Cult Of Games XLBS: Do Games Need Regular Releases To Keep Us Playing?
December 13, 2020 by lloyd
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![Warcradle Studios Reveal TINY New 10mm Festive Marker! [Updated]](https://images.beastsofwar.com/2025/11/christmas-kyle-main-600-338.jpg)
It’s the XLBS SHOW…..Happy Sunday CoGs!
…at the point when @lloyd left the camera range in his room, he should have said, “Hold my beer!” Then jumped out the window to fetch carrots.
Israel having contact with aliens??? This I just never expected!
As an American, I can honestly say, “I’m not happy if the Chinese Government put a base on the moon before We do!” So you are very correct @avernos
With regard to Companies needing to constantly release new stuff to keep folks playing…..I have seen this happen first hand. The minute that a game stopped getting new stuff for longer than a four-month period the group that was playing it all decided that the game was dying and the players all collectively sold their minis and rulebooks and switched to a different game.
…..
I think the main reason that folks bail on a game when minis stop being made is because those folks are only playing one-off scenarios and NOT campaigns. YMMV
Congrats to the Golden Button Winners! I bought the ‘Time Robbers’ minis when @avernos brought them to my attention. I keep putting off painting them. Highlighting this work may just get me off my duff to paint mine!
It was Terry Gilliam’s 80th birthday a couple of weeks ago and he is still very much like an excited kid, there’s a BFI interview with him online and it was fantastic to see. It got me thinking maybe I should paint mine, and then today these show up in the Golden Butt Butt Dings and now I’m pretty certain I have to
Maybe we can have a slow motion race to see who finishes first! ??
I can honestly say that i have two bits boxes. I have started teaching my spawn to hold onto bits and he too has a good collection of bits.
I used to have a massive bitz box but when I had to move it became a pain in the arse to transport. So…I just dumped it all (recycled). But, alas for bitz!
HAPPY SUNDAY!!!
I don’t know if minis keep games alive, but I know that when the minis stop, the game doesn’t last much longer.
Good morning to you all and a Happy Sunday everyone hope this finds you all well. If anyone fancies a entertaining podcast about UFOs try the Josh Rogan experience with retired Navel Air Force Squadron Leader David Fravor or the Bob Lazar episode that one is bonkers. There’s always a book or movie release linked to these things. Id sign up for a one way trip to Mars, there’s bound to already be a Irish themed pub staffed by Australians when I get there.
I’ve been painting up cheaply bought £1 store knock off transformers in 80s cartoon colours as part of nephews Christmas present. It was a fun little project with all the poppy cartoon colours and I think he will love them.
I agree with Lloyd that I’m never going to keep up with all releases despite my collectors itch I just couldn’t afford to do so but Ben is spot on with the Cult of the New and that’s what makes GW so successful as they have the money and set up to keep pushing out a range of new minis for every white dwarf. I know I ramble on about Warcradle but I think it’s a clever plan to fold 4 games into the dystopian age allowing for a defined look the sculptors can work with and allowing for releases from within that universe, they may be for different scales or games but for fans of the dystopian age it’s a new release to keep the purchases coming in allowing further investment in the games. Then theres the smaller companies such as Warploque where Alex is literally a very talented and brilliant one man design and sculpting operation which leads to smaller and less frequent releases but to me that makes those kickstarters and future releases something I really look forward to. Warploque has the monthly push with the 3D printing packages but I still feel a specialist boutique feel and would never expect releases on the scale of GW I’d think that would put me off…..maybe. Active communities are a big pull for me, especially welcoming communities, I know that sounds common sense but I have had some bad experiences within a online community that has in the past put me completely off a game. Not to end on such a down note there really are some great gaming communities out there that help keep my interest in that particular game fresh more so when the company is very good at keeping in touch with members helping to cement that sense of ownership in the gamer.
Great Golden Buttons everyone ???
I think you’re right on the community side of things. Or having a very vocal and involved lead for a company. It makes the difference and feels like they care.
