Why bother about Games Workshop? Because it matters!

Every time somebody mentions Games Workshop anywhere, it is likely to spark a lively discussion. This article is not going to end those discussions. I'm just trying to figure out what it is that is driving those discussions. What do wargamers expect of GW, and what bothers them so much?

A nice example of some GW-love to be found on the net

First of all, everyone agrees about what makes GW special: high quality miniatures (let’s see failcast as an short term aberration), well developed and engaging mythos and mostly innovative games. Although this applies more to the ‘specialist games’ than to Warhammer.

Second, I don’t think it’s about prices. What is acceptable is an individual consideration. I feel awkward at spending more than 3 pounds on a 28mm miniature, while others will gladly smack down a tenner for a superior sculpt. So almost all GW stuff I own I got second hand or remaindered. I was tempted but didn’t even buy the LOTR Nazghul set at half price. Many people have no such inhibitions. But generally people will not get worked up over this much, especially now there are reasonable alternatives.

Where GW lost the plot is in the peripheral shenanigans: gamesdays, White Dwarf, intellectual property, its treatment of its own shops and independent traders and most of all the players. In the last five years we've seen GW's heavy handed approach towards fansites that where keeping alive the interesting in older games, like BloodBowl. And the policy that favoured the online store over independent brick and mortar shops. Then the end of the specialist games. Or the new model for the games days, which was less show, more shop. And now the demise of the monthly White Dwarf in favour of a weekly plus a monthly glossy. In all, it looks like GW is sacrificing its community for the quick buck. 

The point is why non-GW wargamers bother about that at all? I mean, apart from the enjoyment of sticking  it to 'the Man'. My guess is that it is the notion that Warhammer is the portal for young kids to start wargaming. We want more opponents to play against, and somehow expect GW to deliver generation upon generation of fresh blood. 

Of course, Non-GW players realise that the things they value in a lively hobby are not always the same as those of a stock marketed company. GW is in the money making business and has no interest whatsoever in providing clientele to its competition. Not for nothing does it expressly ignore other forms of wargaming by declaring itself The Hobby. No wonder wargamers feel irked by that, but GW have no obligation to anyone other than their shareholders.

An relevant question is whether GW actually serves as the gateway to wargaming. As someone who delved directly into historical wargaming, I have no personal experience, but a comment on one of the Masterminis GW blogs made a big impression on me. A former GW European mainland employee remarked that after the first year about 40% of GW 'kids' quit wargaming altogether, 30% stay in The Hobby and the other 30% move on to clubs or play in their own circle. Which kind of proves the point that we have a real stake in GW's success.

So, with this in mind, many wargamers are torn on the issue of whether they’d like to see The Evil Empire fall or fear the disappearance of those young lads from wargaming forever and see the hobby die out. In fact, knowing those 40% of kids disappearing after GW has ransacked their (parents') wallets breaks our hearts. And we have a sense that if GW pisses of more people, they will not turn to other games and manufacturers, but disappear from wargaming for ever.

So wargamers have good reasons to worry about GW's recent attempts to antagonise their community. The sense of powerlessness only makes it worse.  

Are wargamers driving 3D printing innovation?

Interestingly, there was a Dutch report out recently suggesting that 54% of Dutch people having order 3D prints, had ordered toys of which it was remarked that there is a high share of figurines among them. That would suggest wargamers are a driving force behind the industry.

Two sample monsters at Shapeways stand for Dutch Design Week

Now while I know a few people who have ordered bit from Dutch 3D printing company Shapeways, I'm not quite convinced that this would be enough to drive an industry. Of course direct sales to consumers is still a small industry (some stuff I've seen suggests that industrial or artisanal prototyping is a major source of 3D prints) and the biggest category is art (75% of people have ordered art works). This means that the process is still so expensive that people will only use it for high added value products. Now some toys may be in that area, but wargaming miniatures probably not, especially as the quality of 3D printing is not up to the standard of metal and plastics yet.

There's an interesting post by Andrew Rae of Khorosho Productions about digital design of miniatures. Andrew also uses digital printing for replacement parts. He explains why digital printing is still an art.

Samples from two different printers, taken from Andrew's blog

So what's the future for 3D printing and wargames? My guess:

In the coming few years we will go from the stage where it is only used by a few designers to one where we will see the first commercial releases, with a wide variety of quality. Some new entries (3D print only) will provide low quality miniatures and some established companies will use it for promotional purposes, riding the hype.

My reasoning behind this is that for new entries there is no cost of switching technique and process from sculpting, molding and casting to direct digital, which is holding back the many small manufacturers that have invested heavily in acquiring those skills. Also, the new entries will be amateurs not worrying too much about profitability. And I mean that as even less than many part time manufacturers presently.

