Tag: rant

Finecast Models: Killing Me Softly

A wholly owned subsidery of Games Workshop

If you follow table top war games at all you know that the hobby is largely at the mercy of the commodities market. Many of the models used by table top war games companies are metal cast. This year Games Workshop decided to do something about that by abandoning metal models and using a newly developed resin instead. Resin is lighter, easier to modify and much cheaper than metal. Games Workshop hasn’t passed those savings on to their customers though! In fact, in their press releases and investor’s statements hardly mention the cost savings at all! Instead they’ve highlighted the high quality of the new resin models:

Games Workshop already makes the best fantasy miniatures in the world. All Games Workshop miniatures will now be made either in resin or plastic to ensure Games Workshop customers get the best quality miniatures available. From a strategic perspective, Citadel Finecast has established an even greater quality differential for Games Workshop over other miniature makers using traditional metal manufacturing methods.

Mark Wells, CEO Games Workshop

But of course, one of the main reasons for this change to resin was quality. One thing you’ll notice immediately when you pick them up is the exceptionally sharp detail on the model, which can only be described as staggering. For dedicated painters (which we all are to some extent) this is a dream come true.

Andy Hall, Writer Games Workshop

I’m not going to contest that the new models look great and that their resin mix does an excellent job of capturing the nuances of the master molds. My problem is that these new lighter, cheaper models cost more than their metal counterparts?! The company has said this rise in cost is due to the better detail quality of the new finecast models, but the fact of the matter is that GW and Citadel Miniatures are using the same master molds as they were for the old metal miniatures. The only difference here is the new resin! The molds have already been made the costs invested and already returned from the sale of the old metal models, so why are customers now having to pay more for a model made from cheaper raw materials?!

Cast in the traditional manner using a metal alloy
The new finecast resin model

Games Workshop has been pricing me out of their hobby for years. I have a hard time justifying the purchase of a single model for $15 moving the sales point to $18.50 ($20 in the mind of the buyer) is out of the question! Who can afford that when armies consist of upwards of 100 models?!

 

I want to see more games like TWEWY

Silly name, good game

I finished The World Ends With You (TWEWY) last Friday. The game was an enjoyable romp. The story didn’t make a lot of sense and the character (and costume) design was atrocious but the gameplay was solid and more important scalable. Why is scalable bolded like that? Because it is the single greatest thing it has going for it and the single greatest thing I wish started showing up in more games!

TWEWY doesn’t punish a player for not learning the minutiae of its various game play mechanics. It doesn’t penalize you for not being able to sink in the hours and hours to master controlling characters on two screens simultaneously, or learning the intricacies of its mini games (like tin pin slammer and fashions.) TWEWY is only as difficult as you want it to be. You can set the difficulty level at any time, you can set how your secondary characters works at any time and you can safely ignore all the mini-games, sub-plots, and interesting game design elements if you want, and still see the ending of the game.

More difficult than it looks.

Why is this so important? Well, I’m not six or sixteen anymore. I have a fucking life now and I no longer have the luxury of six or seven spare hours in a day to immerse myself in my favorite pastime. If I did I’m sure I could master all the nuances of tin pin slammer, or figure out just what types of experience go into making my pins evolve. Seven-year-old-me loved that shit and ate it up. Seven-year-old-me had the free time to memorize enemy stats and talk endlessly about the differences in the magic systems in various JRPG gaming franchises and how that compared with said systems in western game franchises (oh, the misspent hours of my youth…) I do not.

I don’t want to hear anyone down in the comments say something like “Maybe you just suck at gaming,” or “If you can’t commit to a game don’t play it.” The answer to my lack of time isn’t to give up my most cherished pastime. And you should slam your head against a wall for thinking I, or anyone else, should. The average age of a gamer today is 34. In general 34 year-olds have full-time jobs, family commitments, social commitments, community commitments, etc. What they don’t have is a lot of free time to sink into games that demand they ‘master’ them in order to enjoy them.

God, these kids look stupid.

I just wish more designers did things like this. The difficulty in video games has been declining for years, but as implemented in TWEWY it allows the player to decide, on the fly, how difficult they want things to be. So, when the player is looking for something more challenging or has the time to sink into it they are rewarded for it. At the same time I can play and enjoy the game as well.

Here is a case where gamers can have their cake and eat it too. So why aren’t designers catching on?

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