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@OP- Captain Obvious here but a ridiculous number of businesses fail, and it is way more that fail than succeeed. Success is the exception and not the rule.

That being said, reason #1 is cash flow can not sustain debt repayment. Hence, closure.

As gamers we tend to focus ont eh things that are least likely to cause a game to fail, the creative. However, it is much more likely the production costs, manufacturing, shipping, storage, etc. that will cause a critical failure.

Rookie mistake number one is focusing on sales. Sales do not matter is you do not make money from a sale. If you costs are too high, then it does not matter how much you sell. You can even have great sales, but if those sales are not profitable it will not matter. Professionals talk about Profit Margin and not sales.

 Stormonu wrote:
Here's some other companies, if people could fill in the blanks

Pinnacle (Rail Wars) - I know that Rail Wars was turned into the Savage Worlds RPG, but I don't know why Rail Wars was dropped and they got out of minis games.

West End Games (Star Wars Miniature Game) - Lost the Star Wars license, shortly thereafter went belly up.

Iron Crown Enterprises (Silent Death) - I think they went belly up, but don't know why.

FASA (Battletech, Star Trek Simulator, Interceptor, Crimson Skies, etc.) - folded, rights were sold off to successor companies

Wizkids (Mageknight, Pirates of the Spanish Main, Heroclix, etc.) - A FASA successor company, they went dark/dormant for a time, and have slowly been coming back

Avalon Hill (Axis & Allies, other wargame/board games) - they were absorbed by WotC and their assets cannibalized

ICE got dragon punched in the groin by the Tolkien Estate. They were gearing up for the LotR movies and had their license pulled. The expenses of gearing up with zero payout and lost of revenue sent them into a tailspin.

Ironically, only GW is still supporting the games they put out as result of the getting the miniature game license from ICE. All others games have long since gone to the dust bin.

Wasn't West End done in by the owner's other business (a shoe factory) going under?

A issue that comes time and again is that there are ... Gamers who think they are businessmen. When that happens, the issues boil down to basic Project Management, reach extending the grasp, and unrealistic approach to funding and production.

I'll put a point to a couple of examples, and let others take the slack.

1. Mongoose. Too much too fast. A victim of their own success.

I was on hand for Mongooses success and failure from Conan, B5, Starship Troopers, and witness to more then I honestly want to admit. I was a Game rep/ demo runner back in the time of Starship troopers, and watched as the wheels fell off the wagon with the extension of more then they could handle, the unrealistic production, the outsourcing, the oversaturation, the unrealistic time hacks, and after a fashion, the complete loss of control of the engagement to the point where consumers dissatisfaction and licensing overtook the engagement, and company holdings.

Babylon 5, in particular was a blessing and a curse, as the licensing and game stabilization ended up slitting the products wrists. Hell, even having Commander Ivanova couldn't keep the station going to keep it out of the warp. They started with the RPG, which was manageable, but then they tried to continue to push forward and add on more and more game components/ properties, and it ended up blowing up in their face, as Mongoose added on more and more unsustainable licensed products. Much like X wing, now, Mongoose had the issue of the properties that they picked up being one trick ponies.

With that, some of these ponies had only 2 good legs. RPG's, or Miniatures. Starship troopers was one of those properties that Mongoose attempted to grow too fast, and the unrealistic production schedule, lack of QAQC, and the lack of serious Business acclaim ushered in the negative reputation that wasn't adequately compensated, and continued with questionable property acquisitions, and dead dog lines, such as the Gak awful idea of the prepaints ( in which Starship troopers was in the crosshairs) the Battlefield 2 tabletop, and the Call to Arms system, that ended up closing the coffin on the companies reputation.

Add that on to Sony, and even the thought process of dealing with Sony, and you have a company that was living on borrowed time. Even the temporary help of having the Rebellion line didn't help Mongoose, as product recognition for the A.D.2000 line was, and is still a foreign concept to the majority of gamers across the world.

