Weekender XLBS: Miniatures IP Debate & Bolt Action Tanks Explored
June 12, 2016 by dignity
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Happy Sunday!
Happy Sunday!
When I see the Mature Content warning on the link, my head immediately rewrites it to Immature Warning, which frankly could be applied to just about every XLBS episode.
And that is why I keep coming back every week, seeking likewise company,. Happy Sunday, indeed.
Happy Sunday!
\[T]/
Lol, what the hell has married life done to you @warzan – yesterday it was bony-parts and today it’s big ball. Do we need a little electric shock treatment
😉
What. The pupe rifle looks excellent but you mean to tell me that John didn’t want to do something like this for his first prop..?
https://youtu.be/vdgSBeRonbw
(Skip to 1.30 to avoid the cringworthy intro.)
Oh. Happy Sunday by the way. 🙂
Happy Sunday!
Happy Sunday!
John that prop looks great I have a friend that makes props for extra cash, him and his friend have a store and I would say that is pretty close to what they churn out, I mean they use fiberglass and ozzie madness to make top notch probs, but yours looks just as good as theirs, and they are paid money for theirs.
By the rock I take it you don’t mean the Isle of Wight?
@johnlyons Its even easier to tell the Italeri kits from warlord, the Italeri sprues are round, Warlord’s “in house” (produced by renedra iirc) kits have sloped bar sprues.
I think this environment, ‘the gaming hobby’ and all it’s associated elements, is slightly ‘unique’ in that, initially, it was begun by pure enthusiasts, as a ‘hobby’. The next stage was, perhaps one could make a living, out of this ‘hobby’. It then ‘morphs’ into a business. Eventually, it one has constructed all the elements effectively and appealingly to the prospective customers, success follows, followed by more growth, followed by more success, etc etc. Then, what becomes the ‘key’ driving force, the ‘interest’ or the acquisition of fiscal gain? The fine line is reached! The ‘unscrupulous’ elements within any industry, not just necessarily ‘ours’, then identify an opportunity to ‘get rich quick’, therefore, driven by fiscal greed, have no qualms about ‘ripping off’ others IP! Unfortunately, not everyone has or exercises integrity, morality or conscience, and this ‘element’ runs right through the different scales of society, from the bottom to the top! Sad, but true! I love my ‘hobby’, it has been instrumental on many occasions in my salvation and sanity, this is why I would never seek or wish to engage in it on a business level, ie, try to make a living out of it, for me, it would then cease to be my ‘hobby’!
Really interesting point @phalanx58 . My sense is that it remains the case that most people employed within the hobby are also hobbyists (i.e. it’s more than just a day job). I imagine very few choose to enter the hobby industry with the desire to make money without at least some level of interest in the hobby as a hobby. Which isn’t to say that some hobbyists don’t want to make as much money out of it, or as good a living out of it as they can. Just that this is still a business which has a certain culture to it.
I think probably the main exceptions would be GW and possibly a few other companies which have outside owners, be they shareholders or larger companies for which ‘the hobby’ is just one of the many things they do. It would be interesting to know what proportion of GW’s shareholders for example, have no interest in the hobby at all.
Happy Ball-day
The IP issue is one that seems to be rearing it’s head a lot at the moment. I read pages of comment on the recent Kickstarter MOBA style game LOAD.
I know that a lot of the ire at the Kickstarter was because it’s a Prodos game (albeit released under a new company they have created) but what I found more interesting was the appropriation of the entire Rum n Bones (part 1) rules that admittedly when it was discovered by the community the developers scrubbed them.
As well as the rules it has been claimed was the direct referencing / copying of characters and rules within the board game from video game characters most notable were ones from League of Legends.
So what happens next ok the rule set was pulled, but what about the characters. A Boardgames is a completely different animal to a video game, but as we have seen from Dark Souls the IP is totally transferrable into a different game style. How closely the characters are the same is I suppose what is up for debate, the sculptor can change the look of the mini to not resemble the video game character, but the character concept, and play style is something surely also owned by the original IP holder?
When it comes to the IP debate… you are looking at things from a rather limited background. When you state that “GW was the industry” it sounds as if GW invented wargaming… it didn’t. If anything fantasy and SF gaming were a small niche within the hobby before GW came up with its business model. And they were very good at that, so much so that it is now considered by a lot of people as being “the industry” and “the hobby”.
And when I hear that now there are finally companies publishing just the rules or bringing out just the miniatures… well, that is how it was done most of the time before GW anyway.
Minifigs never produced rulesets for their miniatures, Wargames Research Group never produced miniatures for their rule sets… And when Table Top Games made both rules, they would hope that you bought them together, but other than F&SF gaming they would rarely be marketed under the same name. Now that has changed where you have a Bolt Action of Flames of War range, while it is nothing more than 28 or 15 mm WWII, available everywhere else (and often cheaper)
And every time the “it is all just a cheap Warhammer knock off” comes around… I just roll my eyes and think WHFB is just another uninspired Tolkien clone (oh great, another fantasy version of Europe) and 40K is just a more fleshed out version of Laserburn (to be honest Bryan Ansell did work on both these games so that explains that I guess).
