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Other Stuff => General Wargames and Hobby Discussion => Topic started by: Predatorpt on August 25, 2017, 02:58:06 PM
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I just received this email:
http://www.spartangames.co.uk/spartan-games
The following statement is issued today, Friday 25th August 2017.
Following a prolonged period of challenging trading and despite the directors’ best efforts to manage through, Rebel Publishing Ltd was unable to continue to trade and the directors have taken the difficult decision to cease. All members of staff were made redundant.
The company, which traded as Spartan Games, is a Somerset, UK based provider of tabletop miniature games which include
Uncharted Seas, a fantasy naval combat game (now retired)
Firestorm Armada, an exciting space combat game featuring highly detailed starship models
Dystopian Legions, a game based in the world of Dystopian Wars using highly detailed 32mm scale figures and vehicles (now retired)
Dystopian Wars– an exciting journey in a Victorian sci-fi world encompassing naval combat, ground warfare and aerial combat.
Spartan Scenics – a range of detailed and easily assembled wargames terrain.
Rebel Publishing Ltd was formed in July 2002 and traded successfully for a number of years. Spartan Games was launched in 2008 and grew rapidly. However, the tabletop games market is challenging and has changed over recent years, and suppliers are predominantly a small number of large well-known names and several small, cottage industry, type businesses.
Initially the business outsourced production but following quality control and production management issues, manufacturing was moved in house between 2009 and 2011. Over this time and since, significant investment was made into machinery and infrastructure. The business also expanded to provide models for a well known video game, moving this into the tabletop games arena. However, significant new development costs, timing issues and the deflection of management time from the core games brands resulted in a significant trading loss for 2015/6. The business was able to continue to trade by raising additional finance and refocusing on core brands, and direct / online trading improved significantly. Results for 2016/17 were significantly improved.
However, despite this it continued to encounter challenging trading conditions and it became clear this month that the company could not continue to service its liabilities, particularly given the burden imposed by the amounts owing to finance companies.
The company was in the process of running a Kickstarter project to raise funds for expansion of one of its successful product lines. This was well supported and positive feedback on the new products was given showing the popularity of the product line and ongoing demand. However, this does not, unfortunately, provide the full range of success and resources needed to sustain the business.
In addition to challenging trading issues, one of the directors has suffered from a long period of poor health which became significantly more serious earlier this year and although now back in the business, requires ongoing treatment. That has inevitably taken a toll on the amount of time available to the business so, along with other challenges, has significantly contributed to this difficult decision.
The directors are extremely saddened by this decision and particularly regret any losses incurred by employees, customers, suppliers or other trading partners. The directors fully committed their time, energy and personal resources to effect a turnaround. Employees will receive redundancy payments through state funds and although efforts have been made to fulfil customer orders, it is hoped that anyone who does not receive their goods will be able to redeem their payments through their credit card or PayPal.
If customers have made a deposit or paid for goods or services by credit or debit card and the goods or services are not going to be received by the due date, they may be able to get their money back by claiming a refund from their card issuer. They should contact their card issuer as soon as possible. Further information including time limits that apply is available from the UK Cards Association: Credit and debit cards: A consumer guide. Similar schemes exist in other countries.
Throughout the years that Spartan Games has traded, it has prided itself on the highest level of product quality and customer satisfaction. This has been delivered consistently and is evidenced though annual customer research that the company has undertaken.
We would encourage anybody who may be interested in acquiring either stock, assets or the business to make contact as soon as possible. Spartan Games and its product lines have a strong reputation in its markets together with an asset base which may be of interest to a number of parties, and a variety of machinery in addition to Intellectual Property.
All enquiries about this matter should be sent to spartangames@mail.com.
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Dang! :(
Hopefully the IP and lines will be picked up by sombody else eventually, because I believe there are many players/collectors of their miniatures out there.
I know I've considered buying into Firestorm Armada several times in the past...
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Got that too :'(
They had some really good stuff.
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Sad but not a surprise.
Their attitude towards their existing games has always been shoddy.
Good miniatures, nice games, But weird buisness decisions and ADHD style product support were never a great mix.
