Weekender XLBS: There’s Something About IP Games…
December 9, 2018 by dignity
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Happy Darkstar Sunday
Indeed, here we go! See you in about an hour! 😀
Happy sunday and my god what another frightening image that is. We should be thankful it’s not animated I suppose
Yup……….that’s three weeks in a row……..the nightmare doesn’t end.
Begs the question as to whose ‘hair product’ did he use?
never ask questions, you may get answers, and nobody wants that.
Happy Sunday!
Let’s get stuck in……….
Happy Sunday!
Let’s be honest, with Christmas approaching it’s not just an IP’s fanbase – it’s the fan bases’s well meaning relatives… Imagine:
“Little Jonny likes XYZ(tm) and board games doesn’t he? What shall we get him for Christmas”
“I saw the bookshop had some games and I’m sure there was an XYZ(tm) Monopoly…”
(insert Psycho shrieking violins here…)
I’ve seen this happen time and time again.
I seriously thought Justin was suggesting an Isle of Sodor* dungeon crawling game…
Now that WOULD be something!!
(* Thomas the Tank Engine setting)
After seeing Thomas the Tank-engine in Skyrim I’m not too sure how kid friendly a ‘Isle of Sodor’ setting would be …
For reference :
https://youtu.be/yNaTZV8qS1I?t=110
don’t worry in the real Thomas the tank engine they walled Percy up in a tunnel and took the tracks away as punishment for not obeying the fat controller. so it was pretty dark to begin with, kids love that.
I’m sure it was Henry the green engine that was walled up
they all look alike to me but I’ve gone back and done the research, and it was Henry the poor old bugger who was left to run out of fuel and rust behind the wall like some massive iron cask of Amontillado
Happy Sunday!!
It’s not so much the picture as it is knowing what was in the mousse that is disturbing this weekend…
That Thumbnail…It’s Richard Branson’s Twin!
for Battlestar Galactica fleet combat there is a full thrust mod in existence I think it was at some conventions a few years back.
http://www.mechworld.de/?collection=MW_collection_readmore&id=29&uid=53139641dd200
I downloaded the rules for that. It’s great.
I’m in the process of building up the larger capital ship models for the tabletop.
I did buy one squadron of each of the little ships currently on Shapeways that are for that setup. Very tiny models. When I get my 3D printer I’ll take a stab at printing on that scale.
‘Beasts of War’ did cover the MechWorld guys running the game at a convention.
https://www.beastsofwar.com/liveblogentry/battlestar-galactica-blood-steel-pops-up/
An interesting aside. In the 80’s and early 90’s the worst games on the old Commodore Amiga was the IP games.. Maybe the mindset of “getting an IP” this is going to be successful .. removes some of the “passion” that comes with the creation of your own “world or worlds” and IP. Incredible games like Populous, Powermonger and other incredible Amiga games all did not “rely” on the IP. The issue may come from the restraints on creativity that the IP presents (real or imagined) rather than than the actual gameplay (Boardgame or computer). I am not too sure but the investment of cash into the IP may create “pressure” to get something out quickly to create return on investment over real creativity ?? I am not sure without seeing the inner workings of an organisation but it is a great question .. thanks for the interesting topic people !! 🙂
Cheers
WarHound67
IP based games still have that “it’s going to be crap” these days.
Maybe not as bad as last century (do I feel old or what ? ;-)), but there is a definite ‘not a good idea’.
Gerry they did Warriors? http://warriorsmovie.co.uk/blog/help-crowdfund-warriors-turf-war-board-game
they tried but it was cancelled I don’t know if they ever went back to try it themselves. However I wouldn’t want it as a boardgame, as a miniature skirmish game I think it would be terrific though. So many gangs and a lot were only viewed in the original park meeting so potential to expand it if required.
Funky Skull Games has Street Wars NYC that is just that.
I think my favourite IP would be The Crusades©™ but I think getting the IP off the Vatican would be quite expensive
I always thought a Marshall Law or Nemesis the Warlock game would be fun though getting Pat Mills and Kevin O’Neills imagery and ideas across might be difficult
The Battlestar Galactica full thrust version us by these people
http://www.mechworld.de/?collection=MW_collection_readmore&id=29&uid=53139641dd200
Vector movement etc in space battle games was also done by FASA in Renegade Legion a few decades ago and probably before that as well by other systems that I don’t know of
@bloodstrike Apologies I didn’t see your original post
I don’t know the current Pope seems very easy going, now is an ideal time to broach the subject I imagine.
Marshall Law, he makes Dredd look like a bleeding heart liberal, that would be hard to get across on the table top but the look would be fantastic.
