The Force is strong with this one.

In my previous post on licenses I made reference to the popularity of Star Wars within the hobby.

Star Wars is one of those properties that has serious longevity and is consistently establishing new fans to enjoy the games by publishers such as Fantasy Flight Games.

What caught me by surprise today is that ICv2 have released some market performance information around the success of games in the Non-Collectible Miniature format during Summer 2013.

These numbers are taken from independent stores in North America and doesn't include Games Workshop stores in that mix.  The numbers show that the Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures game outsold Warmachine, Warhammer Fantasy and Hordes.  Now there are no numbers published to give market share or anything like that but seeing the game selling so well in comparison to the stalwarts of that format is surprising.

Top 5 Non-Collectible Miniature Lines – Summer 2013
	Title	Publisher
1	Warhammer 40k	Games Workshop
2	Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures	Fantasy Flight Games
3	Warmachine	Privateer Press
4	Warhammer Fantasy	Games Workshop
5	Hordes	Privateer Press

Mind you looking back at my post on bias/snobbery in the hobby I had managed to determine that the market for Warhammer (both games combined) was something in the region of 1.5 Million players worldwide.  So maybe it shouldn't be a surprise that a game which gives fans of Star Wars the opportunity to play games of starship battles or maybe it's more a reflection of the size of that format as a whole but either way it was a surprise to me to find X-Wing as the 2nd most popular Non-Collectible Miniature game of the Summer.

Have you got a license for that?

Licensing of popular TV shows, movies and books has been fairly common place throughout the hobby for as long as I can remember.  In my post on MERP I only covered the RPG licensing of the setting for The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings.

Currently Middle Earth can be explored in a variety of forms whether that be wargaming with Games Workshop, collectable miniatures with Wizkids or any number of board and card games that are set in the world created by JRR Tolkien.  And that's just what's currently being published!

Star Wars is another regularly used license with Fantasy Flight Games releasing a RPG, Card Game and in the form of X-Wing a Board/War Game (I can't decide).  The key omission here is the lack of a full scale wargame along the lines of Warhammer.  I'm not sure why this is the case as I can't think of any reason why any gamer (including this one) wouldn't be interested in playing the Hoth battle using miniatures...

Superheroes (primarily DC Comics and Marvel Comics) have also had a number of instances in the hobby with Heroclix being the main example but RPGs and Board/Card Games also exist.  Plus to make sure no-one forgets there's an Atomic Robo RPG coming out!

Licenses for TV Shows have gone through a bit of a glut over the years with Firefly / Serenity, Stargate, Leverage, Supernatural, Smallville, Primeval and Dr Who all having RPGs. Some have multiple formats of games.

Now, none of this is bad as in many respects a product based on a licensed property increases the exposure of the hobby as a whole.  It's also fair to say that a number of licensed products are one-shot publications to maximise the opportunity to tie-in with the popularity of the TV shows involved.  Not saying it's a bad thing as afterall these are companies in the business of making money.

What am I saying then?  A licensed game doesn't make it a good game.  It doesn't provide any form of guarantee that the game will invoke the sensation of taking part in that license.

So by picking up a license, any license, a company gives themselves a good start in finding a player base for that game but at the same time that game better be good!  The thing that kills a licensed product quickly is when the players buy it in droves but find that it's actually "not that good".

What games based on licenses were you most disappointed with?

Tabletop media

TableTop.  That's the You Tube show hosted by Wil Wheaton.  You have heard of it right?  No?
Ok.  Go here - TableTop Playlist - and watch a few of the videos and then come back.  Back?  Cool.  Now where were we?  Ah I remember now.

There's been a real growth in recent years in using media to talk about, review, promote etc the hobby. Shows like TableTop are an evolution of podcasts like those created by the good people at Pulp Gamer.
The promotion of the hobby through "celebrity geeks" first occurred when Penny Arcade and PvP got involved in promoting D&D 4th Edition through a variety of podcasts.

This evolution or whatever it is seems to be happening at the same time as wider awareness of the hobby; whether that's coincidence or as a result I'm not sure.

So.  Why the post?

The exposure that shows like TableTop give the hobby is fantastic.  The show uses high profile geeks to promote Tabletop Games, primarily of the board/card game variety.  Those same high profile geeks promote the show through Facebook, Twitter and a variety of other social media routes.  This in turn drives more traffic to TableTop and has resulted in some serious improvement in the sales of the games.

This is a good thing.  Right?

Absolutely it is but I worry that rather than broaden the exposure of the hobby that the success of TableTop will instead only build the profile of specific games rather than the market as a whole.

Now this might be a false worry and in many respects I trust Wil Wheaton to enable a broaden exposure to the hobby as a whole.  Indeed he's gone so far as to post a video about games that they can't use on TableTop due to the limitations of the show here - Not The Flog.  Go and watch it then come back, we'll still be here.

That's great stuff and I hope if nothing else that they continue to have some sort of "we can't play this game on the show but we wanted to tell you how awesome it is" coverage.

Crowd Funding

So this is about Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, Community Funded and no doubt there's a whole host of other crowd funding websites out there.

With the recent controversy over the highly successful funding but failure to deliver of The Doom That Came To Atlantic City on Kickstarter I felt it appropriate to post on what I think crowd funding is doing to and for the hobby.

There are positives and negatives for the hobby with the use of this source of funding.  Let me see if I can break it down...

Positives

• This method of funding is great for self publishing games that a company has rejected for whatever reason. Particularly effective for recognised creators of games.  It's also a less risky way for a company to bring a new product to market that they would normally not get made.  Plus it plays to the fanbases of products where a reboot/relaunch/expansion can happen 
• Products that a company would potentially opt against under normal circumstances.  Using crowd funding to reduce risk of taking to market.
• Fan rallied expansions or reboots for products with a small / core player base.  Builds momentum for that product where the fan base is particularly active and can exercise that momentum through a variety of means.

Negatives

• Your spend is speculative and is hedged on the basis of eventually getting what you've paid for.  It's very different from the normal retail experiences for both brick & mortar and online (unless the online seller is really bad at shipping of course...).  To quote GeekDad - "Kickstarter is not a pre-order platform. It’s not like seeing a pre-release DVD on Amazon and reserving a copy."
• After a successful funding many companies revisit this source of funding time and time again.  Thus making this route of supply almost exclusive.  Now that might be a good thing from some perspectives but I think it limits the routes to market that a product has and also saturates a core market resulting in game stores (online and bricks & mortar) being unable to a) get the product in a timely fashion and b) find a market for the product as the core market has already bought it.

In summary - I get why it is popular and why it works but at the same time I feel that some relatively established publishers are becoming more risk averse when it comes to launching new products.

The latest for "TDTCTAC", Cryptozoic have since picked it up and will fulfill all pledges for the game that fans made.  Pretty awesome of them to do that seeing as they had no obligation to do so.  Interesting to see what the MSRP is of the game though as they'll need to recoup that "marketing" expense somehow!
I played an early version of the game when Keith Baker came to KoA on our opening day and whilst it was still rough around the edges I am pleased to see it finally make it to print.