Man Battlestations Forum
Warcradle Naval Games => Firestorm Armada => Topic started by: Ryjak on October 25, 2016, 05:28:22 am
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Alex Mann recently quit his volunteer position with Spartan Games as the lead Firestorm Armada game designer. Yesterday, he posted a new podcast and blew up bridges with some C4-F Bombs, as he explains to the Jaded Gamercast why he finally got fed up with the company and quit:
http://mannmomo.blogspot.com/p/the-hub-systems-podcast.html
Adult content warning
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Disturbing to hear, and I'll listen when I'm home (if its not past midnight before I get to leave work)
Especially sad in light of the positive strides the survey seems to be prompting.
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Here's the quote I think that best summarizes it:
"Neil doesn't know what the expletive he's doing". -Lange
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Here's the quote I think that best summarizes it:
"Neil doesn't know what the expletive he's doing". -Lange
Shhhh ... no one tell our LGS owner.
Here I am with my new dream Syndicate Fleet, over 1200pts of painted Relthoza and counting, still loving Planetfall, and finally back into Dystopian with 2 full and 2 half factions I really enjoy. And it all might be a house of cards.
I feel like Master Po on the old KUNG FU. He finally gets to his life ambition to visit the Imperial City, and gets shot by some snot-nosed nobleman line-cutter.
:-/
But its all wait and see really. And could be worse ... Spartan could be Mongoose. ;-)
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I think that the even better quote is that Spartsn is a small game company that is trying to figure out how to be a big one. Or, as I like to say, it's a business being run as a hobby, where game companies that are successful long term are hobbies run as businesses.
Overall, while I have some quibbles with what was said (DW 2.0 is a big improvement IMO), I agree with many of the critiques that Alex, Oliver, Nathan, and Lange brought up in this episode. Spartan has indeed tended to over-promise and under-deliver, missed a lot of opportunities, and not been very forthcoming on its plans for the future. I can't say I blame Alex for wanting to end his association with Spartan if none of his hard work was ever going to see the light of day. In the end, Spartan has a clear pattern of jumping from project to project, and has struggled to provide support evenly across its games. Will that change based on the survey they did and the feedback they have received? Maybe, time will tell.
Even if they do not, I don't see it affecting my enjoyment of their games too much. In this, I find myself in a very different place than the hosts of this show; I remain excited about Spartan's games, especially FSA and DW, and I'm looking forward to playing in the events planned for Adepticon.
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Here's the quote I think that best summarizes it:
"Neil doesn't know what the expletive he's doing". -Lange
Shhhh ... no one tell our LGS owner.
Here I am with my new dream Syndicate Fleet, over 1200pts of painted Relthoza and counting, still loving Planetfall, and finally back into Dystopian with 2 full and 2 half factions I really enjoy. And it all might be a house of cards.
I feel like Master Po on the old KUNG FU. He finally gets to his life ambition to visit the Imperial City, and gets shot by some snot-nosed nobleman line-cutter.
:-/
But its all wait and see really. And could be worse ... Spartan could be Mongoose. ;-)
I haven't yet listened to it, but...I doubt Spartan is going away anytime soon. And even if it did, Dystopian Wars and Firestorm Armada both have a solid rule set, plenty of factions, and hundreds of models, so we wouldn't lack for playing material for quite awhile. Planetfall is in the same position too.
Ruckdog, I tend to agree with your final analysis--the company has flaws to be sure, but I'm far too casual a gamer to get wrapped around the axle about them. There certainly are things I wished they would do differently, but that hasn't stopped me (nor will it stop me) from collecting models for and playing their games. Real Life is stressful enough--I'm not going to get bent out of shape over a hobby. I have cool models that I enjoy painting and rule sets that work for me, so I'm happy.
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Real Life is stressful enough--I'm not going to get bent out of shape over a hobby.
I'm not allowed to get bent out of shape over work, so that's part of what my hobbies are for, right? ;-)
Perhaps this explains why I'm playing a lot of Khorne lately in AoS...
