The wargaming thread of war. And games.

Great bit on RPS about an expansion to Battles from the Bulge. I just wish Panther games stuff was cheaper. I really do believe there are 'casual' wargamer types who would love to pick these sort of hard core wargames off Steam and give them a go and it would be far more profitable than the price all Matrix-published wargames get stuck at :/

Probably, but people have been arguing that for years and Matrix hasn't changed and continues to apparently do reasonably well. So it works for them. At this point I feel a lot worse for their more casual titles, like Distant Worlds, then I do for wargames, in terms of lost potential.

But yeah, I'm a wargamer and I've never touched the Panther games stuff or the higher end Grigsby titles. Just can't justify those prices.

The inaccessibility (both in price and scale) of War in the East to regular gamers makes me sad, because at its core is a really great operational wargame engine that could easily be used to simulate a more popular, less expansive campaign (Normandy, for example.)

The Panther games are pricey, but they are also like nothing else. I will get this Highway to the Reich soon, as it is way more interesting to me than the Bulge, but I need to save up for it.

Also, I haven't played even half of the Bulge scenarios.

I don't doubt the value in those games even at those prices. At least in theory. But the thing about wargames (and games in general, really) is that you don't know if you are going to really like it until you play it and get a feel for how it all comes together. For better or worse the gaming industry as a whole has decided that $50 or $60 is the general starting point and so we each make our decision about how much risk we are willing to take. Some are willing to take a risk on a game at full price, while others wait until the price comes down. The double whammy of how Matrix prices those specific titles is that 1) the starting risk point is higher because of the higher price and 2) they never drop in price.

So while I'm generally a fan of WW2 settings, and even played several of the precursors to War in the East, its too high a bar for me at the current price. If I bought it and ended up liking it then the price would probably be worth it. But if I buy it and hardly ever play it (and we all have plenty of games where that has been the case) then I'm out a lot more then if I buy and don't like the next $50 game.

I'm amused that there's an actual "pirate for a trial" scenario here. I don't know why the hell the war game industry is so resistant to demos.

I simply have too large of a backlog to justify buying games at Matrix prices.

There is also Combat Mission Commonwealth module coming out in Feb. I've hardly played any CM Normandy, but I'll pick it up because, well, Brits & Churchills

Matrix Games just announced an expansion to War in the East, called "Don to the Danube." From the description it sounds like it's mostly a scenario pack. I'm mildly disgruntled by that, because I feel like some of the promised scenarios, like Operation Uranus, were glaring omissions from the original game.

Hopefully it'll be a reasonable price, but I'm not gonna hold my breath.

According to this it's going to be $15. That's a lot cheaper than I had expected, but it is just a scenario pack. If I wasn't buried in a pile of games I want to play I'd be a lot more excited than I am about it.

I guess that's not that bad. Still think some of this stuff should have been included for free.

The problem with WitE is that it's more of a simulator and less of a game. Ultimately, if you play the game with the default settings you can't really "win" as Germany. All you can do is delay the inevitable. As such WitE is a remarkable achievement, but it's really not that much fun to play.

A fortress full of vampires? Why not!

And it's out.

Oops. Only just noticed my miss post.

Kickstarter project by some award winning wargame designers for iPad versions of Battle of the Bulge and El Alamein. Looks like it could be really nifty. They seem to have a lot of wargame design experience, including one developer who has won the Charles S. Roberts Hall of Fame Award.

Some of their current graphic design ideas:

I would love to see some more "serious" games offer the multiplayer of Ascension of UniWar on iOS devices - maybe this will be one of them.

I thought you couldn't give away/sell iOS games on kickstarter? It would be a violation of the Ap Store policy, because they didnt collect the money.

You may have already seen this, but from their Kickstarter page:

I don't think they can. Giving away iPad/iPhone games is real hard and you don't get that many to give away... so fully backed, I have no idea how they intend to get people their games (sometimes when reviewing Apps, the developers just sent me an iTunes giftcard, because that's easier than getting a code from Apple). Looks good and I'd love to back it, if for nothing else then to push for deeper games on the platform.

Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear is coming out for PC soon. I'm a big fan of the board game version, which does a great job of simplifying tactical WWII combat without watering down the simulation aspects too much.

CoH is great. It's basically ASL for sane people. Very much looking forward to the port.

Definitely looks like it could be a lot of fun.

Jeez... $50? Why not just get the board game?

EDIT: Yes, I know this is a stupid point of view, but I'm just really surprised by the pice-point for no good reason.

Slitherine/Matrix. I'll never understand their pricing policies.

I likely won't get this unless it goes on sale. One of the reasons I like the board game so much is that it is so streamlined. If I have a computer doing all the math and bookkeeping and rules enforcement I'm more apt to go with something crunchier like Combat Mission at this scale.

So yeah. For $50 I'd much rather just buy another board game in the series than have the ability to play the one I already have on my PC. On the other hand, this comes with a scenario editor, so if the community starts cranking out awesome scenarios and the AI puts up a decent fight it might be worth it.

