|
JDCorley posted:Yeah, gamers are ultra-bad at predictions for some reason, but mine is that one day there will be a gigantic Kickstarter that completely fails to deliver anything whatsoever ("sorry, we spent all your money giving it a try and failed"), there will be a lawsuit about it, and that lawsuit will also fail to deliver anything whatsoever. I really thought the OUYA was going to be the iceburg to KS's Titanic, but not anymore. Kickstarter can use NOT A STORE language to distance themselves from any multi-million dollar disaster, and the project creators are going to be the target of ire - not the service that facilitated the transactions. Suppose you buy a DVD player at Radio Shack and get an empty box. Would you stop shopping at that mall entirely, or just Radio Shack?
|
#
¿
Apr 20, 2013 12:36
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 08:34 |
|
|
The first was for the tech demo to show to investors - did the videogames industry as a whole decide it was poo poo? Or did Goblinworks just want to double-squeeze fans already on the hook for in-game rewards?
|
|
#
¿
Apr 20, 2013 15:17
|
|
|
You give reaper money to expand their line. They pay you back in miniatures because it's cheaper for them than going through normal channels. It's not a store, it's not a preorder, it's not an investment, it's not a philanthropic altruism dispensary - it's a Kickstarter project. It has elements of all those and doesn't fit neatly into any one box. What we should be asking is why categorizing it still gives people raging boners and aneurysms.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 20, 2013 23:10
|
|
|
LT, I really don't think it's a good idea to make this a one-time thing. You can still sell them through Etsy or eBay at a higher price, but more importantly it won't come across as "after this kickstarter I'm falling off the planet" which doesn't inspire confidence. Successful creators are totally excited about their project and enthusiasm drives support. It's going to be hard to sound enthusiastic about a thing you *REALLY* want to make happen! ...Once! and then never touch again.  Even if your eBay store sells them for twice as much, the fact that kits are still produced will help. Who hasn't wanted to expand their table, or broken something and wanted a replacement?
|
|
#
¿
Apr 21, 2013 19:51
|
|
|
If you promise a future discount for backers, you add value without closing yourself off to the rest of the world. Plus, people will look at the price for non backers when they're evaluating the deal. "I'm getting $400 worth of terrain for $100!" looks better than "I'm getting $100 worth of terrain that other people can't buy later!" even if both backers are getting the exact same terrain.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 22, 2013 16:24
|
|
|
E: phone posting!
|
|
#
¿
Apr 22, 2013 16:25
|
|
|
Something about crowd-funding has been bothering me for a while, and this is a better place to discuss it than the announcement thread. I've quoted two posts from that thread to illustrate what I'm talking about. Jedit posted:That middle mascot looks decidedly familiar. Eyespy posted:If you want a Blood Bowl Indigogo, how about this Star Wars themed one?  Between this and ten-thousand Firefly crews and "homage" figures, there is a lot of stealing going on. I don't think Disney or GW will go bankrupt because some guy is making Star Wars Blood Bowl teams, but I do feel that artist should get paid for their work. This also cheats legitimate studios who go through hoops to make above-board tie-ins. I'm wondering if crowd-funding accommodates infringement because of the short window it gives owners to respond and challenge it; Other short-term sales sites like Tee Fury have been caught shamelessly stealing with very little consequence. Another possibility is that the owner doesn't want to be the "bad guy" to the backers who have already paid for the item. (Not to mention that the creators can argue that nothing was sold because KICKSTARTERS ISNT A STORE OK? and these are all gifts or rewards.) Or the thing is perceived as too small-potatoes to bother with. I don't think this is going to destroy gaming forever or anything that hyperbolic, I just cringe every time I see this stuff. It's tacky and I and worry that it'll eventually provoke a disproportional sweeping response that hurts future projects.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 6, 2013 14:35
|
|
|
Disney has a history of absurdly pursuing violations. I mean, if a reasonable person looks at the Star Wars Bloodbowl stuff, they're going to come to the conclusion that it's low quality Star Wars or Games Workshop merchandise. Which it isn't. I can't imagine inviting that legal ruin into my house, much less ordering it with a side dish of Games Workshop. Yet, here it is. I worry someone will cross a line and the pendulum will swing the other way, with big companies aggressively policing and c&d'ing original designs. A new wargame about the space battle for planet Iwo Jima IV? Not if it contains the words "space" and "marine" consecutively.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 6, 2013 18:14
