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jivjov posted:I just would like to clarify that I'm not defending rape as an action. I am defending the right for game creators to make any sort of game they want, and players to play any sort of game they want. If that involves rape, that's the concern of said creators and players. And by doing that, despite Ettin's post not even being directed at you, you somehow manage to make the exact category error Ettin's post refutes. If game creators want to make whatever they want, hey, guess what! Free speech applies to people who want to call them shitlords for gamifying rape. And it doesn't just relate to RPGs; This is something that has been explored, and criticized, in the larger game industry, and has been the subject of critique in literature for decades. Now, let's explore this game in the specific. Its entire premise is that a group of players will sit down and get into the mindsets of a) a soon-to-be rape victim, b) an ancient intelligent psychicically dominating sword, and c) a thief who is a serial rapist. Two of the players are intended to gang up on and play out the violent rape of the third player, who is only allowed to make suggestions as to how their character is raped during that act. Let's assume for the moment that we accept that people can write rape into books, movies, games etc. based on serious maturity or artistic merit and be taken as such. In this environment, there also exist prurient depictions designed only to shock or titillate, and they are generally not considered of much worth or merit. This game is asking me to accept taking away one player's input in the game, essentially, because they are being raped with the help of a magic sword. Why the hell would anyone, ever, be raped by a magic sword? What magic sword would wish this act on someone and take part in it? The premise isn't just offensive, it's also stupid. On top of that, it's prurient - the people are expected to enjoy describing the violent rape of a woman by means of a magic sword. They state outright that it's for "fun". The game's creator tried to explain it as underscoring the violence inherent in RPGs, but - once again - rape is not equivalent to the threat of death or the use of violence in drama. Equating the two is fallacious. Since it fails to underscore said violence in any way (something better done by using the actual violence being underscored and not something on another level entirely), what we have left is shock factor and prurience mixed with some RPG author's cluelessness about sexual violence. And I'm somehow supposed to accept that it exists, and even encourage it, because it's a "right". It's also my right to point out that this is poo poo, and the people who defend it, buy it, enjoy it and write it are covered by said poo poo.
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Aug 6, 2013 04:43
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xiw posted:I think there's a possibility that that game is intended as black, black satire of narrative games and nordic-rpg-style games and Raggi's shockjock style. I might be wrong, but it's worth skimming it with that in mind - some of the dumb is so heavy-handed that I can't believe someone would write it seriously. One of the absolute most difficult and problematic aspects of writing satire is that good satire can get too close to what it's satirizing. Rather than poking fun, it becomes just another example of what it's trying to satirize. Bad satire just wallows in it. One of the most notable instances of this is the world's most beloved adventure story, Gulliver's Travels. It's a satirical parody of the colonialist tropes of its contemporary adventure fiction, but it was such a good example of it that it's become the defining work of its genre. If you satirize games with rape in them, and you're poo poo at doing satire, all you're doing is writing a game with rape in it.
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Aug 6, 2013 06:09
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And it may yet get funded by the special kind of toxic people who think they're being transgressive and acting against the norms of society by trivializing rape and making light of the suffering of other, non-white people who aren't as well off as they are. When breathed on, they will poo poo themselves and roll on the floor yelling about free speech. Welcome to the tabletop industry!
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Aug 6, 2013 06:32
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jivjov posted:I don't really care to continue a discussion here, as its not worth a probation or ban if I say something the moderators interpret badly. If you would like to continue a discussion on the topic (Preferably without dragging personal insults into the mix) could be please do it via PM? No. But do go on.
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Aug 6, 2013 22:46
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So someone told me to look at the other games and not judge the entire kickstarter based only on one game. One of them has "welfare queens" in the title. Another is about Jews being monsters, and it unironically uses the term "blood libel". I'm not sure I want, or need, to dig deeper.