Yeah vectored movement certainly isn’t new, it’s funny how game design seems to be cyclical though. Rules get more complex and realistic until people think that they’re clunky, a wave of “simple” rules appears and after a few years people think they’re shallow and vapid and then weightier more realistic rules start reappearing
Very true
Another interesting addition to the discussion .. Full Thrust had similarities to Battlefleet Gothic (or the other way around to be more accurate). Sometimes developers develop ideas from other games for their own or brought in IP’s. The pressures (again related to the purchased IP or maybe in the case of GW, the expectation and timeframe in which production time frames to deliver a working product is expected) may result in rushed work that may not be as “good” as other products that have had time and passion put into it.
One of my favorite movies is Gangs of New York. I’d love to see that either as a miniature skirmish campaign game, but I think it’d also work as an area control board game with political elements.
come out and plAAyaaa
I think IP games certainly can be a licence to print money, but they can also be an opportunity for a more public and more spectacular failure. That’s why it’s great to see the majority of companies working really hard to do them justice.
An IP I like with miniatures I want to collect and paint will pique my interest a LOT more than a generic title. The game still need to be decent but the cash will be in my hand ready to spend if it is. If the game is fantastic then I will stick with it and buy more (e.g. FalloutWW, Star Wars Legion). The IP is a definite extra factor for me, albeit not enough to sell me a crap game, or in most cases a good game without miniatures.
An IP I’d love to see would be Bladerunner. No idea how you’d do it. Maybe a solo game. But something that evoked that cyber noir detective feeling with Deckard leading the way would have me interested.
Might I suggest looking at “Inhuman conditions” ?
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tommy-maranges/inhuman-conditions-a-game-of-cops-and-robots
It plays of the Voight-Kampff interrogation scenes in Bladerunner as one player tries to determine wether the other one is a human or robot. I’m pretty sure anyone roleplaying as a violent robot will utter the lines “Let me tell you about my mother … ” 😉
Happy Sunday. Totally second full Thrust, it also comes with an option to build and import your own ships, still have a stargate and BSG project going for that, by far the best starship battle system. You could also check out the Saganami Tactical Island Simulator, which does real realistic ship of the line battle based on the Honorverse.
I have a sneaking suspicion that Babylon 5 Wars worked off of Full Thrust as well.
There were quite a few fan versions of B5 for full thrust. Not sure about any official game
Never played the first Bb5 Game, but I know the latest version was based on Full Thrust.
Squadron Strike is a newer iteration of the SITS rules and builds off of Attack Vector:Tactical. It allows for full 3D movement and positioning including pitch and yaw differences.
I’m lazy would you have a link kind Sir?
Ad Astra Games – http://www.adastragames.com
I’ve followed SITS for a few years, but have only picked up the pdfs from DrivethruRPG. I recently did the same for Squadron Strike which is very similar, but more freeform. I think this year’s project is to finally get it on the table.
Ben means what is know as a Project for a US housing Estate, a subdivision is a land term for the area property is built onto.
you know what – i would like to see BLADERUNNER as a tabletop game . that would be amazing….
The right Blade Runner game could take all my money. Would your game be based on one aspect of the film(s) or something else within the universe?
The one that jumps out to me would be a “spot the replicant”, but would that be much different to the “spot the Cylon” described in the show? In case it’s not already obvious, I’m not a game designer 🙂
I remember the original Aliens board game was quite fun
Yes it is a time when table top games are booming, but there are plenty of non gaming people who have absolutely no idea or interest in Burrows and Badgers say purely because it has nothing to drag them in. Games like Ice and Fire have an important role in that the IP will unquestionably bring in new gamers who will not have had exposure to TT games before.
That to me is the use of the IP, not to necessarily attract the experienced gamer (though of course it will) but to tempt to the hobby new gamers, who one would hope if they enjoyed the experience will go on to enjoy other games.
I agree with @avernos about the Ice and fire game. Having the political machinations during the game seems a little weird. I would have thought it would have been much better to have all that as a pre battle section a bit like Bloody Barons the War of the Roses rules that Peter pig published
As an ASOIAF obsessive and someone who has played every analogue and digital incarnation of the franchise I would have to say that CMON did the best they could with their game.
What they made was a mass combat miniatures game. In order to tie in the franchise it was important that the game carried some of the overtones of political machination and skulduggery of the original world. The card mechanics and use of the Tactics board do this in a very elegant way.
I agree that the original novels did not focus on the combat elements of the story overmuch and mostly the results of battles are merely communicated in the narrative and dialogue of the main characters micro-stories.
But adding a miniatures game to the array of options for franchise nerds like me is greatly appreciated.
