Forum Replies Created
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Just to be clear, Han didn’t shoot first, that implies there was a second shot. Only Han shot.
Cheers,
The Bandit
No, I didn’t. Did you have a stab at some scenario-specific rules for it?
Our ESR Campaign Guide, Roll up that Map, 1805 in Germany, provided special rules that caused random movement – both speed and potentially direction – for any Units that entered the marshes. Because Mahler was quite unaware of the Austrian disposition, we also allowed for the Austrians to be placed on the tabletop, only once the French had come within artillery range. The fourth bridge opposite Reisensburg was not contested in the historical engagement. It is unclear if Mahler knew it was there or not but also curiously, d’Aspre assigned no troops to cover it. The historical battle turned on the French getting a foothold between Günzburg and Reisensburg with Labassée’s command: the 59eme Ligne. The engagement is a good one to demonstrate that most actions end when someone’s position becomes untenable, not when the last soldier falls. Once the French were across east of Günzburg, the Austrians attempted to throw them back with cavalry but the poor quality of the Kaunitz Infantry (leading them to break in advance of the French), meant that when their cavalry charge failed there was really nothing to reallocate right and the Austrians began to withdraw.
How’d you like the game?
Cheers,
The Bandit
Did you implement any house rules for the swamp? The scenario in Rise of Eagles doesn’t provide any – and it is a difficult thing to address in a wargame. Historically the French element sent to the SW bridge gets lost in the marsh.
Cheers,
The Bandit
Except that Austrian cavalry were generally rated as superior to French in the earlier part of the Napoleonic Wars, and were in larger units.
Sorta.
I’d completely agree that Austrian cavalry were, in many cases, better cavalry, at least in the case of their küirassiers. The chevaulégèrs were likely better than their French dragoon counterparts, but when there are 200 chevaulégèrs and 1600 dragoons, it really doesn’t matter. And there is reason for this, the Austrians rarely trained or drilled in cavalry formations larger than the regiment, and commonly that level itself was relatively rare amongst the largest cavalry regiments which focused on squadron and battalion level drill. Meanwhile the French were up on the channel coast drilling by division and even corps. This means that once the campaign begins, one side does not have the means to operate large bodies of cavalry in coordination, while the other does. Thus, each move towards their strength and operate based on how they know how to.
Which goes to the other part, while Austrian cavalry regiments were huge compared to their French counterparts, during the 1805 campaign you won’t find any Austrian cavalry operating in as large of formations as their French counterparts. Austrian cavalry regiments might run upwards of 1,000 horsemen, but they were rarely all assigned to the same parent body. Even in 1809, 1812, and 1813-1814, it is very common to see a regiment of hussars, dragoons, or chevaulégèrs split up, operating with two or three different parent formations, a squadron here, a couple squadrons there. In 1805 this is even done with küirassiers, which is how Auffenberg ends up with 200 küirassiers attached to his infantry column.
Meanwhile, French regiments are *drastically* smaller, but generally don’t only operate intact, but also in conjunction with substantially larger parent formations of the same troop type. Hence what we see at Wertingen.
Really, it is all a bit reminiscent of ‘National Characteristics’ as per Quarrie.
Here I’m with Jack, I’m not sure what the “it” is referring to.
Cheers,
The Bandit
All I can do is echo your sentiment on morale; we all had to know that “troops test morale at 50%” is sheer lunacy. I don’t want to let you down, but there’s literally nothing I can add, you are clearly the expert here! I’m James Carville:
Ha! That is incredibly kind.
I do believe this drives a design conundrum as we have to make things playable, not just accurate, and that becomes a balancing act of what to track – no one wants a notebook full of stats they have to track for each unit. We also want to make sure there are variables to prevent high predictability of results by players – no one wants to know exactly when any given unit will break.
The trick is how to accomplish these things together, and it can be difficult. Its methods and difficulties also vary by the scope of game being designed. You could play Wertingen with a tactical system or with a grand tactical system. It is, relative to the other, easier to design a mechanic to accomplish these goals in a grand tactical system where you are more focused on macro results. With the more granular tactical system, you are likely to find some of those more macro mechanics less satisfying, thus, you may need more micro mechanics to address them and provide a satisfying game.
Cheers,
The Bandit
Whirlwind and Jack,
Thank you, glad you find it useful/interesting.
What is your explanation for why the artillery fire didn’t work as (wargame) advertised?
Putting a fine point on it: I think this has everything to do with the expectations of players, and the notion that we incorrectly model casualties.
I think we overplay how powerful artillery is against a dense body of troops, and perhaps it is necessary to broaden the conversation to how we address losses vs the relative impact of casualties in a given battle. In *many* wargame systems, losses only have a very dire impact on morale when they hit 25, 30 or even 50%, whereas historically in real combat examples, 10% losses to a given unit is very significant.
