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All the rage in wargaming right now is a marketing concept I call "Wargame as Product". This is a model that I first observed with Games Workshop products, and has quickly spread across the game producing community as THE model for making money off of wargaming. Now you can see this model being used from Battle Front, to Atomic Mass Games, Warlord Games and beyond.

Defining the Model

To my eyes, there are two major paradigms for making money off of wargames in play at the moment. The focus of this post will be the Wargame as Product model. However, for completeness I will mention them both so we can compare and contrast them as we proceed.

Wargame as Product
In this model, the wargame rules are simply one component used to drive a revenue stream for the producer. That means, they also try to create revenue streams from additional rules content publications, models to play the game, terrain to play the game on, boards to play the game, and monetizing components of the game for sale. Therefore, when consumer purchases the game, they are often given an incomplete product or a product that only allows for basic or entry level game play. Additional levels of play and components for a "complete" game are additional purchases from the producer.

Wargame is Product
In this scenario, the producer is selling the game itself. The components and other elements may not come with the game, but they are also not purchased from the producer themselves. In this case, the producer is simply selling you a method to play a game, and that is it. Further components maybe licensed to other producers to "spread" the potential profits for the game across a larger group of producers; but they may also be created independently of the initial producer or not on the market at all.

A Hybrid Model
In this scenario, the producer may try to monetize some, but not all the components of game play. These additional components may come from another source, either licensed or independent.


So, what are some examples you have seen of these models in the real world? Which do you prefer to "buy into"? How do you think these models change the design process?

Read more at the blog here:

http://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2023/01/wargame-design-wargames-as-product.html

I'm not sure how this is really a question? Obviously you want to follow the GW model, that's how you make money. You only settle for selling rules alone if you have IP constraints (making a historical game where you can't copyright your models and lore) or you know you don't have a mass-market game and your sales can't support anything more than a pdf download of the rules.

The more interesting question IMO is how we can expand monetization methods that have been demonstrated to work in other genres of gaming: microtransactions and loot boxes. How do we successfully implement a paywall for DLC in an offline context where people can pirate the rules, proxy the models, etc, instead of buying the DLC? How do we add to the thrill of opening a loot box when adding flashy effects is a matter of expensive packaging vs. a cheap digital animation? How do we make the loot box buyer feel like they almost won even with a low-value box when we can't do the slot machine thing and briefly display a winning result before settling on the loss? We've seen people try to make games that integrate with a digital component but so far all of them seem to have been complete failures.

You're leaving out a model where the publisher produces more than one game or system, but instead multiple offerings.
Sales can be centered on expansions but also the reputation for quality offerings. This was how most gaming companies (including GW) used to function. They were not tied to a single system. Steve Jackson comes to mind.

GW has created a new concept that is similar to software where you never really own anything other than figures (which have limited compatibility). The thing is, only GW's monopoly position in miniatures during the late 1990s allowed them to impose this model. No other company has an equivalent presence in the industry. Far more valuable IPs are subject to changing licensees, which can wreck an otherwise successful product without warning.

Witness what happened to Decipher's Star Wars CCG or West End's Star Wars offerings. Excellent, popular, lucrative and now out of print.

My miniatures rules have sold poorly entirely because I've been too busy (and too cheap) to market them. As I get more free time, I'm looking at both refreshing that offering and further developing my other designs, some of which share common platforms, but many do not.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
This was how most gaming companies (including GW) used to function.

But it's not really a valid business model anymore. It worked in the old days when the internet wasn't really a thing yet and finding information was hard but things have changed. If you get popular and are generating enough sales to treat game design as a job instead of a hobby that maybe pays for some of the gaming books you buy then some guy in Russia or China will make a Wahapedia equivalent for your game. As soon as that happens you're entirely dependent on people feeling charitable enough to buy your rules instead of getting them for free, and your sales crash to near-zero. The only way out of the trap is to have content that can't be pirated, and that means making a line of proprietary game components that people have to own to play your game.

Witness what happened to Decipher's Star Wars CCG or West End's Star Wars offerings. Excellent, popular, lucrative and now out of print.

Was the CCG ever that successful? It was an absolute disaster from a game design point of view and by the time it died its foundational flaws had turned into a hopeless mess. Was it really generating all that many sales as a game, vs. people buying cool looking Star Wars cards but never playing?

Aecus Decimus wrote:

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
This was how most gaming companies (including GW) used to function.

