Points of View: Peak Entertainment! Part 2
March 1, 2019 by dignity
For some website features, you will need a FREE account and for some others, you will need to join the Cult of Games.
Or if you have already joined the Cult of Games Log in now
What difference will having a FREE account make?
Setting up a Free account with OnTableTop unlocks a load of additional features and content (see below). You can then get involved with our Tabletop Gaming community, we are very helpful and keen to hear what you have to say. So Join Us Now!
Free Account Includes
- Creating your own project blogs.
- Rating and reviewing games using our innovative system.
- Commenting and ability to upvote.
- Posting in the forums.
- Unlocking of Achivments and collectin hobby xp
- Ability to add places like clubs and stores to our gaming database.
- Follow games, recommend games, use wishlist and mark what games you own.
- You will be able to add friends to your account.
What's the Cult of Games?
Once you have made a free account you can support the community by joing the Cult of Games. Joining the Cult allows you to use even more parts of the site and access to extra content. Check out some of the extra features below.
Cult of Games Membership Includes
- Reduced ads, for a better browsing experience (feature can be turned on or off in your profile).
- Access to The Cult of Games XLBS Sunday Show.
- Extra hobby videos about painting, terrain building etc.
- Exclusive interviews with the best game designers etc.
- Behind the scenes studio VLogs.
- Access to our live stream archives.
- Early access to our event tickets.
- Access to the CoG Greenroom.
- Access to the CoG Chamber of Commerce.
- Access the CoG Bazarr Trading Forum.
- Create and Edit Records for Games, Companies and Professionals.
If a company wants to make a mini then let them, I will not buy it and I will even go further and ask my local shop to withdraw it from stock.
I believe in free speech, but I do not have to listen.
Hi @warzan,
In response to my comment, others might disagree but I don’t think you’re putting out too much content – I’m really loving all the new stuff but sometimes it might be nice to make it a little easier to find. One simple example (a bit of a bugbear of mine) – on the main page, first thing I see is just 3 videos from frontstage – there’s no link to show me all the most recent content from there. Whereas for Backstage, News, Projects etc. there’s a link at the top of the section to show all the content. This makes it easy to scan through what I’ve missed and see if there’s anything relevant to me.
I also noticed that the beloved sidebar of hobby news only shows up once you’ve clicked on and entered an existing news story, for front stage. I LOVE that vertical side bar, it’s direct and to the point and should be kept.
Totally agree – the sidebar is a very useful way to find stuff – I too miss it off the front page.
Very interesting PoV. To address the controversial issue straight off the bat, i could go on at length about this however i am going to take a deep breath and hold back my autism on this one and just say that the miniatures are being made by a Chinese company. They are more than likely made for a Chinese market (Correct me if i’m wrong) and so there is a huge cultural divide your dealing with right there.
On another note, challenge for @warzan ….you want Roman orgies…..”Caligula The Game!!”….get on it, i’d well play it!
I have had a funny thought on the peak entertainment topic, wouldn’t it be great if table top games became so popular that it triggered a long line of film and series franchises like comic books have done in the recent past! Now that would be an awesome tide line!
Great discussion guys and thanks as ever.
Caligula The Game is just another name for Friday’s game night with a Slaanesh crew. You just need to bring your own implements from home and be dressed publicly acceptable to the door.
Crucifixion…. common practice in roman times, potentially game-able, or set dressing (gladiator based games). N although thought of as outside living memory, I seem to remember some mention of it in more recent times… but ignoring them (as not sure how true that is), given the religious symbolism surrounding such a “activity”, should it be made? Has it been made? Although lacking faith myself I would say not, but only because I wouldn’t want to offend others unintentionally (am fine with intentionally!) but then what about the crusades as an era?
Well made point @nogbadthebad and in fact i, as well as no doubt millions of people, wear a crucifixion mini around my neck! It’s technically a mini!
Yeah but could you imagine the outcry if someone ‘modified’ one for the table top… saying that am sure I have seen Buddhas in wargaming…. could offence be taken is a wargames table of Rio complete with Statue (it’s late and I can’t remember the name of it)? I mean at the inclusion of the stone Jesus…
There was an art exhibition were one of the installation was called “The Piss Christ”, it was a Christ on the cross upside down in a steel bucket of urine. THAT offended me, a Christ mini on a table top does not offend me.
In fact to quote the bible Matthew 10:34 King James Version (KJV)
34. “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.”
