if that is the case in actuality for all or none of those. History, however, is not on the side of optimism. They promised us the same with blitz and, while there was a glimmer of hope for a while, they soon smothered that with Locked and Loaded proving that the iterative don't bother fixing half of what needs it but charge full price and invalidate everyone's stuff Dp9 of the RPG 2nd/3rd/tactical/silhouette days was alive and well. Field manual and the field guides reconfirmed it 2-3 years later.

But, hey, maybe this time it'll be different. I don't wish them ill will although for a time I did thing that the best thing that could happen to HG would be a failed kickstarter to truely get some fresh eyes making the decisions. What's done is done (or I guess more correctly what's funded is funded) and we'll see if the excuses start flowing come December. If anyone wants to sell me the 1/4 of their base pledge that consists of the Caprice minis for 1/3 of the total pledge price once the minis are on the way, I'd be possibly be interested in that depending on if I like what I see. In the meantime, I'm staying at $1 though.

 warboss wrote:
But, hey, maybe this time it'll be different.

In the meantime, I'm staying at $1 though.

Insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over, but expecting a different result.

Same. I got my pennies worth of entertainment from these guys.

 Vanguard-13 wrote:
[..] So really, I think the issue is exposure. No one has the figs, no one knows how to play this game (since the rules are CONSTANTLY changing), and their presence at LFGS seems low. But that's just my opinion. [..]

Whiskey144 wrote:
[..] Ultimately, the issue is that DP9's reputation as a company is far less than stellar, and they can't really try and take a different business approach to make themselves successful - it would seem that the company leadership won't ever think of it, and they certainly wouldn't go for it anyways, IMO.
It's sad too, because the background seems very rich, and there's some great models, and it's a niche that's not really well represented in the market. [..]

Isn't it amazing how over just the lifetime of this thread, let alone on the "official" forum, interested folks with little or no knowledge about the (setting/title/game/company) still manage to keep noting the exact same things so many of the "overly critical if not outright haters" had likewise pointed out before being told by the Pod and its supporters that none of those concerns have ever been or currently are actual issues that need(ed) addressed.

If complete, or nearly so, outsiders having varying levels of experience with other types of games alongside everyday life in a retail heavy environment keep seeing the same things then yes, a problem or problems would seem to be indicated.
Basic logic kind of says that if no one knows about your game, can't differentiate why it's different from what they currently own, or can't understand how to play it, then sales aren't going to happen so $$$ can result.

 warboss wrote:
[..] Someone a few years back posted on the dp9forum's a third or fourth hand story (so apply salt as needed) about a third party being interested in obtaining the jovian chronicles rights but that the company wanted a very unrealistically high amount for essentially a dead property that has been and will be generating no income for them. If that was actually true, I don't see why it would change with the demise of the company; the hubris is still there. [..]

I hazily recall in the version I heard second-hand (but not on the forums, so no link either) the sum asked for the JC license being something like fifteen or twenty thousand.

 Smilodon_UP wrote:
I hazily recall in the version I heard second-hand (but not on the forums, so no link either) the sum asked for the JC license being something like fifteen or twenty thousand.

I don't recall you posting that but since you obviously did then you're probably my source. I just got the forum wrong... and the year... but at least I got the IP right! I see your hazy recall and raise you a swiss cheese memory! Maybe you told it earlier by pm over at dp9... don't recall but thanks for the clarification.