And in the end, even the tabletop game, which was developed off of the result of a Gak Kickstarter ended up dying on the vine, and costing much more then reputation- which at the end of the day, is the lifeblood of a solid company name.

2. VOID.

The game, which is now Urban War was put out by I-CORE, and their biggest issue was that they THOUGHT that they were competing, instead of conducting their own business.
Each of the units was almost a neck and neck run of a copy of GW, and the similarities, and generic nature of the system lead to a bland game, and an uneventful product.
As an afterthought, what you see out of Corvus Bell, now- THAT should have been ICORE, from the get go.
Example of "Gamers Who think they are Businessmen". Except that they had no serious business experience.
Great out of the gate showing, pretty shinny's, and easy to play game- but that was it. No expansion, no follow through, no Project Management experience, no Structure for growth.
Think of them as a local game shop with one table, but five or six games in one little room. everyone sitting there with a full army box, but two people playing a game, while other people look at their watch.

3. VOR The maelstrom-

Same thing, but worse. Instead of gamers with no business experience, this was a one man show with no experience whatsoever. A little seed money, backing from an established minis company, and the FASA situation, which compounded the catastrophic failure. He half heartedly tried to revive it, but it ended up crashing into a brick wall.

4. Rackham-

A company driven into the ground by greed, shortsightedness, and avarice. Let it never be said that Ego doesn't have it's own rewards.
They had some of the most top notch miniatures, in a market that they could manage, and then ended up getting involved with that AT 43, and that god awful DUST situation- the egos killed the company.

If you are running a game company, it is a business. You have to have structure, business savvy, and horse sense. Being a gamer is helpful, but it is a program management issue. You have to have a solid product, be able to stick to a vision, and plan, plan, plan for growth, failure, and your games future. It is a product, you have to be able to provide it, at a reasonable rate, at a reasonable price, and be able to fully support the range.

More problematically; a game company is probably more like 6-7 businesses compared to a lot of things out there. :(

Mono pose or duplicates for the hair splitters.

As mentioned earlier in the thread. 12 dudes getting stamped out of the exact same mold is not an advancement in mini manufacturing. Or does it warrant any praise IMO. I can respect if others think its neat. I'm just not one of them.

 silent25 wrote:


Wasn't West End done in by the owner's other business (a shoe factory) going under?

Okay I want to hear this story... I just know they lost Star Wars licence and had trouble after that..

 Genoside07 wrote:

 silent25 wrote:


Wasn't West End done in by the owner's other business (a shoe factory) going under?

Okay I want to hear this story... I just know they lost Star Wars licence and had trouble after that..

From Wikipedia -

History

Previously a producer of board wargames, the company began producing roleplaying games in 1984 with Paranoia. The high production values demanded by the wargames industry made them one of the few companies who could compete with TSR, and they were able to acquire the license from Columbia Pictures to produce an RPG based on the film Ghostbusters. This game, Ghostbusters: A Frightfully Cheerful Roleplaying Game, formed the basis of the D6 System which was to be heavily used in many of their licensed products.

Around 1987, the company acquired the license to produce a Star Wars role-playing game. Since the films had been released some years previously, and there was (at the time) no new media forthcoming, the success of these books came as a surprise. Their early work on the Star Wars Roleplaying Game established much of the groundwork of what later became the Star Wars expanded universe, and their sourcebooks are still frequently cited by Star Wars fans as reference material. Lucasfilm considered their sourcebooks so authoritative that when Timothy Zahn was hired to write what became the Thrawn trilogy, he was sent a box of West End Games Star Wars books and directed to base his novel on the background material presented within. Zahn's trilogy, in turn, renewed interest in the franchise and provided many sales for West End Games.

The culminating event involves mismanagement between West End Games and its then parent company, shoe importer Bucci Retail Group. When the parent company filed for bankruptcy, West End Games could not survive the process and had to go under as well. [1]

The West End Games Star Wars game forms the basis of the reboot of the Star Wars universe. And is coming back.

