Will the future of Sedition Wars be with CMoN?
- Thread starter biomage
- Start date
CaGeRit
New member
I know the forum is kind of dead, but I just stopped by studio McVey's site out of boredom. Apparently they're shutting down the forums, in the shutdown announcement they gave a tidbit of info saying Studio McVey will not be producing any miniatures in Sedition Wars or their limited edition resins for 2016. The will instead be working on miniatures for other game systems such as The Others and Blood Rage.
It sucks, I quite liked the SW universe, the game was a doosey, but nothing unfixable IMHO. Last word some months ago was that there was going to be a reboot in 2016, but it looks like this announcement kills that. I guess the SW name is too toxic to risk development assets to produce. Maybe in another couple of years when everyone forgets that it ever existed.
It sucks, I quite liked the SW universe, the game was a doosey, but nothing unfixable IMHO. Last word some months ago was that there was going to be a reboot in 2016, but it looks like this announcement kills that. I guess the SW name is too toxic to risk development assets to produce. Maybe in another couple of years when everyone forgets that it ever existed.
Bummer. that was one exciting KS. It was one of CMoN's first and they couldn't come up with stretch goals fast enough. I sure would like to read a post-mortem to learn what they felt went wrong with the whole project from the beginning to end. I confess i didn't play it very much.
CaGeRit
New member
From what I gather it boils down to a number of things. A good bit of this is either from what I remember or is opinion, don't take it as gospel.
A: This one is mostly stuff I've heard, I never found anyone who would play it and I don't like solo games. BUUUUUUTTTTT I've heard the rules suck. On the outside they look ok to me, but there's supposedly some massive imbalances in some of the scenarios which make it impossible to win as one side or the other.
B: The record keeping is bad in more than one way. For starters you have a card for each model and you need to keep track which generic looking sci-fi soldier or zombie is which is someone difficult with multiple same sculpts often appearing on the board. Wounds were to be kept track with paper clips on the cards which led to damaged cards after a few play throughs. Lack of a way to keep track of activation. The list goes on.
C: Some dud components. The boards on the first printing were dark and tended to warp. I have a first wave copy and I think the darkness was blown out of proportion a little, if you play in a well lit room, there's no problem. My copy is second hand and I can see that the previous owner isn't as paranoid about humidity as I am and there is noticeable warpage. I can't attest to whether the boards are more prone to warping than others as I didn't observe the conditions under which it happened. I can say the material quality of the boards isn't the best I've seen though. The material they're made out of is a dull (not shiny or laminate), dry and scratchy cardboard with unfinished edges. It's made out of what most games' tokens are. I can see that they'd take on humidity more readily than other boards.
D: The miniatures were unbuilt and unpainted. I'm from a table top wargame background so that's pretty standard, but boardgamers seem to be more anti-miniature-hobby than wargamers. A lot of people complained that they did know how to glue models together let alone paint them.
E: Two player boardgames have come along a bit, but a lot of people didn't like that back then. I think it's unpopular even now. Boardgamers expect 1-4 player experiences at a minimum if not 1-6 or 8.
F: The McVeys' big sin (IMHO) was changing sculptors between wave 1 and wave 2 and not managing them properly. The guy who did wave 1 couldn't do wave 2 and the guy who did wave 2 didn't consult wave 1 minis and the McVeys let wave 2 go into production. Wave one was 32 heroic and looked damn good. Wave 2 was 28 truescale and also looked damn good. However 32 heroic and 28 truescale look absolutely bizarre next to each other. While the basic aesthetic is the same they look like two different systems. The big draw to the project was the minis. You can't screw that up.
G: The plastic didn't have all the quality of the resin. I think it's minor, a lot of people disagree with me. The KS was advertised with pictures of the resins, the plastics are worse even though they are still above average. Once again the main draw is the minis, people thought they were getting Studio McVey quality resins, they didn't. I personally find it odd that the same group who moaned about having to put miniatures together and paint them would complain about a small decrease in quality that they don't have the painting skills to bring out. A generalization sure, some who backed are quite skilled painters, but I've seen this brought up by people who can't paint so often that I feel like pointing it out.
H: Delays. There were quite a few delays.
