GENERAL OBSERVATIONS AND PARTICULAR MISTAKE OF THE SHATTERED VOID DRAFT

1.) Crowdfunding has become too convenient even for mediocre concepts.

The whole Indiegogomania and Kickstarteritis are getting way out of hand. Since companies and individuals have discovered that they can substitute entrepreneurship and market analysis with a crowdfunding campaign that loads the burden of investment and financing on the customers’ backs, there are dozens of pre-financing campaigns every week. In the beginning, crowdfunding was a good idea to get the show of innovative projects on the road, but these days, it’s just a way of handing all the risk of entrepreneurship over to the client from the start, and even big companies ask people to pay for a promise in the case of every run-of-the-mill addition to their product range. At the same time, we see a drastical decline in reward value as a recompensation for the backers who finance the production phase for them. Initially, people who took the risk and financed projects obtained the products at a significantly reduced price, usually at cost pluis a small margin. Nowadays, IG/KS creators exploit the goodwill and enthusiasm of fans by charging ridiculously expensive prices for a couple ‘exclusives’ without which gameplay suffers.

In this particular case, £70 GBP buy 10 plastic ships, a couple plastic chits and a downloadable .pdf rulebook. In order to become playable, add-ons for at least another £60 GBP (i.e. £6 per little plastic ship), but more realistically a total of £200 GBP are needed to obtain all the game materials and niceties to make a decent impression on the gaming table. That’s ridiculous and the reason why the project hardly reached its funding goal after two weeks, whereas fair offers and well-run campaigns do so within two hours.

2.) Improper Choice of Materials and a Chaos of Scales and Sizes

The first general annoyance in the miniature figure industry: the chaos of scales and sizes. Whereas plastic model kits of different manufacturers in the same scale are all compatible and fit nicely together, tin soldier companies stupidly specify sizes, but without any congruency, standardization or common sense. Even figure ranges from the same manufacturer that both show the same scale on the box sometimes vary 20% in size for the same type of figure. That’s insane and drives customers mad whenever the need to complement limited ranges arises. There is a comparison picture on the WDM KS page that shows space troopers from different manufacturers next to each other. With a lousy six figures of their own, couldn’t they make them compatible with what’s already out there, goddamn it?

Another impertinence of wargame figure and scenery manufacturers is the arrogance with which they insist on casting windows and other glass or transparent elements of models in opaque material. Airfix, Revell, Zvezda & Co. deliver their cars and airplanes with really transparent ‘glass’ windscreens and cockpits since 50 years, at decent prices per kit. Wargame companies charge way more for their products, but the windows come in the same gray plastic as the walls, which always looks ridiculous and makes lighting a pain in a part that the sun never tans. People who prefer to paint their windows blue or black can always do so, but realistic modelling requires transparent parts to be transparent. Since WDM cast the bases in transaprent acrylic, why not the ships as well? It would make lighting the cockpits possible, look better and more realistic even without LEDs and those who prefer to smear them over can always do so. The same goes for the rest of the hull: don’t like to paint? Then simply spary them over with primer to get the same gray plastic ‘appeal’ as always.

3.) Shattered Void is not Game, but a Concept thereof

Now to the particular shortcomings of the game Shattered Void. Despite a pretty steep price point for a board game, there’s nothing in the box, as described above. A whopping £70 GBP for ten little plastic ships and a few plastic tokens? No printed rule book, no game board, tons of add-ons needed to project at least the impression of a game and not just a bunch of lose figures … There’s just no value for money, and except for a few really devoted fans, the abysmal result of the campaign so far proves it.

One can only wonder what the WDM guys were smoking, but it is an unfortunate tendency that we see more and more often in crowdfunding projects: the creators assume no risk, offering no bang for the buck, include bullshit like T-shirts and useless gimmicks in the core game and stretch goals while game components are sold as add-ons, etc. Instead of using the IG/KS campaign to open conventional financing and distribution channels, they want the entire design and production cost financed by backers for the later retail phase, ignoring that in today’s world, there is just too much other stuff that people can spend their money on.

For the money it costs before it comes close to what could be called a complete game, there are many alternatives out there that look better, play better and bring a lot more to the table than Shattered Void.