Future of Specialist Games

[yamaneko]

Have you guys heard anything to substantiate the rumor YAAF references in this thread?

LINK

[Stomm]

Maybe, maybe not....

[yamaneko]

Maybe, maybe not....

 

[Stomm]

Ain't seen me, roiyt 

[yamaneko]

 

[Stomm]

It's a riddle, wrapped in an enigma, disguised as a clown...


More to the point, from my discussions I have deduced that they haven't thought of anything yet, but doing games as one-off boxed releases similar to Space Hulk might be one way that they can 'do' some of the existing SG range. Ones that spring to my mind that would work might be MoW, Blood Bowl really needs the breadth that extra teams, star players and so on bring for it's real flavour. I guess they could get around this by actually releasing about five different Bloodbowl games, with different teams and pitches for each game... That's thinking out loud anyway...

There are also a couple more that might work, maybe Mordheim being one, and of course going back to the roots of Epic in the form of Space Marine would IMHO be a good idea for a game tie-in with the Horus Heresy series of books that wouldn't threaten diluting their core 40k market.

[Steel Rabbit]

I always thought GW should do what they did in the mid-90s. Bring out one Specialist game and circulate it for a year or so with figs, and WD support, then bring out another one.

[Darkson]

and circulate it for a year or so with figs, and WD support,

What, and waste space in WD where they could pimp yet another Aragon/Gimli/Bilbo/etc figure?

[Stomm]

The studio just doesn't have the attention span to do any of the SG range any real justice. I know this is going over old ground, and we're endlessly repeating the same story, but basically if GW spends £100 on one of the SG's, it might make £100 of profit. If it spends that same £100 on WH, it will make maybe £250 of profit, if it spends it on 40K, then it makes £500 of profit, and if they spend it on anything to do with Space Marines, then they make well over £1000 in profit.


So why spend £100 on say Mordheim to only make £100 back, then you can make ten times that ammount by investing on a new range of Space Marines, etc...


We all know that this is the basic business reason why our favourite games are basically left out in the cold. We also all know how GW could get support for these games to actually work properly, but the internal politcs of GW just won't allow that (it's all to do with the regional sales companies refusing to give up control of any sales). So, we are by and large stuck in this limbo until such time as a miracle happens and one of 'our' games gets picked for a revamp.



So if a limited release as with Space Hulk is the only way of GW being able to do something with one of the SG range, then I for one would rather that than nothing at all...

[Darkson]

We also all know how GW could get support for these games to actually work properly, but the internal politcs of GW just won't allow that (it's all to do with the regional sales companies refusing to give up control of any sales).

That, and allowing SG to have it's own casting machine for smaller runs (as was the original plan back in the Fanatic days), rather than relying on gaps in the production runs on the main casters.

[horizon]

Heck, GW could license out casting & molding quite easily, even without IP trouble.

[Stomm]

They won't though, see issues with retail companies not wishing to relinquish control...

[yamaneko]

They should sell the entire division or license it out then.  I hate what they did with BoFA.

[Stomm]

They should sell the entire division or license it out then.  I hate what they did with BoFA.

Well if they can't or won't allow Fanatic/SG to exist internally, I very much doubt that they'd ever consider licensing it out to a 3rd party. Even if the money that the GW retail companies (that is GW UK, GW US, GW Oz, etc...) make from the SG ranges are tiny compared to the likes of WH or 40K, it's still a pretty large ammount of money, just not enough for them to justify investing any money in 'actually' supporting any real growth.


And as for BotFA. To be honest this was perhaps a perfect example of a game that was or is suitable for 'The Space Hulk Treatment'. Since it was clear from the start that in-store support would be pretty much non-existent (I don't think any stores even opened up a copy for demo games), I personally don't think that they should have bothered with the 'extras', IoW the metal models that they also released. A shame I know, but IMHO it is better to do something properly once, than to do it half-heartedly and then take it away...



All that being said, I think that we can safely say that it is very unlikely that we will ever be satisfied with GW's treatment of their own SG ranges...

[Evil_and_Chaos]

They won't license it externally, no matter how much cash you offer them.