Tag: article

Categories
General Kickstarter Massive Awesome Shattered Earth

State of Play

Hello fellow Survivors!

The harsh climate and unpredictable weather of the Shattered Earth has made communication difficult over the past several months, but we’ve managed to jury rig a makeshift transmitter out of a pre-Event cell phone and some processed food tins to send this message to you.

This past year has seen us fulfil the dream of releasing a brand new tabletop miniatures game into the wild, and we’re delighted to have such an appreciative and dedicated fanbase. Unfortunately, post-Kickstarter sales haven’t been where we would have liked them to be, and the tabletop industry as a whole has experienced a challenging twelve months, especially for small (read: tiny) companies like ourselves.

As is often the case, real life and the pressures of working a full-time job have meant that we’ve had little time to rectify the financial situation. Short of attending every gaming convention on the calendar we have no way of reaching beyond the people who already know about Shattered Earth, and that’s a challenge we’ve been struggling to overcome. We’d dearly love to increase the range of miniatures currently available to players, expanding on the fiction and rules we’ve established over the past few years, but we can’t do that without increased income.

And so, with much thought and consideration (cue drumroll…) we’ve decided to make our long-awaited return to Kickstarter!

The intention of this second Kickstarter is to provide us with a more retail-friendly product that we can then use to advertise Shattered Earth to a much wider audience, ultimately bringing in more revenue so that the game can effectively support itself. To do so we will need to create new packaging and more balanced starter sets – including additional miniatures – and all the admin and legal requirements that go with it. It’s something we’ve wanted to do for a long time but have lacked the capital to pursue, and so the best option available to us is another round of crowdfunding.

We’ve been hard at work fleshing out the core factions and have some early concept art and playtest rules for a raft of new miniatures already lined up. We also broke into our piggy bank one last time so that we could have a brand new sculpt ready to show you (hint: he’s adorning our new Kickstarter banner) but the full reveal will have to wait a little longer…

In short, we want to continue supporting Shattered Earth, but in order to do so we need your help once again. We’ll announce details of the Kickstarter nearer the time, and look forward to inviting you all to once again explore the Shattered Earth with us.

John and Si

Categories
Massive Awesome

Miniature Myth Busting

As you may know we are currently writing an article series for Beasts of War detailing the steps we’re taking as we approach the launch of the Shattered Earth Kickstarter on February 10th. A comment on our latest entry got me thinking about the ‘black box’ that is miniature production, and the reply I started writing quickly got out of hand, hence this (enormous) blog post.

Firstly, a disclaimer: this in no way constitutes professional advice – it’s just what I’ve learned over the last year or so of trying to do this for a living. Also, the numbers quoted are merely examples and represent the range of prices you might be expected to pay rather than quotes from specific manufacturers. Lastly, Massive Awesome are a UK-based company so all prices are in pounds sterling.

(Note: this is a very long post – you have been warned!)

Art and Design

The best way for me to debunk some of the myths around miniature production is to run through the entire production process with a couple of imaginary miniatures; let’s call them Bob and Kate. Bob is a standard 28mm human soldier whereas Kate is an intricately-detailed 54mm collectors’ piece.

Let’s start with Bob. Bob’s concept art was pretty straightforward to design and cost about £100. The sculpting was done digitally and again was a straightforward job – let’s call it £250. Bob was sent to the printers to have the master produced which cost another £100. Bob is now ready for casting; total investment so far: £450.

Kate on the other hand took some time to get right. Her concept art needed several iterations and ran to £350. The sculpting also took some time to get all the details right, and she’s a complicated miniature, so that ended up costing £1,000. Due to her size and the amount of different pieces required, the 3D print was also a lot more complex and cost £350. Total investment for Kate so far: £1,700.

The Casting Process

There are three main materials that miniatures are cast in: metal (normally tin), resin and plastic (specifically high impact polystyrene, often referred to as HIPS). Some miniature ranges and a lot of boardgames produce their miniatures in a different type of plastic called polyvinyl chloride, more commonly known as PVC. I have zero experience casting in this material so I won’t be covering that in this article. If anybody has experience of casting PVC miniatures please share your thoughts in the comments!