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Sad news. Not only to SG, but to the industry at large.
Tell you what I do find odd and amusing about these kinds of statements (not limited to just this one, or about this one in particular - it just prompted the thought is all), is the line about buying company assets because they have a 'strong reputation in the market.'
If that was the case then surely they would have sold more and wouldn't have had to go under?
It might have something to do with being neither 'cottage industry' nor a large company, and having production inhouse. You can have a solid, well-received product, but it's simply too costly to keep producing it, after the initial success and growth. Like they said, they had invested big time, but then management took up more and more time, and then someone in the lead had health problems. In small/medium companies these are really big issues.
Their attitude towards their existing games has always been shoddy.
Good miniatures, nice games, But weird buisness decisions and ADHD style product support were never a great mix.
Companies run by enthusiasts have these symptoms. They fulfill a dream and might grow fast, not fully comprehending what needs to be done at which point. Maybe hobby firms should have someone solely in the management, less interested in the product itself.
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Yeah having grown up around small business the jump from a small company to a medium one is risk and all it takes is a few missteps and things can go wrong big time...
Sad to hear - I have some of their stuff but was not a regular player of their games.
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On the subject of buying assets..
Warlord have been searching for that golden IP that will give them the same boos that lord of the rings gave GW.
We all thought Halo would do this for spartan but sadly it didn't due to the way they handled it. I wonder if warlord would be up for buying their right/moulds/game and changing it to fit in with their line?
They could do it as 15mm skirmish, or just buy the IP rights off them and make 28mm halo gates of antares.
(Not that I want warlord to absorb anymore of the industry for it to then hold in a warehouse somewhere for the rest of time,but it's an idea.)
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On the bright side it gives us all something to get nostalgic for an track down on ebay in 25 years time for ridiculous amounts of money.
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I'll have to snap up some of the Halo stuff now before it's gone... was hoping to be able to wait on that a while longer. lol
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Not terribly surprising. I've got my finger on a lot of pulses in the gaming community (like most of us, I'm sure) and Spartan Games was and is simply on no one's radar. It does sound like a "we bought in too heavily to manufacturing and weren't able to make it work" kind of thing - happens to a lot of Kickstarter companies/projects from what I read.
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Not terribly surprising. I've got my finger on a lot of pulses in the gaming community (like most of us, I'm sure) and Spartan Games was and is simply on no one's radar. It does sound like a "we bought in too heavily to manufacturing and weren't able to make it work" kind of thing - happens to a lot of Kickstarter companies/projects from what I read.
I would say they were on everyones radar for something, But never for very long. Either using weird scales, lack of support or just long release times, The things people wanted just never quite made it off the ground so people stopped buying.
Every thread on Facebook about this is full of players saying " I played X when they released it but stopped when they stopped supporting it." I think they simple killed their own player base through attrition.
Now what we don't want is for their collapse to discourage the growth of other companies that are doing things right and cause a slowdown of the whole industry.
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Goes to the old adage of never trust a person if they use the comment/phrase 'trust me', because they believe you likely should not...It rarely goes well if you have to use that phrase. :)
And another observation.
(again, this is not really about Spartan Games in particular as it is about inane marketing - it's just there's some good examples in their statement).
I notice that both Firestorm Armada and Dystopian Wars are 'exciting' games. Since they felt the need to point this out to differentiate then we can only assume that the other games are not exciting?
Kind of reminds me of something my mother said last weekend when we round there for dinner. She said she'd made a 'nice pie'. That's good to know, but why would she make a 'bad pie'? Actually, thinking about it, knowing we were coming round...
It was a chicken, asparagus and mushroom pie and she was wrong. It wasn't nice, it was bloody lovely. We took the rest home with us.
Still, good to know that at least two of Spartan Games' games were exciting. Shame about the others, but I suppose there's only so much adrenaline one can take.
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I have some of the Spartan Scenics stuff and it's very good. I often had a hard time getting it though as it was often out of stock with companies for lengthy periods.
