Current Climate of Wargaming?

[hammurabi70]

I think 3d printing has a way to go before it competes with the Mainstream manufacture of metal vehicles and figures.

Personally I'm not really impressed with the 3d printing stuff, I cannot see the point of sitting for hours sanding down print lines. (I hate removing flash).

Agreed. Tough enough to get figures painted without having to go through the time and cost of becoming a self-taught 3D printer equipped with all the necessary gear. If it ever gets to be as simple as photocopying or printing it might be worthwhile but right now I am unconvinced.

[Orcs]

But I'm of the opinion that companies like Pendraken will start selling 3D files along with their physical figures, once there's a system in place to keep people from just giving the files away.

You are talking about digital files. There is no way you can stop people giving them away.  There is always a way to crack anything digital and get if for free.  Look at the huge household names that have been successfully hacked.

You can buy current top selling music albums for as little as £1.50 if you know the sites to go to.  If you want to go a bit further into the "dodgy" parts of the internet you can get them for free. Likewise you can get the latest console games for £2 each if you know where to look. The saving grace with them is most players want to play online, which leaves you open to being caught. If you are solo player there is no chance of that.

You can also get "Key generators" that will generate you a Serial number for the software you want.  You simply tell the program the software you want and it will generate a key for it.  No only that, the manufacture will recognize it as genuine and automatically give you the free updates to that software.

Some manufacturers did get wise to this and try and send blocking code in the updates. So you simply take the computer offline if the process you are using it for -say photoshop or Corel Draw  does not require you to access the internet.

I used to part own a small computer company, and we would go into reasonable size businesses to supply new Hardware. We often made more money selling them licenses to pirate software they were running than replacing the hardware.  One place we went to had 50 computers running, and not one piece of software was legit.

My eldest daughter worked for a company that won awards for its online selling. The only legit piece of software on her PC was Windows. This is a company that in 2020 had assets of 4.5 Million and over 2 million cash in the bank.  So it could well afford to be legit as it has only dozen office staff.

So I think the problem will be that once someone has the files it will be virtually unpoliceable. Certainly for companies that do not have the money to invest in court proceedings.  You will stop one rogue person/company selling your files and they will simply pop up elsewhere under another name. The product will be identical to yours and if they have a good 3d printer it will be of the same quality.  But without the overheads they will sell it for fractions of the lowest price you could sell it for.

[flamingpig0]

I am reminded of Clarke's Law: If a distinguished but elderly scientist says something is possible, he is probably right. If he says something is impossible, he is almost certainly wrong.

(The great Clarke lived a bit before the age in which all decent people felt uncomfortable or indignant about the implications of masculine pronouns in such cases.)

I have met his brother Fred

[Battleback]

You are talking about digital files. There is no way you can stop people giving them away.  There is always a way to crack anything digital and get if for free.  Look at the huge household names that have been successfully hacked.

You can buy current top selling music albums for as little as £1.50 if you know the sites to go to.  If you want to go a bit further into the "dodgy" parts of the internet you can get them for free. Likewise you can get the latest console games for £2 each if you know where to look. The saving grace with them is most players want to play online, which leaves you open to being caught. If you are solo player there is no chance of that.

You can also get "Key generators" that will generate you a Serial number for the software you want.  You simply tell the program the software you want and it will generate a key for it.  No only that, the manufacture will recognize it as genuine and automatically give you the free updates to that software.

Some manufacturers did get wise to this and try and send blocking code in the updates. So you simply take the computer offline if the process you are using it for -say photoshop or Corel Draw  does not require you to access the internet.

I used to part own a small computer company, and we would go into reasonable size businesses to supply new Hardware. We often made more money selling them licenses to pirate software they were running than replacing the hardware.  One place we went to had 50 computers running, and not one piece of software was legit.

My eldest daughter worked for a company that won awards for its online selling. The only legit piece of software on her PC was Windows. This is a company that in 2020 had assets of 4.5 Million and over 2 million cash in the bank.  So it could well afford to be legit as it has only dozen office staff.