Another cool monster from Shapeways

In a following phase, starting within the next decade, some of the low quality producers will improve their technique and find viable business models. I won't be surprised if this leads to one or two of them cornering a large part of the market and becoming major players later. Some established companies will switch (in stages or in one big step) to 3D print.

It will take two decades, I think, for 3D printing to overtake the present forms of production. This will have to do as much with current designers and companies dying out and wear on molds as with companies switching. It will not disappear completely. But once you need to replace a mold, it might be cheaper at some point to just scan the master miniatures.

A wind driven contraption

Of course there will also grow a community of people making copies of models by other companies. These will be lower quality but cheaper. Piracy will be an interesting development, especially if it is hard to monitor. In that case it might actually drive down prices. That development will be very much driven by the moment where 3D scanning/copying will become mainstream.

But in the meantime, will there be designers making money by giving workshops on 3D design and printing? Will there really be a move to companies just providing designs to be printed at home? That would expand the market even more than the internet has done, because shipping costs will disappear. On the other hand, how do you prevent piracy by individuals or local shops? It also depends on the time it will take 3D printing to really compete on cost with mass plastics production.

On the other hand, with the expansion of DTP and lowering of print costs you had a similar situation for boardgames in the 1990s. This has made it much easier to self publish. That is probably the reason that the boardgame industry has so many small, marginal self publishers hoping that one day they make it big. That may also happen in miniatures, although digital designing requires a level of practice and experience comparable to sculpting.

John Terraine goes myth busting WWI

The Smoke and the Fire is a well witten and entertaining read with a clear intent. Terraine has no time for studies critical of British commander in chief Douglas Haig and other WWI generals such as The Donkeys by Alan Clark and Haig’s Command by Denis Winter. In that sense the book feels a lot like Corrigan’s later Mud, Blood and Poppycock that also sets out to bust the myths of incompetence and mass slaughter.

This means Terraine also has little sympathy for Lidell Hart and Fuller, the earliest criticasters of WWI generalship. One chapter dismisses Lidell Hart as a man traumatised by his battlefield experience and suggests that Fuller later rescinded on his earlier views. Of course, to Lidell Hart and Fuller, their criticism was not just a matter of history but also a way to advance their ideas of the future of the British army in the Interbellum.

Terraine defends the military leadership by arguing that contrary to the 'donkeys' caricature they did see the potential of modern weapons and quickly adopted many innovations like machine guns and tanks, but that the delays were in development and production. So the civilians were to blame, really.

Likewise, the maintenance of a sizeable cavalry force was not the result of pigheaded cavalry generals clinging to an outdated arm, but to the fact that cavalry was the only means of operational exploitation of a breakthrough. The technical limits of tanks meant that even by 1918 deep and sustained penetration was impossible. In the spring of 1918 the Germans sorely felt the lack of cavalry to achieve the final breakthrough.

While he acknowledges the cock up that the first day on the Somme was, Terraine argues that this was due to inexperience and too much faith in the effect of artillery. He points out that losses quickly fell and success increased in the following months. And it was the German insistence on counterattack that lent the battle its gruesome human toll. But according to Terraine, that is why it achieved its objective of distracting the Germans from Verdun and wearing the German army out.

Sadly, my copy of The Donkeys seems to have gone AWOL

The best point that Terraine makes is that you have to see WWI in the perspective of the American Civil War and WWII. These are wars in which the challenge was not just military but more so in mobilising a complex whole of economy and society towards victory on many battlefields. That also means the war won’t be won in a single battle. Attrition is part and parcel.

As such the war was a huge challenge to the generals involved: training, organising, supplying and leading mass armies in an environment of solidified defensive lines and a mass of new, unproven technology. But those technological advantages are few and short-lived as the enemy catches up.

This applies to WWII as well. Although the Germans can win early on against opponents that haven’t acquired an answer to their operational innovations, this then turns for the worse. Even the string of unprecedented victories in Russia in 1941 cost them more casualties than the battle of Verdun.

Which ties in with Terraine’s firm stance that the object of war is the defeat of the enemy main army. As long as that is in the field, any diversion only means dispersal of force. On this point he criticises both politicians like Lloyd George and Churchill who pursued campaigns in minor theatres as well as theorists like Lidell Hart who advocated an indirect approach.

Dispersal of British Imperial forces according to Terraine p 57

For Terraine there is no way around it and evasion of the showdown on the Western Front was just a lack of moral courage to face up to the truth and its ugly consequences.  Modern warfare, with its mass armies, will result in mass casualties. The search for a bloodless solution only lengthened the war and caused more casualties.