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Goes to the old adage of never trust a person if they use the comment/phrase 'trust me', because they believe you likely should not...It rarely goes well if you have to use that phrase. :)
Reminds me of how I always say never to eat at a place which has a sign up saying "Good Food". ;)
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I love it when barely beyond cottage businesses style their management as 'directors', CEOs or MDs. I suppose at least director, might have some legal meaning in the context of going tits up but it's not like there's a board responsible for shareholders interests. Says a lot about the people running the place usually.
Not long ago I had cause to ring up a small gaming distribution company in Oz. Having fucked up my order in almost every way possible, including but not limited to swapping it with someone elses order on the other side of the country, the owner said he would pass me on to their 'Distribution Manager', which I assumed to be his wife. "Distribution Manager?" I enquired. "Is that the person that posts out your packages?". A brief pause followed by "Er, yes" was the response.
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Whatever some may think, the wargames' industry is small. In fact you could fit all the people who work in it into a large village.
So, when a company goes down, it is a sad day for all of us. All the creativity, energy and hard work put in by Spartan's people over the years has just come to an end, and we are all poorer for it.
Let's hope that this is just a localised difficulty and not the beginning of a trend.
To all you former Spartan's, good luck with your next endeavours and I hope you soon emerge from this with new jobs and opportunities.
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I love it when barely beyond cottage businesses style their management as 'directors', CEOs or MDs. I suppose at least director, might have some legal meaning in the context of going tits up but it's not like there's a board responsible for shareholders interests. Says a lot about the people running the place usually.
Not long ago I had cause to ring up a small gaming distribution company in Oz. Having fucked up my order in almost every way possible, including but not limited to swapping it with someone elses order on the other side of the country, the owner said he would pass me on to their 'Distribution Manager', which I assumed to be his wife. "Distribution Manager?" I enquired. "Is that the person that posts out your packages?". A brief pause followed by "Er, yes" was the response.
I used to have to do this at work. I was even worse before we separated the warehouse and the store. "Sorry sir, I'm afraid you'll have to ring the warehouse to enquire about the state of your delivery, I'm only retail."
wait two minute...
"hello, warehouse...Yes i'll just check that."
It's the same system and we could check everything from the store ,but out boss insisted on having the two be separate.
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In other news Tor has just announced that they are closing down aswell due to lack of demand and an over-saturated market.
I remember a couple of years back when kickstarter really took off someone predicting a tabletop crash if people got too used to getting heaps of stuff for no money, I'm really hoping this isn't the start of it.
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I saw this on Facebook and it saddened me as well but unfortunately didn't really surprise me. I never bought or played any of Spartan's games even though I looked at them and considered getting into them. The issue for me was stability. It seemed every time I looked at getting into one of their games, there was either a new edition or revision coming out or the miniatures were being redone. Sometimes a game just needs to be allowed to grow than constantly getting rebooted or redone. Marvel Comics is going through the same thing due to their yearly relaunches. Things need to be kept interesting to retain attention and sales but as a rule, people don't really like change and too much change too often can kill anything.
William
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A shame, as it always is when a company goes.
I was a big fan of the Halo fleet battles game. Will have to pick up what I can before it's all gone!
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This is a crying shame!.....but in hind sight probably predictable!
I loved their sci fi scenery! The cabinets, medical suites, canteen and stuff. I have ordered a load of it in the past and always looked to get more, but anytime I went looking for it, it was always out of stock! There's me, a customer willing to buy their product, and not being able to throw my money at them! It sounds the same for a load of people playing their games!
Still, a bad sign for a struggling industry! :-[
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Sad to hear Tor gaming is going. I have a large pile of the his figures, some fun stuff in the mix. :'(
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Yes quite a surprise for me, I like Uncharted Seas and they stopped making it. Not too bothered about the other games although I'd bought starters when other local gamers expressed an interest.
In case there's any interest, I have a painted sorillian fleet, unpainted/primed Prussians for dystopian legions, painted fleet again Prussians for dystopian wars. Also a 28mm mdf set of SciFi rooms, all going cheap.
Paul
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Let's hope that this is just a localised difficulty and not the beginning of a trend.
I think it is both.
Localized in that their product obviously had its problems...