Thinking about it I don’t think any of the board game or card game releases have recreated EXACTLY the narrative tone of the original novels (the RPG probably is closest) but games shouldn’t always slavishly recreate something. Offering a new way to experience something is often just as valid.
Much better episode. By the way, we need more Dune, baed on the Frank Herbert Novel. Actually there are 2 board games, i i ignore and one i really appreciate for its immersion. So we need a tabletop. May we will see it with Dennis Villeneuve version. And then i think about bladerunner, we really need a good tabletop about cyberpunk. I still have a eye on Hints Nakamura Tower.
I don’t know if we’ll see one, but it would be great with the new version to get a tabletop version.
I totally agree with the analysis that miniature based games are less risky for wargames players because of the ability to repurpose the miniatures.
Sadly I don’t have the money but I would love to back the Assassin’s Creed kickstarter, not because of the board game but because I can re-skin a Carnevale style game using those miniatures to create a great tabletop wargame experience. If the core game is good that is a bonus for me.
On a similar note I have already used my Mythic battles Pantheon miniatures more in Dungeon Saga and D&D than I have in games of Mythic battles. Not that Mythic battles is a bad game but the miniatures are amazing and I love those other game systems more.
This conversation has some real strong analogies to the previous conversation on whether miniatures sometimes harm a game.
The answer IMHO is the same. No IP/miniature should ever be an obstacle to a game being good. BUT IPs and miniatures will not make a bad game good. The responsibility lies with consumers to not allow publishers and game designers to get away with parting them from their hard earned in exchange for shoddy products. In a highly commercialised environment it is inevitable that poor games with great IPs will emerge. Thankfully due to the small amounts of money to be made in our industry this problem has not reached the scale of the problem in the computer game industry that was alluded to in the discussion and long may this continue.
I have to agree with above. IPs don’t make a game good or bad. There are good games and bad games, and IP games and non-IP games. If it’s a bad game, I don’t blame the IP, it’s the developer producing a bad game.
To Bens point, that with an IP game, they have to focus more on satisfying the IP, rather than making a better game. I also somewhat disagree with this, because it assumes the money that the developer could spend on the game is set and finite. I would argue that one of the benefits of using an IP is the developer can expect their retur/sales to be higher. They can make “spaceship game A”, and if it’s a great game, a few people will buy it, and it may slowly grow a community. It if has an IP, the developer can bank on additional sales from people who just like that IP. That allows them to spend additional development $ because they can expect higher returns. ROI can be expected to be higher, so initial investment can be higher.
I also think we need to realize that not every game needs to be a huge success, getting a lifetime following. Yes the battle star game maybe just a reskinned spaceflight game with an IP that makes them quick money because of the IP. That may be all that company wants/needs. Many don’t want a product they need to support with a product line for years to come. That has its own problems and burdens. Again it’s ROI. If they have a good game, and for a little IP and a production run can release a resin to make some extra cash, and that helps their business, why should we take them to task for not innovating everything they produce? I don’t innovate everything I do at work, and neither does the team at BoW.
Happy Sunday guys. Question, have you stopped doing the community hobby section during the weekenders. I always liked the community sharing/critique, but it’s been absent the last 2 weeks.
For me personally, when I see an IP attached to a game it immediately makes me suspicious of the cost/gameplay/quality of the game experience. In the majority of cases I avoid games with an IP attached. Not automatically, but after checking them out from a value/gameplay perspective.
Fresh new experiences are much more attractive when allocating my hobby cash. Or if not fresh new experiences, then established and readily available. Games with IP attached, for the most part, use the IP as a crutch for the failings of the game.
What if they are yet to release a second ASOIAF game that interacts with the battle game? All the politics and all the intrigue and resource management etc, but any time you march to war you have the option to switch to the battle game? Each box is a different Level of War and while a battle may last a few hors the game lasts weeks or months. If I was releasing something like that i think it’d be easier to start with the battle game. I used to run a Play by Email game like this based on D&Ds Birthright setting for 130+ players. It was a lot of fun.
Happy sunday all!
Thanks Sam, my therapist had only just managed to get the experience of the AvP car crash out of my head! 😀
I think when it comes to IP games there’s a triad to making it successful – the IP, a proper ruleset and proper components/minis. If one of those is lacking then the immersion is lost and rest will struggle to bring you back in.
The IP that I wish had been more successful were the Halo games from Spartan Games. I picked up the Ground Command starter set but the rules were a little clunky in places and needed a bit of work to tidy them up. Then the expansions began to be released and the prices were a little off-putting to say the least. How much of that was due to the licencing costs I don’t know, but maybe a big contributor into why Spartan went under.