So in that light an ass kicking Christ would be right up my street! 🙂
Will roman orgies be the next boot camp? Don’t think the missus will sign off on that one…
– Caesar Miniatures – Would I buy the militia “scene”? No. Can I see other people buying it? Probably. I think some people will use it as an “objective”. ‘Can the SAS or Delta Force locate and rescue the hostage in time?’ Is it too soon? Quite possibly, but deciding when events are too soon is down to personal opinion. I have a mate who won’t play WW2 games as he had family members involved in the British army and in his words “Doesn’t feel right playing the Germans who are fighting against the Brits”. Don’t get me wrong, he won’t say that people who play WW2 games are wrong or anything similar, but its not his cup of tea. Could Vietnam be considered too soon? Maybe by some people it is as they either fought or knew/know people who fought and the effects it had on them. As I said, it is a very personal opinion.
– Too much content? – IMHO, maybe. But I am selective on the content I watch. To be honest, as an example, 99% of the GW content doesn’t interest me, so I don’t watch it. Maybe multiple channels could be a way to look into the “issue”, similar to the emails sent out for Fantasy content, Historical etc etc.
@dignity – you need to reread ‘Cains Last Stand’ as the female Commissar myself and others were referring to was in that (specifically she was one of the cadets he was training); if you don’t remember the book, it’s the one where he’s yanked out of retirement to help lead the defence of Perlia during the 13th Black Crusade against a Hitler-expy.
beheadings and orgies should this post not be in a plain brown bag @warzan ?
I have zero issue with the minis. Jihadist do cut people’s heads off and rescue attempts have been made to get them out. I understand from the point of view of “Well my friend was beheaded so I find this offensive/in bad taste” but to me that just means exactly that. YOU don’t like this. If someone’s Dad had been executed by Islamic terrorists and we were planning a wargame I would tuck these minis away in the deepest darkest hole I could find but if it was someone else and we’d decided to play a modern hostage rescue scenario that’s totally different.
The Reason we don’t see Death Camps on the Tabletop is that they have no military place on the tabletop. Battles weren’t fought at Death Camps and Camp Inmates weren’t on the front lines. If there was a “Battle of Auschwitz” (and there could have easily been one thanks to Witold Pilecki) and it was important I guarantee you we’d have Auschwitz terrain, source books, dedicated games and everything else that comes with a battle. We would have Inmate miniatures and the narrative around the battle would be something like “Inmates revenge on the Evil SS” and it would most likely be a pretty celebrated moment with glorified movies made about it. The difference between WWII and today is that in WWII the horrendously evil things were being done far away from the front lines and that means far away from anything we’d recreate on our gaming tables(yes shooting PoW’s is bad but nothing compared to exterminating 11 Million people) whereas today the horrendously evil things are done by the guys on the front lines and broadcast around the world. The military troops didn’t parachute into Death Camps (during WWII) guns blazing to get people out like they do today.
For example the Warsaw Uprising took place in late WWII in Warsaw Poland, the Polish Citizens rose up and fought the German occupiers. Brutal street fighting, tens of thousands of citizens including women and children dead. Mass executions followed. You can get Warsaw Uprising miniatures from a lot of companies out there. Same with the Hitler Youth in WWII.
These can easily be used for tabletop gaming in the same way any other prisoner mini could be used in a game. Any miniature is playable as an objective/terrain piece.
The Media loves some outrage don’t they? Toy Soldiers are bad but they’ll put 9/11 and Beheadings on the front page every single time, they can profit from terrorism but don’t you dare try to incorporate a very real thing into your gaming.
With all that rant over will I be buying these minis? No I have no use for soft plastic, low quality 20mm Jihadists. If this was 28mm Plastics of good quality I would strongly consider it.
Hit the nail on the head.
Granted, their are times when I’ve had to take a second and think but ultimately you’re dependent upon context when making decisions about stuff like this. As you say, you would NEVER show a diorama of an execution to a friend who you knew had lost in those circumstances but should that mean a blanket ban, censorship of such material? I remember during the Walking Dead bootcamp coverage where someone had made piles of human corpses as a terrain feature (tremendous ingenuity went into it, don’t get me wrong). My mind immediately went back to my undergrad days when I was studying the death camps, the Katyn Massacre, of seeing piles of burning and freshly buried bodies, or worse, images and footage of the exhumations and autopsies that took place soon after. Would I like to play a game of bolt action with German and Soviet forces battling through a camp? Piles of corpses as ‘terrain’? No. But had it happened in real life, then as you say, like the Warsaw Uprising it would become part of the history, part of the national memory and character. As horrific as these images are, I wouldn’t necessarily condemn the use of those corpse piles in games like the Walking Dead, and to be honest, if it could be proved to me that front line actions did take place in the camps then likewise, I’d most likely suck it up and consider it to be part an parcel of the experience. Initially, when Warlord brought out SS Cavalry I was a bit taken back, knowing what these people had done, but in the context of Yugoslav partisans gunning them down in an ambush? Yeah, I’d be up for that.