|
|
|
I'm not as worried about UpFront! as you guys, but I'm also not in it for as much. There have been some setbacks, but there have also been a lot of updates and significant progress - I just hope Texas doesn't gently caress this.jivjov posted:It exists, it has every right to exist, and people who want nothing to do with it have every right to ignore its existence. This is a really cute and dangerous sentiment. Do people just not remember the 80's Satanic Panic? Because as much as I'd hate to see swordrape become the new face of tabletop gaming, it's a Fox News Alert away from undoing 20 years of mainstreaming the hobby. FW:FW:FW:THIS IS WHAT YOURE GRANDCHILDREN DO ROLLPLAYING
|
|
#
¿
Aug 6, 2013 12:28
|
|
|
I'm more concerned about the real effect it would have on prospective players. Part of why things are better now is that games have moved out of mom's basement. Gamer is becoming less synonymous with maladjusted nerd. Crap like this puts a black eye on the industry and drives away people who might otherwise make it a better place.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 6, 2013 12:42
|
|
|
We have proof of it being a thing they are trying to make money with. There's no reason something can't be both a product and a troll, unless I imagined Glen Beck's nazi bookcover in a fever dream.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 9, 2013 13:12
|
|
|
That's been answered pretty clearly in statements from both parties, too. I'm not sure what the disconnect is.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 9, 2013 21:18
|
|
|
As a real-world example, when 7E Call of Cthulhu was being talked about, I googled the layout guy to see what kind of work he'd done. I don't regularly do this, but the art in the 7e book was a big deal - the rules weren't expected to be that removed from a book I already own. If I'd seen anything on-par with misery index stuff, I'd have absolutely walked away.jivjov posted:Were I in charge of inverse World, I probably would have gone with including a small disclaimer that Inverse World and all authors and contributors thereof are not affiliated with and do not support Misery Index et all, and perhaps refraining from working with that layout guy in the future. Why should Mikan be foreced to acknowledge MI in his product? Even denial of endorsement is a type of association. People are going to look it up and associate it with Inverse World, and it will read as "writer claims no association with associates". It's like a "Have you stopped beating your wife?" scenario; A disclaimer would be tantamount to writing "I have stopped beating my wife" in the introduction. I realize this is dead horse territory, but I really wanted to get that off my chest. Gau posted:Likewise, I generally look down on people who engage or even like the Foglios, because they are pretty awful people. I know XXXenophile was kind of garbage, and they've done some style-jarring MtG art, but is there anything controversial there?
|
|
#
¿
Aug 10, 2013 16:53
|
|
|
I feel like the whole model of gaming is shifting towards a more "episodic" format. Not that you didn't buy AD&D or GURPS or oWoD in installments, but barely anything today goes to print without planned expansions. This subscriber model is replacing the "buy and you have it" one, which creates much higher barrier-to-entry for people who weren't there on day one, and that brings me around to how this is relevant: After launch, it's easier to mine existing customers than to creating new ones. There are exceptions, some of the smarter and more forward-thinking companies have recruiter programs and have "deputized" fans to help teach the game in-stores. I'm re-learning Warmachine later this month through a guy in PP's program. GW used to have their Outriders community-organizers, and it's almost mandatory for TCG games that they have organized play of some sort. But after a few years of bloat, without such a program, you've created an impregnable wall of material. My sister asked me if I wanted Arkham Horror for Christmas; I looked at the bulk of expansions and told her to save her money. It's daunting as gently caress to an outsider, but it's cheaper and easier to produce additional content than design new games. The move toward Kickstarter makes sense because it perfect incentive for day zero purchasing, creates interest, and can generate a huge starter-pool of players to sell expansions to. The higher tiers and exclusives appeal to "gotta catch 'em all" customers who are going to start on the right foot with alt-sculpt miniatures, mini-expansions, fancy alternate cover, and all the exclusive limited edition paraphernalia. I recognize that I'm a sucker and fall into this group from time to time - but there are games I've skipped entirely because there was no (sane or affordable) way to get "everything". This character was a con exclusive, that equipment card came from the Kickstarter, or this miniature went to pre-orders only. It's a huge loving turn-off. And it's a shame, because they obviously don't see the customers they're losing with this poo poo. Missed sales are hard to gauge, because they produce no visible metrics. But it's stupid to assume they don't happen and there's nothing that can be done about it.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 15, 2013 12:16