So I think the problem will be that once someone has the files it will be virtually unpoliceable. Certainly for companies that do not have the money to invest in court proceedings.  You will stop one rogue person/company selling your files and they will simply pop up elsewhere under another name. The product will be identical to yours and if they have a good 3d printer it will be of the same quality.  But without the overheads they will sell it for fractions of the lowest price you could sell it for.

I'm not going to say that files won't get pirated but Valve is now a 10 billion dollar company selling only digital files. And that's in a huge market, our hobby tiny in comparison so there should be way less people trying to hack Wargaming 3D printings systems.

But companies will need to offer more more then 3D files to discourage theft. My guess is that a company's will need to focus on developing their own game systems where players can not only buy files but get immersed into the game. Think of applications similar Table Top Simulator that could be available to people that buy into the game to learn how to play, maybe phone apps etc.

If 3D printing gets to the point where it's more mainstream (and that's still a big if), it would make very little difference where you buy your historical files from, becouse the user can scale them how they please so what would set them apart would be the game system. Rules, models files with the proper baseing, game aids, how they are pre-supported for printing as well as what the company offers beyond files and rules. That's where fantasy games will always have an advantage over historicals, in fantasy games you create everything. For historicals does it really matter where you get your M4 Sherman tank file from, if you can scale it to whatever size you want? Probably not, so you'll need to offer more to hook players.

It's anybodys guess what will become of 3D printing. But we have seen rapid improvements over the last few years in price and quality. 20 years from now it might be as common as a microwave or go the way of the VCR.

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[Gwydion]

Will it be able to print my personal jet pack?

[Steve J]

Code Select Expand

if you can scale it to whatever size you want?

You can scale up and down a bit within reason, but taking a 1/48th scale tank file down to 1/150th doesn't work, as we tried it where I used to work. Also you have to scale from the centre of the model which is not easy to do.

[Battleback]

Code Select Expand

if you can scale it to whatever size you want?

You can scale up and down a bit within reason, but taking a 1/48th scale tank file down to 1/150th doesn't work, as we tried it where I used to work. Also you have to scale from the centre of the model which is not easy to do.

I've never tried scaling a figure to that extreme. Good to know! I'm still pretty new to 3D printing and I've scaled down 15mm stuff to 10mm and up scaled 6mm to 10mm. Their pretty close anyway so it turned out great. I've also taken 15mm buildings and scaled them to 1/285th without issues.

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[Orcs]

I'm not going to say that files won't get pirated but Valve is now a 10 billion dollar company selling only digital files. And that's in a huge market, our hobby tiny in comparison so there should be way less people trying to hack Wargaming 3D printings systems.

Valve has the money to take legal steps to stop the piracy. With one or two exceptions, Wargames manufacturers don't

My guess is that a company's will need to focus on developing their own game systems where players can not only buy files but get immersed into the game.

I don't think most wargames manufacturers are interested in developing their own games systems.  Just because they produce  the "best figures" available does not mean that they will be any good at producing a games system.  Several manufacturers have tried and the results have not been satisfactory , let alone good.

I want  to play my own rules using the miniatures I choose, not be ties to a particular manufacturer. I think this applies to  most wargamers.

I am not saying you won't see a rise in the sale of  3d print files, but I think it will be quite slow and initially limited to stuff where people will only want one or two of the file . Ie  a print file of the church at St Mere Elise or Rorkes Drift etc.

[mmcv]

I'd say most attempts to control digital rights and copyright on software and media were largely unsuccessful. The decline in piracy has more to do with the desired media becoming cheap and readily available through subscription services than the clunky DRM and legal methods that mostly gave those using them a bad name.

There's no point trying to pirate music when you can pay a few quid a month for a hassle free music streaming service with it all on demand. Ultimately you can't really stop digital piracy, so you just need to make it not worthwhile...