Right, let’s talk about metal. Metal is normally spin cast, which means you make a circular mould out of rubber or silicone and spin it at high speed to distribute the metal. You can use a 9″ mould for Bob and you can fit five of him in each mould. Each mould will set you back about £50, and let’s call it £3 for the metal (you pay by weight) and another £3 per spin. Assuming you get 50 casts out of each mould, your cost per miniature for Bob is £1.40 (=(3+3+(50/50))/5). Kate on the other hand needs an 11″ mould (£80) and you’ll only fit three of her in each one. She costs £5 in metal and £5 to spin, so her cost per miniature is £3.87 (=(5+5+(80/50))/3).

Cost Per Miniature (Metal)

Resin production is very similar to metal production, although the miniatures are normally vacuum cast rather than spin cast. Some companies (particularly in the US) still make spin cast resin; it’s often a little cheaper than vacuum cast, but the miniatures are more likely to get air bubbles. Vacuum cast resin miniatures are probably the highest-detail you will achieve, but that detail has an effect on your mould yield. Mould costs per miniature are also more difficult to ascertain as it depends on how each miniature is cut.

For our example we will assume Bob’s mould cost is £35 and Kate’s is £50, and you get 20 pulls from each one. Bob costs £2 in resin, therefore the cost per miniature for Bob is £3.75 (=2+(35/20)). Kate costs £8 in resin, so her cost per miniature is £10.50 (=8+(50/20)).

Cost Per Miniature (Resin)

Lastly we’ll look at plastic injection moulding. This form of production uses metal ‘tools’ to produce sprues, usually 6″ by 8″. Each sprue can hold multiple miniatures and, whilst the tools themselves can be very expensive, the cost of plastic is cheap. You also don’t need to worry about yield with injection moulding as each tool will last for tens of millions of casts. Working out a cost per miniature with injection moulding is quite difficult due to the large upfront cost, and the fact that you don’t need to replace the tool. The easiest way to reconcile this is to add the cost of the tool to your initial design outlay instead of factoring it into each miniature’s individual cost.

We can create a sprue for Bob and, because he is quite a simple miniature, we can fit ten of him on each sprue. The cost of the tool is £8,000 and each shot of plastic is £1; the cost per miniature for Bob is therefore £0.10 (=1/10) because we aren’t including the cost of the tool. Kate is much more complicated and takes up an entire sprue on her own. She’s also got some pieces with quite a bit of depth to them, so the tool itself is more expensive at £12,000. We’re still paying £1 per shot, which is how much it will cost us to produce one Kate in plastic.

Cost Per Miniature

(If you’re going to use plastic injection moulding, you’ll need to cut the miniatures differently than for metal and resin. This will obviously incur an additional cost which is not covered in this example.)

Making Money

Now you have a production-ready miniature to sell you need to set your RRP/MSRP. Production costs should normally run somewhere between 15% and 20%, so you can easily calculate your RRP/MSRP by multiplying the cost per miniature by 5 or 6 (note: this is where you need to decide who you’re aiming at; high-end boutique miniatures will obviously have higher production costs, whereas simpler 28mm humans will run closer to 15%). This will often produce a higher RRP/MSRP than you would like, so you’ll need to normalise that cost using other similar miniatures as reference, without undervaluing them.

For metal, at around 15% production costs, we’ll price Bob at £7.99 and Kate at £24.99. For resin our production costs are higher at 20%, so Bob is priced at £12.99 and Kate at £39.99. For plastic it gets a bit more complicated as you’re unlikely to be selling ten Bobs in one retail box, but for our example let’s assume that the sprue can be cut into individual miniatures. Our (ongoing) manufacturing costs are low, so we’ll price Bob and Kate at the same as metal: £7.99 and £24.99 respectively.

RRP / MSRP

(You might think that the resin price for Kate is especially high; wait until you see what happens to that price when we get to distribution.)

Now, this is where things get more complicated. Depending on where in the world your business is based, you will need to account for all appropriate sales taxes. As we are based in the UK we need to take off 20% to cover VAT. You will of course need to charge this to any applicable customers, but you have to pay it back so it works out as a zero sum. If you’re selling your miniatures direct (e.g. from your own web store) you can easily work out your income per miniature by taking the production costs off the net price.

Net Income (Direct Sales)

Selling direct looks good for your bottom line, but your product is only being advertised in one shop window, so your sales potential is limited. If you want to increase your reach you’ll need to start selling into retailers, who will obviously want to make their own cut on the sales. Let’s assume that every retailer buys from you at the same discount (note: normally you’d negotiate deals with each retailer separately and offer tiered discounts depending on how much stock they buy) which we’ll say is 70% of RRP/MSRP.