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Aug 8, 2013 16:19
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MadScientistWorking posted:Honestly I don't think you need to include incredibly horrible elements in a game to approach the subject of alienation, disenfranchisement, and racism. I've seen writers do it quite deftly without having to resort to things like rape which honestly is a bit of an extreme oddity to see it tactfully done with maturity and gravitas in any medium. Hell, let's talk about a game I feel does it right: Iron Kingdoms roleplaying. It has a very, very thinly-veiled analogue of Roma, or Gypsy, culture. The culture is even non-human. They are "Gobbers", or IKRPG's version of Goblins. They are usually thieves, they are tinkers who are not always trusted, they travel in wagons, the lot. But the game engages in a frank and open discussion of the reasons behind all of them. Gobbers are portrayed as a disenfranchised minority, often unable to find acceptance or work, and are pushed into illegal careers due to the social pressures they face and the prejudices at work against them. Even though they often tend to be thieves, the prejudices are not given justification in the setting: they are not thieves by some kind of inner thieving nature, but because of opportunity and circumstance. Now anyone can be justifiably leery at depicting a real life ethnicity as a non-human species, but it serves in part to underscore the situation rather than try to vilify the Gobbers themselves. The game also avoids some of the more problematically sexist prejudices and depiction thereof in favor of the social angle. Privateer Press isn't a company that started out doing this sort of thing; this is a company whose wargame once opened, on page 5, with the words "play like you have a pair" and emphasized the masculinity of playing with little metal figurines you spend ages making pretty. They're not even perfect or anything now (models with battle-heels and such), or pushing any kind of major agenda. They simply learned better, and then did better.
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Aug 8, 2013 17:22
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One alternative I've heard suggested is "orcs and humans live in tribal communities at the edges of civilization, and tribal communities intermarry". It has the benefit of being both realistic and in line with actual anthropological studies and theories about things like how humans got neanderthal DNA in them. Actual realism is always so much more interesting than what people insist is realistic in elfgames.
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Aug 8, 2013 20:13
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neonchameleon posted:Which one? I didn't spot that bit of That was a bad on my part: it's actually a thing they said in one of their podcasts regarding their kickstarter games. Yes, they have podcasts. Yes, they are terrible.
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Aug 9, 2013 02:37
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on a quick scan through.
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They are also not good for opening discussion, despite what the man says, because they're basically "White guy writes lovely games about horrible things that don't personally affect him, waits for people to get offended". It's such a transparent-seeming troll that I can't help but wonder if the dude is actually trying to be serious.
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Aug 9, 2013 14:23
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quote:I understand that consequences exist, but the way I saw it "you no longer get to write a stretch goal that X number of backers were to receive" He's still writing it and it's even being given to backers, it's just not associated with Inverse World anymore. The Inverse World version is being produced in-house instead. He is not being prevented from writing anything. Literally the only thing that actually happened here is that Jon Walton can't use the name Inverse World and associated concepts because the people who own and are behind Inverse World didn't want it anymore.
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Aug 9, 2013 23:17
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It's a conundrum. A parody of a game can totally be a game in its own right, so you want to make it good. But to parody White Wolf games, you'd have to make it uhhhh  More on the point, making a good game clashed with the intent of the parody in KPFS. Another game that criticized the violence in games was, well, Violence: The Roleplaying Game of Egregious and Repulsive Bloodshed. And it was made, intentionally, practically unplayable because the subject matter is really just that vile, and also to masterfully demonstrate the absolute stupidity that goes into a lot of game design decisions. I didn't even appreciate half the game until I started doing design on my own. It's less of a game and more of a weirdly formatted essay that makes fun of everything from the constant grimmer and darker tone games take to the entire premise of entering a location and exterminating everything inside it so you can steal poo poo and even to making things more mature and edgy by absolutely burying itself in juvenile nonsense. Even now, almost a decade and a half later, it strikes way too close to the mark.
