The Weekender: The Game Designer Challenge! [Updated!]
September 29, 2014 by warzan
Submissions for the Game Designer position are now closed. However, Illustrators can still apply throughout today!
This Weekender we're announcing an awesome chance for you to flex your creative muscles with a Game Designer Challenge and it's all about zombies! If you have always fancied becoming a Game Designer or Illustrator in this fantastic industry of ours, come Monday you may have your chance, and you even get to spend a bit of time with Alessio Cavatore for a bit of mentoring!
- Game Designer Applications (Closed)
- Game Illustrator Applications (Keep Applying!)
We're asking you to come up with a great zombie (or Halloween based) game idea and if we pick it you and your chosen Illustrator will not only see the game become a print & play reality distributed via our weekly EZine but also win the chance to be interviewed by us and get some mentoring from an industry professional! (The mighty Alessio Cavatore) Find out more by watching the show!
On top of all that goodness we're also talking about the cool Cyntopia: The Future is Now Kickstarter that is starting in the next few weeks and we had an exclusive sneak peek at! There have also been some great developments with Carnevale too!
Last but not least we reveal who won that Facebook Titan!
Happy gaming!
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The one upside to working nights: I can come home and watch the Weekender, doing what it says on the tin every Saturday 🙂
Whoooooo! Saturday morning!! Hello guys!! ^_^
Wow great competition I have my idea already!
Personally I can only see any adaptation of the Silmarillion being done on tv. But done right? As a Rome/ Game of Thrones-style prestige series?
Hell.
Yes.
great show guys. yeah like the catalogue idea.
Good show, very intriguing competition.
I was wondering do you guys have any plans to cover the two new starter sets coming from Spartan Games over the coming month?
I’m personally very intrigued by the Codename Iron Scorpion set for Dystopian Legions.
The LotR movies were a real zeitgeist moment. The Return of the King was the second highest grossing movie of all time when it came out and it jointly holds the record for most Oscars (which was really an acknowledgement of the entire trilogy). All three movies hold ratings in the 90s% on the aggregate websites. The Hobbit movies have made a lot of money, but they haven’t been well received. Their ratings are between 50s-70s% and they’ve won zero Oscars. The comparative performance of the GW product lines stems more from this than how GW marketed them. People came to GW looking for LotR, few people care that much about The Hobbit. I don’t think GW dropped the ball on this one as much they were thrown a hospital pass.
I agree with a lot of this, but I think we need to consider that although it may not be as well ‘recieved’ or as popular as the original trilogy… It’s popularity still dwarfs 40k… And Lego etc seem to have made a reasonably good show of monetizing it.
I actually went down to WW to have a coffee and a chat with Jervis (off the back of his invite in his WD column) and the conversation went towards the LotR success.
He actually said that the amazing success of LotR really wrong footed them as as a small big company, they just didn’t have the resources to manage it’s success properly and since then, GW has been very afraid of situations where they don’t control the marketing and therefore the product push.
I totally agree with @redben. The Hobbit movies are just not good movies. The humour has gone too far (Gimli was never a comedy dwarf in the books and the Hobbit’s dwarfs had a charming, whimsical humour to them, not slapstick), the action set pieces are overblown and feel shoehorned in, the whole tone of the films is off. I know a lot of people who were big fans of the LotRs movies, who went, with high expectations to see the first Hobbit movie and came away horribly disappointed. In fact the only friends I have who bothered to go back and see the second film were those with young children. They’re the ones buying the Lego.
I think GW knew they were never going to make money with the Hobbit. In fact the releases for the second film almost felt like GW were saying, “we’re contractually obliged to release something. Buy them, or not, we don’t care. Let’s just get this over and get back to 40k”
The point that I buried a bit in the post was that people came to GW for LotR, rather than GW effectively marketing LotR to people. This hasn’t happened with The Hobbit because The Hobbit movies haven’t had anything like the same cultural impact.
Lego have done very well marrying their product to IPs. They sell a lot of Batman product, and Batman is more popular than 40K, but that doesn’t mean that Knight Models should sell more Batman minis than GW sell 40K minis, or even that GW would sell more Batman minis than 40K if they picked up the license. There may be a broader discussion here about whether GW could grow if they switched their approach to selling and marketing all of their products.
I agree about the action scenes, a lot of them seem to have been filmed with ‘ that will look great as part of a video game’ in mind
They just dont seem to capture the magic of the book but that might be looking back with fondness of over 35 years since I first read it
great show thanks guys
What made the first GW LOTR game different was that it was skirmish based… then ‘sustained growth’ and the need to sell more models pushed it towards WarOTR movement tray/mass army mode. Lost it’s differentiator from WHF.