I asked them about this and their plan is to buy copies and gift them to all the backers. So that means you can not back this and buy it at launch for the same price the backers get.

I threw in for $20 to get both games. Butterfield deserves the money upfront.

I asked and got the same response too. I guess Apple doesn't care, they get the money.

It's still funny from a cash flow perspective though, theoretically they would have used all or most of the kickstarter funds to develop the game, but then have to turn around and have a big enough cash float to buy all their backers a copy of the iOS game at full price. 70% comes back via Apple in the end, but if they don't have enough other sales to make up the shortfall I could see things getting messy right quick.

I like the look of the concept, but probably will wait until it is in the app store as an actual purchasable game, even if at $15+ instead of the $10 you can kickstart for now.

They could just set the price at a buck on launch day, gift it, and jack it up to $10 or whatever they want to sell it for.

The Slitherine/Matrix point of view is that you're getting a high quality product that they're going to support for years, so it's worth that premium price. Its also a niche business - theyll never sell a huge number of copies. They don't drop prices because they feel that would punish early adopters.

That is sneaky and I like it, but it is tempting an almighty response from Apple legal.

Plus heaps of non kickstarter people will buy it directly from the app store for $1 at launch (and no doubt tell the entire internet), causing people to wonder why they bothered kickstarting for $10+

Spiderweb had a similar policy until Jeff Vogel decided to port to iOS and start putting his stuff up on Steam. And Slitherine has steeply discounted its PC games in the past.

The market has changed, and companies like Matrix haven't changed with it. I would buy a ton of their games if they brought prices down to levels that are competitive with the games I do buy. Especially for the older stuff in their catalog. Have you looked at their Budget section? Where you can get a download copy of Tin Soldiers: Alexander the Great for $30?

Heads in the sand.

I know you are just repeating their position but that has to be the dumbest thing I have ever heard. Early adopters, almost by definition, aren't worried about what others are going to do months (or YEARS, in Matrix's case) later.

The thing is, yes, some war gaming is niche, but a lot is not. Hell, imagine if Uniwar was a PC title published by Matrix - it would cost $30* and and 30 people would have bought it.

In my wild imaginings Matrix ships some of their lighter/friendlier/prettier titles to Steam and enjoys a ton of sales. It will never happen, of course, because war gamers are often elitists. Matrix seems of this ilk.

* this isn't to say every Matrix game needs to be $1 and on iOS just that there is room in the market for some movement in price and that their audience isn't necessarily as hard core as one might think.

The problem I have with Matrix pricing isn't the concept in general, its that they apply it to everything. Distant Worlds is a prime example of a game that is badly priced for what it is. In fairness to Matrix they didn't try and charge $70 for it at launch so there is that, but they also don't seem to understand that games with actual mass market potential need to be price adjusted over time. At this point DW with its expansions should be $40 or $50, not $90.

I think if they put Panzer Corps on steam even with the current pricing scheme ($30 + $5 per dlc) they would do very well. A bundled Distant Worlds for $40 would also do much better than they have on their site.

Edit: Nice example of how screwy they are about pricing: They offer the A.I. Wars bundle for $29.99, and the same thing is on steam for $16.99.

I don't have a problem with one price on Steam and another, higher price on their website.

Jeff Vogel explains it well:

It's skeezy as shit, whatever he wants to say. "Man, I guess I'll engage in discriminatory pricing to fuck over the people who really care about my game, but let the people who don't give a shit have it for half as much".

Is that logic fair? Arguably yes, because I'm not qualified to figure out something like the Robinson-Patman Act. Will I ever buy a game from him? Hell no.

It's not fucking anyone over to charge a higher price on your own site. Those people are welcome to buy it elsewhere or not buy it at all.

In a world of perfect information. What the designer is saying is that a good deal of his fans are uninformed, his best fans, in fact, and he likes it that way.

If people are too stupid to get the best price and shop around then screw them. A lot of wargamers buy like one game a year and play the hell out of it. If they're going to get 300 hours out of a game then they damn well ought to pay more money than me when I'm likely to play it for two and a half.

You guys thinking he is sleazy, frankly speaking, are full of shit. Heaping piles of it.

It's worth pointing out that Jeff Vogel was not always on Steam, and in fact this is a pretty recent change for him. He's taken it in the shorts for literally decades by not marketing or pricing his games aggressively. He struggled to get by, and did it out of a passionate love for RPGs that his fans are happy to pay for.

Now he has finally given in to the inescapable, listened to external marketing advice, and adopted the standard operating practices of the entire rest of the industry, and it hasn't made him rich. It's just made him not struggle as badly, maybe have enough to send his kids to school.

Then he makes what is apparently a mistake in being honest about how the sausage is made with you guys, so you can lambast him for being a rip-off artist when he easily would have made far more money in a regular software engineering job.