I haven't read anyone reporting on this, but it's intriguing and could be huge: Blue Table Painting is running a Kickstarter apparently aimed at remaking the wargaming industry.
In short, huge quantities of miniatures are sold, but only a part gets assembled, painted and eventually used. That may or may not be sustainable for the producers, but the use of eBay these days presumably means it eats new sales more than it might have once.
As I understand it, the idea is to provide BTP with the capital to build up a stock of ready forces - picked, assembled and painted by BTP - to be made available off-the-peg online.
A new player would buy the rulebook for the given system and choose a faction as ever, but then rather than buy all the items needed to assemble and paint a force, and set all that time aside, just make a few clicks and possibly have a new force by the weekend.
In theory, it would mean more new players play sooner, even play at all - with complete, polished armies at least - and fewer miniatures end up sitting around and gathering dust.
But it could well have an impact well beyond that. First, here's Shawn talking about it all.
Here's how I think it could go if the idea takes off. Most obviously, if BTP prove it works, we could see existing or future businesses enter this new market, maybe even current miniature producers themselves. For now, I'll call all these firms 'ready-force providers'.
Next most obviously, a pre-assembled and -painted force will usually cost more than the bits, and increasing ubiquity could mean that explicit social pressure mentioned earlier rises, pushing those with less cash or time out of the hobby, shrinking the player base.
Game stores and online retailers could lose revenue if more of the miniatures being sold are bought in bulk direct from the producer. The ready-force providers could increasingly affect which specific items a producer sells and makes. It could mean less of a need for that producer to appeal to individual preferences, so the number of options within a given faction range might fall over time, while the number of factions might rise to compensate.
What would all of this mean for the smaller producers under the radar of the ready-force providers? Would they thrive or be throttled? How would that change the wider industry?
Even beyond these changes, it could put the producers in a very difficult situation. A big question is how far the potential burn-out involved in those dozens or hundreds of hours is built into the industry model. Maybe a customer base that bumps along the bottom - buying a new force, getting bored before finishing it, then moving on to the next - is how producers stay afloat? Maybe they make more on what we don't use than what we do?
There could be all kinds of knock-on effects, and some even pushing back to the status quo, offsetting the changes, the more so the more the current industry is a stable point.
At any rate, it would put a lot of power in the hobby into this new tier of middlemen, firms which provide a service, but also mediate communication between player and producer.
I trust Shawn and feel I understand his general outlook. He's been generous sharing the development of the business, and his views, in great detail with viewers and readers over the years, and I'd say he has a sharp mind and a good will. This makes me think he has thought through the possibilities, and that if he's going ahead anyway, he's doing it also as a challenge, daring us to match his dynamism and together find the new equilibrium.
Anyway, I'm very interested in how you see this playing out, and if by chance Shawn or any other interested parties are reading - and I'm confident many are - they could be too.
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2 comments:
Im genuinely not convinced that it will be a game changer. This huge change that it expects to do to the industry is assuming people would be willing to pay double the cost for stuff to be prepainted. With the economy the way it is and people looking for the lowest price anywhere, more wont be willing to spend the money on prepainted.
I don't see it making an impact quickly, even if it does catch on, for that same reason of cost. Even beyond the price for the work, just take a look at the criticism of rising prices for the base miniatures themselves.
GW, for example, seems willing to have their part of the hobby move upmarket, and shed in the process those players without the budgets to keep up. If that's the case, and if it does work for them - and there is still a big question mark over that - we can imagine others will follow, even as newcomers and smaller producers collect up those players that can't or won't pay.
Based on that, it could be there are more than enough wargamers willing and able to shoulder the increasing costs, in the case of particular brands at least, as well as by extension for the kind of ready forces BTP is offering. It could also be that the new players drawn in by these brands in future are relatively more monied than now as a result, reinforcing the influence.
Another issue is that of where all of the players priced out of a brand then go, if they do stay in wargaming that is. Even forgetting about homebrew support, possible player ownership of IP and reworked or revived game systems - all of which might be player base responses - there are and will be a range of other smaller miniature-and-game systems out there to move into. One problem with a lot of smaller producers is that initially they have a small player base, maybe spread over a large area, an external that can limit their growth. But one solution to that is factoring ready force costs into the business model. By this I mean a producer releasing a low-requirement game, a skirmish game say, and doing a deal with a ready force provider for their support, i.e. having the provider keep forces for the new game in stock from the outset, maybe even putting up the capital to have some initial forces created and standing by. Absolute assembly and painting costs would presumably be lower at skirmish level, and the extra encouragement early on for potential players that these ready forces represent could mean the concept becoming a major factor in that area of the market too.
All other factors being equal, a game seen at a store or club with players playing fully painted forces is likely to be more attractive to a potential player than one without. The social pressure mentioned in the post, the expectation, could see demand for the ready force providers grow all through the market.
That said, I would expect this to be a medium-term factor at best, even if the potential is quickly becoming more visible, not least through BTP's YouTube videos, but also through the blogs and the vitality of the tournament scene and its need for rapid adaptation to rolling rules releases. I'm still surprised by the number of players choosing to hire assemblers and painters and the volume of miniatures involved, and BTP itself has expanded fast. The Kickstarter is moving, but I get the impression BTP is heading this way anyway, and that whatever the Kickstarter does, the general trend is marked out in its case.
Based on all of that, I wouldn't bet against the wider transformation.
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