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Aug 10, 2013 13:13
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On the topic of the KS thread and that quite excellent BattleCON quote; Wrath of Kings provoked attention in the KS thread for basically being the sleaziest ball in a while. Now, I'm not going to drag that derail in here in full. I'm instead going to talk about how this relates to the minis industry and my oh-so-hopeful role in it. Basically, I've become 100% fed up with the situation for about a dozen reasons in addition to the obvious ones. For a while now, I've had a miniatures game in my head (and am now making it for the August contest thread), and one of my primary objectives with it is to do better. I want multiple bodytypes and non-sexualized posing, so I began making inquiries for sculptors ready, willing and able to do it. I was told that what I was asking simply would not happen. Full stop. After the third or so straight no answer, I really started paying attention as to why they said it. The reasons were pretty varied, all told, but most of them have to do with sheer inertia in the hobby. The first problem, and what I was told would be the most difficult, would be simply finding a sculptor who was able to do it. Mini wargaming sculptors are a niche within a niche, and they make for themselves their comfortable niches within that. This means that many, many sculptors simply don't practice making anything but those one or two bodytypes they're familiar with. Certainly they follow the art direction, but it alone doesn't explain it; I myself own a model from Privateer Press which went from cool art of an elf-like woman reaching behind her for her giant fuckoff sword to a model which is running her hands through her hair and inner thigh in a silly come-hither pose. (Lanyssa Ryssyl, if you care to look it up.) It simply doesn't occur to many artists in the hobby to not do this automatically. Assuming I did find a sculptor who was able and willing, my next problem would involve inertia from the hobbyists and building a community which would be willing to accept not having their women models be sculpted around their penis, so to speak. The hobby has a lot of inertia, more than RPGs and their myriad social issues, and have longer to become entrenched and well used to the fact that the wargaming hobby is something people treat as a private matter, or which is far enough off the pop-culture radar that they can just revel in stuff that wouldn't be accepted elsewhere. Even the massive PR-success that is 40k and its various games hasn't changed the audience of the tabletop game significantly. This is such a problem that Games Workshop tries to both cater to and actively combat it; Stores carrying GW products must follow a license which includes special measures for family friendliness in the storefront, but they don't really change their model line to follow suit in all cases. Assuming I did find a sculptor and a community - the latter of which I'm finding easier - the third would be that all entrenched markets have equally entrenched opinions, and that includes things like "the hobby is FOR men", "sex sells" and "our customers are a little ashamed of their hobby anyway" - and yes, they really do just read like justifications for why it's hard for a dude not to be a creeplord. But this goes beyond just the community and straight into the business angle of things. Swathes of the customer base and the potential customer base are simply ignored, not because of post-facto justifications like those but because trying to capture markets is risk, and you don't want to risk a business. And if I were to start it up myself, I'd be taking a bigger risk than usual by trying to capture a market which might not really exist. If people gave up on minis wargaming a long time ago due to the many problems in it, and I know oh so many people who have, my one game probably won't change that overnight. I think I can overcome the community and risk angles, eventually. Options like Kickstarter (which I can't participate in directly, but it would be my preferred venue) can do a lot to both overcome risk and reach customers, and I can at the very least not directly encourage some attitudes. But the more practical problem I have is that the sculptors I talked with were right. I have not found a single one. I'm not soliciting people at the moment, so don't try to send me an avalance of contact mails or nothing. But man, I had no idea that a simple stance on modelling could lead to trying to overcome this much bloody inertia.
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Aug 15, 2013 16:02
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Fiendish Dr. Wu posted:Wouldn't it work if you secure a sculpture who wouldn't have to do any work until / if the funds come in from KS? Basically, prove there is a market first, then do the work? It's not a matter of securing a sculptor, but of finding one that meets my requirements.
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Aug 15, 2013 20:54
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Bucnasti posted:It really sounds like you're going about this the wrong way. You should be looking for a CONCEPT ARTIST to create your non-sexytime characters, and then contracting a sculptor to sculpt based on the concept art. Your art briefs and contracts then stipulate that any deviation from the concept art must be approved by you. As already mentioned, this is not just a concept art problem. It turns out that not only do concept artist sex their concept pieces up from art directing conception to finished piece, but so do sculptors. And there are about a metric ton of reasons for why said piece would then be shoved in anyway, ranging from a director just going "oh whatever" to time constraints to simply not having the money to redo everything because someone agreed to pay upfront. It's one reason why larger businesses insist on stuff like tryouts rather than just going by artist portfolios. Now places like Privateer can only improve over time as they expand a stable of more professional sculptors who produce better quality models with less fuss like this, but the default mode for the hobby is stuck in "amateur artist wanted to do some anatomy studies with one hand". Looking outside the hobby scene for sculptors is much harder too, and is likely to be much more expensive. Finding better artist is absolutely the end goal, but the process is mind-numbingly stupid. JerryLee posted:Rulebook Heavily, have you talked to Victoria Lamb? I imagine it's likely she wouldn't want to do work on commission given that she has her own successful miniature line, but perhaps she has some ideas or contacts that could be helpful. I had not, but that's an idea! Thanks.