The Auld Grump

 Byte wrote:
Mono pose.

And...

Mono pose



Except these are £25 for 3. And you have to put them together yourself. You said about the 90's GW being monopose. Less monopose than a large amount of their new stuff.

I'm not sure what your point is. The MD figures are actually fantastic, especially some of the big gribblies.

 Byte wrote:
Mono pose.

...and? Do you have an actual point? Because all I can think of is that you dislike duplicates, which is an entirely different matter to monopose vs multipose. Or maybe you mistakenly believe that the word monopose means duplicate?

As for a comparison, here you go. Compare the poses:



Oh yeah....


Mono pose

Folio Works.... Nice minis - the ogres were sculpted by Bob Olley, as were several other races.

Their game Fantasy Warlord was very nice, and thennn *Poof!*

*EDIT* Weird packaging - the figures were held to the cardboard backing by a plastic film that was glued and shrunk to the backing.


The Auld Grump

 LunarSol wrote:
Multipose models definitely have their limitations.

Really dynamic single pose is fine by me,

Indeed.



I, for one, and very excited over Kingdom Death shifting from multipose multi-part models to dynamic single pose models.

Monopose models with natural and very nicely looking posing for HQ's, multi-part for things that you need in great numbers like basic troopers, etc... because other wise you enter the "Clone Wars" syndrome.

No one has mentioned Wells Expeditions, a team of WizKids veterans who put out Arcane Legions in 2009.
They tried a new business model, and it didn't work out.
First, they were selling 1/72 miniatures, a scale that was unique for FLGSs, outside of board game pieces. Second, they were doing the collectible minis thing with commons/iuncommons/rares. But! The commons were not blind-boxed, but sold in fixed army packs... unpainted, still on the sprues. The blind-boxed uncommons and rares were pre-paints.

It had some cool mechanics. Where other war games require you to base multiple models with glue and then the unit is either present at full strength or destroyed, Arcane Legions included plastic bases the figures plugged into, then you removed casualties during combat. The number of pegs on a mini's base always equaled how many wounds it took to make it a casualty.
Some say the game flopped because archery was overpowered. Or maybe it flopped because FLGS customers didn't want to buy war game miniatures still on the sprues. Whatever the case, they didn't sell enough product to retain their employees and pay for molds for a planned 2010 expansion. Eventually reduced to 80% + off MSRP, booster bricks stuck around on Miniature Market through Black Friday 2015, and the other products are available to this day.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
Multipose models definitely have their limitations.

Really dynamic single pose is fine by me,

Indeed.

Spoiler:

I, for one, and very excited over Kingdom Death shifting from multipose multi-part models to dynamic single pose models.

The whole monopose discussion should be in a different thread.
Anyway modelers often like multipose while those who just want to game don't mind monopose.

 Gimgamgoo wrote:
...

And...

Mono pose



Except these are £25 for 3. And you have to put them together yourself. You said about the 90's GW being monopose. Less monopose than a large amount of their new stuff.

I'm not sure what your point is. The MD figures are actually fantastic, especially some of the big gribblies.

Are you talking about the easy-to-build Death Guard? i ask because you quoted £25 for 3.
If you are talking about easy-to-build DG, they are £10 for 3.
If you're talking about something else, my mistake.

Mono-pose, multi-pose. Who cares? Nothing to do with the subject at hand.

I don't think anyone has mentioned Reaper as an example of what went right.

(All IIRC, don't feel like researching at this hour)

They started making metal WWII aircraft in the 90s, reproductions of WWII models used by plane spotters (in those pre radar days) and did well cashing in on the 50th anniversary.

Recognizing WWII wouldn't pay the bills forever they made life dials for some fad game called Magic (wonder whatever happened to that...).

