"New Blog post - Privateer Press and wargame expansion" Topic

In my latest blog post I muse on Privateer Press's latest War Machine expansion and what it says about them, Games Workshop and all successful war games.

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Good topic – as a Privateer Press fan it will be interesting to see the course they take in years to come. That said, I'm not crazy about the gigantic models they've been coming out with lately, and the even more freakishly gigantic models slated for the future. Just not my taste.
However, as a businessman and capitalist, I do see their dilemma…

I think most games have a life span. You could pick a point when your game is at it's best. The tournament scene is booming and everyone loves it. Stop development on it (not production) and shift your focus. You spent all this time building a universe that people love. Why not use that? Create a high level game and release everything in a smaller scale. (40k Epic) You could also create a parallel game. Maybe a naval game in the Warmachine universe.

Give your existing customers something new and shiny to buy but also support the game they know and love. Over time you could do reprints of the rulebooks to update them. You could also re-sculpt some stuff to freshen the system up but not these massive changes that leave people with hundreds of dollars worth of useless miniatures. Releasing RPGs is also another option. Let your customer base eat, live, and breath the universe.

I'd also like to see more companies push to get more people into the hobby. Advertise more and hold special events to teach people about the hobby and bring them in. Youtube video painting classes.

Lots of different ideas but it really boils down to getting more cash from your customers.

I do not think that it is possible to derive determinist rules like "all succesful wargames must arrive at stage X" from just two examples. Also, and possibly more important, you are confusing wargames with the companies that do produce them.

Having a complete line of books does not mean that there is no need to produce anymore. Only few people have everything that is in the books and surely the minis they buy still need to be produced. Surely, the marketing mostly seems to work the way you describe, but then this should be pointed out to be a marketing thing and little else.

Personally, my reason to just ignore this type of game is exactly due to the huge ammount of stuff they publish and the fact that I am supposed to know all that stuff to play their games. Madness, if you ask me…

One other point:

"as a businessman and capitalist"

Very likely wrong use of the term. A capitalist is someone who owns means of production and gets surplus value out of workers he hires. Is that what you do? If you mean that you are – for whatever disturbed reason – a supporter of the capitalist mode of production, then please put it that way.

The problem with any miniatures company that is making miniatures for a game rather than simply to collect is that at some point you'll end up with way too many miniatures and the game will collapse under it's own weight. Reaper, for example, can keep producing new miniatures forever and never have a problem. Privateer, on the other hand, is already reaching critical mass with warmachine. The only real solutions are either to scrap everything after a few years and start over, or do what GW does and just replace the entire line every few years. It should be interesting to see what they do with warmachine, I mean I can't imagine them being able to add many more miniatures to the line without it causing some serious problems.

Companies need to understand they have a brand.

For Privateer Press: where is Warmachine Naval or even air? They are doing an RPG but why not 10mm epic?

Reaper is a miniature company. They created some games but their focus is on sculpting and casting miniatures.

Privateer Press is game company. They should continue to make new games. Their is risk that if they release something like Warmachine Naval it will flop and they will loss money.

Sticking with Warmachine will just be a slower death. They could also go with the GW cycle of pushing to get more players with each iterative cycle of the game. GW gains as many players as they loss when the release a codex or a new rule book. Eventually that will stop happening and it will be messy.

10mm or 6mm warmachine could be really cool. Colossus have a place there but a massive figure on a 32mm scale table is kinda crazy.

For Privateer Press: where is Warmachine Naval or even air?

Far as I know, there's no flight mentioned in the setting, but I have been out of touch for a bit.

Naval might work better, but you'd lose half or more of the factions. There's no way you can do Hordes naval, for example.

They are doing an RPG but why not 10mm epic?

Why would I buy full-size warmachine minis when I can buy 10mm versions and statcards?

"Why would I buy full-size warmachine minis when I can buy 10mm versions and statcards?"

Because gamers in that genre like big stuff.
Also, it would be required for tournaments and feel-good-official-play. No-one is using Warmaster minis to play warhammer or Epic 40k to play normal 40k.

Obviously you haven't been over to the Tactical Command website, where there are people using Epic-scale models to play 40k. Ironically, the typical conversion involving WFB and Warmaster has been Warmaster rules and WFB minis!

I really should have been wearing my 'devils advocate' horns for that statement, but it is something that the bean counters would say. (valid question, but marketing guys could disprove it)

I would love to see a set of big-battle rules for Warmahordes, where you can actually have a couple hundred troops per side and not have the game take all day!

I think Spartan Games is developing a fleet scale version of Firestorm armada. It disappeared along with the Invasion 6mm land game but my hope is that they will eventually get to both of them.

It will be a good example of what I mentioned earlier. Firestorm Armada will eventually reach a stopping point. The have a few years but then they can switch to the fleet scale and release the land game. They have done some of this with Dystopian Wars.

The fleet scale game is a double win. Either your customers buy the new smaller versions of miniatures they already own or they buy more of the full size ones to use with the larger game scale. It would require a REALLY big table so that might not work well. 8' by 5' might work.

I got into PP in WM's infancy (just as the first infantry units were released) and was a very active player up to the MkII FT when I had to do a gaming hiatus due to increasing demands of grad school, work, and family life.

I flirted with getting back into PP, but seeing the warengines was off-putting for me. I like the game as a skirmish game and its evident that they have been trying to scale it up for a while. Now the colossals have put the final nail in the coffin for me. I don't want the time/expense of large armies in 28mm.

Also, having a large battle game with the caster kill mechanic is a bit of a downer. As games can go quite one way or the other quite quickly with experience players.

I did enjoy the fluff and generally liked their design, so if they do an IK Epic or something of the sort, I'd consider buying it. But as for now, I'm trading my Trolls, Cryx, Circle, and Mercs on B-Town.