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Aug 16, 2013 11:32
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To shift my discussion here: There are a bunch of things you could do with apps for tabletop gaming, like a real-time board game (these do exist already but there's always room for more), more complex behind-the-scenes math and stuff like that. But ultimately the biggest hurdle is communication between the tabletop game pieces and the software, and the only thing communicating between both is the player. And as I said in the kickstarter thread, making the player do data entry so that a game works is usually a non-starter if you're looking to make something popular. Ideally, the game pieces would communicate what needs to be communicated on their own to the device, but that of course invokes the spectre of "why is this a board game at all". But then you have games like Betrayal on the House on the Hill which might benefit from stuff like more randomized hidden scenarios that don't require booklets. The ability to store, contain, crunch and apply a lot more information than a board game normally could would be an interesting way to go in design, so long as it doesn't involve the player just entering a bunch of play data to inform the game of exactly where all the pieces are. You could easily make digital-only products for RPG gaming to do all kinds of interesting stuff; the one prominent example I remember are a bunch of shareware items from the late nineties that basically generated random encounters and weather effects for every day of travel in a hexcrawl style game, essentially streamlining an already complex process. Ultimately the idea of a half-digital game is really cool so people don't let go of it, but people need to stop thinking in terms of just playing your average game and then just entering data into a computer during play. It basically doesn't have any kind of comfortable niche that people have found yet.
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Sep 12, 2013 13:47
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I could totally see a "limited information" style game like Starfleet Battles be digitized. You could even calculate moves on your pad, move as instructed on the board and keep all your information private, leaving your opponent with nothing but a physical piece to look at and plan around. It could keep track of cloaked vessels without the need for elaborate rules: just remove the ship from the board. Scanning a hostile ship would involve rolls made behind the scenes by the two pads. Attacking would be accompanied by sound effects, and captains could handle complex power distribution without having to track it on paper. Of course, that runs into "why is this a boardgame" and so on. I mean, they already made a videogame series from Starfleet Battles. It's called Starfleet Command. In a game like this, there would have to be a balance between resolving things on your computer and having that integrate seamlessly with what's going on at the table. Not have it be two halves of a game, but one single game. The classic mistake is to have the player do data-entry between the two and do everything twice, but you don't want to overemphasize one portion of the game to the point where the other one feels pointless. Basically, treat the pad as another game component, just like dice or cards.
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Sep 12, 2013 16:26
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I'd much rather see RPG design embrace the idea that you don't need to learn most of the game's rules before even making a character and instead the ruleset grows more complex during play. Really, the classic example here is Traveller. It has a cool chargen system which you can even play as a kind of minigame on its own, rolling life paths and interesting backgrounds and cool randomly generated planets to come from. The actual gameplay by comparison is simple to the point of being immensely boring and doesn't generate those cool results much.
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Sep 13, 2013 22:54
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moths posted:I'm always surprised at the number of ladies playing Warmachine/Hordes, given that tabletop miniatures wargames have always been such a boy's club and the game makes such a deal about being manly man men playing like you have a pair. That, and Privateer Press has gotten progressively better at this over time. It kind of puts the lie to the idea that women don't want to play wargames to begin with. If it's a man's hobby, it's because the men made it so.
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Sep 17, 2013 16:22
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Mikan posted:That "this is a hobby and you should do it for the love of the game" bullshit is toxic and awful. Folks deserve to get paid for their work, and if people feel it's worth shelling out money then awesome. Yes, this. If people elsewhere are allowed to get a bit of cash for doing and enhancing what they love, then so can I. Artists and writers shouldn't be exempted from the "do well off what you love" train.
