This is a Limited Edition Game

I’m thinking the game will still be in print.  They may not drop massive quantities on the shelf.  So “limited edition” might just refer to it being available on shelves for a limited time, not your inability to get a copy.

Don’t forget, China loves to produce counterfits.  Hell, I can usually buy movies that have not even been released to the theaters yet from China if I ever had the inclination to sit in one place and be spoonfed a story. (AA is different, you have to think…movies…they think for you, IMHO.  No offense, you can like what you want, I like strategy and books and math, not movies…TV is starting to piss me off too lately…)

@Cmdr:

I’m thinking the game will still be in print.  They may not drop massive quantities on the shelf.  So “limited edition” might just refer to it being available on shelves for a limited time, not your inability to get a copy.

Don’t forget, China loves to produce counterfits.  Hell, I can usually buy movies that have not even been released to the theaters yet from China if I ever had the inclination to sit in one place and be spoonfed a story. (AA is different, you have to think…movies…they think for you, IMHO.  No offense, you can like what you want, I like strategy and books and math, not movies…TV is starting to piss me off too lately…)

TV is much worse than movies IMO, I can at least get a bit of enjoyment out of a deeper movie.

I agree, Movies at least have writers and scripts.  TV is now just a bunch of children from meth-head/crack using families with little or no education being dropped off on a deserted island or sent to a fat farm and letting them cry moan and back stab each other.

Marquis,

Thank you for your numbers.  They seem quite accurate.

toblerone77,

If Hasbro makes a billion dollars on GI Joe, and makes 800,000 on A&A50 and needs to cut costs, where do you think they’ll cut?

Neither.  Whether you have a product that makes $100 or $1000, why would you afford to cut either?  They’re still making you a profit?  I never saw a company cut costs by slashing something that already made them money.  Normally you cut the deadweight, the lines that put your company at a financial handicap (where people simply aren’t buying).  I guarantee if even the Wizards stories were making corporate even $1 in overall profit, they would still be open today.

About the mini’s.  I’ve think they’ve had their time and I wouldn’t be afraid to see them go.  They did what they were suppose to do, and I see no sense trying to prolong them after all’s said and done.

@TG:

Marquis,

Thank you for your numbers.  They seem quite accurate.

toblerone77,

If Hasbro makes a billion dollars on GI Joe, and makes 800,000 on A&A50 and needs to cut costs, where do you think they’ll cut?

Neither.  Whether you have a product that makes $100 or $1000, why would you afford to cut either?  They’re still making you a profit?  I never saw a company cut costs by slashing something that already made them money.  Normally you cut the deadweight, the lines that put your company at a financial handicap (where people simply aren’t buying).  I guarantee if even the Wizards stories were making corporate even $1 in overall profit, they would still be open today.

About the mini’s.  I’ve think they’ve had their time and I wouldn’t be afraid to see them go.  They did what they were suppose to do, and I see no sense trying to prolong them after all’s said and done.

That’s a good point also, I’m just trying to point out that no franchise is invinceble or as huge as we may percieve. I used some of those examples to show that if you like something enough you should get it while you can.

A prime example for me is I collect RPG books. Some of them were very easy to find in the 90’s but by 2000 they were pretty much gone. Just WEG was announcing more SWRPG for the Phantom Menace WEG lost the license.

If your familiar with it, look up an e-bay a copy of Pirates and Privateers. Cha-ching!

What I had tried to say was that we do not need a “Computer stand alone program for playing A&A”, that is useless, but we need a “Web Application Browser based with a supporting website, forum etc”.

I understood you, I just disagree.  :-D

See I think we do need a computer stand alone program for playing A&A, and I think it should be designed to play on consoles as well (like Xbox or Playstation.) It should have a supporting website/forums for the online community, but its should go well beyond a Web application browser based set up. ‘Play by forums’ and ‘Play by Email’ exclusive is not the solution. There are programs which do that already, and they don’t cater to the casual player, because they require too much overhead to operate. In any case, a real computer game could easily support something along those lines. I’m not talking about catering to people who are willing to study the game manual like its the bible, and exchange their email address with perfect strangers just to play the game. We all know about that group of players, because that’s the group we all belong to. But we are not the casual players, and we’re not the ones who need an introduction to this game.