I: The problems all hit people at the same time. There was no indication that Sedition Wars was going to bomb like it did until people got the game in their hands. Some things could have been foreseen, but most were very optimistic until the delays hit and even then they thought they were getting the boardgame of the decade, just later than expected. When the truth finally sunk people turned real hostile real quick. I think if there were gradual warning signs and some people bailed before funding was complete the reaction wouldn't have been so bad, but people thought they were getting gold and the disappointment hit them that much harder for it.
J: The community's reaction was strong. I'm all for consumer rights and I recognize the projects failings, but damn, there was some really unpleasant stuff being thrown at the the creators. I recall (this may or may not be true, working from memory) that it really affected Mike to the point where he did not want to interface with the backers because he didn't want to put up with the abuse.
In my opinion the failure of the project came down the the McVeys' inability to manage the project. They're very talented people, they make beautiful miniatures, they crafted a solid setting and put out an interesting story. They cannot manage a project. Part of it I think was inexperience, but also I get the feeling that they're not really the outgoing leader types. I think the project would have done much better with someone else handling the nitty gritty and leave them up to creative development. Someone who could have looked the wave 2 sculptor in the face and told them that the greens were not usable because they weren't the same scale. Someone who could send the production prototype back to the factory and say that they board material was crap. Someone who could say no, it's not good enough.
Getting a tried and tested rule designer instead of winging it would have been good too.
Having a community manager to handle the public, especially if you're not up to dealing with everything that comes with it, the good and especially the bad.
In fact having more people and a larger team in general would have probably helped. I get the feeling like they were overstretched in a lot of areas in game design they weren't familiar with because they wanted complete control of the product.
In the end I think they're doing the right thing going into miniature production for other companies. It's what they're good at. It's sad to hear they're shutting down, if only temporarily (I hope only temporarily) their limited edition resins. It's sad to hear that Sedition Wars is mothballed for the foreseeable future. I think CMoN had more to do with killing Sedition Wars' current development than Studio McVey. Sedition Wars is Mikes baby and he was involved in development until very recently. I think that even if he puts something in CMoNs mailbox that's pure gold they might decline to publish because the first one was received so poorly after the fact. CMoN looks for 1+ million dollar kickstartable ideas and very often gets them. The opportunity cost of pushing a potentially toxic brand is too great for them. I think the only reasonable hope Sedition Wars has, if Mike continues to develop it in his off time, is a smaller competitor to CMoN. One who can't get 1+ million dollar game concepts thrown at them with regularity. The opportunity cost goes down for a company like that. Whether that will happen is debatable. Mike is pretty deep in CMoN's pocket. They need someone to handle models and McVey wants to handle the models, it's a good partnership. Whether CMoN would try to pressure Studio McVey into not pursuing Sedition Wars with another publisher is anyone's guess. If this were digital entertainment I'd say it would be a certainty, but tabletop boardgames hasn't reached that level of cutthroat yet I don't think.
A: This one is mostly stuff I've heard, I never found anyone who would play it and I don't like solo games. BUUUUUUTTTTT I've heard the rules suck. On the outside they look ok to me, but there's supposedly some massive imbalances in some of the scenarios which make it impossible to win as one side or the other.
B: The record keeping is bad in more than one way. For starters you have a card for each model and you need to keep track which generic looking sci-fi soldier or zombie is which is someone difficult with multiple same sculpts often appearing on the board. Wounds were to be kept track with paper clips on the cards which led to damaged cards after a few play throughs. Lack of a way to keep track of activation. The list goes on.
C: Some dud components. The boards on the first printing were dark and tended to warp. I have a first wave copy and I think the darkness was blown out of proportion a little, if you play in a well lit room, there's no problem. My copy is second hand and I can see that the previous owner isn't as paranoid about humidity as I am and there is noticeable warpage. I can't attest to whether the boards are more prone to warping than others as I didn't observe the conditions under which it happened. I can say the material quality of the boards isn't the best I've seen though. The material they're made out of is a dull (not shiny or laminate), dry and scratchy cardboard with unfinished edges. It's made out of what most games' tokens are. I can see that they'd take on humidity more readily than other boards.
D: The miniatures were unbuilt and unpainted. I'm from a table top wargame background so that's pretty standard, but boardgamers seem to be more anti-miniature-hobby than wargamers. A lot of people complained that they did know how to glue models together let alone paint them.