But it's not really a valid business model anymore. It worked in the old days when the internet wasn't really a thing yet and finding information was hard but things have changed. If you get popular and are generating enough sales to treat game design as a job instead of a hobby that maybe pays for some of the gaming books you buy then some guy in Russia or China will make a Wahapedia equivalent for your game. As soon as that happens you're entirely dependent on people feeling charitable enough to buy your rules instead of getting them for free, and your sales crash to near-zero. The only way out of the trap is to have content that can't be pirated, and that means making a line of proprietary game components that people have to own to play your game.

And yet I see plenty of boardgames still out there. Are they all Russian knockoffs?

Was the CCG ever that successful? It was an absolute disaster from a game design point of view and by the time it died its foundational flaws had turned into a hopeless mess. Was it really generating all that many sales as a game, vs. people buying cool looking Star Wars cards but never playing?

Wildly successful, massive tournaments, cards flying off the shelves, global rankings updated regularly. People paying waay over retail to buy sealed boxes. It was crazy.

From a sales perspective, I don't really care if they play my games so long as they're going for over MSRP on ebay.

It died because Lucas had just acquired Wizards of the Coast (or rather Hasbro did) so the license was pulled and given to WotC. Their game never caught on (can't even remember its name) but the Decipher cards are still quite valuable.

Not to cross the threads, but that is an advantage to cards - not really worth counterfeiting. In a print-on-demand world, you can order custom decks and there's not really a feasible way for someone to undercut that.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
And yet I see plenty of boardgames still out there. Are they all Russian knockoffs?

Most board games include physical components that can't be pirated as a Wahapedia-equivalent. The pure rules-only games with no physical components are either fairly easy to pirate or have such a limited audience that nobody bothers pirating them but they also don't make much money for the creator.

Wildly successful, massive tournaments, cards flying off the shelves, global rankings updated regularly. People paying waay over retail to buy sealed boxes. It was crazy.

Weird. Though I guess I shouldn't be surprised, 40k sells in massive numbers despite being a hilariously terrible game.

From a sales perspective, I don't really care if they play my games so long as they're going for over MSRP on ebay.

Mostly agreed. If they're going for over MSRP on ebay it's a sign that I should be increasing MSRP to get that value myself instead of letting third-party sellers have it. I'm just blown away that a game as terrible as the Decipher CCG was selling that well. I had assumed that they pulled the license and gave it to WotC because the game had become unplayably bad and sales had collapsed to the point that gambling on WotC making a successful product was more appealing than letting Decipher keep printing more product to gather dust on shelves.

Not to cross the threads, but that is an advantage to cards - not really worth counterfeiting. In a print-on-demand world, you can order custom decks and there's not really a feasible way for someone to undercut that.

Well, partly. This only works if you have a community with a hardcore stance against counterfeiting and proxying. If proxies are legal and people don't care if you go down to your local print shop and spend $20 to print a whole set of everything it's very easy to pirate a game. You probably need WotC-style organized play where if WotC finds out you're tolerating proxying or counterfeiting in sanctioned events you lose your ability to run MTG events and your sales demand disappears to the nearest other store.

Aecus Decimus wrote:
Most board games include physical components that can't be pirated as a Wahapedia-equivalent. The pure rules-only games with no physical components are either fairly easy to pirate or have such a limited audience that nobody bothers pirating them but they also don't make much money for the creator.

That would be me.

Mostly agreed. If they're going for over MSRP on ebay it's a sign that I should be increasing MSRP to get that value myself instead of letting third-party sellers have it.

Years ago I worked for a photographer and after trying to get him to raise his prices (and therefore my pay) I began tallying up all the wedding bookings we had to turn away. When I reached 20 I said "You have a problem."

I had assumed that they pulled the license and gave it to WotC because the game had become unplayably bad and sales had collapsed to the point that gambling on WotC making a successful product was more appealing than letting Decipher keep printing more product to gather dust on shelves.

No, Decipher offered to increase their licensing fee considerably, but Lucas wasn't interested.

As for pirating cards, it depends on their function. If it's non-collectible, the game publisher is probably going to get a lower per-unit cost than someone trying to have a deck duplicated. I don't think people are pirating Cards Against Humanity.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
As for pirating cards, it depends on their function. If it's non-collectible, the game publisher is probably going to get a lower per-unit cost than someone trying to have a deck duplicated. I don't think people are pirating Cards Against Humanity.