It’s good to know the company or lead from the company that designs and produces the game your interested in is themselves not simply interested from a financial stance. I understand that financial investment in the company project is important but such examples as the Drowned Earth Community input from the creator or Stuart’s input into facebook discussions regarding Warcradel Projects give me sense that they are interested and enjoy the process. Of course not all companies have the time or ability to do so but if Brigade Models, relatively small companies can get involved so I think so could larger companies beyond sale posts.
Happy Sunday!!
At least I hope it is…
I have a Bits collection in some small office drawers – the problem is they’re mostly GW sprues etc,and I haven’t modelled anything GW for years. I think I’ve just solved one of my many storage problems!
Anyone want any old pre-Primaris, Blood Angel sprues?
Who knows – it might all become relevant again in the future!
So Lloyd’s destruction of the Feng Shui in his room when he changed it about and affected his enthusiasm for painting?
Are we surprised?
Always consult your local Feng Shui expert first
Did you record all those games of SAGA in the secret Chinese moonbase
Yep – you should have seen the tables the Chinese were able to afford and build for us.
There are quite a few examples of games that have continued to live even after there is no support anymore. Communities tend to keep something alive if it is popular enough.
When Conquest released their artwork for the planned new factions it actually stopped me buying miniatures for the current range as there were a couple of designs in the artwork that really liked. With me trying to focus on having a single force for a lot of gaming systems rather than multiples for the same games I am now in a holding pattern for Conquest for their future faction releases.
It can certainly change your mind on a faction. I remember starting out a Stormcast Eternal army and then the Fyreslayers got shown. I stopped concentrating on Stormcast and just bought Fyreslayers instead. I reckon I need better discipline!
I can understand that buddy. I think something will always come out from a range that you like more but I do think you still like what you chose first. It’s rare for me to like more than one or two armies in a range and within those armies, I normally don’t field miniatures that I don’t like the look of which can sometimes mean I don’t do an army at all if it needs a unit I don’t like aesthetically. I suppose it helps my shiny syndrome not get out of hand 😀
About a year ago my mates and I started playing Warcry. About 2 months ago we started using the Cities of Sigmar list in White Dwarf. 2 Weeks ago we started using Mordheim minis and now we’re in the middle of Warcry campaign set in Mordheim. We loved the nostalgia but the Mordheim rules were unnecessarily complex.
Similarly we are looking at Starwars Armada with the view of seeing if Battlefleet Gothic can ne impossed on it. Again, loved the setting, the rules haven’t aged well.
KoW was also an awesome way to keep fighting in the Warhammer universe without playing Warhammer.
in Feb A Billion Suns is coming, hold onto your Gothic for that 😉
Sunday. XLBS. Coffee. Let’s go.
Lol XLBS show.
Now is Lloyd off for a pee when he was getting the carrots?
Great show as always. On games “dying” due to lack of support I’m increasingly purchasing self contained miniature board games. They never “die” through lack of the new “shiny” or the Meta stagnating.
Similarly I’m switching to historics, having been burnt from game systems that fizzled out.
I’d personally love a formal GW “Warhammer epic” style game. They based adeptus titanicus scale based on what they could scale “troops” too without loosing too much detail, so would guess that might be mirrored in fantasy.
Fingers crossed they do something like Warmaster for sure!
The bits at GW Mail Order didn’t usually require calls on the casters (though Gerry ordering 50 of a specific shield certainly would). They did take up a huge amount of space in the warehouse and took a lot more effort to get £50 of product out the door than popping Blood Bowl and a Land Raider into a box. Your picker would be rocking around various bins of metal looking for specific bits possibly among near identical other bits. Someone else would check that order, send them back out to fix it, etc. and so on.
I was a ferocious bits buyer in the old days, and seeing it from the other side, it was an expensive way to sell minis. It stopped after my time but I can only imagine it was the costs (labour and warehouse space) that drove the decision.
Yes those prices tell you it’s a long time since I was a Mail Order Troll.
but a kilo of lead for £20 was amazing and you know it 🙂
It bloody was. My biggest regret was putting a nazgul winged beast head on my chaos knight champion’s horse and not the entire unit.
Are you sure he’s not cauld hid in a shed?
Send Matt Damon?