A smaller scale Battle of the 5 Kingdoms box set would fly this christmas.
GW minis were also sold throught the LoTR magazines that came out every couple of weeks – it was about 50% cheaper to get some of them that way, and remember that was when a box of 20 or 24 troops was £12-£15. The world has moved on since 2001-2003; a lot of young people spend more on electronic goods like smart phones, so attributing sale solely to the quality of a movie or marketing is ignoring the array of other factors that influence purchasing. There are a lot of other ‘big’ movies out there like the Marvel and DC franchises and GW has more competition from other companies that frankly are offering more innovative and satisfying games.
I have thousands of LoTR minis. I only have EFGT LE of the Hobbit stuff – GW’s prices just annoy the crap out of me.
I’m not so much ignoring other factors as highlighting a significant difference. The world has moved on and even if The Hobbit movies were excellent, they could never capture the zeitgeist again the same way. The same applies to the likes of Star Wars. The prequels and upcoming sequels may make lots of money, but they won’t be cultural events like the original trilogy. You are correct to say that the De Agostini magazines brought a lot of people to GW, but they were people hungry for product. The Hobbit audience is not hungry for product.
The catalogue idea is fantastic when ever I get stuff from forgeworld they send one and it’s ace and I remember going back when I was a boy getting gws thinking this stuff is amazing and I would like to get more for other games company’s and great show guys
The Hobbit films just felt far too padded out to me. – It’s part of the complaint about it being ‘just walking’ I think (which was a complaint about Fellowship, fair enough). But, the thing is, it just didn’t really feel like they were making progress. In FOTR, characters joined (and left) the group at each section, there was defined goals. You had the dramatic points in between. It just felt much better paced.
On the subject of the ezine, I did find myself browsing the catalogue, so it does seem like a good idea. However, I’d suggest avoiding any ‘white dwarf’ style traps and for you to continue having clicking the catalogue an optional thing.
I’d get rather grumpy, if I ‘had’ to click through 5 pages of the catalogue to get to the rest of the ezine, for example.
Interesting talk about the Hobbit… I don’t think that the opportunity to capitalise on the films was anything like as big as the LotR, but I also don’t think GW tried. The LotR really felt like a first – like something millions of people had been waiting for, that had never been done before, and was then done pretty well. I enjoyed the Hobbit films, but they don’t feel new and exciting in the way the LotR did, and I don’t think anything GW could have done would have changed that. Nevertheless, I think they did drop the ball with it and could have done much more.
I reckon there were a few factors:
– Not wanting to take a risk, and so doing the minimum with the license (ensuring that none of their competitors would get a boost from it).
– Not being able to price the product to the market in the way they did previously without undermining other parts of their business. The LotR figures were, by today’s standards, reasonably cheap. It was possible for kids to buy a bunch of stuff with a bit of saving, birthday presents, etc. But GW pricing is now so expensive, that to offer Hobbit minis at the same kind of price would have presented a very uncomfortable comparison with their other lines.
– Their fear of failure meant that I think they viewed each product as a collector’s item that only a few people would buy (and so was priced with this market in mind). I don’t think they ever tried to turn the Hobbit into a hobby game.
I do expect that they’ll bring out a massive Smaug this Christmas, and I think the precedent is there with their other ranges. As well as the various 40K Apocalypse figures, every new army/codex release comes with a big new plastic kit these days. Look at Wolf santa… There are plenty of Space wolf players, but it’s still probably a pretty limited market. Nagash is a large kit, and an expensive one. Yet they still thought it was worth doing. These kits have also got the markets used to higher prices. As long as a large, plastic smaug is a nice kit, I think they can expect it to sell well. I bet they can price it at £100 and it’ll still be one of their best-selling Hobbit kits.
Alternative Smaugs –
http://news.toyark.com/2014/08/21/bridge-direct-releasing-massive-smaug-toy-136387
http://www.geenemodels.com/dragon-kit/
Some thoughts on the catalogue, and speaking only for myself, as I can usually see all the minis on a website, I don’t get much out of a catalogue. Having a physical copy at least means I don’t need to be online, but having a PDF copy is less useful as I need to be on a device, if not online. I did download the Carnivale catalogue and flick through it, but I wouldn’t have missed it if it wasn’t there.
I have to agree with Warren on the Hobbit movie. I think they have been excellent so far. I cannot see at all why the ratings and reviews have not been as good or better than the first three Lord of the Rings movies.