I’m off course showing my age here, having been to my first Salute back when it still was in Kensington Town Hall in 88 🙂
For all you young folk, pick up a copy of Henry Hyde’s “The Wargaming Compendium” and check out chapter two on the history of wargaming…
To be fair, being the industry (at that time) and inventing it are not the same thing 🙂
At the time im talking about they probably accounted for 80% of the industries revenue 🙂
Happy Sunday. Warren your Balls are in the post old boy…..
Lol i shall unleash them upon @dignity at every opportunity 😉
This is the thread on copyright discussion and how miniature design interacts with copyright law –
http://www.beastsofwar.com/groups/painting/forum/topic/the-thin-white-line/
Here’s the theme music for Warren’s & Justin’s “Underground Mole Men”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3F2ElD6__KU
Ohh i love this lol
Happy Sunday!!
I’d love it of Raging Heroes released a more ‘affordable’ basic unit set that would llow me to build a KoW Nightstalker army made up from a variety of their Void & Lust elves – they look spiky enough!
Some problems with your subway plan…
1) where are you getting your electricity?
2) how do you clear all the other trains off the line?
3) Will you have enough coins for the food vending machines?
4) Ummm… how will you breed to continue the human race?
I think you’re giving GW a bit too much credit for creating an industry; some of us began our hobby long before GW emerged with a broad choice of historicals and even fantasy ranges on hand – Airfix being one of the bigger name – with a vast choice of rulesets. A broad choice evident at places like Salute was there before GW and will survive long after.
What GW did was create an interesting value proposition for hobbyists – a one-stop shop for all your needs including the literal shop!
Sitting at the heart of this was developing their own IP – which is the main reason why the LOTR move was seen as controversial within GW and has continued to do so. LEGO has struggled with similat issues of trying to develop their own IP ranges balanced against the easier sell of an IP based range but with the additional costs and hassles.
Theft is theft and ‘passing off’ like re-casting clearly falls into that category. However while certain things can be protected – genres can’t.
At the other end of the scale we have over protection, particularly retrospective bully-tactic IP grabs by corporate entitiesl for example “You can’t call your pub the Hobbit any more” and the term “Space Marine” being out there before GW called a range of models that. If anyone needs protection it’s the small start-up but the size of your wallet and hence your legal resources tends to rule.
Again just because GW have tied up the Space-dollies and Tolkein origined market for the last couple of decades, don’t think the ‘industry’ started there. As for this notion of separate rulesets/mini ranges – that’s a lot more mature an industry. Take Frostgrave:
Frostgrave >> Osprey >> Founded 1969 and has been releasing rulesets without mini ranges for decades.
I actually wasnt giving credit, just stating how things were. GW didnt create the industry if course, they did however create an industry that was so dominent as to make its imagery and ideas account for the vast majority of sales (which is the fojndation of my point that it perhaps lead to the initial slowness in development of fundamendatly different sucessful franchises, of wich we now have many)
One of Musk’s theories on AI is that something as simple as E-Mail could be the trigger for an AI. His theory is that an AI focusing on spam filtering would determine humans are the main cause of spam and determin humans need to be destroyed to get rid of spam.
Cyber enhancment is also dangerous since electrical signals can be sent fast than brain sygnals so by the time you’ve thought of doing something the AI has stopped you from doing it
Terrifying!
Talking about piberifles I recall seeing one from WW2 that was used by the resistance in Denmark based on a bike cycle pump – think it was more or less one use only.
Here’s some guns made from gas pipes and plumbing stuff in the 90’s used during the Bosnian war in Sarajevo
Happy Sunday, I couldn’t help but the notice that John today on a tank episode of all things was not wearing one of usual WW2 t-shirts but a lovely winged unicorn number. This should definitely qualify him to be the playtester from the BoW team for the My Little Pony RPG game that’s coming out. As we already know he really likes them from previous shows and has the wardrobe for it.
Happy sunday with an intro like that this has to be posted
https://youtu.be/_W-fIn2QZgg
The question on recasting tanks has got me intrigued. If the tank is under copyright, and the company who makes the miniature hasn’t licensed the right to make it from the copyright holder, then they are making a derivative work which infringes on the copyright holder’s rights. If I sculpt and sell Batman minis without getting Time Warner’s permission, and you recast and sell them, I’m not sure I could stop you on the basis you are recasting my sculpt. I am myself recasting a copyrightable image that I don’t own when I make minis of my sculpt, so I’m not doing anything different to you when it comes to infringing on Time Warner’s rights. That would lead me to conclude that if a tank is under copyright, and a wargames company makes and sells miniatures of that tank without a licensing agreement, then the same would apply. If someone with a better understanding of IP law than me knows better then please enlighten me 🙂
Where that leaves historical images in the public domain I’m equally unsure of. No-one owns the copyright on an ACW soldier, so any minis company can make and sell ACW miniatures. If those minis are accurate depictions thwn by definition they can’t contain anything copyrightable, so does the fact that someone has sculpted one give them exclusive rights to copy that mini? Again, if someone who knows the law better than I can explain then please do :).
Happy Sunday!
The talk about Churchills and no mention of the North Irish Horse?
They used Churchills in Italy and named their tanks after towns in Northern Ireland including Coleraine.