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I just listened to this episode, and I think it makes a lot of valid points, but realistically if spartan stopped supporting firestorm armada tomorrow all it would really mean is that we might have to play with crapy models right? The rules are electronic, the mechanics depend on the base rather than the actual model attached to it, and it sounds like most of the hard graft of development was actually done by a community group rather than spartan anyway.
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i am collecting factions i like the looks of
i can always modified the rules
and write my own fluffs
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I think that the even better quote is that Spartsn is a small game company that is trying to figure out how to be a big one. Or, as I like to say, it's a business being run as a hobby, where game companies that are successful long term are hobbies run as businesses.
That's the serious, brass tacs version of my quote, and not nearly as good for click bait. :p
I'm not a serious gamer either; I basically play with my buddy Ben once or twice a month, and sometimes give up my Sunday for a two-hour round trip to Baltimore for 1-2 games. I don't see the former stopping anytime soon, but the latter has lost a lot of momentum. It's the only store I know in the area which carries SG products, and they decided to stop stocking it. The product just sits on the shelves, particularly since the support SG provides to Vanguard Bill is via online gift certificates. Now that everyone has a pile of models, and I don't see new players, I see why they want to clear out inventory and not support store events.
This makes me wonder what happened with the 2.0 creators:
Christopher Worth, Franco Sammarco, Derek Sinclair, Michael Hetherington. I assume it's the same Derek behind Planetfall; did everyone else leave after their non-paid work was also ignored and Alex stepped up and took over? Was Alex put in charge before Christopher formally cut ties, just as Josh was put in charge a few months ago?
Ultimately, while I am now heavily invested, I don't really care as long as I can find people like Ben and Andy to play with... worst case, I have two painted fleets with Syndicate/OSO in the works, so I can run a variety of games on my own with a solid game system.
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particularly since the support SG provides to Vanguard Bill is via online gift certificates.
This has turned into a fair issue locally I think... when I use my Vanguard credits, or folks get their event certs, it tends to bunch up orders for just online Spartan direct. I've included this gripe in my event feedback forms for months - that they need to supply the STORE with the prizes, not the players.
Spartan just doesn't support local sales enough. And we can only seem to get product moving in spurts.
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New blog post from Spartan:
http://www.spartangames.co.uk/feedback-from-the-survey-part-ii
This seems like a step in the right direction, but time will tell as to what actually comes from the statements made in the post.
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This seems like a step in the right direction, but time will tell as to what actually comes from the statements made in the post.
If you'll forgive the political analogy, that blog post felt a lot like:
"We've got tremendous plans and minis coming for all the games. You won't believe how fantastic these minis are, that we haven't made yet. But they're going to be the best, just the best. And the rules too, the best you've ever seen. We're going so bigly on these games, players will just love it."
;-D
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As long as their not planning on producing a new game and having GW pay for it...
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As long as their not planning on producing a new game and having GW pay for it...
LAWLZ!!! :D :D :D
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As long as their not planning on producing a new game and having GW pay for it...
Nicely played, good sir. Nicely played.
I have no complaints about the blog post, but then I've already discussed where I stand on this issue. I'm actually thinking of getting my Dystopian Legions models out and trying to set up a game...
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Inspired by Dalek and Ruckdog, here's my internal translation:
1) We're going to keep making models as our core business, and design lots of new models for you to buy! We're probably not going to make models for existing stat lines; instead we're releasing even more factions! You want more factions, right? And we'll work on our disjointed IP fluff with all these story writers we didn't hire!
2) We have no idea how to create and support game and scenario development, so we need volunteers!
3) You know how awesome we are at posting and updating our digital rules, right? Our solution is to print books for you to buy! We also talked to one group of gamers at a non-gaming convention, and are basing all our future decisions on what they want! And we still don't know how to release new rules to our customers! Please help!
4) We have big plans for two completely different community campaigns; this is going to be awesome! (You read #2 above, right?)
5) We noticed how our models are unpainted, so we'll try to advise you on what to do (you clearly don't know the Internet exists; you're reading a print-out of our blog hand-delivered by mail carrier, right?)