In the wargaming industry the most evident part of it is PDF rules. Some manufacturers refuse to publish them or go down ridiculous lengths like putting your name multiple times on every page to personalise it. But in reality if the pdfs are reasonably priced and easy to get hold off from the manufacturer there's not much incentive to pirate them. Those that do pirate them are unlikely to be paying anyway!

With 3D printing I could see a subscription based print on demand service with manufacturers licensing their products to a particular platform, much like you see with the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video for films and series.

[Battleback]

Valve has the money to take legal steps to stop the piracy. With one or two exceptions, Wargames manufacturers don't

I don't think most wargames manufacturers are interested in developing their own games systems.  Just because they produce  the "best figures" available does not mean that they will be any good at producing a games system.  Several manufacturers have tried and the results have not been satisfactory , let alone good.

I want  to play my own rules using the miniatures I choose, not be ties to a particular manufacturer. I think this applies to  most wargamers.

I am not saying you won't see a rise in the sale of  3d print files, but I think it will be quite slow and initially limited to stuff where people will only want one or two of the file . Ie  a print file of the church at St Mere Elise or Rorkes Drift etc.

Valve didn't start out as a huge company though, they were just a average sized game studio before they launched Steam, but even at that time they probably had more capital then most miniature manufacturers.

I agree and feel the same as you but we don't represent the majority market in the miniature hobby. GW is the driving force behind the hobby and their base does want to be tied to their game systems, same can be said the other big games like FOW, BA etc. If GW and the other large companies in miniature Wargaming jump into 3D printing then the smaller companies will be forced to as well.

If GW was smart they would launch a Steam like platform and allow other companies to use the platform too sell on the market like Valve did with Steam, and since it's GW they would be able to keep piracy down and build in steam like features etc. But knowing GW they'll probably sell GW branded printers, installed with a GW slicer that can only print GW models at GW prices.

The thing about 3D printing is it fits perfectly into our hobby. We like to create and build things, 3D printing allows people to do whatever they want or still buy designs from companies and people we admire and start printing them right away without the expense and time of hand sculpting figures and creating molds. All you need is to create are 3D files. There's already lots of D&D players that follow designers on Patron for the 3D files they create. Most create their own unique worlds that people enjoy so they pay monthly to get access to that world.

Today we buy scenario books from companies or make our own. But in the future we might buy or created a scenario that includes all the figures and special figures, terrain and markers needed to play a specific scenario. Print them out in color (pre painted essentially) in the morning and play it that evening. Sure we can't do that today but 15 years from now that certainly could happen.



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[Battleback]

I'd say most attempts to control digital rights and copyright on software and media were largely unsuccessful. The decline in piracy has more to do with the desired media becoming cheap and readily available through subscription services than the clunky DRM and legal methods that mostly gave those using them a bad name.

There's no point trying to pirate music when you can pay a few quid a month for a hassle free music streaming service with it all on demand. Ultimately you can't really stop digital piracy, so you just need to make it not worthwhile...

In the wargaming industry the most evident part of it is PDF rules. Some manufacturers refuse to publish them or go down ridiculous lengths like putting your name multiple times on every page to personalise it. But in reality if the pdfs are reasonably priced and easy to get hold off from the manufacturer there's not much incentive to pirate them. Those that do pirate them are unlikely to be paying anyway!

With 3D printing I could see a subscription based print on demand service with manufacturers licensing their products to a particular platform, much like you see with the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video for films and series.

Great points mmcv!

Also regarding PDF rules I'm sure I'm not alone in saying even if a company gives me the PDF rules for free, if I like the rules I'll buy a print copy, I think most of us in this hobby love books. Companies might even see more print copies sold if they lower their PDF prices, since it would expose more players to their rules.

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[mmcv]

That's probably more true for rules books than army lists mind you, army lists I'm generally happy to just have as digital. Conversely I find it somewhat irritating when they don't provide a pdf copy as I'll usually buy a pdf over a hardcopy, at least initially and I'd generally not buy a hardcopy without also getting a pdf as I'd do my majority of reading on the digital version.