And a trend, as folks like CMON and others team up with the Chinese to produce unbelievably low priced, highly detailed miniatures for kick starters, to wipe out as much of the competition as possible. It's called Predatory Pricing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing). Very difficult to prove but pretty obvious once the industry has been almost completely obliterated.
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CMON has possibly made a fatal error though...never ever get into bed with the Chinese, especially when their job is to provide the goods, the entire culture now has a massive culture of business dishonesty, constant lying and just running and starting new companies elsewhere when the current fades.
I recall Spartan had trouble when the Chinese held their moulds to ransom, GW is clever in that it keeps as much away from parties that would pirate it as possible.
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That is part of the deal working with the Chinese.
Any manufacturing plant is inspected by the Chinese and no part of it is off limits.
So it is essentially a cheap way for them to gain intellectual property. It would seem strange that the Chinese would want to dominate such a niche hobby but apparently no sector is immune.
You sell your soul when you work with the Chinese. And when you send them your money, you contribute to the destruction of small business in the West.
When you look at the crushing effect that Amazon has had on local small business, it is just a harbinger of the future for our own hobby.
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That is part of the deal working with the Chinese.
Any manufacturing plant is inspected by the Chinese and no part of it is off limits.
So it is essentially a cheap way for them to gain intellectual property. It would seem strange that the Chinese would want to dominate such a niche hobby but apparently no sector is immune.
You sell your soul when you work with the Chinese. And when you send them your money, you contribute to the destruction of small business in the West.
When you look at the crushing effect that Amazon has had on local small business, it is just a harbinger of the future for our own hobby.
It's a niche hobby when it's being made at high cost by one man ventures in sheds here.
It's not niche when you take everyones ideas, pool them into one big factory and pump them out so cheap you can flood toy shops/online sales with them, or just sell them as "super awesome robot go toy soldier force" at the pound shop in bags of 300.
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This is one problem that, for the consumer at least, I'm hoping 3d printing will eventually solve. No more OOP or limited-edition kickstarter minis or any of that bollocks. Just files on servers that can be DLed or traded by anyone. DRM would/will eventually be a thing as companies try to hold onto the old ways with their fingernails, and so DRM cracking would become the new recasting, but it's my hope that the hobby community will eventually be able to sustain itself without commercial models. All you need is tools that are cheap (already there), easy to use (halfway there), and a mostly share-positive grognard culture (halfway there). And of course 3D printers that are both cheap enough and good enough to be truly mainstream (halfway there).
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This is one problem that, for the consumer at least, I'm hoping 3d printing will eventually solve. No more OOP or limited-edition kickstarter minis or any of that bollocks. Just files on servers that can be DLed or traded by anyone. DRM would/will eventually be a thing as companies try to hold onto the old ways with their fingernails, and so DRM cracking would become the new recasting, but it's my hope that the hobby community will eventually be able to sustain itself without commercial models. All you need is tools that are cheap (already there), easy to use (halfway there), and a mostly share-positive grognard culture (halfway there). And of course 3D printers that are both cheap enough and good enough to be truly mainstream (halfway there).
To some this sounds like utopia, To me it sounds like hell on earth. lol
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To some this sounds like utopia, To me it sounds like hell on earth. lol
It would suck for two groups: those who manufacture and sell minis for a living, and those who desire scarcity-based collectible value in their tat.
The former... well, it legit sucks for those people, but it's kinda just the way technological advancement is. All technological advancement. Old ways get made obsolete by new technology pretty much by definition. The bigger the leap, the more it changes. Sometimes a tech is big enough to make entire paradigms obsolete. On balance these changes are desirable (almost as a truism), but in the moment it does suck for those who have to retool their lives/livelhoods the most.
The latter can suck it, IMO, as their pleasure is explicitly defined by the limiting of others' pleasure. They can go in the bin with sumptuary laws and MMO griefers where they belong.
For everyone else it'd be grand.
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It would suck for two groups: those who manufacture and sell minis for a living, and those who desire scarcity-based collectible value in their tat.