True, but if you want to discuss monetization you want a collectible element to your cards. A non-collectible game like CAH relies on getting a massive player base to overcome the fact that the total purchase price is low and each player group only needs one copy of the game to share. Yeah, it clearly worked for CAH, but for every CAH that succeeds with that model you've got a lot of games which sell a few copies at a low profit per box and never make much money for the creator. Meanwhile even a very bad CCG can make an obscene amount of money if you hook a few whales, and if you don't get the whales with your first attempt you can always print the next minimum-effort CCG and try again.

Aecus Decimus wrote:


True, but if you want to discuss monetization you want a collectible element to your cards. A non-collectible game like CAH relies on getting a massive player base to overcome the fact that the total purchase price is low and each player group only needs one copy of the game to share. Yeah, it clearly worked for CAH, but for every CAH that succeeds with that model you've got a lot of games which sell a few copies at a low profit per box and never make much money for the creator. Meanwhile even a very bad CCG can make an obscene amount of money if you hook a few whales, and if you don't get the whales with your first attempt you can always print the next minimum-effort CCG and try again.

But you can substitute quality for quantity, so to speak. Munchkin has how many iterations? None of the are collectible.

That's what I mean by the Steve Jackson model. Throw lots of stuff out there and if enough sticks, you're fine.

It's important to recognize that most small businesses fail, and for every GW, there are dozens of companies that went nowhere, and plenty of ones that went somewhere and then crashed and burned. See also: Avalon Hill, TSR, etc.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
But you can substitute quality for quantity, so to speak. Munchkin has how many iterations? None of the are collectible.

That's the kind of thing I'm talking about though. Munchkin is an extreme outlier, the rare success that got so many players that "cheap enough that nobody can counterfeit it" was a viable pricing strategy. Your chances of making a game that reaches Munchkin levels of popularity are much worse than your chances of making a CCG that hooks enough whales to cash in on gambling addiction before it all collapses and you have to make your next CCG.

It all depends on what you are willing to dump into production and marketing and risk on the chance of success.

Conqueror: Fields of Victory is a slow-selling game, but I haven't lost a dime on it. In fact, I've been able to buy several pizzas with my royalties.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
In fact, I've been able to buy several pizzas with my royalties.

Thank you for demonstrating my point quite nicely. You just described a game that was a dismal failure as a commercial product by every meaningful standard: absolute revenue numbers, the hourly wage you earned by making it, and the opportunity cost of making the game instead of something more profitable. For you game design is exactly what I said previously: a hobby that maybe pays for some of the gaming books you buy, not a real job.

And that's fine! There's nothing wrong with being a hobby designer who makes cool stuff because it's fun, with no expectation of commercial success. But you should be honest that you're doing it purely as a hobby and if you earn $20 here and there it's a nice bonus.

Aecus Decimus wrote:


And that's fine! There's nothing wrong with being a hobby designer who makes cool stuff because it's fun, with no expectation of commercial success. But you should be honest that you're doing it purely as a hobby and if you earn $20 here and there it's a nice bonus.

Indeed.

I think the GW and FFG model makes sense if you are a production company focusing only on Games as your primary driver of revenue. I think it was the creator of All Quiet on the Martian Front who said something along the lines of, "The only way to make money in this business is to own the IP for the game, so background, rules, accessories, and models." Of course, he went out of business; so he might have been wrong.

However, in the case of Osprey Games, they are a small sub-division of a much larger company that is all ready focused on publishing, and trying to follow a GW model would cause significant scope creep to their core business model, for little reward and heavy risk. These risk/reward trade-offs may also apply to smaller publishers who have a press, and not much else.

Therefore, there are a lot of factors why even non-hobbyists and the big boys might want to follow one model over another.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

Thank you for demonstrating my point quite nicely. You just described a game that was a dismal failure as a commercial product by every meaningful standard: absolute revenue numbers, the hourly wage you earned by making it, and the opportunity cost of making the game instead of something more profitable.

I hate to break it to you, but those aren't the only "meaningful standards." Do you know anyone who works in small business? No one turns a profit on day one, and a high number of them draw no salary from whatever revenue they generate until much later on.

A smarter approach is to set realistic and attainable goals, gaining experience as one goes so that one can better determine if the enterprise is feasible and sustainable. Huge numbers of would be TSRs (including the actual TSR) crashed and burned because they didn't do that.

It might be worth noting that companies like GW started as small retailers, and only later developed their in-house productions. They started making money first and started making their own products later.