|
|
|
I saw this in the Reaper thread and maybe it could use some discussion over here.Fix posted:Nothing yet, but they recently put out an advisory warning that might point to changes in the future. This is probably one of the most well-crafted CYA advisories I've seen. From here KS could do anything between absolutely nothing to eliminating stretch goals, and then point at this message and cite this message as warning of it. Although if stretch goals get barred, they'll probably just be moved off-site to the fulfillment pages and KS can claim even less responsibility for them.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 21, 2013 11:57
|
|
|
This is a better thread than the KS one for this discussion: Why do people keep trying to technologize board games? It seems that every few years someone comes along with the idea to make a hybrid game that uses physical components and digital mechanics. So you fast-forward your VCR to location 0224, push a button on the Dark Tower, zap your miniatures location into your smartphone, hold your cards where the xBox can see, or key in what chess pieces you moved and then the game tells you how to move pieces around. This has never worked. They've almost universally felt like digital games saddled with physical components. I should add that I'm not talking about Skylanders or Infinity - those are both videogames with toys. What I'm talking about would be the equivalent of Mickey or Spyro appearing onscreen and telling you how to play with your toys on a special board where they can see them. It's obvious why this isn't how the games work, and why they're each fairing better than Eye of Judgement. The current "trend" seems to be to go with smartphones and tablets, but that invites compatibility issues between platforms - which further divides the (already tiny) wedge of potential players who would invest in such a game. You're dealing with a demographic that isn't big to start with and then subdividing them along smartphone OS preference. You need a critical mass of players, and you're starting out with the disadvantage of guaranteeing some people will never buy your game. And you can't design your own scenarios or units. Hell, Ex Illis implemented DRM on its miniatures. I get that it's a cool idea. It is a cool concept - you play a game and use the device and man now it's the future, right? But then the novelty wears off and you're left with an inflexible boardgame that's harder to play because of the paraphernalia. It's always ended up with the worst of both worlds, but there are always hundreds of thousands of dollars being dumped into this because ... why?
|
|
#
¿
Sep 12, 2013 12:45
|
|
|
I'm throwing VHS games in with the lot because they epitomize the awkward, stilted lengths to which people have gone to force tabletop and tech together. I don't think there's anything at all wrong with tech game-aids (ie: interactive character-sheets, army/character builders, rules references, score-keepers) and there is a role for them because they make playing the tabletop game easier. With a "digital referee," we're making a videogame harder to play because it's married to its physical components. The hybrid model falls flat when forced digital complicates the tabletop experience, or vice versa. If I'm moving my units and then inputting my moves to watch an animation of them moving, fighting, and dying digitally - then removing my physical models from the physical table - Why am I even doing that? I'm essentially playing a digital game and moving superfluous props. I've lost the convenience, fast play, portability, and smooth experience of a videogame. Digital game aides will certainly get better, and may organically develop into fun hybrid games in the future. But the model where we're playing the same game twice (moving physical pieces, inputting our moves into the 'real' digital game) is redundant and gimmicky. But until it goes hands-off, we're stuck doing that and it's never been fun for very long.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 12, 2013 15:57
|
|
|
The AR stuff has a lot of potential that just isn't getting used. It would be rad to slide AR cards around on a modeled battlefield while viewing them on my smartphone as fully rendered armies of hundreds of samurai. It would also be infinitely more practical than having hundreds of samurai models to paint, break, and lose to my cat's hatred of soldiers. But is anyone doing that sort of thing? homullus posted:It doesn't always fail! The times when technology enhances play are times when information needs to be processed real-time, or given and then taken away. I was unaware of these and am corrected!