Interesting, but context plays an enormous role when objectively, why should one pile of corpses be any more or less abhorrent than any other? Same could be said of the nature of the scene being depicted by Caesar – horrific scene to many, but executions take place by the thousand every year? Politically motivated killing is the same, whether it’s an execution, or at the point of a bayonet of an invading force or a bomb dropped from an aircraft.
We’ve each got a moral compass and at the end of the day, it’s a hobby. You do whatever you’re comfortable with but if you want to invest in stuff like this then it’s up to you, your tastes and the people around you if you’re actually wanting to put this stuff on a table (or even a shelf for that matter). Oddly enough, I think people would be more accepting of an execution diorama within the context of a search and rescue game than simply being a painted item on a shelf there to look nice. Yeah, could be a great paint job, but the subject matter devoid of context could make for an awkward atmosphere…
Thanks for the Reply.
On the point of corpses there’s a famous case of the “British” (They were German’s) defending La Haye Sainte at Waterloo using Corpses to barricade the gate and hold off the French. That’s a far different context to Death Camp Victims dumped ready to be incinerated.
The Warlord Games La Haye Sainte Box actually comes with some Corpse Piles just for that reason and people had no issue with it.
I don’t disagree with the sentiments above 🙂 (and many of you will know my long standing stance on free speech and freedom of expression for creators etc)
But I wonder is there a line not to cross or is it all about context? (I have to say I’d personally be more comfortable if it were about the latter esspecially if the community here also ‘accepted/embraced’ that notion.
It’s a bit of a minefield on so many levels.
When it comes to Gaming it’s all about context.
If this (Just the guy being beheaded and his killer not the rest of the set) was a bespoke diorama sold by ISIS as a way to raise money and promote themselves that’s horrible but as part of a larger set done by a reputable company that’s fine.
When it comes to minefields sometimes we just have to plow through them Sherman style.
https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-b3de1033d234893d7ccd2fd7f2802f10.webp
Realistically @warzan you can have your Roman orgies if you build it this way. Set up a Gangs of Rome scenario play for Lupercalia. Imagine that the whole of the city is ready for the celebration and you’ve got in a ton of revelers. You’ve got all the fanfare of the celebrants and maybe even pull in a few floats the likes as seen in Caligula (Is this where the Trump float came in, as an edifice paying homage to big dicks?).
Taking historical information for terrain building one of the most notable places in Pompeii was the estate of merchant brothers that was a veritable ‘pleasure palace’. Using that as a model you might be able to design/print interior art to establishments catering to a particular industry. I don’t know if Gangs can be played in buildings but its a thought. Maybe it might be better as a large outdoor pavilion of tents and stalls with people all about. This has me remember Conan the Barbarian.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXg-MCv-YQQ
On that note you can see that there are tie ins with all of the media to create peak entertainment. If we’ve reached a point to where we can give ourselves opportunity to find whatever distraction we want, a la Justin’s Command Crapper (its just a matter of time before that’s a feature to have you stuck in for hours on end), then its time to pare down the focus. This is probably the strength of historical games in their limitation for conflict.
The sheer amount of games behind you guys shows that there is more than a fair number of games that are created but which also don’t get played. I think this is a good reason behind the mini exchange posed by Gerry. The time used for the human element of interaction, literally why we play with/against each other, seems to be the premium you pointed out. The Fear of Missing Out also drives us socially as we become hyper aware of how in/out of touch with pop culture we might be. Warren had his moment on camera showing a smidge of this but he’s always relevant with providing gaming news content. Again, that touches on the sheer amount of content to cover. Everyone wants to make a thing and be celebrated for it that in turn makes news.
I think that maybe the zen approach of mini-malism is a good way to clear out the brainpan and focus on the people as well as the act of doing hobby/play.
Don’t think yer putting out too much content myself. I’m pretty happy with it, though I agree that pinning certain content would be helpful.
@ 9:49 for @dignity “Justin, when you’re right, you’re right!”
Totally agree Warzan, it’s about the relevancy of the topic, and how emotionally it is close to home.
Personally, I miss the dinosaurs. 😛
@warzan The debate about the ISIS beheading miniatures is in some ways a repeat of ones we’ve had before about the suitability of certian scenes in wargaming.
I lived in Syria. Some of my friends had family members killed in ISIS bomb attacks. I didn’t know, but I did meet an Italian priest who’d lived in Syria for decades who went to ISIS-controlled Raqqa to try to mediate the release of some hostages. This was years ago and virtually everyone assumes he was killed.