Net Income (Retail Sales)

Okay, so you’re in 30 or so retailers in the UK and sales are looking good, but you want to break into Europe and the US. You can of course start talking to retailers in those countries directly, but it’s far better (and less stressful) to have a distributor do it for you. Now, obviously, adding another link in the chain is going to impact your bottom line as the distributor will want to take their cut before the miniatures go to retailers, so we’ll say they all buy from you at 50% of RRP/MSRP.

Net Income (Distribution Sales)

Now you know why the RRP/MSRP for a resin Kate is so high! Selling into distributors looks super-painful on paper, but they can exponentially increase your sales potential. You have to ask yourself if you want 80% of a small number, or 50% of a massive number. Of course, you need to have a commercially-viable product to begin with, but that should be your goal from day one even if you only plan to sell small numbers from your own web store.

The Final Reckoning

Let’s remind ourselves of our initial design costs – this is how much we need to clear to make any profit. As noted previously, we’ve included the tool cost in the outlay for our plastic miniatures.

Initial Outlay (Design Costs)

In order to break even we have to sell enough miniatures to clear our investment. We obviously make the most money selling directly, but our customer base is limited. If we sell into distributors we don’t make anywhere near as much money, but we could increase our customer base exponentially. Ultimately you need to decide where your game sits in the market, and plan your production accordingly.

Break Even (No. Miniatures Sold)

Phew! I think we all need a sit down and a nice cup of tea after that.

Now, none of the above covers things like warehouse space, staff salaries for picking and packing, stock insurance, etc. but it should give you an idea of where the money goes, and what the different production processes are like. If this has triggered any further questions in your mind, please post them in the comments below. And, if you have your own experiences to share, we’d especially love to hear that.

Categories
Shattered Earth

Shattered Earth Rules 101

We said early on in the development of Shattered Earth that there were three pillars which would define the game: the universe, the miniatures, and the rules. We’ve talked a lot about the first two over the past few months and, despite a recent Closed Alpha playtest, less about the game itself. So this week, instead of a new miniature reveal, I’d like to present something of a ‘rules reveal’.

Now, with a game as detailed as Shattered Earth, there isn’t nearly enough space to cover every mechanic in a single blog post. Instead, I will break down the core tenets of the game over a series of posts, and answer any specific questions in the comments. The first thing we are going to look at is the basic dice roll mechanic, which we call a test.

A test is made using one or more ten-sided dice (d10) to form a test pool. If a dice comes up as a 7 or higher it counts as a success; if it comes up as a 6 or lower it counts as a failure. In addition, a 0 counts as two successes, and a 1 counts as two failures. Whenever you make a test you are looking to score a certain number of net successes. This target number is defined by the task you are attempting to perform, or by your opponent’s result in an opposed test.

An opposed test is by far the most common dice roll you will make when playing Shattered Earth. Both players will roll their test pools and compare the number of net successes each makes, with the player having the most success overall ‘winning’ the test and succeeding at performing whatever action they were attempting. Let’s take shooting at another model as an example.

John is playing the Cult of the Dragon and has advanced an Acolyte up the board. Simon has a UNM Coyote Assault Trooper in waiting, and activates this model on his turn. Simon declares that he will make a ranged attack action; taking a few wounds off the Acolyte before it gets into charge range will certainly help to even the odds.

The Coyote Assault Trooper has a Ranged Attack Value (RAV) of 5, meaning that Simon’s initial test pool for the ranged attack is 5 dice. John’s Acolyte of the Dragon has a Defence Value (DV) of 3, meaning that John’s pool is 3 dice. If there were no other modifiers to this attack, both players would simply roll their dice and compare the result. But let’s say that John’s Acolyte is behind a low wall, and Simon’s Coyote cannot draw line of sight to that Acolyte without it crossing the wall. In this case, we can say that the Acolyte is obscured and, as such, gains +1 DV against ranged attacks. However, Simon’s Coyote was well prepared; not only has it gone prone, it also took the time to aim, gaining +2 RAV overall. The final modified test pools are therefore 7 dice for Simon and 4 for John.