Thanks for the mention, @avernos – yeah, between you and me I think we got them all identified, at least those in that 122 “Griffon” Inf Div photograph. That alternate division symbol definitely had me stumped at first, though.
One thing I’ve been noticing is that hobby companies send out a sheet of transfers with many different kits. “World War II mid War German Panzer Division,” etc. Going into detailed instructions in the kits is really too much, as we’ve discovered / shown in your great project thread, it can be extremely complex. So they give you a range of “close enough” and basically say “you figure it out.” They know people who are really into this stuff enjoy doing the research anyway. 😀
Fantastic job on that weathering! Those definitely have the look of 1941 DAK trucks … “We’ve driven this thing through sandstorms and machine gun fire from Tripoli to Benghazi to Egypt … and back again! She doesn’t have an original part in her, and we barely have water for the radiator, much less fuel for the engine!”
I can start digging on that “IC” designation on the license plate.
@oriskany
Hey Jim I was talking to Gerry online about the IC licence plate. IC was used from 1906 in Germany to designate a car registered in East Prussia. We wondered if some vehicles still carried the designation during the war as we thought it possible that local civilian trucks were used in occupied countries
Awesome. It’s like that plaque they used have hanging at my old battalion.
“All of us are smarter than any of us.”
Still not sure if that’s the right answer
we could ask Warlord 🙂
That sounds dangerously sensible
Found a picture in old Panzer Colors book of a car used by a PK unit with the license plate staring with 1A . The caption states the 1A prefix was used on cars registered in Berlin . Sometimes you see trucks in use by the Army with DR plates , those would be ex state rail road vehicles . The Germans also had a number of prefixes for captured vehicles used in the country of origin in the early years of the war ( for ex MD – Denmark , MN – Norway ) , as the war started to move toward Germany they had other things to worry about than vehicle license plates . And yes it would be nice if we got a little more info on kit decal sheets on vehicle markings , division and tactical signs etc . Don’t think there is a good book out there which covers both the early (1935-42) and late (1943-45) markings in detail . I’ve got bits and pieces in various publications but I always find pictures of stuff I have no reference on and of course that’s the vehicle I want to build …
Marvel battle game. 2 teams duking it out in a city with actual civilians in running away from the battle to established exit points, sort of like a MOBA. Maybe theres a fixed number or maybe they spawn at a set rate from defined possibly random buildings. Set it during some kind of civil war event where the sides are mixed up. The Marvel Ultimate Alliance games had a thing were people were infected with evil nanites so good guys were killing people and bad guys fought with the heroes to avoid infection. This would let you build whatever team you like. When you roll off for initaitive at the start of a game the winner of the roll picks if he’s the heroes or the bad guys. The other guy decides on deployment order. The winner scores points for getting humans to safety and loses points for any that get hit by friendly fire (Bring on the AoEs!). The bad guys get points for taking down (Infecting?) the good guys. Both sides also get a mission objective. I think this could give you a really epic narrative battle with a similar feeling to the start of the Battle for New York in Avengers Assemble.
Superhero games on the tabletop are a bit of a challenge. Unless it is a co-op game, you need balanced factions with a reason to face off against each other. Licensing costs aside, I think that’s why Batman is viable for Knight Models where Marvel or a wider DC game was a tougher sell. It was easier to have protagonists of similar strength without a large imbalance and the foot soldiers still pose a threat.
Pulp City did it well with an original IP and a large number of varied factions. Many characters can work with different factions showing shifting allegiances. This lets the game be individually thematic without breaking the narrative. (I like the game so much it was my first project http://www.beastsofwar.com/project/1181548/?order=asc )
Full Thrust <3
Generally speaking, so not excluding some exceptions, I’m not a fan of games developers buying in existing IP.
Firstly because I want to see creative people coming up with new stuff, rather than drawing the last breath out of stuff which will eventually have been done to death.
Secondly because quite often, the constraints and risks of working with an existing IP can negatively impact on the quality of the final product, and the delivery of a project. Delays, quality issues, and gameplay which suffers from shoe-horning themes, characters, settings, and ideas into it, or vice-versa.
I think the games that do get it right never lose sight of two things: Firstly, it needs to do justice to, and capture the feel of the original IP, otherwise it’s just branding slapped haphazardly on top of your game. Secondly, it has to deserve to exist in its own right- it needs to be good enough that people would play it without the IP, but also, if the IP is itself already a game, it has to add value beyond what people can get by playing the original.
Generally speaking I agree with your sentiment and your points. When a company has half or more of it’s games depending on licenced IP I begin to worry about the company’s future. If Spartan had not pusued the HALO IP and subsequent large financial outlay for something they could never own it was the begining of the end for them.