Nomeny wrote:
It might be worth noting that companies like GW started as small retailers, and only later developed their in-house productions. They started making money first and started making their own products later.

They did create their own products, but it was a gradual process and they kept their growth in line with their limited resources. White Dwarf magazine was famously a general gaming publication, not just a GW fanzine. They became TSR's UK licensee and began producing dungeon modules for importation in the US (I have one).

Miniature model production was famously the kind of thing you could do in a garage workshop, with materials being relatively cheap and inventory controls based around doing a run whenever a particular bin was empty.

Like TSR, GW found a niche and also got in on the ground floor of a new type of business in an industry they helped create. Unlike TSR, they managed their growth much better, remaining focused on the bottom line.

That's why they are both a good example (of success) and a bad example, because their model is unique. GW's actions today only make sense in the context of a monopolistic position in a very narrow market. Other competitors that have attempted their tactics (big box of plastic models, lavishly-illustrated books) have failed because the effort required to quickly acquire GW's market presence would take years of losses before achieving any profitability - assuming that it ever happened.

Alternative settings (like Star Wars) are burdened by the fact that the people making product don't own the IP and are therefore at the mercy of their license terms. Having a lucrative license can be a huge benefit, but if it is your main draw, you're at the mercy of not only its popularity (which you don't control) but also the IP owner, which can kill your entire enterprise simply by declining to renew it.

That's why I think a more feasible model is the Steve Jackson one - multiple products, some of which you own outright, some of which you are licensed, all of which combine to broaden your market appeal and spread the risk.

Again, the key is to avoid the pitfall of overreaching. TSR is the most famous example of this, but there are many other examples of smaller gaming companies that had popular products and growing marketplace recognition but who nevertheless failed because their business model was not well thought out. SPI is a great example of a company that was cranking out product, but was so busy making and selling stuff, they had no idea of whether any of it was generating an actual profit (it wasn't).

That in turn goes to another model for game design, which is having someone else publish your work. That saves you the difficulty of having set up production lines and deal with overhead. Avalon Hill famously did not do much in-house design work, but instead roamed about finding promising games and bought the rights.

Whichever way one proceeds, keep clear, consistent and attainable goals. Lots of successful businesses started as sidebars, profitable little hobbies that came to take on greater importance as they grew. Even more remained just that, a side gig that brought a little extra income and enjoyment. I recall a guy I knew years ago who had a decent job but his dream was to run the ideal gaming store - a combination of retail space and hangout that would be a social hub for the area.

He succeeded in making his shop a popular hangout, but after a few years decided that it was time to move on. The charm of having a cool gaming place faded as he approached middle age with a family to support, so he sold out. The shop kept going for a few years after that but it's gone now. Still, I think he achieved his goal even though he didn't become fabulously wealthy.

Spartan Games is another great example of growing too fast and not keeping focused on the profit margin. One of the most dangerous times for a small business, and a key point of failure, is when the business grows faster than the infrastructure can support, or when a business tries to grow their infrastructure to support growth and that growth never comes. Growth can be very tricky to manage as a small business.

I was/am a small business owner for a long time, and one of our maxims is: "It doesn't matter what your sales are, if you are selling it at a loss." There are some strategies where selling at a loss makes sense, but very few small businesses can manage that.

On the flip side, the secret to small business is your ability to absorb loss and still keep going. If you do not have the margin or resources to avoid loss for a period of time; than you will not be in business for long.

Just some semi-random thoughts that sprung up from your post CvT.

 Easy E wrote:
On the flip side, the secret to small business is your ability to absorb loss and still keep going. If you do not have the margin or resources to avoid loss for a period of time; than you will not be in business for long.

This is very important. You MUST have a cash reserve if you are looking at an expansion. It can be outright savings or you can take out a loan and just have it standing by, but I've watched people in many lines of work fail simply because they cut things too close. A big customer is late with a payment, a vendor has a delivery problem and all of a sudden they are in a world of hurt.

Staff shortfalls can do it as well. It may seem like a hobby/fun activity until money starts rolling in and people start talking about "back pay" for all the long hours they worked - and if they don't get it, they're leaving right when you need them the most.

Thing brings me back to the "just sell out" concept. If you look at board games in particular, you see a lot of people who never ran their own company but nevertheless came up with excellent and popular designs that they sold for others to publish.

GW is sort of a hybrid - they had staff designers and developers, some of whom went "way back." I'm not sure who is doing that now, but an aspiring designer could do worse than some of the design staff as GW.