In my opinion Desolation of Smaug was the best of the 5 movies so far. It had everything that is needed to make a good adventure movie. Even the giant dragon in the cave at the end. It was laid out and executed practically perfectly.
Maybe it is because the Hobbit has been an adventure movie trilogy, not a war movie trilogy. The Hobbit so far has just been Bilbo and companions adventure to the mountain. Whereas the LotR trilogy started as an adventure but quickly turned to being almost all about the wars and the massive armies starting in the second film. Which would also explain why the fellowship is usually the least liked of the three. I guess movie goers just want more war… less fun and adventure.
I think the catalog was very nice. Especially where kickstarters are concerned, you have to scroll through walls of text jumping between sections of pledge levels, stretch goals, etc. it’s nice to have one resource to just see the products at a glance.
I actually have to join in on that the Hobbit movies are better than the Lord of the Rings trilogy:
Even putting the Mary sue called Legolas front and center instead of the background, the beardless dwarves and Smaugs missing legs cannot bring the movie down to the level of a whining crying pretty-boy Frodo.
I really am a fan of catalogs, I usually make sure to get Reapers yearly one, even if it does not contain all of their products.
I was a seriously hardcore Tolkien fan when I was little; can still quote whole sections of the history of Middle Earth. It’s been years since I read any of his books but I was hugely excited by the LoTR films. I even agreed with a lot of his editing, missing out a lot of the irrelevant guff that Tolkien shoved in (Tom Bombadil, the scouring of the Shire, &c.). I loved those films.
That said when I heard the Hobbit would be 3 films I lost interest. I’ve not seen them and have no desire to.
I’m probably too much of an anorak to be representative but my reaction could give a few clues as to why the Hobbit stuff was such a damp squib.
It was a shame that old man willow was missed I think?
Yeah, definitely entered the game designer contest. Even if I don’t get a chance to do this, I might try to make my game on my own!
Good show like the BOW command icecream van with Marlin Manson tune? The hobbit films were a tad two long but almost as good as LoTR films. Congrats to the competition winner. Loved the BALROG, & invasion look interesting, Any game with zombie killing is a good game.
Surely, GW can do something decent with the Battle of Five Armies. A revamp of Warmaster would hardly be that onerous…
Those tanks were only a tease! D: Enjoyed the show today, and even submitted my own little Halloween game idea.
There was a LOTR RPG with a miniature line. It was called Middle Earth Roleplaying System (MERPS). It went out of print a few years before the Fellowship of the Ring came out.
Back in the day I played a Rider of Rohan who thanks to ICE’s love of voluminous critical hit tables, sustained an electrical crit and all his hair fell out. Later in the campaign I was able to have it magically grown back, but I wound up being the only black-haired Rohanite in the village. The other only other thing I remember from the campaign was us falling off a ship into the sea, and one of the PCs being a dwarf in full plate. The penalty was so high his chances of not sinking were in the negative percents.
Good show guys, great idea regarding the competition.
A few points on the Lord of the Rings/Hobbit thing – GW have dropped the ball on the release massively. Differences in style/success of the films aside. They priced it wrong, as a potential entry point game they had then record prices and a range that was fairly weak (Although that was a great eagle kit for fantasy players). The box set only contained rules to play the box set and you needed to buy the rules again to go further – which was greed and stupidity, I know a lot steered clear or returned it because of this fact and goodness knows how many just never explored further.
The support for the second film was so weak it was pathetic, it was also a missed opportunity to try the box again. Now that support could have been poor as the first film’s release did not meet the expectations. I have low expectations for the third films support – personally I think it would be a great opportunity to re-launch war of the ring and push it as a third core system. Or even relaunch the battle in middle earth 10 mm scale system. I do hope we get Smaug – although the limited release nonsense could be a terrible idea.
The films and indeed the book do not make for great skirmish scenarios but more could have been done with it. As to the films themselves I enjoyed the first film, very different but to my mind a faithful to the spirit of the book adaptation. The second had good action but I felt it to be Hollywood not Tolkien and overall while enjoyable and visually strong a poor addition to the series. hoping the last film delivers, to justify the wider story aspect that was the reasoning for 3 films.
With regard to the rules being mass battle rules – that is simply false, the games scales poorly and is at its best in small skirmishes and really comes alive as a scenario driven skirmish game. A few things break under point matches, in part due to the simple nature of the mechanics of the game. War of the ring was released as the skirmish game was poor for mass battles. Anyone who has tried the large battles or big point matches can testify to that.