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Oct 8, 2013 20:21
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Fenarisk posted:Scores of student films, music, and others have shaped the world we are in today by being free. And people still do that. Hell, most of the small products people release for f.e. Dungeon World are for free, as well as for money. Payments are already at the levels of a tip jar, and encourage more creativity and more things being released, often for free. Entire game systems are for free now, and you choose to complain about what amounts to tipping a waiter. e: Oh and I didn't even notice the student film thing. Did you know people get subsidies - i.e. money - for making those a lot of the time? Did you know that they are often funded, even crowdfunded? That good ones even get sold for actual money? Because as it turns out said films cost both money and time in expressing their creativity. And as for monetizing music, that's something artists are doing right now directly on their own such as by selling on their own sites. It also costs money to play songs on the radio. These are things that are quite monetized. Rulebook Heavily fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Oct 8, 2013 |
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Oct 8, 2013 20:54
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The whole concept of marketing designers like rock stars - yes, that was seriously how they phrased it - was born at Wizards of the Coast. Skip Williams and Monte Cook were lead poster boys for that project. The end result was that most fans hated Skip for his "Sage Advice" column personally as opposed to as a more abstract figure, and Monte Cook just kept doing it because it seemed to work, and ended up competing with D&D's brand. That's why they downplayed that strategy considerably as time went on. As for Monte's design credit, I'll credit him for designing a full game when he stops copying the drat D&D spell list for every product he puts out and just tweaking it upwards or downwards.
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Oct 10, 2013 07:47
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Not me though, I'm hostile and awful.
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Nov 20, 2013 23:49
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Well, it looks like he's mostly working in open license game systems and self-help manuals (e-publishing guides, hah) with a very few early forays outside that. Mostly what he's done in recent years is short fiction anthology stuff, and even that's not a lot. So uh, yeah. Doesn't really have any kind of credentials that other small-time freelancers don't, aside from maybe over a decade of experience and a proven record of not delivering on time.
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Nov 21, 2013 00:27
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Jack Norris is hardly a bastion of good industry sense, either.
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Nov 21, 2013 08:17
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JDCorley posted:I disagree that Adamant hasn't ever done anything notable or good. Most people around these parts don't value d20 that much but there are a lot of things Adamant did right: Not gonna lie, if the qualification is that it has to be notable only ICONS fits the bill because I have never heard of any of these other things. And I have a tendency to pick up weird obscure foreign RPGs no one else has heard of.
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Nov 21, 2013 22:34
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I'm not trying to be inflammatory when I say this, but the way GMS has been treading here reminds me rather sharply of a certain other infamous tradgames publisher. Notably, the inability to take criticism, and the ever-sliding release dates (on top of missing material), combined with - has to be said - an absolutely colossal ego and inflated sense of his own capabilities and importance.
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Nov 22, 2013 03:58
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The recent Heroquest kickstarter was closed, and now the company that actually owns the trademark and product gives its point of view.quote:Background concerning suspension of Gamezone’s Kickstarter campaign It's so open and honest that I expect GMS to spew hate about it any minute now. What's this thread's take?
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Dec 1, 2013 06:34
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JackMann posted:I think it comes down to the fact that people in gaming like and respect Fred Hicks, and praise his decisions. GMS wants that praise and respect. He dreamed of being the next Gygax, Well he's got one thing down pat: a batshit insane publishing schedule. Let's never forget that the three books required to run AD&D 1e (Monster Manual, Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide) came out over the course of three years. This industry was never founded on solid principles.
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Dec 1, 2013 08:57
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So Games Workshop lost 25% of its stock value in one day. This is a few days old at this point but I guess we'll have some perspective on this. I'll give this insight: it's been a few days and the stock is not recovering, but isn't exactly in freefall either. Thoughts? e: http://masterminis.blogspot.de/2014/01/the-future-of-games-days-games.html (this is more funny than it is impartial and informative)
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Jan 17, 2014 22:13
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It's not really "new store", is it? You can't play there or do much and there's just one employee in every new store. They're more like GW kiosks.