What about those who enjoy the handsculpted and material based nature of the hobby? Those who enjoy the experience of going to a game store? Those who generally dislike digital products? There's actually alot of pleasure in a hobby that isn't digital and has minimal interaction with a screen, it's the same reason I don't do admin work for fun.
And what about obsolescence? a mould can be handed over, a miniature recast, a master repaired. If the publisher withdraws the file then those who aren't in contact with someone willing to copy them a file suddenly can't acquire their miniatures.
Your reduction of the hobby into two groups based on your own wants is a little small in scope.
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What about those who enjoy the handsculpted and material based nature of the hobby?
That would still be available as a hobby. In fact you'd probably see it survive to some degree as an "art" thing rather than a "product" thing. 2D media, for example, has already gone through this process: digital is flat out how it's done commercially, and has taken over a lot of hobby painting/illustration as well, but oil, watercolor, pencil, etc still live on as "fine art" and niche hobby media.
Paint would still exist, putty would still exist, glue would still exist. They might not be marketed for the miniatures hobby specifically anymore, but they would still be available to use.
Those who enjoy the experience of going to a game store?
There's one I go to these days for a gaming meetup that sells all manner of things 3D printing wouldn't effect. They've diversified, certainly, but they aren't going under as far as is apparent. Commercial prepainted minis have already all but knocked traditional minis off the shelf from what I've seen.
More relevantly, if something will finish off game stores in general, it'll be ecommerce, not 3D printing. Ecommerce is going to keep evolving/advancing too.
If gaming stores survive, I expect 3D printing to be folded into the "community center" side of them. Like, they'll have printers in shop, and a big touch screen you can use to browse, preview, and pick out minis.
Those who generally dislike digital products? There's actually alot of pleasure in a hobby that isn't digital and has minimal interaction with a screen, it's the same reason I don't do admin work for fun.
I feel like disliking any media in such blanket "on principle" terms is not healthy. That is to say, in that situation, you're basically admitting you don't like it for prejudicial reasons, rather than for actual practical or experience based ones. There's too many ways where the digital methods have evolved to mirror the physical ones, and since we're talking about the future here: will continue to evolve towards better user experience. Even if you don't like the current form for legit reasons, that doesn't mean you can rely on it to continue having the same problems. As it is today, it's already too easy to move the goalposts from "a screen" to "a painting bench" without actually changing anything meaningful about the argument. Decades ago adults were worried about kids staring at a model bench all day instead of going outdoors. Now they worry about screens, except the kids who were staring at benches back in the day are now the parents. Go back another generation, and it's books instead of painting desks.
But also I see this sort of thing a lot in "old guard", and it pretty much always boils down to some form of "Green eggs and ham". They don't like the idea of it, and if that idea might be inaccurate, they'd rather harrumph their way into the sunset than find out.
And what about obsolescence? a mould can be handed over, a miniature recast, a master repaired. If the publisher withdraws the file then those who aren't in contact with someone willing to copy them a file suddenly can't acquire their miniatures.
A file owner can sell or pass that file to another publisher the same way you'd sell a mold or a master. Deprecated file formats can still be read, and converted to new ones. Sometimes that might require fixing some glitches or lost data, but as you say, physical masters sometimes need repairs too. If a company goes under and the IP chain is effectively "lost", DRM can still be stripped and files converted by the community (the equivalent of recasting).
In a P2P environment (Thingiverse and the like), common file formats are and would be the standard. Anyone could convert and re-upload anything. Redundancy is wide, and every copy is a master/mold in its own right since generational degradation does not apply. While it's true that one could run into instances of a file that had been taken down or otherwise lost everywhere, this would be directly analogous to a physical mold or master being lost, only statistically far less likely due to much greater redundancy.
A hypothetical future in which the hobby is self sustaining without commercial miniatures would be a free of "publishers" that would hoard files and enforce proprietary formats and/or DRM anyway, so an argument predicated on those things does not really address what I described anyway.
In short, every advantage you're assuming for physical molds/masters has a functionally superior analog in digital, and every disadvantage you're assuming for digital either doesn't exist, or has a physical analog which is functionally worse. Digital files have more security than physical molds/masters.