I think that whoever reads Terraine, like Corrigan, has to readjust their visor from the Lions Led By Donkeys school. But not all the way. Although Terraine often uses statistics and source material to support his point, he rarely goes into great depth, weighing both sides of the argument. It´s hard to find a point where Haig doesn´t come out clean and his detractors come out looking like fools.

Because of that, on a different level this book gave me the indefinable feeling that the lines on these issues in the first post war decades were linked to what faction of British history writers you belonged to. And that was probably related to which school you´d been to, the party you voted for and who published your books. This social dimension gave these discussions a shrill tone that also for example also pervades the post war discussion of generals like Montgomery. I can´t lay my finger on what the factions were though.

Thanks to Nick for giving me this books as a birthday present. The other was Tilt by Nicolas Shrady on the history of Pisa and its tower.

Positive reviews have greater influence on ratings

This research concludes that early positive online reviews tend to have more power over your judgement than later negative reviews. Thanks to Nick for pointing me towards it

Conversely, later positive reviews negate earlier negative reviews. So there is a bias among people looking for online reviews for positive ones (confirmation bias?).

This message has already been taken in by advertisers, who know that it is more important to vote early and get their positive reviews in.

It ties in with the cult of the new and amateur online reviewing in hobby games, to create a good deal of hype.

The cult of the new refers to the tendency to keep publishing new games at breakneck speed at the expense of supporting and playing older games. I know this tendency from first hand, because I love to learn new games and see if I can 'get' them. But once you feel you've mastered the game, interest drops.

Amateur online reviews are not unique to games, but are making an ever increasing mark on internet consumption. While amateur reviewers have their advantages, they tend to be less critical of games and less thorough in their reviews on the actual merits of the game as opposed to rules run through and description of components.

In combination, we see a large number of games pass with lots of fuzz caused but not much staying power. Last year´s hits, can we name them?

A Golden Age of Boardgaming? Maybe, maybe not

Quinns, of the Shut Up & Sit Down boardgaming blog and video reviews recently gave an entertaining if longish talk at the GameCity video gaming conference on the development of boardgames in the last 15 years. He contended that boardgames are now experiencing a Golden Age and argues this mostly on the basis of a marriage of 'German' style mechanisms with 'American' storytelling. This is a story often told in many different ways at Fortress Ameritrash?.

The presentation includes many of the most interesting boardgame designs of the period under review (although War of the Ring is incredibly left out, while City of Horror is included for no good reason). If your not familiar with boardgaming design developments, the whole video is well worth watching, otherwise some of it will feel familiar.

The thesis of a Golden Age of boardgaming only partly convinces. There are many signs of crisis in the boardgaming industry and it is doubtful whether more people are boardgaming these days than 15 years ago. So we should at least differentiate between boardgame design, the boardgaming industry and the hobby.  While I can mostly agree with Quinns on boardgame design going through a strong patch, I have strong doubts about the industry and the hobby.

What I will do today is go is explore Quinns argument on board game design, and then discuss the industry and the hobby on Sunday. Part of that discussion has already filtered into my discussion of brick & mortar game shops in the last couple of days.

Design

Quinn uses the first part of the presentation to show the influence of German style boardgame designs from the 1990s. I’m fully agreed that these designs were more accessible than many older boardgames, and the design built on keeping the race tight until the end. But Quinn adds the dimension of the higher quality of components. On the other hand, theme in most of these games is thin.

By the start of the 21^st century these design concepts started to be copied by ‘western’ designers, who mixed them with ‘American’ storytelling. Examples mentioned are Twilight Imperium, Game of Thrones and more recently X-Wing.

Dominion, the start of something beautiful?

To illustrate how quickly innovation is now taking place in design he went over the recent deckbuilding revolution, starting with Dominion in 2008. Thunderstone in 2009 added theme. Puzzle Strike then allowed playing the oppononent’s deck in 2010. And in 2011 A Few Acres of Snow integrated the deckbuilder into a boardgame, modelling the logistics of war.

Quinns actually leaves the two most exciting developments in game design to the end of the presentatio. The Boardgame Remix Kit allows you to combine elements from Monopoly, Scrabble, Cluedo and Trivial Pursuit to ´build the most dangerous things´. Risk Legacy lets players name continents, add new rules and extra information to the board as the result of events during the game. In this way each copy of the game becomes unique, with it´s own history. 

If it weren't for the Halifax Hammer...

While I agree with the general line of his argument I have two questions. On the one hand, we can also see how innovative designs like Dominion are copied and milked by less innovative designers and publishers.  While further developing the deckbuilding engine, are Thunderstone and other deckbuilder derivates actually good games who themselves will stand the test the time?  

You could also argue that most of this innovation is incremental but that these are not game changers. How many people outside, or even inside the hobby niche, will actually notice?  