Those new figures Ben was showing could be good used as battle monk’s to go into a battle sister’s army?
I haven’t had time to watch yet, but the question posed as the title I can answer. No they don’t need regular updating to keep me playing – in fact regular changes (new versions) put me off – I’m looking at Privateer Press more than anything with Warmachine and Hordes – I enjoyed the game in the first version, but the new additons and new versions have pushed me away. However, I can understand the need to release new stuff to keep people purchasing things and hence maintain a cashflow mechanism. Having said all that I lost interest in Wargods of Aegyptus etc, becuase Croc were so slow in releasing stuff for the game.
I think you’ve hit on something there. A new game needs a lot of stuff available quickly but once established, too many releases can burn us out.
There is certainly a balancing act that you need to achieve
I do like Lloyd’s talking about “suffering” new releases (not sure they were the exact words, it was some time back in the vid). I feel the same. I got a bit burned out by Warmachine and feared WH40k because of it. I’ve started Imperial Guard a large part because of the lack of releases, and most other things I want to do are minis agnostic.
I want to build up armies I can use in a variety of games without minis companies adding to my already daunting “to do” list.
More great button winner’s.
Nice one Guy’s.
00:00 That grinch needs some WD40
01:00 CoG-legtive hive mind!
03:10 and here I am thinking that “string theory” always was about hot babes and bikinis…
06:05 “Did he jump out the window?” XD
07:30 Carrots…. the Gerry of carrots and the Lloyd of carrots… when Warren sees this episode he’ll die laughing… SEND AN AMBULANCE!
12:45 “Who’s going to sign up for that?” Oh @lloyd … so many people have had it with people on earth and would love to leave permanently 😉
17:00 Aliens? Yes. Do people know it if? Possibly. Do I care? Covid-19 …. if you know what I mean :S
25:00 “When all was metal” … *sigh* good times…
29:00 Tubs of bitz. @brennon I think that is also a problem with miniatures like GW does these days. Parts aren’t as easy interchangeable as they where before.
37:00 “Saga – The Example” a book about miniature wargaming by Lloyd and Gerry.
51:00 Blood Bowl!
53:00 FFG did this “release cycle” with their Star Wars games to. X-Wing, Armada, Legion and to a degree also Imperial Assault and the CCG. Lets see how AMG will to this now.
58:30 Ben: “I’m my own friend”. Everybody should think of oneself that way. Love yourself and love thy neighbour… or something.
1:08:00 Regular releases? No. Regular updates, news and community things? Yes!
1:12:00 RELEASE THE BACKCRACKEN!
and, as is tradition now… the Remix has been expanded:
https://youtu.be/PBtA5-U_ycg
I can’t believe @avernos was teasing us with the top of that T-shirt all show and never did stand up and show it in all its glory… ;-P
Henlo Frenly Frenz…
😉
One thing to remember when comparing GW’s cadence of releases to other companies; they are supporting a multitude of games! I know a lot see it as essentially two games (40K and Fantasy/AoS) it is really a lot of individual games and rulesets. On top of that, they have a gazillion factions for each of those games so as a player of a particular faction in a particular ruleset you actually don’t get updates that often.
The fact that GW does books and video games as well – which makes into their updates news cycle – just amplifies this even further.
It has certainly kept me interested and in the verge of buying back into their games simply because of the amount of stuff they pump out into the news.
I think there’s a few issues when a company isn’t releasing on some form of regular basis. The first is it means the distribution chain doesn’t have new stuff to sell and therefore doesn’t promote it. A LGS is going to push products that bring in regular revenue over those that release from time to time.
It can also cause people to think the company is dropping support which threatens the potential of a game in gamers minds. While those who have the game could certainly continue to play if the game isn’t supported then it won’t be on shelves, minis and rules will become less and less available and therefore new players won’t be coming in.
This all comes down to community. Miniature games are heavily based on having active communities and if you don’t have new players coming in or materials available to use, then that community will eventually disappear. Knowing this on some level many gamers jump ship early on and “dead” games crash.
It’s basically a negative feedback loop.