Ranged Attack Test = RAV + Modifiers vs. DV + Modifiers

Continuing our example above, with his 7 dice Simon rolls 3 hits and 4 misses and with his 4 dice John rolls only 1 hit and three misses, therefore Simon scores 2 net successes on the test, meaning that his Coyote has successfully hit the Acolyte. We now need to make a damage test to determine if the hit causes any wounds. The Coyote’s Assault Rifle has a Damage Value (DMG) of 5, and the Acolyte’s Armour Value (AV) is 4. We add the 2 net successes from the ranged attack test to the weapon’s DMG value, giving Simon 7 dice versus John’s 4. But remember that wall John’s Acolyte was standing behind? Within 1″ of the wall the Acolyte can claim soft cover, giving it +1 AV, and 5 dice overall.

Damage Test = Net Successes + DMG + Modifiers vs. AV + Modifiers

We feel that adding and removing dice from the pool is much cleaner and more efficient than adding and subtracting numbers from a target figure, removing the need for complicated maths for every roll. And, using our custom d10s with clearly designed hit and miss symbols, resolving even the most intricate combat scenario is a piece of cake.

I hope that gives you a good feel for how most conflict resolution is achieved in Shattered Earth. We have made the core mechanics as simple to understand as possible, whilst providing ample room for creative experimentation. One thing to note is that all modifiers in a given situation are applied directly to your own model; you never have to work out what your opponent’s model is doing – you simply work out your own test pool and roll the dice. That means less time debating, and more time playing.

Categories
Massive Awesome

Constructive Criticism

As I have not worked in manufacturing or an industry where I produce tangible physical products, most of what I have ‘delivered’ in my day-job for the last 15 years has been a service or a presentation or written report. In managing staff who have (usually) provided their own services, I have often been in a binary situation where something is right or wrong; an application is either behaving as expected or it isn’t. So when a user can’t log in to a system or a financial transaction has gone through but nothing arrives in a client’s account, it is very clear what our end result should be.

Getting used to how it works in the games industry while interacting with our artists and sculptors has taken some time. I’ve been looking for the best way to offer constructive feedback to people who provide a physical finished product. There are rarely objective rights and wrongs when it comes to art or design and so all of our discussions have been discussing small, incremental changes to reach a goal that is not at all explicit, being as it lives in the heads of Simon and myself.

We have been incredibly lucky that the talent of all our collaborators is so obvious and the quality of their work so fantastic. Their skills seem almost alien to me, the ability to create drawings and models with such great detail and character, simply from the descriptions and feedback that we provide over email and instant message. It has sometimes been difficult for me to tell them when I’d like things changing. I feel like I, with my utter inability to draw, paint or sculpt, should have no right to question these hugely talented artists. I worry that suggesting changes is insulting their skills.

Thankfully, all of our collaborators are very secure in their own abilities and more than happy to engage in active discussions on the direction of their work. They have been extremely receptive during the conversations about the modifications and changes of directions that we have requested of them. This has made my job very easy and confirmed our opinion that it is worth paying for the best, most professional collaborators. Not only is the standard of their work high, but interacting with them is a pleasure and the process of design very much a collaborative effort.

It also makes me realise how sometimes products come to market that are less than stellar. They might not simply be a case of bad or lazy design; there may have been less experienced people involved or corners cut on materials. Perhaps the brief wasn’t clear or maybe people were simply too polite when it came to offering criticism, and they held their tongue when they should have pushed back. Either way, I hope I know what to do if I experience one of these tricky situations but my preference would be to keep hiring the best people so that I never have to.

Categories
Massive Awesome

Letting Go

Now that the game is public knowledge, I have had the odd but very satisfying experience of seeing it mentioned on gaming websites and blogs. It has been a real pleasure to see that people we have never met seem excited about what Simon and I are working on and are looking forward to playing the game and handling the miniatures that we’ve created.

This of course also comes with an additional level of responsibility, as we are no longer working just for ourselves but for a public audience. It also comes with the knowledge that we no longer ‘own’ the conversation around the game. Sure, we can try to steer it in the direction that we prefer but, going forwards, people will be less likely to get their information about the game from us directly and rather from website writers, reviewers, bloggers and the commenting public.

This level of public scrutiny is nothing new for Simon, who has gone through it countless times on big video game releases, but it is not something I have any experience with. The work I do in my day job will generally only directly affect a few dozen people and I know who they all are, so the whole concept of an unknown audience is taking some re-adjusting on my part.

Of course the whole purpose of starting the company was to create games that will reach a wide audience but, until now, only a few friends and family members have known what we are up to. So the best we can hope for is to try and enjoy this transition to having hundreds or even thousands of people read our words and view our art. After all, if the game is a success, this is the last time we’ll be in this position.