@avernos – yes to the emptying of the said clip(s) into Steve Rogers!!
Great great XLBS guys – thx as ever. Hope ye have had a great weekend.
IP games……… so so much dross cash grab examples out there – the one that really comes to mind is the Street Fighter one recently. Jesus that was awful adn so obviously some wee twat trying to make cash while not having a single original idea of his own. On the other hand there have been some good IP cash-in games. Ehmmmm…….thinking….. Oh yes. Warlord and Strontium Dog 😀
Usually though when I see an IP tabletop port coming out I do find myself at the very least viewing it with utter suspicion.
I think Ben is talking shit about Song of Ice and Fire.
Each to their own. Personanlly whilst it seems like a neat game I think the way the political/battling of Westeros in board game form is better.
…and I’m hesitant about the longevity of the game. Yes, there are plenty of battle to play out but for me that’s not the main draw of what A Song Of Ice & Fire is.
also the politicking doesn’t make sense within timescales of a battle. Running it as a separate game as part of a campaign and then swapping to the tabletop for the battles in a campaign I can understand
As a level of abstraction, I think it works here.
Whilst I wouldn’t put it quite as raglan has, I think Ben is missing something here. If the board-game and card games didn’t exist, I think I could see the argument that the political side should have been the focus. But given that games do exist that focus on that part of the world, I don’t think it is harmful to have a game that focusses on the battle aspect. I also think the political board was really well integrated, it acknowledges that aspect of the world in an abstract way that really is a bit more than just a card power. The fact you have list building even with your political characters, and a bit of a mini-game on the side with them, I just think is a really great way to have that nod in there, and make it a very functional part of the game. I agree with Justin that I am not 100% fan of tray-based games, but that is more about tray vs non-tray, than it is about how good the mechanics of combat specifically are in ASOIAF.
I’d love to see a Stargate skirmish game. No idea how it could work though. It would have to be very narrative/scenario driven i think.
@cassn What about a Tetris RPG? 🙂
Where you are an odd shape just desperately trying to fit in? I’m living it already thanks lol ?
Depends on you’re Allignment – if you’re Chaotic Evil you head to fill a spot exactly to set off a chain reaction, but at the last minute you rotate or take one step to the side and screw things up. ?
Depends on what you want from a Stargate skirmish game; you could have it focused on the Goa’uld forces and have it be Jaffa vs Jaffa and have some sort of campaign system where the players are rival System Lords vying for control of contested worlds.
Alternatively, Stargate might lend itself better to an RPG where the PCs play as a new SG team; in D&D terms, the SG team is like the party, roles within that team take the places of classes, you have social interaction in trying to negotiate with natives, combat when Jaffa show up/you raid a Goa’uld world/natives turn hostile/etc, exploration of new worlds, Ancient devices take the place of treasure, etc. And all it takes is a supplement book and you can also play an AR team on Atlantis. Obviously if going down this route SG-1, AR-1, etc would all be NPCs. And because the setting has established parallel realities you can say explicitly that you’re playing in one of those rather than the canon timeline so you can still have the Goa’uld be relevant and not have to worry about things happening in your campaign that didn’t in the show.
I’ve done SG1 skirmish with the Savage Worlds rules. I have the old figures from Eureka miniatures, sadly no longer available. There was also some official licensed figures some years ago but they didn’t last.
I suppose you could also do skirmish with the old D20 Stargate RPG.
Quite a bit to cover…
It feels to me that when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s there were a few ‘classic’ board games and then some pretty awful IP reskins and/or rapidly produced junk games.
We’ve been going through a ‘golden age of gaming’ in which changing technology (the internet), culture (geeks are cool) and financing (Kickstarter, etc.) opened the industry up to a huge number of new designers and companies who had a lot of great ideas. I suspect many of them wanted to pursue their ideas and never considered buying an IP. And those who wanted to buy an IP generally couldn’t.
I think it’s relatively recent that we’ve had another wave of games based on IPs and I think they should be considered for the most part to be more serious efforts at good games than the previous wave of them in the 80s/90s.
I know you weren’t wanting to name and shame too much, but I feel that there have been quite a few good games based on IPs and that you really needed to be specific about the bad ones to support what you were saying.
A few other observations:
I think there is a different standard for wargames than board games. I think it’s true that some IPs can be better represented by board games than war games, but I think it’s also true that many wargamers just want to be able to play a wargame in the setting that they love. If the Song of Ice and Fire wargame is a decent wargame, then even if it doesn’t capture the source material as well as the board game, that doesn’t necessarily matter.