Everything Toblerone77 has said in this thread, only convinces me of this even more. The difference between a PC game and a board game is that, with the PC, your initial investment makes future investments cheaper. You can interpret the word ‘investment’ however you want, whether that be financial, or in terms of networking/marketing, even down to something as simple as enforcing the official rules. For example, a Larry Harris Tournament Ruleset would be 100 times easier to implement in a PC game, then it would be to publish and disseminate new rules through the tradition method.

In fact, the way things are set up right now, I don’t consider any of the board games “official” until they’ve been out for a year. This is because the designer, or someone on this website, will invariably have to come up with a way to fix the set up 6-12 months out. Now that could be a bid, or it could be a rules/set up adjustment, but the point is that, when the game first ships, everything is still basically in the Beta testing phase and subject to alteration. The board games almost always require further testing and re-balancing, and we’ve come to just accept this as part of the way the game is built. Its stupid to do it that way though. Maybe it was a good idea in the 1980s, when nobody had personal computers, and the likelihood of someone developing a game breaking strategy 6 months after release was more remote, but it makes zero sense to me in 2008/9.

They should design the new games by using their online community to conduct the playtesting and to provide feedback. The game should be thoroughly reviewed and tested for overall balance/popularity, before the first order for Chinese plastic is ever even placed. And yes, it would be more profitable too, for that same reason. Standard PC games can fetch between $50-65, with expansions ranging from $30-40. And once you have the groundwork laid down, they become progressively cheaper to produce with each iteration (since for the most part, you’re just building on top of the same core game engine.) Everything that WotC has failed to do to promote A&A, since they got rid of their storefronts all across America, could be recreated with their online community. In fact that’s the only way its ever going to get recreated, because you sure as sh*t know that they’re not going to open another chain of physical stores for players to congregate at, and where they can hold live tournaments and the like.

We don’t have anything like that right now, (not in California anyway, which is the ‘Coast’ in Wizards of the Coast) and if we don’t go digital and start attracting new players soon, then, chances are, our hobby is just going to disappear on us one day, because they’ll be nobody left who knows how to play.

We don’t have anything like that right now, (not in California anyway, which is the ‘Coast’ in Wizards of the Coast) and if we don’t go digital and start attracting new players soon, then, chances are, our hobby is just going to disappear on us one day, because they’ll be nobody left who knows how to play.

Uh huh.  Where exactly from California are you from?

I split my time equally between the San Fransisco Bay Area (Mtn. View, where the microchips get made), San Diego (SDSU, Classics and Humanities dept.), and Sacramento (Folsom, now a suburb as well as a prison).  :-D

Right now I’m in San Diego, and yes, almost all of the hobby shops and traditional game stores that used to be in the Westfield Malls are no longer in existence. :(

To be perfectly honest, I’m not as disappointed about that as I might otherwise be, simply because I’m not the kind of person who enjoys playing in that type of environment. For me those stores were always just the place I went to buy things, not to play them. The point is though, that the “local gameshop tournament” is not going to be around to bring this franchise into the next decade.

If we want to have any chance at hooking a new generation of players and keeping them active, then we need to start planning for the Internet + major chain retailers (ala Target and Toys R US), and in that sort of environment I’d put my money on the Internet.

Funny.  I split my time between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Sacramento?  There’s nothing but cows there.

Unfortunately the drive from San Diego to LA is 2 hours, though from San Fransisco to Mountainview is like 40 minutes.

I wouldn’t mind supporting my local game shop, except I don’t have one here.

@Black_Elk:

What I had tried to say was that we do not need a “Computer stand alone program for playing A&A”, that is useless, but we need a “Web Application Browser based with a supporting website, forum etc”.

I understood you, I just disagree.  :-D

See I think we do need a computer stand alone program for playing A&A, and I think it should be designed to play on consoles as well (like Xbox or Playstation.) It should have a supporting website/forums for the online community, but its should go well beyond a Web application browser based set up. ‘Play by forums’ and ‘Play by Email’ exclusive is not the solution. There are programs which do that already, and they don’t cater to the casual player, because they require too much overhead to operate. In any case, a real computer game could easily support something along those lines. I’m not talking about catering to people who are willing to study the game manual like its the bible, and exchange their email address with perfect strangers just to play the game. We all know about that group of players, because that’s the group we all belong to. But we are not the casual players, and we’re not the ones who need an introduction to this game.