The original game did well but the part works for LOTR was a massive influx, it was also excellent value for money from a buyer point of view. It serious increased traffic in the store I was working in. It also unfortunately was seen by a number of shop staff as an unwelcome distraction, and did not receive the support it should which then lost the opportunity to transition gamer to other games. Combined with the poor/no planning for transition post film it did become a bit of a negative experience for the company. Which is a shame as I think it is a good narrative skirmish system.
There wont be any substantial lotr realeses this xmas, and certainly no smaug.
GW is ditching the ip as soon as possible, so will only do the bare minimum they are contractually obliged to do.
I’m sure they are doing the minimum, and are keen to dumpt the IP (just so long as no competitor can pick it up and run with it), but it would still make sense to make a Smaug model that unlike most of the rest of the range, is likely to sell.
And as the Hobbit has already had quite a few plastic releases for things which I wouldn’t have expected to sell in large numbers, I can’t see them expecting to do worse with Smaug.
To be honest I just want dwarf ram riders
Great show as always, game design submitted!
Huzzah! Never a good weekend until the Weekender has been watched!
I read that The Hobbit was supposed to be 2 movies originally and GW had prepared all their releases for the first “half” then was taken by surprise when they stretched it out to 3 movies. That meant a lot of the releases they had planned for the first push got held back till the second movie and a bunch of the final “half” stuff had to be rushed to get out in time for the second movie. Remember they have a fairly long lead time on creating new products, especially plastic kits.
The LotR/Hobbit game is by far the best skirmish level rules set GW has produced. The new version has years of refinement and includes ALL the content from all 5 movies plus a LOT of stuff from the books. I am working on some minor conversions to use the system for Skyrim games. Warlord Romans for Imperials, Gripping Beast Vikings for Stormcloaks, various GW and Reaper figures for monsters, bandits, and NPCs. I just need to find someone with enough skill and free time to start making 28mm scale replicas of the Skyrim locals!
Hi guys, another great show.
I think the catalogue idea is also something to run with – How about a Dust catalogue?
Sorry if it’s been mentioned already but dosent GW’s licence mean that everything they make for LOTR has to be in scale according to the films? If so smug would have to be massive.
I have no interest in the LOTR game but I’d be tempted by a massive HIPS dragon
I was thinking use a similar design to MERCS, but seeing as it isn’t copy n paste (and it ends tomorrow) I think not.
shame, as I have a LOAD of zombies that I’m going to use for MERCS
I’ve been a tolkien fan for ever. Sorry Jon Warren is right.l personal love the first Hobbit movie the best. All the movies are great.
On the Privateer Press topic, I wrote a review of some of their recent rpg content. http://darkerdaysradio.blogspot.de/2014/09/iron-kingdoms-rpg-review-no-quarter-53.html
Also, to note, having rewritten all of Witchfire Trilogy for the new system, and run the first third, IKRPG is no more combat heavy than say, World of Darkness or Fading Suns or any narrative heavy rpg. What happens, is that people assume IKRPG is played as a dungeon crawl, due to the link to the wargame.
What IKRPG does well is combat light stories, with combat set pieces. And this is definitely seen in how they present their prewritten adventure modules.
Another good show and on the advice given, me the wife, the kids and the hounds have all posted our CVs for CEO GW, so have my minis crossed.
Liked the catalogue.
Would love to see one for Infinity.
I like the catalogue. I used to enjoy reading the old GW catalogues and the back of White Dwarf magazines (the green pages).
Yes you can probably find the stuff online but I wouldn’t know to go look for some of the smaller company’s ranges so a catalogue is a great way to be introduced to new stuff.
I absolutely love the catalog! I understand that you could go to the companies website and mostly see everything. But you often have to click through many pages, etc. I like having the catalog and printing it out. I like looking through it to see what I have, what I want, and what the possibilities are. I would think that a company would provide a PDF catalog as it is a piece of marketing that they already have the images for and would just need to lay it out in however they want organize it. If beasts of war can get other companies to do this I’d like it if there was a section on the site for PDF catalogs so that if I missed one I could go there and download the PDF.
I think way too much time has been spent on the health of games workshop. I don’t own anything by them and I’m not interested in their product lines. The industry would not disappear if GW failed (which they won’t). There is so much more out there and some very exciting smaller companies. I just think the topic needs to move on.
So has a game idea been chosen or what? would be good to put every one who has submitted an idea out of our misery now!
Great show as always guys.