I like the Dark Souls board game and never played the computer game. The computer game sounds boring to me, and I think the board game would have benefitted from cutting further loose from the source material. It would have been better if they’d just taken the look and feel of the original and made a more traditional dungeon crawler rather than trying to replicate the repetition of the video game. I’m not sure why I enjoy it as much as I do, but I can certainly see its flaws.
Finally, I haven’t actually played Terminator Genesyis, but from the lets plays that BoW did it looks like quite a fun game. One that ironically was let down by being tied to an IP that was bungled so badly by the film the game is based on.
strange vehicles markings sounds like a job for a man on the internet ?
weirdly after several weeks of hunting the interwebz and reading the books I have the answers are still not all their. It’s like an itch I can’t scratch
nice tat @cassn
@dracs – what’s wrong with SAO?
Surely a Wallace and Grommit game shouldn’t be a card game it should be something physical where you build actual Rube Goldburg machines ala Mousetrap?
What IP would I like to see? Hmm, not sure actually, can’t really think of any off the top of my head…maybe if I could stop procrastinating and get around to writing the fantasy book I want to write then that? ?
Sword Art Online. Very strong premise. Superb action scenes. I occasionally go back and watch the first couple of episodes. Back when it held potential. Then…
– Interesting characters turned into bland anime stereotypes
– A set up that promises to explore the nature of online relationships that completely squanders it on waifu baiting.
– A protagonist who may be the biggest Mary Sue since Wesley Crusher.
– A villain who is built up as a big deal only to be revealed to have no motive WHAT SO EVER!
– The entire Fairy arc. just… Just all of that. Complete disgusting train wreck. Gah! It’s one of the worst things I have seen. Sure, let’s take our once promising female lead (completely squandered after the whole marriage thing in any case) and stick her in a literal birdcage to become a maguffin for the hero to rescue.
-Just… just all of it! Argh that show makes me so angry.
I’d recommend checking out the Abridged series, funnily enough. It actually manages to be a better show than the show it sets out to parody!
Heh, I was actually going to suggest the Abridged parody to you funnily enough.
One problem I have with SAO is the lack of filler. I know filler can normally be the bane of anime, but I think having some more of it would allow for exploring the setting a bit more; at the very least it would have been nice if when Kirito joined a guild early on they’d have had him stay part of it for a few episodes rather than TPKing them in the very episode they appeared. It would have helped flesh Kirito out via his interactions with them and it would have made the deaths more meaningful for the audience.
Overall though I don’t mind it, although that could be because my experience of anime is not that broad, and I tend to be kindly disposed to characters voiced by Bryce Pappenbrook.
If you have Netflix, you might want to try out SAOII; skip the first half (Gun Gale Online – from what I recall it doesn’t have anything to correct on the issues you have with the first series), but maybe check out the second half which is focus on Asuna (don’t remember much of it ‘cause I have a memory like a sieve, but giving her chance to take centre stage might almost make up for the fairy arc for you (and failing that it’ll give you more ammo for criticism and hopefully will make the Abridged version even better when they get to it).
interesting conversation they may be one like this but what about a Asimov (foundation) type game civilisation in space ? guys.
Starcraft! Prodos was doing it, now its limbo.. Need mini Siege Tanks!
Has anyone talked about the best thing, in my opinion, about IP games: that they get folks who aren’t in to our hobby into our hobby via a propertty thy’re already a fan of?
When I was a youngster, we had a Return of the Jedi branded game set on Jabba’s sail barge over a cardboard, funnel-shaped Sarlacc pit, (the funnel fit over the game box bottom) and it had little miniatures that you’d toss over the side of the sail barge into the pit. I don’t remember anything else about the game, but because it was Star Wars, I was eager to participate.
In addition, probably the best use of IP is to not even try to duplicate the source material, but to expand on it by playing to the strengths of the board/miniatures game experience. In the movies, they don’t make direct word-for-word translations of novels into films, they adapt them to play to the strengths of the moviegoing experience.
As long as the game mechanic can re create the IP, then it should be a success. Some mechanics just are not suited to the theme it is trying to re create. X wing is clunky with a lot of ships but not with a few. Using another mechanic can work but it limits the overall growth of the game ( Not in a tournament so do you use it if you want to play tournaments).
Topic also matters. Mockingjay looks like a great political game that if it didn’t have mockingjay, it would not work or be a success( Still to be determined if it’s success)
Timing also matters. I think mockingjay that missed the boat; same with Pacific rim extinction
there is something very wrong with that banner image
IP games do come down to the business model of the company – they are good and bad just because they are driven from IP.