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Jan 17, 2014 23:03
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One of the big things now is that GW's community outreach is small and shrinking. I've seen several reports of how Games Day events are run for profit/have to make their cost back, no longer give out even T-shirts to attendees and don't even have space for people to play games. Golden Demon has been deemphasized, too. I never went to a Games Day event as a kid. I didn't live with the means or in the right country. But y'know what kept me going for a few years in the hobby? The cool poo poo that went down on Games Day. The tournament reports (ha ha remember Games Workshop organizing play for their game?) and Golden Demon looked really cool. There was a real sense that the company played games and encouraged people to play their games. Games Day as I hear of it now is a chance to pay fifty euros or its equivalent in order to get to the Forge World counters and receive the privilege of buying product... at retail price. No game tables. No live painting demonstrations (GD Germany did those but there might not be another German GD sponsored by GW at all). No early release deals or any deals of any kind. And the painting competition has gotten a lot of flak for basically being a downplayed thing, with display models being placed under yellow halogen bulbs that distort the paint jobs and the event being over in an hour or so. And in line with all of this, attendance is way, way down. GW doesn't really care about building or maintaining a community. They think that those will manage just fine on their own and that they can treadmill the youngsters forever. The communities that do stick around end up being poisoned against the company. (But hey that's okay so long as they're buying product right?!?!?!? No, it isn't). So yeah, it really is an economic miracle that something like this didn't happen sooner.
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Jan 18, 2014 15:04
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There's all kinds of elements as to why Space Marines are so popular and get people into the game. When I started playing 40k two editions ago, the choice to start with Marines was easy. I needed to buy the smallest amount of models to get a playable army and they were the easiest to paint so as to look good with a limited palette. That was literally it, that's the clincher. And it's remained true for years, and although this is all anecdotal it's still the top reason a lot of people I know pick them (and these days the Grey Knights) as their intro army. They have been an economical way to get into the game in comparison with other choices in time and money. I'm pretty sure GW doesn't really recognize this; I used to think they did, but I'm not so sure anymore because the price point, already high, has reached the point where the old Marines aren't occupying that sweet intro-level spot of juvenile masculine fantasy mixed with comparatively low entry bars. So if the new Marines didn't boost sales, I am not surprised. They have creeped towards being too expensive, GW hasn't done a whole lot to get people into the game lately, and there's now a new "minimum entry" army occupying their old position. That's before I even consider how we're still in a recession and all and how there's lots of competition these days. That price point is worth expanding on further. I did a little price comparison today: I compared the price of GW models and Mantic Games introductory level army deals for Kings of War. The two games are similar in many respects, share a development history, use the same base sizes and in some cases are pretty much just serial numbers away from being published by the other company. This army deal of 135 dwarf figures goes for 99 pounds: Translated roughly into GW unit pricing (with Cold One cavalry subbing in for the nonexistent dwarf GW cav), it came to around 300 pounds for the sane content, not including the fact that the Mantic army deal has the army book and rulebook for Kings of War included. This 179 model deal for undead models for 99 pounds eclipses 400 pounds in equivalent GW models. That's five hundred if you include the price of the rules needed to play. Does that seem sane to anyone? One game offers a full playable army for the price the other charges just to buy the rulebooks needed to play. The main difference between the two games is visibility in the marketplace, and that's rapidly changing in Mantic's favor in the wake of its successful kickstarter campaigns for Deadzone and Dreadball. Whether or not the GW stock drop heralds change, change is coming whether GW is ready for it or not.
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Jan 19, 2014 09:20
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Gravy Train Robber posted:This is a direct policy from the top of GW though- to spread out their presence as much as possible with one-employee shops, and, well, mostly irregular hours. You've got GW shops in towns that really can't support one, and making no effort to provide anything but presence because they are allergic to any sort of rational policy when it comes to other shops selling their products. There usually one overworked employee, responsible for everything, and without the ability to engage customers or attempt to run demonstrations or events or anything. Wouldn't it be easier and cheaper at that point to buy poster and TV ads if all they want is presence? It's not like the game stores stock half the poo poo in the catalogue or take special orders as-is.