Everything Toblerone77 has said in this thread, only convinces me of this even more. The difference between a PC game and a board game is that, with the PC, your initial investment makes future investments cheaper. You can interpret the word ‘investment’ however you want, whether that be financial, or in terms of networking/marketing, even down to something as simple as enforcing the official rules. For example, a Larry Harris Tournament Ruleset would be 100 times easier to implement in a PC game, then it would be to publish and disseminate new rules through the tradition method.

In fact, the way things are set up right now, I don’t consider any of the board games “official” until they’ve been out for a year. This is because the designer, or someone on this website, will invariably have to come up with a way to fix the set up 6-12 months out. Now that could be a bid, or it could be a rules/set up adjustment, but the point is that, when the game first ships, everything is still basically in the Beta testing phase and subject to alteration. The board games almost always require further testing and re-balancing, and we’ve come to just accept this as part of the way the game is built. Its stupid to do it that way though. Maybe it was a good idea in the 1980s, when nobody had personal computers, and the likelihood of someone developing a game breaking strategy 6 months after release was more remote, but it makes zero sense to me in 2008/9.

They should design the new games by using their online community to conduct the playtesting and to provide feedback. The game should be thoroughly reviewed and tested for overall balance/popularity, before the first order for Chinese plastic is ever even placed. And yes, it would be more profitable too, for that same reason. Standard PC games can fetch between $50-65, with expansions ranging from $30-40. And once you have the groundwork laid down, they become progressively cheaper to produce with each iteration (since for the most part, you’re just building on top of the same core game engine.) Everything that WotC has failed to do to promote A&A, since they got rid of their storefronts all across America, could be recreated with their online community. In fact that’s the only way its ever going to get recreated, because you sure as sh*t know that they’re not going to open another chain of physical stores for players to congregate at, and where they can hold live tournaments and the like.

We don’t have anything like that right now, (not in California anyway, which is the ‘Coast’ in Wizards of the Coast) and if we don’t go digital and start attracting new players soon, then, chances are, our hobby is just going to disappear on us one day, because they’ll be nobody left who knows how to play.

Black Elk, maybe  I am not able to explain myself.  I will try with other words.
For doing what you are saying, the better way is using an MMOG like game, a browser based game or something similar.

Are you familiar with Warcraft? Blizzard have made Warcraft I, II, III and other spin off, and thay are (togheter with Starcraft) the better RTS I have ever played. Now they have moved to World of Warcraft, having servers computer running the game 24 by 7. The players use a simple client application, with no stand alone game capability, to connect to the server and playing with other players (WoW has more than 9.000.000 of players and is reaching 10 million). It cost a slight amount of money to pay monthly.
Adavantages of a online-game:

• you have no need to develop AI, players are supposed to play with other humans, the game has originality and unpredictability built in with this feature;
• user provides feedback continuolusly;
• the update of the game do not need to be sold and delivered to the customers, they are simply uploaded on the servers, continuously improving the application;
• there is no risk of software piracy, what you sell is the subscriptions for playing the game on the servers.

All this reason are well known new trends in the computer game industry. If we want to do a step in the future we have to di it in the better way.
The problem is: may such approach have success?
Look at initiative like Gleemax (now closed) or the Gametable online, they offered or offer the possibility to play Revised on line (and it is qiute good at Gametable online) with other players. Look at TripleA Lobby and all the players that are there to play on line. This initiative are only catching a share of the A&A fans, which prefer to roll the dice on the table (because the dice roller is no dependable according to more of them as their hand was a Gaussian dice roller) moving the miniatures on the physical board or that play by forum or by email using Abattlemap. A&A players have no need of PS3 or X-BOX or PC with nVidia GE Force to play A&A. What they need is a map representation, and a way to talk with the opponents for organizing games. Web 2.0 is arrived and we, the users, are now reay to create the content and the community on the internet. Forget the stand-alone game for PC or for console. The only games sold for them are the FPS or racing simulations or sport games. Trying to enter in such market is pratically the same that we have now: selling of A&A compared to GI-JOE or to Settlers of Cataan.

Taking advantage of Web 2.0 is a genius idea.  What this equates to having embedded applications inside popular social networking sites.  For example, several entrepreneurs came up with “Scrabble” and “Risk” clones for Facebook, where users could play gratis as long as they installed the plug-in.  Not difficult at all to do.

Anyways both games were HUGE HUGE HUGE hits with over 1 Million Subscribers and relied on little to no advertising whatsoever.  It simply spread by word of mouth.  Eventually the games got so popular that Hasbro had to issue a cease-and-desist order and forced the entrepreneurs to shut the games down.