|
|
#
¿
Sep 12, 2013 17:25
|
|
|
Leperflesh posted:e. Christ, I'm not a prude, but I'm really coming off that way! I had a hard time articulating this, but I know how you feel. So much of the 'sexy' stuff is just uncomfortable. It gets in the way of enjoying what I otherwise enjoy about miniatures - Namely, using them in games, displaying and photoblogging them. It's not something I'm in a hurry to associate myself with. Alien Rope Burn posted:Honestly I would probably have a lot more respect if they were like "here are some sculpted tits, we heard you guys like those". American guys (probably men everywhere?) have some weird need to be dishonest with themselves about enjoying tits or anything else perceived as vices. It's why we get stilted justifications involving iron skin, demon blood, or magic whatever. It's the classic "Read it for the articles" argument. And because of it, a guy who would never buy a Hustler might buy Playboy - Hustler is for perverts but Playboy is for classy gentlemen. When I smoked, I never bought cigarettes by the carton - That's what addicted smokers do. If they flat-out said "hey buy some boobs-warriors" I don't think it would fly.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 16, 2013 12:17
|
|
|
Is there room for a PWYW+ where if you pay more than X you get some kind of prestige ... thing? It's how the Humble Bundles work, and they seem to do allright. But I wonder how many cheap nerds just wouldn't bother with the extra mission or whatever.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 17, 2013 02:26
|
|
|
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. The female models are typically absurd, but women occupy important, powerful, and significant roles both in the setting and in the tabletop game. Is that all it takes to make the hobby more inclusive?
|
|
#
¿
Sep 17, 2013 16:19
|
|
|
That may be true for something like Malifaux (it's not big around here so I have no idea) but Warmachine's aesthetics are mostly only steampubk on paper. In practice, the models are just a combination of generic fantasy and sci-fi. Yeah some robots have smoke stacks, but there are no tiny hats and big dresses - everybody is dressed like they mean business. Sometimes sexy business with high heels and flintlocks, but otherwise it's not terribly Victorian.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 17, 2013 16:41
|
|
|
JDCorley posted:* Adamant tried "app pricing" for its supplements for a while, trying to see if it was viable to just sell virtually all supplements for $2.99 or under, and shared the results with others. (It didn't work that well.) Difficulty selling your supplements for $3 is probably indicative of bigger systemic problems.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 22, 2013 01:36
|
|
|
Alien Rope Burn posted:Like I just believe you did, see what I did there.  But if I wasn't buying D20 poo poo Nobody Cares About at $20, dropping the price to $3 doesn't change the underlying problem.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 22, 2013 02:59
|
|
|
FWIW, back when you could look at Amazon's top selling RPGs 4e D&D titles regularly dominated sales, occupying over half of their top selling items in that category. Obviously it's a snapshot of one retailer at one time, but it's the complete opposite of what many forums were screaming at the time.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 22, 2013 22:50
|
|
|
It's embarrassing that "pay people when they complete their work" is a controversial statement. It's basic adult courtesy. You'd go to jail if you tried to delay payment for an oven and tables until after your restaurant is open and making money.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 30, 2013 20:34
|
|
|
Is there any reason (other than banks being harder to rip off than freelancers) that publishers can't get legit loans to pay writers and artists?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 30, 2013 23:53
|
|
|
Sarx posted:Its a shame because a lot of their models are incredible looking, but short of a total rethinking of their rules and marketing, I can't picture myself ever playing a GW game at this point. Specialist Games and Warhammer Historicals always struck me as GW's Bell Labs where the actual innovation happened. I can't point to specific examples anymore, but I distinctly remember seeing good Warhammer (or 40k) mechanics that I could recognize from their debut in the "minor leagues." As 40k grew, it's encouraged larger and larger armies while doing very little to facilitate playing those armies. My breaking point was when Apocalypse came out without any means to abbreviate turn length. You'd expect some stats to be consolidated, squads' fire to be consolidated into a firepower table, rules for movement trays, or anything that would make the game play more like Epic. And instead it was just "Dump all your toys on the table and play a game built for a fraction of them."