So would I buy or want these miniatures? I haven’t seen them, but no I wouldn’t.
But I don’t actually feel any worse about them than I would watching people play a moderns game of ‘Syrian Army vs. Rebels’. I don’t personally feel more affected by a diorama of a beheading than I do seeing people game a conflict I have a stake in.
As @dignity said, it’s about context. It’s about whether it has an impact on people today. But for me – and this is repeating a point I’ve made previously – it’s about whether or not the miniatures and the game are actually part of the conflict today. Perhaps only in a small and unwitting way. Put it like this. WWII is over. No one would think that people gaming a WWII battle would have any impact on anyone else other than perhaps making people with a personal connection feel uncomfortable. (Especially if those people aren’t familiar with wargaming and may not be aware of the degree of respect, sensitivity and interest in the actual history that is often exhibited by wargamers.) But the wargame will have no other impact.
A game about the Syrian conflict runs a much greater risk of actually having a greater impact. The history isn’t ‘known’. The war isn’t over. Even basic facts are still contested. There are propaganda battles being actively fought. To take a very recent example: the UN OPCW has just reported on the chlorine gas attack on the city of Douma last year, concluding that the attack a) happened and b) was the result of chlorine gas being dropped from helicopters. Although OPCW’s mandate doesn’t allow them to appoint blame, only the Syrian government could have done this. (As with scores or even hundreds of other chemical weapon attacks.)
Russian state media is still actively promoting conspiracy theories about this attack. Some ‘alternative’ media organisations in the US and UK promote these same conspiracy theories. Some members of Congress and members of the UK parliament do the same (Tulsi Gabbard, Chris Williamson, etc.) These people are actively supported by voters in today’s political world.
If this appears that I’ve veared off on a tangent, let me bring it back to gaming: I personally feel that there’s a risk in gaming a battle in the Syrian war of, even in just a small way, contributing to the contest around the facts of the war. Playing a game set in WWII is not going to change anyone’s perceptions of what really happened. Playing a game set in Syria ask participants to implicitly or explicitly take a stance on some of the debates that are not resolved in the way that the basic facts of WWII are resolved.
I’m not saying that honest and dedicated wargamers can’t attempt to get the history right, nor am I saying that it’s impossible to get right. I’m saying that the stakes are much higher and that there are consequences of them getting it wrong in a way that does not apply to gaming other, older wars.
(And although I’ve talked about Syria, yes, I think my argument could be made for many other wars going on today too.)
Definitely not a case of too much content. With less content there is a greater danger of being unable to find something that is interesting to view. As whilst I like the magazine style weekender due to time/hobby constraints there are specific areas I have no interest in. With less content there is more chance that I will find nothing of interest that week. With the new setup I find myself actually on this website everyday (especially the projects section. That has really inspired me to get painting. Some brilliant Rangers of Shadow Deep & Test of Honour stuff being created by people here.) whereas before I rarely visited and could go weeks even months without watching anything even on youtube.
Well, just to add another angle to the discussion, several years ago Polish artist in cooperation with Lego created series of Lego sets allowing one to build nazi death camp.
Pictures may be found here:
https://www.google.com/search?q=lego+concentration+camp&tbm=isch&source=univ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi215Ob-OjgAhV4URUIHdtsAT0QsAR6BAgFEAE&biw=1536&bih=754#imgrc=Gm4wsjOSP8InjM:
Too much content… Nope we want more ?
I have the Imperial Guard Human Bomb miniatures from the 90s. They were a brilliant unit to play because they were first into combat and really unpredictable. The Genestealer Cult had their own version. But I can understand how they cannot be in the modern game.
While I’m open to all opinions, I have to ask a simple question – to what end? If you begin to say this is okay, and this is not then you begin to self censor. Censorship in art is never alright. I get the time and distance argument, as its a good one and pretty on point. But you have to ask if you censor this, what is stopping it from expanding exponentially? It’s art, yes its brutal but if you are offended just move on. I live in the US and being offended is blowing out of proportion and PC culture has far to long of a reach. Offended? Don’t blow up or launch a crusade to remove a product, just keep walking, its not for you. Beheading’s are a part of life – a very unfortunate one that should NEVER happen. They are depicted in movies, games, artworks, ect. Why should this tiny sculpture be treated any different than any other medium?
On a side note, I think the amount of content the team is churning out is amazing! One thing come to mind for improvement. Some kind of way to find wanted content like these videos, articles, tutorials, ect in maybe a filter mode. I guess I should say maybe a way to filter out content instead. Just a way to browse videos while your painting, or articles if your in the mood for reading. Or, maybe I’m an idiot and this feature has been there all along and I just have completely missed it.