All that said I don’t think you need weekly/monthly releases but just enough to keep everyone comfortable that the game is supported and will continue to be available. You can also fill in the “gaps” by producing other types of content (campaigns, community events, fiction, etc).
I think that community engagement element is key to filling the time for sure. Having a way to get people playing the game and buzzing about it as a larger group – at tournaments and the like, is a top priority I reckon.
I’d blame capitalism/consumerism for teaching us to always expect ‘more dakka’ *eh* I mean updates as a sign that a system is ‘still alive’.
It’s hard to break that feedback loop when the competition may be one big marketing campaign away from stealing your customers. So you need to do it or else …
I’ve seen similar complaints/cycles in videogames. Especially the multiplayer variety appear to ‘need’ regular content updates to survive.
As an industry they need us to consume content at regular intervals, because how are they going to survive if we only ever buy their rule set and nothing else (because we print our own minis or use the stuff we got?)
So they try to instill the fear of missing out in us … and so the cycle continues.
There’s a reason the entire industry is moving towards ‘product as a service’ model where the customer doesn’t get to own a thing, but is forever locked into their service/system because the idea that you could jump ship is made scary/costly on purpose.
A Gerry sized Gerry hairball is not something I imagined that would be in discussion this week
The realm of XLBS is vast and full of terrors
Ay, this was a good way to spend the end of my weekend: listening to this chat while prepping some mini’s.
@brennon an epic jammie dance was done while while watching XLBS this weekend
“My models are on the tele, OMG look my models are on the tele… ok it’s only YouTube … but it’s my models”
Thank you so much for the golden button … I’m a very, very long time painter and have only just started to share my work because of self confidence issues. This really meant a lot to see other people not only viewing but praising my work.
I didn’t have plans to go much further with this project as it was a small side project between some of my larger models…. however with all of the interest shown it would be rude to not complete it
Thanks again
Another interesting discussion, guys.
I have quite the collection of games/minis/systems/terrain in my garage most of which is still waiting for paint or play. When I discovered the unique world and characters of Wolsung I was determined not to let these kits collect dust, so focused on completing much of it as it was acquired. The fact that MicroArts isn’t releasing a lot of new things for it actually appeals to me as it means I can collect it at my pace and not worry about keeping up with new releases.
My group of friends love our Ranks and Flanks wargames and between us had all of GW’s Warhammer factions covered, some multiple times (we’ve had a three way dwarf struggle going on for decades known as the Porridge Wars). When Warhammer was retired we shifted over to Kings of War (we were already looking that direction) and most folks just used their movement trays to build their units. Only a couple of us felt the need to make entirely new forces on unit bases. We just kept using our old toys with new games.
I think there is a lot to be said for keeping a product line in the public’s eye but it seems so easy to fall into the Latest Shiny syndrome. I know I am in the minority in that I don’t need a new unit or character added to my forces every couple of months. I would much prefer new scenarios with unique combinations and narrative rather than hundreds of new minis. Again, I know I am in the minority in this view but I just can’t keep up painting with massive release schedules and find a glut of stuff kills my interest, 40K is a perfect example of this. I had been playing since Rogue Trader but got so overwhelmed and bored with it all I just quit several editions ago. I still think GW does gorgeous minis but I just don’t care anymore about keeping up with any of their game systems.
Finally, I’m a painter and will paint whatever looks fun even if I don’t play the game they are associated with. Ben’s enthusiasm and love of Burrows and Badgers got me excited about the minis and made me want to paint them. I have been slowly collecting and painting these angry Beatrix Potter characters for a couple of years now, have no intention of stopping, and have never played the game though I do own a copy. Inspiring sculpts is what has me buying lots of Hasslefree minis even though they aren’t attached to any system.
I do think that regular releases are a thing that most companies must do, but regular doesn’t mean every week. Every 3 months or so would be fine by me. I think if GW would release stuff like every 3 months and actually put time and thought into what they release it would be a lot better. Right now it feels like they just release stuff for the sake of releasing stuff.
SAGA: From Here To Eternity, the new expansion for SAGA! You heard it here first folks!
A great new collaboration between @lloyd and Tomahawk Studios! 😉
Top show ole chaps