Reply To: "Golden Age of Wargaming"….perhaps not?

[blinky465 17028xp 0]

I started looking into 20mm a while back as it seemed like a great “starter” entry – models are big enough to hold detail, but small enough to paint relatively quickly. It proved difficult to mix-n-match at that scale though, as different manufacturers had different ideas to what 20mm is – for some their 20mm range were closer to 25mm, some were more like “heroic scale 18mm” and so on. Maybe it’s different now, but when I was looking into 20mm sci-fi it was really hard to create a unified army. 28mm and 32mm (heroic) are very much order of the day these days.

I feel that the whole scene is starting to feel a little “tired” despite (or maybe because of) the sheer volume of content being churned out. But that’s almost how it feels – churn.

Quite a few manufacturers are now going down the “toy industry” route of just shoving out any old thing and sticking a franchise label on it (I got out of the toy inventing industry for the same reason – it wasn’t for a lack of ideas, but a lack of imagination from the sales team and the money men; they would prefer to throw £50k at a licence, knowing it’s almost certain to sell even if it’s just a re-hash of something that’s gone before it, than invest in new ideas, characters and IP).

And with Kickstarter now being used a product launch/pre-order system, rather than a platform to raise funding for indie developers (as it originally started) it feels a bit like we’re reaching market saturation point – in principle there’s so much stuff, there should be something for everyone but in practice, it’s starting to feel a little “same old same old”.