To Whom It May Concern,
This letter is regarding your excellent miniatures game, AT-43. Since it's announcement back in 2006 I have been a strong supporter and loyal fan of your game. Your decision to provide pre-painted miniatures and printed "terrain" maps won me and mine over instantaneously and we were very excited about your product, especially in light of the fact that almost all of us were, at one time or another, burned by your chief competitor, Games Workshop. Because of its easy buy-in, AT-43 was primed to whip the tits off of Warhammer 40,000.
However, since it's release, AT-43 has yet to really dethrone 40K. This is both a real shame and inexcusable. A shame that those chimp-fuckers at Games Workshop, who make it their life's work to gouge the players out of every cent they can, haven't suffered a mass desertion of their customer base and inexcusable because...well, I just really wanted to see them cry.
You see, I was lured into that money-pit of a game when I was about 10 years old. My brother, six years older and an experienced builder of WWII model tanks spotted the game and got suckered into thinking that making all those pretty models and terrain would be easy and he conned me into throwing in with him. We bought a box of plastic Space Marines and split the contents (back then, they came 30 to a box). He was going to make Dark Angels, I was going to make Crimson Fists.
About 5 minutes into the process I sliced three of my fingers open with an x-acto knife.
I had to continue with half my left hand bandaged up. After about EIGHT FUCKING HOURS,
I had 15 badly painted Space Marines.
We didn't even play the damn game. It turned out my brother didn't understand that the game rules didn't come in the box but in a book the size of The Bible. It would be years before we tried again, that time buying the 2nd edition starter box with all the needed materials. We played a few times but with the dawning realization that our terrain, make up of stacked books and such, was less than inspiring and that we had weeks of model building to look forward to, we gave up.
And that's probably the best part of the story. Unlike so many others we got out with only a $200 loss, compared to the THOUSANDS that some people throw into this hobby, not to mention the hours upon hours of building and painting armies and terrain. Sure the back story was cool but who cared! We realized that this wasn't a game, it was a cult! One that required tithing on a constant basis. We said "no thank you".
So, when I saw your game I squealed like a little girl. Sure the price tag was as big as 40K's but everything was painted. There was so sign of having to do anything but buy it and play it. And unlike collectible minis, you could see exactly what you were getting! Brilliant!
Unfortunately my dreams of Games Workshop having their asses handed to them didn't come to pass. Your marketing was less-than-aggressive and your habit of releasing almost every wave of figures late didn't help any. While I understand your distribution deal with Fantasy Flight probably hurt, I still think this fight was yours to lose. I mean, you have power-armored gorillas!
Get off your asses and stop releasing product late all the time. Get some aggressive social marketing going (HIRE ME! I'M CHEAP!), maybe make some card stock building and get AT-43 into mainstream stores like Borders and Barnes & Noble. Really harp on how easy it is to get started, as opposed to that OTHER game and you could totally eat GW's lunch!
Sincerely,
Michael Wolf
5 comments:
You sir, are a god among nerds and geeks. Thanks you for your ass kickery letter to Rackham.
At has turned into that hor girlfriend you love to death but keeps cheating on you.
dude,
you sir are correct, I'm still awaiting for Rackham to kick some ass.
I mean, Hybrid is one of the best games I've played and they've ignored it; they had the best sculpts and everyone wanted to painted their Confrontation minis, well not anymore.
When will they get their head out of their ass and start taking names? God damm it, start selling AT-43 in Wal mart instead of HeroScape, start attracting attention, now it's the perfect moment with the new army boxes.
That's what almost every non big 3 hobby game needs to do.
PUSH IT.
They can't all just hope some Gen Con sales and other early adopters will get their game moving.
Most games won't sell unless people are playing.
And you need to get people playing.
Rackham and others need to get demo teams, give gameshops free starters just to get some groups playing. Have sales reps encouraging play.
Sadly, most game companies won't do this, and most can't afford to even if they wanted to.
At best they send out a demo box that never gets played.
I, as a gamer who WANTS to play hobby games besides 40K, D&D in print edition, and Magic; is starting to get tired of having to not only risk a decent chunk of change to promote a cool new game, but watch the heartache of nobody else in my region actually CARING.
From the store to other players.
Its like "Ok, I gotta PAY MONEY to be a games marketer"?
Why would we want to bother?
Actually, I think this is a pretty bad letter.
Criticizing GW is totally OK, but not for the aforementionned reasons. They don't hide the fact that they are a MODELLING company before being a gaming company. Building and painting their models is part of the fun. Similarly, building terrain is part of that hobby, and can be done without handing GW any money.
It would have been OK to criticize GW on their policy of codex creep (a.k.a. newer is better), lack of balance, inconsistent support of tournaments, and weird pricing policy, but not on the fact that they sell models that need to be painted.
Onto Rackham. Yes, they need to push their game harder. However, simply saying "hire me" without giving ANY indication on how you would help is, well, very unhelpful.
Rackham, or any other miniature company, cannot compete with GW directly. GW is the juggernaut, and has unparalleled distribution circuits and brand recognition. Ignoring those factors won't do any good, except fire up the anti-GW crowd.
Social marketing for games is overrated. Advertising on FB or have a twitter account is all well and good, but brand recognition is slow and painful to build, and involves plenty of demos at stores and conventions, and other ground actions. It's slow and not hip, but that's where success lies.
Obviously, players are also wary of buying product from a company that has and may still go under, and Rackham needs to communicate far better in this respect, reassuring players that they are in for the long haul, and making sure all their references are readily available (no initiation sets available? Now that's a bit of a problem to compete with GW).
Sincerely,
Antoine
Disclaimer: I play both GW and AT-43, love both systems, and have no issue criticizing both companies. I also did work for GW for 4 years, 10 years ago, and still follow the gaming industry both from a hobby and marketing perspective
Well I admit it.
I was a GW bitch also but I dumped all my madels back at my local shop. Lost in the wilderness I saw a glimmer of hope. AT-43 has got the potential.
Miffed with GW as I am I must admit that there is one thing they do well. They do lots and lots and lots and lots of introduction games. Did you know that they expect £1800 of income for every starter set they sell, and they sell a starter set 1 out of 30 times they do an intro game. Thats how they do it, they play lots of games with lots of people.
So if we want AT-43 to suceed then people have got to have the opportunity to play lots and lots and lots and lots of games. The contributors who talk about getting the games out there to all the gaming stores etc is very right. Get it out there with fevourish people to run games for new people. I've already got my stuff and I'm waiting to play. I'll play on the car park of GW HQ in Nottingham if I have to :)
Rant ends.
Magic
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