Then they packaged the figures from the dials as stand alone figures just as Grenidier and Ral Partha got hit by the ban on lead miniatures.

So they made pewter metal fantasy figures, branched out to PVC, museum models and prepaints and here they are today.

Technically they have 2 games but I've never seen or heard of them being played anywhere at all. They make minis for painters and RPGs and I would say dominate that section of the market.

I got most of this from a video interview with the owner who was very clear, he sees himself as a hullahoop maker and always has to have an eye on the next hullahoop because his market could dry up at any time. No sentimentality about old games of D&D, no burning need to realize his vision of a fantasy world, this is a way to make a living for him.

One gets the idea that if tomorrow everyone wants duck decoys he'd abandon the whole line and go all in on duck decoy production.

So good on them.

Anyone remember the CCG glut?

That really did a lot to dent the wargames scene in my area. Shops could make a lot of money off a CCG for a relatively small footprint and gamers were flocking to them. It's a bit of a shame really because imo it was a sort of "golden era" for wargames where you had multiple really great games available, but it was hard for them to compete w/the CCG scene.

Anyone remember Chronopia? I don't recall the name of the company that made it, but it was amazing. They went under and I was never sure of the specifics.

For Mongoose - as others have said, they are (somehow) still around. They just don't make wargames anymore. They are the classic example of "the dog ate my homework". I actually helped bring in the first SST boxes off the truck at my LGS, was one of the more active members on their forum (Quark at the time), and was part of the Mongoose infantry, so nobody in my area was a bigger supporter than me. Problem is, Andy Chambers wrote a great ruleset for SST that had a few little quirks. NOthing huge provided Mongoose stayed on top of it. Unfortunately, they did not. Army balance got weirder and weirder, and the product was often brutally bad. My brain bug had so much extra pewter on it that I felt like I was basically sculpting a new one while cleaning it off with the dremel. Then, because there was no way around it, I had to actually resculpt several large sections of it w/green stuff to get the two halves to match up. This was not an isolated incident. They had issues with almost everything. We got the MI book that, for the time, was a well done, nice looking army book. Then you got the book for the Skinny army (the third faction in the game) that looked like they went to a highschool art class with some gouache paint and markers and told the kids to go to town. So you had one page with a nice-ish illustration, right next to a page with something I wouldn't even use as "concept art". There was also an apparent lack of editing that caused things like typos and/or omissions so extreme that they actually inadvertantly changed the meaning of rules (to a level I've never seen before or since). It was all WELL below the industry standard for the time, which particularly problematic for them as they had a tendency to way over-hype how amazing their stuff was going to be.

At every turn Matt (the owner) would bravely hop on the forums and proclaim that there was some crazy unforseeable incident but they learned an important lesson and this would NEVER happen again. Then, a week later, it would happen again. And again, and again. Over and over until I think people just finally gave up on them. Even now, if you read the "State of the Mongoose" post Matt does every year, there' s often one or two bad things that happen where there's a "but really, the odds of that ever happening are a million to one so there's no way WE could have seen it or prevented it and obviously it will never happen again."

I think, at least in terms of wargames, their consistent failure to deliver on even small promises really cost them. I'm also not sure they truly understood how different being a miniatures company is vs an RPG company (I'm told they tend to do RPGs fairly well). I liked the company a lot and you had to respect Matt for always being on the forums directly interacting with the pitch-fork wielding mobs, but man, you just couldn't trust them to properly execute.

Technically they have 2 games but I've never seen or heard of them being played anywhere at all.

Myself and a small group of friends played the Warlord game for years. AFAIK, that was the first wargame to have unit rules on cards that came with the minis. It was ALL the rules too, not just a basic summary. The game got a little hinky at times, but was over-all great fun!

 privateer4hire wrote:

Spoiler:

 Gimgamgoo wrote:
...

And...

Mono pose



Except these are £25 for 3. And you have to put them together yourself. You said about the 90's GW being monopose. Less monopose than a large amount of their new stuff.