|
|
#
¿
Jan 18, 2014 14:47
|
|
|
Kerbtree posted:They run rather nonstandard hours, though - 12-4ish. I'd have expected them to roll their hours round to 1-9, run an event every evening as a showpiece and sell bucketloads of plastic fitin' mens to the people who come. I typically assume they are primarily making money online, running the business as a hobby, buying their personal figures or magic cards wholesale, bad at business, or some combination of those things. Once in a while you get a "dad bought me a store and I helped plan it!" place, and that's kind of the worst.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 19, 2014 17:54
|
|
|
FMguru posted:Popular-Thing-X-With-The-Serial-Numbers-Filed-Off has been a thing for RPGs since small times. Vampire:The Masquerade is the unofficial adaptation of Anne Rice's Vampire stories, Cyberpunk 2020 is the unofficial adaptation of William Gibson's Sprawl stories, and Conspiracy X is the unofficial X-Files adaptation, to name just three. Vampire is Anne Rice's Vampire, but it's also The Lost Boys, Necroscope, Nosferatu, and every other popular vampire media that they could get their hands on. If White Wolf had pitched a game as roleplaying in the world of Anne Rice's Vampire stories it would need to have been licensed. Instead, they say it shares themes with "popular vampire stories of today" the exact same way Law and Order episodes were "Ripped from today's headlines" without buying any rights. You can make a game about cyborg assassins from the future. But you can't call it "Anachronistic Austrian Assassin Android: A game inspired by James Cameron's Terminator" and talk about how it's totally based on the Terminator films. That's how you get a C&D.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 23, 2014 00:52
|
|
|
It almost makes me wish Defiance produced anything to avoid buying.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 24, 2014 19:18
|
|
|
Thundercloud posted:At that point all the problems at Wargames Factory stopped. To the point where they are now a go to contractor for other mini companies and will take concept art and turn it into minis, as they have done with some of the Malifaux plastics. There's seriously a world of difference between the kits they put out today and their earliest lines. Is there a timeline for when the changeover happened? I'm curious to see how it overlaps with their production values.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 25, 2014 12:01
|
|
|
Cross-posting from the Mantic thread:moths posted:I've also noticed that the plastic sprues they (Mantic) do produce tend to be relatively system-agnostic, which is really great plan. You're not limiting your customers to a narrow band of Kings of War players with a particular army. Plastic zombies and astro-zombies are useful in almost about any fantasy, sci-fi, or horror wargame or RPG. Mantic's gotten some additional mileage out of their plastic kits by issuing some metal upgrade / conversion bits - but these can sometimes be a bear to work with. I'm no insider, but this seems like a pretty obvious point that some companies are missing: Your super-specialized plastic kits are killing you. The success stories in plastic miniatures are kits with broad appeal, flexibility, and high perceived value. Historical stuff works in plastic. Generic fantasy and sci-fi works. So how is Wyrd making this work and not GW? Are they making it work?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 5, 2014 18:47
|
|
|
Comrade Gorbash posted:The saddest part is I'm not even sure that's true. Look at some of the most successful gaming Kickstarters and projects, from Dungeon World to Eclipse Phase to the top video game KickStarters, and they not only aren't presenting oversexualized characters, they're specifically going out of their way to present reasonable, admirable, strong female characters. The elephants in the room are Kingdom Death and its $2,000,000+ Kickstarter, Relic Knight's $900,000 kickstarter, and Toughest Girls in the Galaxy with almost $700,000. Dungeon World and Eclipse Phase combined pulled in just about $200,000 (10x less than Kingdom Death). I'm not arguing that there isn't a market for reasonable, accessible, sane depictions of women - but it's important if you're looking at the community as a whole to recognize that material only currently occupies a fraction of it. And while that might not look like a healthy sign, on the whole the industry is substantially less skeevy than it was ten or twenty years ago. JerryLee posted:Anecdotally, I've talked to at least one WMH-playing woman who straight up said that she