Well I’ll not get into the rules mess that GW have turned Necromunda into (I harp on about it enough already).

I think part of the problem seems to be the current trend to release a set of rules for a miniature game that NEEDS additional cards, tokens, templates as additional purchases (with the rules for these not repeated in the main rulebook for you to photocopy and cut out (as was done back in the day)). I can hardly think of that many major/AAA rules systems these days that’s simply just a single book, all this just makes everything overly complicated and hard to keep track off (and introduces a hideous level of feature creep into games). It also then makes thing an hideous and expensive mess when you want to bring out a new edition of the rules (as players have already invested hundreds of pounds/euros into the current edition, and all the new “extra” elements like cards/tokens templates also need to be updated), I think FFG’s X-Wing is a perfect example of this as pointed out during the show. basically when you start to spend as much (if not more) on the rules rather than the minis for ANY game……it’s developed in completely the wrong way (IMHO).

Feature creep is another horrible trend these days. Rules for rules sake to sell you yet another compendium, codex, army list (released every three to six months apart), turns ANY ruleset into an ungovernable mess that any casual player just can not keep track off (40K and Necromunda are good examples here). This seem to be tailored to the more competitive/tourney scene where the players are less interested in the hobby/miniatures side of things and it’s all about exploiting any loophole in the current rules to gain an advantage in list building. When a game just focuses on the tourney scene personally I always feel it’s a bit like PVP computer games (it’s the cheapest content to create, and endlessly repeatable). But as the tourney side of things doesn’t appeal to me, I always feel the games that are taken over by this scene just seem to rip all the “fun” out of the game (it’s all a bit too much cut throat and competitive for me).

Games that focus on the Narrative side of things (Like Gates of Antares) never seem as popular or “news worthy” as the more tourney focused games DO seem to go through a more popular trend only to simply fade away when the next trend hits the scene (as we saw with Guildball and perhaps now X-Wing?).

HOWEVER one strange thing I saw was with Dreadball. Everyone suddenly seemed to stop playing it when Mantic announced they were working on a second edition (this was about 18 months before it actually appeared) as players seemed to loose all interest until the next edition could be played (and when it did finally hit the shelves the playerbase had already moved on to other games).

Perhaps we just need to think of games these days of just having a shelf life of a few years before either falling out of the playerbase interest OR that we are supposed to buy it all again when another edition hits the shelves. Perhaps this is great business sense for the game creators, but alas not so good for the customer. OR perhaps all this is a sign of a pendulum that’s swung too much over to the customer catering to the company involved (rather than the company catering to the customer) and we might start to see companies start to swing back to more less expensive choices for the customer in an attempt to build/rebuild up customer loyalty (like that’s going to happen in this day and age…but we can wish for it)?

I remember one of my first Wargames rules was Bruce Quarries “Napoleonic Wargaming”. a wonderous production with not only the rules, but the history, the army lists (well a couple of OOBs) rules for a campaign. Basically everything you needed in one small hardback book to play the entire period (the only other resource needed was the willingness to do some research for maps and OOBs for any other battle you wanted to play (ah a simpler time). One book for the rules, “normal” dice and a tape measure, this left you with all the rest of your money to buy figures and paint and stuff (rather than having to buy yet another book/codex/compendium/cards/tokens/templates/APP to continue to play the game every three months)