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Jan 19, 2014 19:23
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Hell, here's a thing that completely wrecks GW's attempts to seek presence: they banned independent game stores from using GW models and photos in their own advertising, including using posters and things in a storefront. Even the lone FLGS in Iceland had to take down half their posters and part of their window display. They have a Warhammer display cabinet they're not allowed to label with the names of models or the name of the company that makes them. The only logos allowed in the store are the ones on the paint rack (fast being eclipsed by alternatives like Vallejo) and the ones on the actual boxes, and the trade deal changes every single year. GW has their cake and eats it too. Games Day is now a for-profit operation, which has killed it anywhere that isn't in the US or the UK (and when Games Day has zero tables for games to be played and all the models sold there are at retail price and are available just as easily through the online store on any other day without paying a fifty pound attendance fee to get in line, something is deeply off). The stores are opened to increase GW presence but are expected to hit sales targets across the board while not being allowed to stock half the GW catalogue and the stores are open at irregular hours and are under part-time management by people who are treated as eminently disposable units. Will this even shake this arrangement up? Who knows. e: Oh yeah and then there are the rumors that Fantasy is going to lose armies. I doubt it: They apparently have new sculpts for at least one of them and want to recoup costs (Wood Elves), so I think it's more likely that the armies on the "chopping block" (Wood Elves, Bretonnians, Beastmen) will see a new type of release from GW: All three armies in one book, all at once, with few actually NEW models for the line. And that will be the state of things going forward: much fewer new sculpts and models, but more concentrated releases. Cutting them entirely doesn't make sense to me at all, same as with the rumors that finecast is out. They'll instead try to leverage the models and sculpts they already have for all they're worth. Rulebook Heavily fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Jan 19, 2014 |
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Jan 19, 2014 19:52
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It's more that those kickstarters are doing a very sensible thing: They title the projects with the elevator pitch. This is a perfectly reasonable and sane thing to do when you want people to click on your project and the title of a kickstarter imparts no legal power over the name of its eventual product or service. It's a good and intelligent tactic to use when getting people to take a closer look. I personally would not have written the elevator pitch or the kickstarter title by referencing Miyazaki or Ghibli directly as a stylistic thing, but I probably would have put it in the project's description somewhere to describe what I was going for since it seems to encapsulate it very well. It's also not misappropriation of a trademark to reference that trademark directly and say who owns it, which this kickstarter clearly does.
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Jan 22, 2014 23:57
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And when that stops being the most accessible thing to people. You can do something off the wall and original, but more often than not you run into the problem of making your product accessible to a consumer. It helps if you have some kind of license to piggyback off of, but only Weis productions are doing that these days.
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Jan 23, 2014 00:39
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Well yeah, there's a big difference between balancing accessibility with originality and just xeroxing the thing you've played since you were twelve. A difference that's all too often lost in this hobby. But the accessibility thing is a big issue that's not easy to solve.
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Jan 23, 2014 00:49
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Defiance Games has pulled some pretty nasty stuff in the past. Here's a revealing one: quote:So what's new? Well, not long after, apparently Defiance Games once more had a change of management. That's right, they 'coincidentally' changed management right before the Kickstarter and 'coincidentally' change management again once the KS was over. Who's the new man in charge? I'll give you a hint, his name starts with T and has the letters O, N and Y in it. ... This is for another kickstarter (their own, in fact), but they seem to have pulled a similar trick this time. The Tony being talked about is Tony Reidy, the number one factor here: he had another company that went under and then immediately righted itself once he'd been ousted. quote:Not everyone knows this, but the person who owns and started up Defiance Games was the previous owner of Wargames Factory, Tony Reidy. That was the time that they publically and conveniently "got new management" just in time to do a kickstarter and then immediately switched back to Tony Reidy once the money was in the house. And under part 3 of this blogger's exposé series, there is a sentiment that we as a hobby need to sear into our minds. quote:Do I think DG purposely misled and lied to Torn Armor though? Yes. Granted, this is purely my opinion but based on their past behavior, switching CEOs, not paying proxie models or rustforge etc, this really seems like something they would do. And seriously, this needs to be stopped. As a community, we really need to bring DGs antics to the publics awareness so that people know who they're dealing with. Long story short, the kickstarter money probably went the same way that all their kickstarter money has: to pay employee back pay and old debts instead of trying to finance their actual obligations. The news hadn't spread because, surprise surprise, the hobby allows toxic people to continue to exist.
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Jan 24, 2014 16:00
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Mors Rattus posted:That's unfair, there's no mention of rape or whores. Look again. (Playtest doc is out.) At some point this industry will have to realize how making, actively supporting and even encouraging this stuff makes the hobby look. Ron Edwards in particular, who wanted to make high-concept, high-visibility games, should understand the knockback effect this can have on the hobby.
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Mar 18, 2014 20:28
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| # ¿ May 6, 2024 09:56 |
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Every female model in fantasy and sci-fi wargaming primarily exists to titillate men. Discuss.
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Apr 20, 2014 01:47
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