Boardgames vs videogames

Later Quinns´ presentation becomes an attempt convert video gamers to board games. He argues that the boardgames revival happened because video games lately haven't reached into areas of social interaction, which leaves room for boardgames.

Videogames are versatile, he continues, but they cannot do everything, like talking, bluffing, joking and auctioning. It’s difficult to imagine a paranoid treason game like Battlestar Galactica or The Resistance working in a video environment.

One of the best games of the past decade. It made me watch the series

Boardgames also do stuff that videogames haven’t done yet: like the dungeoneering mega campaigns of Descent. That kind of 'maximalist' game design is not commercially viable in videogames but in some cases in boardgaming.

Most importantly, Quinns sees no real difference between board and videogames. To him they are two sides of the gaming hobby. Board game design principles can provide a solid foundation for video games with the example of  the recent X-Com being designed as a boardgame. The design tools of bardgames are much more accessible, require less investment and are easier to test. 

Paths of Glory, itself a legendary design, is one of the card driven games that can be enjoyed online using ACTS

But as far as I´m concerned the line between boardgames and videogames is already disappearing. Look at the online engines to play boardgames that have become available: ACTS for card driven games, Vassal for wargames, BrettSpielWelt for eurogames and there´s a host of online/browser games from Travian and Die2Nite to iPad versions of many popular boardgames. 

How will this affect boardgames in the future? Will this mean that physical boardgames will disappear and people will play them online with their friends? Not necessarily. The technology to digitalise boards in player mats is already available, which will allow you to play and easily store long playing games for later use.

It will also make it possible to hardwire the rules into the game components, preventing mistakes or cheating, and allowing limited information, hidden movement and administrative chores to be automated, while still retaining the feel of a boardgame! 

Hopping the zombie games bandwagon

Had a big Nooooooooooh! moment yesterday as the great guys of the Shut Up & Sit Down Show came out with a glowing review of City of Horror. As you could´ve picked up from my Essen report, that game didn´t go down well with me at all. So I was disappointed to see these guys, who´ve shown such good taste in the past, come out like this.

Artwork is good in City of Horror

When I made my opinion known in the comments on their facebook page, a wise ass came out remarking:

"Not sure how deciding who gets eaten by Zombies DOESN'T "connect to zombies at all." This game looks fantastic. We'll be picking it up 4 sure."

Well, here is what I replied

"Just like Caylus and many other euros, this game is a mechanism with a theme pasted on. In a good game, the theme and mechanisms are congruous. Just because there are some nicely illustrated cards and zombie tokens doesn´t mean this game connects to zombies.

This is a move around and pick up game, where the zombies limit your ability to move around and pick up. Running across the street roaming with zombies doesn´t feel like dealing with a zombie outbreak. This is just a designer jumping the zombie bandwagon. Fair enough, but as a zombie game it fails"

There's been tons of zombie games, and Zombies!!! even if it's not the best game ever, captures the flavour of an outbreak extremely well. You try to be in the right place at the moment the helicopter arrives to take one survivor away, while obstructing and attacking your opponents with the zombies.

Four pretty different zombie games

Last Night On Earth has some claim to being the best zombie game ever, although the accompanying CD has opinions divided. Two human players attempt to resolve the outbreak scenario challenges, under constant attack from the zombie players.

And All Things Zombie approaches the theme from a wargamers point of view, guiding you through a survivor campaign of anxious encounters with zombies and other survivors. Which reminds me... this one needs playing!

Zombie State takes the outbreak from a global point of view. You have to build up a working strategy in the midst of local outbreaks that wreck you best laid plans. Unaffected population drops, vital resource areas are lost and if you can't find ways to hold of the zombies or cure the disease you're doomed.

Zombie State: two players happy to contain the outbreak in Mexico. Everything seemed under control then 

The magnificent Die2Nite online game that puts 40 players together in a doomed town, with the option of cooperating or profiting from other peoples efforts is a brilliant experiment in small group cooperation and conforming mechanisms. The best bit is to get out the gallows and hang the traitors!


I even liked the Eaten by Zombies race element in deck builder form, and Zombie In My Pocket's free rider and group dynamics approach.

Starting deck for Eaten by Zombies

It all works because the games put the zombies and the human dilemma first, not the mechanism.

There's no doubt zombies are red hot. Recently two games were published based on the popular Walking Dead comic and TV series, also in the survivor genre. One of them seems to be actually quite good.

The Zombicide kickstarter was a great success, but apparently on the strength of the miniatures, rather than the game.

Even Brad Pitt has thrown in his lot with the movie based on World War Z, arguably one of the more interesting zombie books, combining a Studs Terkel interview style with a sensible background story of the outbreak.

Regrettably this also leads to mediocre games being released. But it's the job of reviewers to separate the wheat from the chaff.