The game quality is down to the developers of the game, they might have to shoehorn a game into an IP that they get told to develop, but they still have design leeway to make a good game. IP cannot stop you creating a good game – unless the IP is bought under the sole reason to make quick money – which is fine for a business model and you cannot blame companies for doing this – you assume that there is a moral contract in place for our community to not make a bad game and only make good games as the community deserve it.
Companies should do what they feel to make money, that is the nature of business and you cannot assume that they shouldn’t be doing such a thing. reskinning monopoly is fine and it makes money so I do not see that being bad.
What is bad is that “mainstream” only get to see reskinned monopoly or cluedo because the vast majority of people are not exposed to our community and the breadth of games. We are a minority and you have to remember that, it is a hidden revenue base, but I getting more exposure and will evolve. Main shoppers do not see games they don’t understand and wont buy the games we see, our generation will be at the leading edge of getting games into mainstream, as we have the spending power and would buy games – Waterstones has more and more non classic titles every so offer, but they are a business and businesses should only do things to make money, that is the sole purpose of a capital society like it or not.
I have love letter as an intro game for non gaming folk I use, however there is too many reskinned versions of that now, slight rule teaks to attempt to reskin and theme it – but do you need adventure time / batman / simpsons love letter??? Yes, from a publisher perspective people who like adventure time will buy adventure time themed products rather than a generic Japanese game – good or bad reskinning is viable and does introduce games to people that wouldn’t normally play games.
IP is a strong buy into gaming – the issue with volume and output is there – publishers and devs can be lazy – they might be working on a AAA game but need to supplement that 3-4 year dev cycle with quick and easy profit margin reskinning games – video games do that in general and now board games are coming into the same process, because the market it emerging and companies can see a profit in it.
SO I do not think IP is bad but it does lend an air of laziness to the games produced under IP, I think it does lend itself to a quick generic game build and ship process – with most IP games missing the mark rather than being great. However I do think IP needs to remain a thing that should not be dismissed out of hand.
IC means “Province East-Prussia” according to http://www.kfzderwehrmacht.de/Homepage_english/Miscellaneous/License_numbers/license_numbers.html @avernos (In case nobody had found that info yet)
Cheers matey, I think I’d rejected that put of hand when researching but after throwing it around with torros and oriskany I think we settled on that as being the only sensible choice. Nice to have another confirmation for it
For my money what makes a game good or bad is the game itself and the enjoyment you get from playing it. If a good game is attached to a popular IP (ASOIF is a perfect example), it’s bound to ruffle a few feathers and have the purists bemoaning the fact that the Nights Watch would never fight the Lannister’s. This is really no different than an argument about Ultramarines facing off against Blood Angels in a tournament.
The game is the game, the IP is the IP. There are plenty of people out there who want to see their favourite Stark rendered in 32mm and get the chance to control them on the tabletop and these franchises have resulted in some great games (I’m really enjoying Star Wars Legion at the moment).
I do always approach IP games cautiously in case they are just an IP cash grab. However you have to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water!
A lot of creative people love constraints so i don’t feel that developers making rules are worried about an IP stiffling their design. I worry about computer games becoming war games and board games because the way you experience a sand box style game changes from player to player. How can you please everyone when the fan base has seen a dozen different narratives (and sometimes even to different endings)? The warcraft movie seems a good example of this disconect from the fan base, even though they tried to stay true to the spirit of the computer game as they saw it.
I love Mantic’s The Walking Dead. The noise mechanics were new (new to me) and I came to the TV series after being intrigued by the game. I have also considered reading the comics. I am sure the owner of the IP would like to hear feedback like that and be encouraged that trusting their licence to Mantic was a potentially profitable move.
I have the Firefly skirmish game but haven’t had a chance to play it yet. I love the boardgame. It does feel like the IP is desperate to keep alive long enough to get a decent computer game company to pick it up and make some serious money that way. It does feel that being the Firefly crew, or a Firefly independent style crew, flying on missions and keeping your ship in one piece and the crew happy would be best covered in a good computer game. Firefly the board game does feel like the old board game S.P.I.V.S but is it’s own game and very fun.
I wanted to play a game like Spectre to encourage my son away from computer games like Rainbow Six Siege and Call of Duty, but realised quickly that the slower nature of war games would be too big of a draw back to achieve that. Why move and shoot by tape rule and dice when they can use a joypad in an interative environment?
Perhaps because the Beasts of War is a very positive place I am not sure I have seen many obvious cash grab IP games, but I have seen IP’s I have been interested in made into games and still haven’t bought into them. Mainly down to cost and mechanics. A good IP always seems to cost more to cover the licence price. Would the mechanics of a good game be better served by setting itself in it’s own world to avoid that expense they have to pass on to the customer?