E: Two player boardgames have come along a bit, but a lot of people didn't like that back then. I think it's unpopular even now. Boardgamers expect 1-4 player experiences at a minimum if not 1-6 or 8.
F: The McVeys' big sin (IMHO) was changing sculptors between wave 1 and wave 2 and not managing them properly. The guy who did wave 1 couldn't do wave 2 and the guy who did wave 2 didn't consult wave 1 minis and the McVeys let wave 2 go into production. Wave one was 32 heroic and looked damn good. Wave 2 was 28 truescale and also looked damn good. However 32 heroic and 28 truescale look absolutely bizarre next to each other. While the basic aesthetic is the same they look like two different systems. The big draw to the project was the minis. You can't screw that up.
G: The plastic didn't have all the quality of the resin. I think it's minor, a lot of people disagree with me. The KS was advertised with pictures of the resins, the plastics are worse even though they are still above average. Once again the main draw is the minis, people thought they were getting Studio McVey quality resins, they didn't. I personally find it odd that the same group who moaned about having to put miniatures together and paint them would complain about a small decrease in quality that they don't have the painting skills to bring out. A generalization sure, some who backed are quite skilled painters, but I've seen this brought up by people who can't paint so often that I feel like pointing it out.
H: Delays. There were quite a few delays.
I: The problems all hit people at the same time. There was no indication that Sedition Wars was going to bomb like it did until people got the game in their hands. Some things could have been foreseen, but most were very optimistic until the delays hit and even then they thought they were getting the boardgame of the decade, just later than expected. When the truth finally sunk people turned real hostile real quick. I think if there were gradual warning signs and some people bailed before funding was complete the reaction wouldn't have been so bad, but people thought they were getting gold and the disappointment hit them that much harder for it.
J: The community's reaction was strong. I'm all for consumer rights and I recognize the projects failings, but damn, there was some really unpleasant stuff being thrown at the the creators. I recall (this may or may not be true, working from memory) that it really affected Mike to the point where he did not want to interface with the backers because he didn't want to put up with the abuse.
In my opinion the failure of the project came down the the McVeys' inability to manage the project. They're very talented people, they make beautiful miniatures, they crafted a solid setting and put out an interesting story. They cannot manage a project. Part of it I think was inexperience, but also I get the feeling that they're not really the outgoing leader types. I think the project would have done much better with someone else handling the nitty gritty and leave them up to creative development. Someone who could have looked the wave 2 sculptor in the face and told them that the greens were not usable because they weren't the same scale. Someone who could send the production prototype back to the factory and say that they board material was crap. Someone who could say no, it's not good enough.
Getting a tried and tested rule designer instead of winging it would have been good too.
Having a community manager to handle the public, especially if you're not up to dealing with everything that comes with it, the good and especially the bad.
In fact having more people and a larger team in general would have probably helped. I get the feeling like they were overstretched in a lot of areas in game design they weren't familiar with because they wanted complete control of the product.
In the end I think they're doing the right thing going into miniature production for other companies. It's what they're good at. It's sad to hear they're shutting down, if only temporarily (I hope only temporarily) their limited edition resins. It's sad to hear that Sedition Wars is mothballed for the foreseeable future. I think CMoN had more to do with killing Sedition Wars' current development than Studio McVey. Sedition Wars is Mikes baby and he was involved in development until very recently. I think that even if he puts something in CMoNs mailbox that's pure gold they might decline to publish because the first one was received so poorly after the fact. CMoN looks for 1+ million dollar kickstartable ideas and very often gets them. The opportunity cost of pushing a potentially toxic brand is too great for them. I think the only reasonable hope Sedition Wars has, if Mike continues to develop it in his off time, is a smaller competitor to CMoN. One who can't get 1+ million dollar game concepts thrown at them with regularity. The opportunity cost goes down for a company like that. Whether that will happen is debatable. Mike is pretty deep in CMoN's pocket. They need someone to handle models and McVey wants to handle the models, it's a good partnership. Whether CMoN would try to pressure Studio McVey into not pursuing Sedition Wars with another publisher is anyone's guess. If this were digital entertainment I'd say it would be a certainty, but tabletop boardgames hasn't reached that level of cutthroat yet I don't think.
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