I'm not sure what your point is. The MD figures are actually fantastic, especially some of the big gribblies.

Are you talking about the easy-to-build Death Guard? i ask because you quoted £25 for 3.
If you are talking about easy-to-build DG, they are £10 for 3.
If you're talking about something else, my mistake.

The Plague Brethren - but you do get art cards & a booklet as well!

Oh and this list would not be complete without Wargames Factory...

But that's more than I have energy to write about now.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Oh and this list would not be complete without Wargames Factory...

But that's more than I have energy to write about now.

Any chance for a TL;DR version? This thread is being really interesting, lots of stuff I didn't know about.

 TheDraconicLord wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Oh and this list would not be complete without Wargames Factory...

But that's more than I have energy to write about now.

Any chance for a TL;DR version? This thread is being really interesting, lots of stuff I didn't know about.

It started with a lot of promise multipart plastics, historical, fantasy and sci fi. And best of all a preorder/suggestion system call the Liberty and Union League where fans could toss out ideas and build support.

The owners were not especially good managers, the sculpts were not great, some of the fan ideas were iffy (3 sets for the War of Spanish Succession? really?) and to stay afloat they sold equity to their Chinese supplier who eventually had a majority share and fired them.

(The original founders went on to start Defiant which managed to put out 2? plastic sets before disappearing with a bag full of kickstarter money)

The new owners kept on for a while but then sold off the lines to Warlord and Dreamforge with several disappearing forever. From what I hear the Chinese manufacturer is doing great, producing stuff for other name brands, and just didn't see any advantage in having their own lines.

beast_gts wrote:

 privateer4hire wrote:

Spoiler:

 Gimgamgoo wrote:
...

And...

Mono pose



Except these are £25 for 3. And you have to put them together yourself. You said about the 90's GW being monopose. Less monopose than a large amount of their new stuff.

I'm not sure what your point is. The MD figures are actually fantastic, especially some of the big gribblies.

Are you talking about the easy-to-build Death Guard? i ask because you quoted £25 for 3.
If you are talking about easy-to-build DG, they are £10 for 3.
If you're talking about something else, my mistake.

The Plague Brethren - but you do get art cards & a booklet as well!

Thanks for the clarification. I didn't know plague brethren were coming out in packs of 3. Good to know.

Back on topic, one of the "good things" about Void/Void 1.1 intially was the fact that every human army had an identical set of core selections.
There were so many basic human infantry and maybe some crew-served weapons that everyone could take.
The army differences came from a few special units that only Army A could have while Army B could field its own special units.
While some argue this made army selection bland (I guess it did), it also helped game balance so that list selection wasn't as game winning a step as with other games.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 TheDraconicLord wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Oh and this list would not be complete without Wargames Factory...

But that's more than I have energy to write about now.

Any chance for a TL;DR version? This thread is being really interesting, lots of stuff I didn't know about.

It started with a lot of promise multipart plastics, historical, fantasy and sci fi. And best of all a preorder/suggestion system call the Liberty and Union League where fans could toss out ideas and build support.

The owners were not especially good managers, the sculpts were not great, some of the fan ideas were iffy (3 sets for the War of Spanish Succession? really?) and to stay afloat they sold equity to their Chinese supplier who eventually had a majority share and fired them.

(The original founders went on to start Defiant which managed to put out 2? plastic sets before disappearing with a bag full of kickstarter money)

The new owners kept on for a while but then sold off the lines to Warlord and Dreamforge with several disappearing forever. From what I hear the Chinese manufacturer is doing great, producing stuff for other name brands, and just didn't see any advantage in having their own lines.

Ooohh boy, it just kept getting better and better Thanks for the story!