6) Everyone thought Adepticon was awesome, so we're going to make that tournament our Official Tournament Format! We're even going to produce digital files for these scenarios so you can produce custom game mats all on your own! You have access to a high-quality custom mat printer in your hometown, right? (Should I mention how only NOVA had set terrain layouts for their custom scenarios? What about a FSA Tournament Kit with plaques, etc?)
In conclusion, this was hard to write... but we're doing it for you, the paying customer!
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One thing that I think I might be in the minority on is that I think it is a good thing to have semi-regular releases of new models for each system. My logic is this:
1. Sustaining interest in a system is a Good Thing.
2. Sustaining interest in a system requires new content.
3. New models equal new content.
4. New models are therefore good.
Now, new models are not the only thing to constitute content, of course, but IMO that, world building, and new/revised stats are the areas where a gaming company should focus its efforts. From a company's perspective rules, fluff, and models are must haves. Stuff like tournament packets, scenarios, painting guides, etc are nice to haves that the community typically takes the lead on.
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I agree that new and improving models is the best sustainment for a game (it's what we really pay for after all).
But I also recall that Mongoose had a bajillion Bab-5 models before they tanked the game. Part of that was licensing, but the bigger part was neglect of the system, game imbalance, correcting bad models etc.
If Spartan keep to their standard sub-standard rules release schedule and quality, releasing a hundred new models wont restore the game to a healthy state.
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Totally agree. To be more clear, I think that a game company should strive to always do 3 things really well:
-New Models
-Rules (including the base rules, model stats, balance tweaks, FAQs, expansions, etc)
-World building/back ground fluff
In my view, if a company can do these three things consistently well, then they will have a good chance of building an enthusiastic community and have success in other areas. That's not to say that a company shouldn't try to actively build its community thorugh out-reach, put itself in the lime-light at shows, support tournaments, etc. But like I said in my earlier post, I really think that focusing on that stuff at the expense of the "main thing" (models, rules, and fluff) will ultimately be counter-productive.
In Spartan's case, here is how I would evaluate their performance at these three main areas of effort (On a 1-5 scale, 5 being Excellent):
-Models: (4) Good. Their models have always been nicely made, and have been steadily improving over the years. The main ding I give them in this area is that they do not space out and balance releases across their games; they go through fits and starts where one game gets all the love while the rest sit idle for 6 months to a year. That is not a new phenomena, by the way; that's essentially how the company has always operated.
-Rules: (3) Fair. The core rules they put out have been getting better over time, and having many of them available via free PDF is great. However, they are lagging behind when it comes to FAQs, balance changes, and other tweaks. Plus, there is the inexcusable and inexplicable failure to not publish the rules and/or stats for Fleet Action and Task Force.
- Fluff: (1) Poor. By far the weakest area for Spartan. They have only slowly released information in small trickles, but there has never been a solid "bible" for their major settings that really lays out the basics in such a way that gamers can fill in blanks, and (to borrow a phase) build their own narratives in the world. If you want a really good example of this in action, I always point back to the Battlefleet Gothic rule book. The fluff in the BFG rulebook gives a good feel for how the universe works, even if you have had no exposure to the 40k universe before.
So, overall I think that puts the company at about a (3) Fair level, but recent developments are encouraging. This is why I see their blog post as a sign they are heading down the right path; their top objectives in the post are pointed towards models, rules, and fluff.
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Hey Ruckdog, would releasing new models for existing models count? For example, I would've bought a Kedorian Battleship ages ago, except the models are out of print and terrible.
I also don't have a problem with SG releasing new models; this is an important thing to do to grow the hobby and the business. However I don't think they should be releasing a new Terran Battlecarrier or a new faction until they produce models for all the existing modeless stat lines. (corsairs and traders do exist, you know)
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However I don't think they should be releasing a new Terran Battlecarrier or a new faction until they produce models for all the existing modeless stat lines. (corsairs and traders do exist, you know)
Amen! If they tumble wholly down the GW Space Marine line of thought, game is doomed: "Only Terrans sell well, so lets make more Terrans"