Eeek! A bald Wookie!
Ip on the table top… the reason i was kicked out of the club
Thank you Noel Coward
Watching this late and not finished yet, but @BOWben re A song of Ice and Fire – is the danger that people will see thru the non IP plot and go “oh this is just ripping off Martins work, especially given GoT current interest in popular culture? I believe that many games that dont have the IP attached to them as copying the ideas if existing IPs are well known
It has to have the ability to immerse yourself in the storyline for IP games for me.
I’d like to see an Armada style Battle Star Galactica fleet battle game.
I believe HeroClix has done a release for every Marvel movie.
I’m a little late to the show but I have been out of the country and watching XLBS proved difficult (the front stage videos on YouTube were fine).
So IP Games. I think it’s actually worth considering board games and miniatures games separately for this. IPs and miniatures games are actually very good bed fellows even though they might be more of a one night stand than a deep and meaningful. They can potentially sell a lot of miniatures quite quickly based almost entirely off the aesthetic. As Gerry said, lots of people will buy something for the miniatures even if they intend to use them outside of the game they come with. A game doesn’t necessarily have to have longevity as long as it is profitable (remember they’re businesses). Longevity might be desirable but it’s not essential in order to make a profit and I think this is where miniatures Boardgames like Conan come in. They don’t need long term support, they contain beautiful miniatures and with one copy you and several friends can all play. Sure it doesn’t tick the massed battle itch but it definitely scratches a collectors itch – it’s a collection in a box. And with that in mind you can pretty much make a miniatures game from any IP that has iconic looking units and characters with a story that has at least some reference to a conflict or a struggle between multiple factions.
Boardgames I think are different because board games really need to capture the feel of the show in a very different and more personal way. BSG is a good example of that, as is the Star Trek game from Gale Force 9.
Some IPs lend themselves to boardgames, others to miniatures games but the best IPs are multi faceted. So BSG has a great intrigue Boardgame but while the intrigue was a big part of the show, so was the space combat; it’s every bit a part of BSG as it is Star Wars. You will never find a game that encompasses all aspects of an IP and different games will likely focus on different parts. Star Trek has a space combat game (a couple actually), a Boardgame about diplomacy and also an RPG. All of which explore different aspects of the Star Trek show. And I don’t even know where to start with Star Wars, it seems to have a game for all occasions (although I am not convinced by the longevity of Legion because of the limited number of factions) allowing you to explore the universe in so many different ways.
Generally speaking I think licensed IPs are a net positive. Yeah, you get very strange choices but I think there’s more gems than turds.
Personally, I would love to see Elder Scrolls brought to the tabletop as both a miniatures game and an RPG. It has all the qualities needes to be a successful Wargame setting but also has a very rich and diverse world perfect for adventuring in
Happy Sunday everyone!
I am surprised no-one mentioned that Tetris is based on a board game (well, maybe more accurate to call it a puzzle?) originally. There are a couple of games that use tetris-esque mechanics quite nicely (Basically all the Uwe Rosenberg games!). Not my cup of tea, but I can see that it works.
I agree with the principle that when you marry an IP and a mechanic that appear to have nothing to do with each other it can be a really flat game. I love the TV show castle and I bought a crime-solving game based on it, and really it was very generic and disappointing. A games theme should be told through its mechanics as much as it is in its art and lore. I think IP games are more likely to get this wrong, but it happens in non-IP games, and there are IP games that get it right.
I do genuinely think that no-one sets out to make a bad game. When I was in the video game industry I worked on many IP based video games, and I’ve never met anyone who said: “let’s make this terrible and grab the cash”. People have pride in their work and they want to do a good job the vast majority of the time. What does happen are people say “ok, but for this IP we are looking at selling X units, that means Y budget, which means we have to consider Z constraints”. So for sure, sometimes they aren’t the best games because you are not going all out on making the game amazing, because it made more ROI sense to spend some money on IP and some on development. But that isn’t the same as saying “lets make this rubbish and not care”, the developers care and are trying hard to do the best, just perhaps with more limited resources than they might otherwise have. Also, sometimes people make mistakes, which again is a different thing to not caring.
Overall I think you get good and bad of both, and I don’t mind IP games in general (especially if they are good, and based on cool IP I love!). I do think it is healthy for the industry for there to be a mix of original IP and licenced IP games.
I also think the more reviews there are out there (and great editorial content like this), the more informed buyers become, the harder it is for “Monopoly: Terminator” edition to make money, and in turn, the market responds and you’ll get a better quality product. I think we are already seeing this if you compare IP games from more recent years to those from a few years ago.