Mageknight 1.0 and Dungeons and Pirates of the Spanish Main were 10/10 on initial release

 Stevefamine wrote:
Mageknight 1.0 and Dungeons and Pirates of the Spanish Main were 10/10 on initial release

I got sucked in on Pirates and Mechwarrior. MW was pretty good, but the hard-on for Davion that made the Highlander mechs worthless bothered me. MW 2.0 killed the game by making everybody's old mechs worthless (they added an upgrade system that didn't work with the old mechs). Similar thing happened with Mageknight. I forget what tanked Pirates, but it disappeared shortly after they picked up the official Disney Pirates of the Carribean to add to the game.

 TheDraconicLord wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 TheDraconicLord wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Oh and this list would not be complete without Wargames Factory...

But that's more than I have energy to write about now.

Any chance for a TL;DR version? This thread is being really interesting, lots of stuff I didn't know about.

It started with a lot of promise multipart plastics, historical, fantasy and sci fi. And best of all a preorder/suggestion system call the Liberty and Union League where fans could toss out ideas and build support.

The owners were not especially good managers, the sculpts were not great, some of the fan ideas were iffy (3 sets for the War of Spanish Succession? really?) and to stay afloat they sold equity to their Chinese supplier who eventually had a majority share and fired them.

(The original founders went on to start Defiant which managed to put out 2? plastic sets before disappearing with a bag full of kickstarter money)

The new owners kept on for a while but then sold off the lines to Warlord and Dreamforge with several disappearing forever. From what I hear the Chinese manufacturer is doing great, producing stuff for other name brands, and just didn't see any advantage in having their own lines.

Ooohh boy, it just kept getting better and better Thanks for the story!

And trust me, this is a very short version of it. Defiance Games was not banking on this being the internet age. The end was very ugly. The Chinese factory owners were incredibly patient and gracious in the face of what was flung their way.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Oh and this list would not be complete without Wargames Factory...

It started with a lot of promise multipart plastics, historical, fantasy and sci fi. And best of all a preorder/suggestion system call the Liberty and Union League where fans could toss out ideas and build support.

The owners were not especially good managers, the sculpts were not great, some of the fan ideas were iffy (3 sets for the War of Spanish Succession? really?) and to stay afloat they sold equity to their Chinese supplier who eventually had a majority share and fired them.

(The original founders went on to start Defiant [sic] which managed to put out 2? plastic sets before disappearing with a bag full of kickstarter money)

The new owners kept on for a while but then sold off the lines to Warlord and Dreamforge with several disappearing forever. From what I hear the Chinese manufacturer is doing great, producing stuff for other name brands, and just didn't see any advantage in having their own lines.

Isn't WGF (China) still producing the plastics for Malifaux and Kingdom Death?

Also, Defiance Games (not "Defiant") are the ones who ripped of Natalya Alyssa Faden, took her money for Torn Armor and delivered nothing. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/alyssafaden/torn-armor/posts/726991

Yes and yes.

 Gimgamgoo wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
.... Yet sadly, they're no longer with us. But why? What was it about those games that failed to attract a large enough player base to keep them going?

Honestly? In my opinion, it's down to GW's brainwashing. Everything has to be GW. The whole hobby is GW. There are such a large amount of GW players who will not try any other game because it isn't GW. I have friends who only play GW stuff. They'd refuse to try guildball or dreadball as they 'hate the genre', but the second blood bowl is released they're all over it like a rash.

It's a crying shame. There are many games out there that are as good or better, or just plain different, to GW stuff that deserve a chance, but the success of GW's marketing/brainwashing strategy has paid off.

By the way, Void is still available, as are all the figures.

I couldn't agree more, maybe in the dark times before the intertubes GW appeared to 'the hobby' but now there are so many easily findable non-GW choices but folks seem to be stuck in the GW rut, like you say unwilling to 'cheat' on GW by dabbling with other systems, I was partially guilty but the stinkyness of 7th jolted me out, and picked up other stuff

But in topic a lot of failure is as others have noted, too much hobby, not enough business