Your reduction of the hobby into two groups based on your own wants is a little small in scope.
I don't thinks so. I think rather that there are people who don't really know or have misunderstood what these things would entail, and thus believe more would be taken from them by such a change than is actually the case.
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Should've made that Dystopian Legions in a scale that actually matched with other manufacturers...
On a mildly more serious note, it's a shame. I actually liked the look of Dystopian Wars but never could get anyone
else here interested, so didn't invest in it. Guess the upside is that I'll have more money for something else now. :?
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Guess the upside is that I'll have more money for something else now. :?
I like that your sentiment is not that you've saved money but that you have more for something else. :)
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This is one problem that, for the consumer at least, I'm hoping 3d printing will eventually solve.
It will.
3d printing will break the entire manufacturing paradigm and the majority of the infrastructure required to make it work.
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Should've made that Dystopian Legions in a scale that actually matched with other manufacturers...
Seconded. Was interested in the system, then saw it was out of scale with the rest of my stuff and thought "fair do, but not for me"
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3d printing will break the entire manufacturing paradigm and the majority of the infrastructure required to make it work.
And yet 2D printers have been available to the public for 30+ years, but I still buy magazines and books instead of printing my own...
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I like that your sentiment is not that you've saved money but that you have more for something else. :)
There's always another project or three. :D
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And yet 2D printers have been available to the public for 30+ years, but I still buy magazines and books instead of printing my own...
There's also a concern for the backbone of the industry; mould making.
I work in 'fashion' - ecommerce operational stuff now, but have worked in various parts of the industry. Denim is a fascinating product to look at how throwing away the manufacturing side of production has effects later on. Time was, all good denim was selvedge - much higher quality, much better weave, produced on smaller looms (and therefore took longer i.e. you could produce less pairs of jeans per day). As the industry grew and changed most mills sold off their looms in favour of newer, higher speed looms - the Japanese bought some of the older looms, most others were scrapped and destroyed.
The net result is that selvedge denim was almost lost (no one was ever going to reinvest in producing new looms, the cost was too high for the niche product) and what high quality denim is produced is significantly more expensive coming in from Japan or Cone Mills in the US. Fewer competitors is bad for pricing and quality control from a consumer perspective. I think a similar thing happened with Polaroid in the camera industry, with niche hobbyists keeping it limping along - once it's gone, it'll be dead because no one will ever reinvest the start up costs.
This is where the 'disruption' of 3D printing is relevant - once you can no longer send things off to mould makers (because they're either shut or prohibitively niche and therefore expensive, and possibly not very good) 3D printing will have killed that corner of the industry.
It's a fascinating topic that touches on much more than wargaming.
edit: pressed enter too soon.
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There's also a concern for the backbone of the industry; mould making....
This is where the 'disruption' of 3D printing is relevant - once you can no longer send things off to mould makers (because they're either shut or prohibitively niche and therefore expensive, and possibly not very good) 3D printing will have killed that corner of the industry.
For metal casting moulds, this is already happening; a lot of the older casters have retired, and the one place that was training new ones (GW) got rid of their vulcanisers and spin casters some years ago.
With the general turn towards plastic and resin minis, it's getting harder to find decent, experienced mouldmakers for metal. Plus, spincasting machines cost a lot more now - the companies making them sell fewer, and are compensating by charging more (like, 2 to 300% more!).
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Yeah that's the exact effect - and once they're gone, no one's investing in tooling the machines that make the machines that make the models. So I guess we all need to embrace 3D printing :/ or something. Dunno.
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this is what happens when you have no focus on your games.
poor rule sets.
poor decisions such as legions.
grabbing popular IP's and just doing god knows what and charging insane money (halo)
flipping back and forth and having no continuity with releases.
its like warlord basically
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And yet 2D printers have been available to the public for 30+ years, but I still buy magazines and books instead of printing my own...
When I say that 3D printing will break the manufacturing paradigm you have to understand that the future isn't everyone owning a 3D printer and making their own stuff. Though many folks will.