[fred.]

.
Today we buy scenario books from companies or make our own. But in the future we might buy or created a scenario that includes all the figures and special figures, terrain and markers needed to play a specific scenario. Print them out in color (pre painted essentially) in the morning and play it that evening. Sure we can't do that today but 15 years from now that certainly could happen.

That is an interesting idea

[Battleback]

That is an interesting idea

Hero Forge just did a Kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/heroforge/full-color-custom-miniatures-with-hero-forge-20Kickstarter and raised over 3 million for color 3D printed minis, so now you can design your own custom miniature and have it printed and mailed to you with no painting needed. Yeah an average to good painter can make the mini look better but it's certainly tabletop ready and most people don't like painting anyway.

It's pretty expensive per miniature but there is a demand. In 15 years time though the whole unit might be affordable for individuals to use at home and probably 10 times nicer then what we see today.

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[industrialtrousers]

Top end is a bit pricey @ $149 for pro painted if you get 10 but other options there. Over interesting KS tho as seems a couple of steps ahead of others.

[steve_holmes_11]

Hero Forge just did a Kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/heroforge/full-color-custom-miniatures-with-hero-forge-20Kickstarter and raised over 3 million for color 3D printed minis, so now you can design your own custom miniature and have it printed and mailed to you with no painting needed. Yeah an average to good painter can make the mini look better but it's certainly tabletop ready and most people don't like painting anyway.

It's pretty expensive per miniature but there is a demand. In 15 years time though the whole unit might be affordable for individuals to use at home and probably 10 times nicer then what we see today.

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I can see this being incredibly popular for the D&D (and other role playing game) set.
A number of figure manufacturers have attempted to produce ranges in lead, but you can see the problems.
* Limited range: Halflings - better make a rogue with a bow and another with a lantern and shortsword. Dward: Fighters: One with axe and one with crossbow.
* Very limited sales: Compared to knocking out 8 viking sculpts for the SAGA crowd.

The 3d print brings massive flexibility around body, armour, equipment, weapons and shield, headgear, face and hair.
A brilliant offering if you need just one or two figures.

[DaveH]

I can see this being incredibly popular for the D&D (and other role playing game) set.
A number of figure manufacturers have attempted to produce ranges in lead, but you can see the problems.
* Limited range: Halflings - better make a rogue with a bow and another with a lantern and shortsword. Dward: Fighters: One with axe and one with crossbow.
* Very limited sales: Compared to knocking out 8 viking sculpts for the SAGA crowd.

The 3d print brings massive flexibility around body, armour, equipment, weapons and shield, headgear, face and hair.
A brilliant offering if you need just one or two figures.

Yes, good for the Role playing market but not for the bulk wargaming market.

[Ithoriel]

My experience is that RPG GMs often have sizeable figure collections. My 400 figure Fantasy RPG collection paled into insignificance compare with those of a couple of GMs whose games I played in.

I couldn't justify the cost of a single Hero Forge figure for a character figure, let alone for the GM's "cast of thousands."

[steve_holmes_11]

My experience is that RPG GMs often have sizeable figure collections. My 400 figure Fantasy RPG collection paled into insignificance compare with those of a couple of GMs whose games I played in.

I couldn't justify the cost of a single Hero Forge figure for a character figure, let alone for the GM's "cast of thousands."

Yeah the poor old GM/DM gets saddled with providing all the monsters and NPCs.
Now those can probably be done using generic metal or plastic figures.

The current economics of 3D make it attractive for player character 1 offs.
(Unless you play with a homicidal GM and need to switch character every few weeks).

Economics may move to support bulk production.
I can't anticipate when that will happen.

[Ithoriel]

(Unless you play with a homicidal GM* and need to switch character every few weeks).

*That would be me .... well every few months maybe