played that game because the 40K community was groggy, misogynistic and toxic whereas the WMH one was laid back and not creepy. There isn't necessarily a 1-to-1 relationship between titty art and a regressive culture surrounding a game (not that you said in so many words that there was). WMH is a really interesting case, since they have their share of bikini tops but women are given parity with the other characters at all levels. In the art and figure sculpts, nearly everyone is depicted in strong poses: You'll see a sexy character, but she's sexy and powerful. (The contrast to this is cheesecake posing, where the subject is depicted in some stage of helplessness.) The only glaring WMH exception is the totally pin-up con-exclusive figures, which are tongue-in-cheek and compartmentalized enough that they're clearly meant to be taken as cheesecake apart from the regular setting. (Ie: Privateer Press has already established that WMH female characters have more to do than lean on stuff, tousle their hair, and gaze longingly.) The issue ultimately has more to do with how female characters are depicted rather than how naked they are. Kingdom Death and Warmachine both have inappropriately-dressed-for-combat women figures. In WMH they're powerful badass commanders of mighty armies, and in KD they're literally furniture. Going forward, that distinction will make more of a difference than any kind of cleavage / buttcheek ratio.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 20, 2014 18:55
|
|
|
JerryLee posted:Did you account for the fact that the first three are minis products and the latter two aren't? Doesn't that skew the cost upwards? I mean, it's still a problem insofar as there's $2,000,000 worth of interest in Kingdom Death, but if you're trying to get a headcount it's not the best metric. It's obviously not 1:1 between RPGs and minis products, but there's enough overlap that it's essentially the same community. That is to say we could split hairs until it's as micro-compartmentalized as the metal community, but outside of a game store nobody differentiates between a TCG, RPG, or miniatures game. The danger is the message that those numbers send producers about that community. Someone in a big office will eventually notice that the same nerds who bitch about a $7 PDF are eager to throw $2MILLION at an untested game festooned with tits and strange cocks. It doesn't matter if they're not actually the same people. The message is how deep the easy pile of money is, and exactly where to dig. (I'd totally forgotten about Reaper Bones I & II. Their massive success makes me feel a lot better about things.)
|
|
#
¿
Apr 21, 2014 06:26
|
|
|
Rulebook Heavily posted:Trust me, big businesses have made the mistake of assuming that they might as well be the same community and have paid for it in the past. The same has happened with CCGs and RPGs. That link could have gone to: -Dragon Dice, Spellfire, D&D miniatures battle game, D&D Clue, Boardgames, AD&D Woodburning Kit -Battletech TCG, RPG, Choose-your-own-Mech-Duel picture book, dozens of video games -Warhammer 40k novels, videogames, RPG, two(?) failed TCGs, 54mm miniatures RPG hybrid, boardgames -Bolt Action Card the card game  , Warmachine / Hordes deckbuilding game, Bloodbowl Team Manager card gameBusiness at large is in a weird place where franchises are emphasized more than individual products. Gaming has been trying really super hard to get here forever. The games industry has consistently pushed (without much success) for decades, but there is zero reason to think that won't continue.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 21, 2014 12:39
|
|
|
Yeah I didn't mean that all those games were stinkers - just that gaming lends itself to cross-genre exploitation (or whatever buzzword soup means marketing a game universe in different channels.) I walked the long way to say that an apple-to-orange comparison between brands is fine, provided that the discussion is about fruit sales.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 21, 2014 23:52
|
|
|
I used to think that until I found myself buying train buildings for cheap terrain.
|
|
#
¿
May 7, 2014 14:29
|
|
|
Worse than that is the advertising image of some 1980s grandpa with kids that are loving thrilled to watch the train go in circles with him. It's the cruelest lie. Your grandkids find no joy in your hobby, either.
|
|
#
¿
May 7, 2014 14:52
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 08:34 |
|
|
I'm glad that at least somewhere the model railroad experience has delivered as promised, that made me smile to think about.
|
|
#
¿
May 7, 2014 17:38
|
|