Eventually, the end game is to be able to 3D print pretty much anything. From what I have read, the goal is to make manufacturing a local enterprise. So instead of buying a car which was made thousands of miles away, it will be made in your own backyard to your own specifications. That 3D plant will also have the capacity to produce thousands of miniatures very cheaply for a new company with a new miniatures concept.
Right now, raw materials must be shipped to the point of production, turned into a product and then that product must be shipped to the point of sale. That is the present manufacturing paradigm or methodology. And that is why we have huge cargo and container ships, massive port facilities and train and interstate highway networks. All of which costs massively and contributes to the cost of the product.
When 3D printing really comes of age, and you have your own 3D manufacturing complex on the edge of your city, the costs of transportation will nose dive. As transportation will be raw materials shipped to your local 3D manufacturing complex.
The efficiencies, for example, being that a huge ship transporting cars today, in the future will be able to carry enough raw materials to make 100 times the amount of cars.
And that is what I mean by 3D printing breaking the old paradigm and with it the massive infrastructure which is needed to maintain it.
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this is what happens when you have no focus on your games.
poor rule sets.
poor decisions such as legions.
grabbing popular IP's and just doing god knows what and charging insane money (halo)
flipping back and forth and having no continuity with releases.
its like warlord basically
Lol. Pub rant right in the middle of an interesting discussion.
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And as I was still in Spartan Games' mailing list, I've just received this email:
Hi
Wayland Games Ltd (Buyer) purchased certain assets of Rebel Publishing Ltd (trading as Spartan Games) on Friday 22nd September 2017 and we note that you are currently listed on Rebel Publishing Limited's (Seller) customer database for the purpose of receiving details of products and/or services from the Seller.
Your personal data has been transferred to the Buyer for the continued provision of the details of such products and/or services to you. The Buyer will process your personal data fairly and lawfully in accordance with the principles of the Data Protection Act 1998 for the sole purpose of continuing to provide such details to you.
Please do not hesitate to contact our Customer Support team on support@warcradle.com if you have any queries or if you wish to have your personal data removed from the database.
Please note that should you require removal of your personal data, we will be unable to continue to provide details of products and/or services to you.
Yours sincerely,
Wayland Games
So Wayland/Warcradle Studios bought some part of Spartan.
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It would be good if someone would pick the 28mm sci-fi scenics stuff up.
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It would be good if someone would pick the 28mm sci-fi scenics stuff up.
Yeah, I totally agree. That is some of the best sci fi scenery bits out there. Kinda wishing I'd picked up more before they closed down! :?
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well seems they have been picked up by a company paid for by wayland games.
Can't fully recall name. I was a little concerned when I heard Waylands name as they are conmen.
but these are just apparently on their paybooks
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this is what happens when you have no focus on your games.
poor rule sets.
poor decisions such as legions.
grabbing popular IP's and just doing god knows what and charging insane money (halo)
flipping back and forth and having no continuity with releases.
its like warlord basically
Obviously a matter of opinion, and Spartan did aappear to have a lackof focus and support for their existing games but certainly the one I'm most familiar with (Halo fleet battles,) was a lot of fun. I certainly wouldn't call it poor. It wasn't that expensive either.
As for Warlord. I get why people don't like them but I'm not sure many of those accusations can be levelled at them either really. Their games are pretty solid in the main, well supported with regular releases, very high production values. On the higher end of the pp rice spectrum but not extortionate.
Just seems an odd rant.
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warlords main games are supported, apart from fan/creator efforts the licensed games and th one off games are pretty much released and left to die almost.
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warlords main games are supported, apart from fan/creator efforts the licensed games and th one off games are pretty much released and left to die almost.
Which ones are we talking about?
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It seems Warcradle has bought both the Dystopian and Firestorm IPs. Here's the announcement:
http://www.tabletopgamingnews.com/warcradle-studios-taking-over-dystopian-and-firestorm-licenses-from-spartan-games/
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Here's the news release from Warcradle Studios
http://www.beastsofwar.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Warcradle-Studios-announcement-26-09-2017.pdf (http://www.beastsofwar.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Warcradle-Studios-announcement-26-09-2017.pdf)