If Hasbro had any brain at all they should implement this idea again, only with their license.  Axis and Allies could work the same way; it would be less popular because it’s less recognizable, but word to mouth will spread the game.  And people will learn how to play the game when it’s free.

Moses that is the idea! We already form communities on the web! We have to go forward!  :-D

Limited my ass! After being sold out since launch date, I will receive my copy tomorrow from the store I ordered it at!

Sorry…has nothing to do with being limited or not…but I am just happy.

For doing what you are saying, the better way is using an MMOG like game, a browser based game or something similar.

Hehe don’t worry Rom, I love talking about this stuff, so I could go all night. :)

I have to say though, that I really don’t like the pay to play model. I was a big fan of all those Blizzard titles leading up to WoW, but I’ll never hop on the pay to play train. D&D Online, Ultima, World of Warcraft etc. none of them has been compelling enough for me to dole out $15 a month, and I know I’m not alone in my aversion to this type of business plan.

For one thing, MMO style games are predicated on the assumption that developers will be regularly putting out new content. In an RPG or a RTS game thats relatively easy to do, but on a TBS boardgame with set rules, and a set look, that’d be a total joke. What sort of materials could they expand upon? Not to mention the fact that the main issue with that model for an A&A style game is going to be droppers, which you can account for in RPGs and RTS games, but which would turn into a complete nightmare for a game like ours. Even on gametable and tripleA, droppers are already a huge problem, even with a rather small player base. No, pay to play is not the way the go for this thing. Not yet anyway :D

What we need first is a starter set with a single payment up front, augmented by sales of expansions. The multi-player component is critical, but not to the point of making it exclusively an MP game.

To use your example of the Warcraft/Starcraft franchise, before they ever even considered going with the MMO strategy, they already had like five best selling titles under their belt. Warcraft, Warcraft 2, Diablo, Diablo 2, Starcraft etc. They had a built in market to target, one that was already broad based and proven profitable by sales of their SP/MP games.  I’m not saying its impossible to do something similar for the Axis and Allies franchise eventually, but if we wanted to take an incremental approach, that would definitely be putting the cart before the horse.

That said, I’m still heavily in favor of digital distribution, and online key checks vs cd key checks. I’m all for building a web community, providing support for MP play online, and doing all the other things, I just don’t want to pay X dollars a month to play. If for whatever reason, they did decide to go with a pay to play MMO structure, then there needs to be a heavy emphasis on end user customization: unique player profiles, unique map graphics, dice graphics, uniforms for your units, things of that sort. And honestly I’m not sure how you could create enough variety to keep that many paying members hungry for more. I suppose an alternative would be to go the MMO route, without the pay to play aspect. The most successful game of that sort in recent years was Guild Wars. But again the differences between that sort of game and a TBS board game are pretty dramatic.

I don’t know though, they might be able to convince me to subscribe for an A&A MMOG, but it would have to be really impressive. I mean they’d have to offer a lot of unique features, serious support for international tournaments, a way to differentiate your player profile from the thousands of others floating around etc. It would have be damn good is the point I’m trying to make.

I would easily be willing to make a one time payment of $60 for a self contained game (either on the PC, or next Gen Console), but take that same dollar amount, spread it out to $15 a month for 4 months, and you will have lost me. My enthusiasm for this stuff comes and goes in waves. If I’m going to fork over that kind of cash, then I want to own the game, and not just lease it. Especially with a game like A&A, I’d like to be able to put in on the shelf for a month or two, and know that when I pull it down again that I’ll still be able to use the program.

Dear Gullible Customers,

"Starting this year we will be releasing installments of Axis and Allies by theater of conflict.  We will start with the China-Burma theater, followed by Western Europe and the South Pacific… We will conclude with the North African Front, sometime in 2015.  The cost per installment will be $59.99.  The total print run is set at 10,000, so buy now before our inventories are gone.  All marketing will be handled by the chumps at Axis&Allies.org gratis.

Starting with the South Pacific we will no longer include pieces or dice with the game.  You may order additional copies of the first two installments if you so wish to replace missing/broken pieces.  Your years of support and goodwill mean little to us; we only want your dollars.  Don’t complain, we ARE Axis and Allies.  You are addicted to us."

I vote this as candidate for post of the year!  LOL!

Why do I not enjoy ?  :oops: