Spartan Games announced it's closing down

[nic-e]

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.

[Connectamabob]

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.

[FionaWhite]

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. 

[voltan]

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.

[Ray Rivers]

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.

[Kitsune]

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"

[Lovejoy]

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...

[FionaWhite]

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. 

[Jagannath]

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.

[Lovejoy]

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!).

[Jagannath]

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.

[JamesValentine]

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

[Ray Rivers]

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.

[Kitsune]

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.

[Predatorpt]

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.