Taking Wertingen as the example, just since it is the battle that started this, Austrian *killed and wounded* are supposedly around 400 (captured are estimated at over 2,500).
400 is not many. The total Austrian force present is believed to be approximately 5,500, including 400 cavalry and ~100 artillery. So the total losses to the Austrians were approximately 7%. That is less than losing a single Austrian battalion. We can safely assume that some of the 400 killed and wounded occur after the Austrians break, which means they broke having taken *less than 7% casualties*. Which causes a question: What wargamer is willing to accept that their troops will run when they have taken such low losses? Some, but few.
The reality is that exhaustion; physical, mental, emotional exhaustion is what plays the pivotal role in the Austrian defeat.
So where do these 400 casualties come from? I suspect, mostly from the French artillery fire. The dragoons conduct several charges against the infantry, but some of these won’t close, some that close won’t inflict many losses, etc… Thus, I believe the conclusion that the majority of the 400 killed and wounded are caused by 1) the French artillery fire and 2) during the breaking of the Austrians, is reasonable.
We know that the French artillery came into action between 10AM and noon, then continued firing on the Austrians until at least 4PM when Murat and Lannes arrive. The French artillery fire is not described as intense, so if we assume they are maintaining a ‘paced’ bombardment, that is one round per tube every 3-5 minutes. There’d also be breaks in there when the dragoons charged and perhaps some other pauses. If the French were firing constantly without a break for (we’ll assume) five hours, they’d be expelling about 400 rounds of ammunition. The Austrians are about the best artillery target you can have: stationary, dense, on lower ground than the firing platform, and not responding in a practically threatening way. Even if we assume that the estimated French ammunition expenditure is 4x too high, that means that ~100 French rounds killed and wounded less than ~400 Austrians.
There are a lot of assumptions in all of this, and I hope it is clear that I am trying to work with reasonable assumptions for the purpose of illustrating a more general notion and not trying to conclude something exact. With that said, let’s unpack this a bit:
Killing 400 Austrians with 100 French rounds of fire. That actually sounds pretty effective. ~4 men hit per round fired. We know this number is high because not all the Austrians are killed or wounded by artillery fire, and we don’t know how many French artillery rounds are fired, but sticking with it for illustration:
I’ll pick on Empire because I know it decently well, it has 30 minute tactical turns, a figure represents 60 men. So, imagine a game where in 10 turns you score hits on 6 figures with your artillery, and you make several cavalry charges – all of which are repulsed. I think that if any of us played that game, and then the defender broke up and routed when enemy infantry showed up behind them – not inflicting any more losses to speak of (because we’ve already assumed all the losses are accounted for by the 6 figures taken by artillery fire) – we’d be floored by the results.
I do actually know some gamers who’d say that makes sense, but they are not in the mainstream by any stretch. I think what this indicates is that it is exhaustion, of several varieties, not actual killed and wounded that make the difference. But, starting in the ~1970s, we have been largely fixated on “hits”, and will pay some lip service to “hits” representing more than “just” killed and wounded, however, I would challenge that in many systems this is simply a justification of the design after the fact, rather than the intended model. In the last ~5 years, we have seen more systems that move away from this and design to a broader notion of “effectiveness”, and I happen to think that is good.
With all that said, to answer your question directly: I think many wargames have artillery firing on a square causing massive casualties because “hits” is the only tool in the toolbox of many game systems to represent reduced effectiveness, thus, when a square gets hit, we have to represent damage, let’s apply more hits. I believe this to be a bad model, specifically because a square – as is easy to illustrate with examples like Wertingen, but also many others – is unlikely to break from only ranged fire, a large part of the square’s benefit is its intrinsic morale bonus. “Sure, you’re a terrific target for enemy fire, but you feel great about it!” This becomes very difficult to model in a traditional, “score hits to cause casualties” design, and the result is we have gotten many inaccurate representations of this “square vs artillery” scenario, in my opinion. The most common output of these traditional designs is higher casualty rates in wargames than in historical actions. Because of these inflated casualty rates, we can’t accept relatively low casualties causing morale catastrophes. Thus, we deflate the impact of casualties on morale, and this is where you get many systems where losses have minimal impact on morale until you reach strangely high, double-digit percentage losses. In effect, “hits” being our only tool has driven a bunch of other strange design methods in a feedback loop. The result is the system of high casualties drive morale failures does not model these situations effectively, so on the wargames table, it is pretty easy to find a game where you can rout enemy infantry in square by throwing enough canon balls at them, despite it being difficult to find historical examples of this.
Cheers,
The Bandit
I got everyone here beat:
Nobody knows what the right way to play toy soldiers is! :-p
Cheers,
The Bandit
Wertingen is an interesting scenario.
Rating the Austrian infantry for it is difficult. The bulk of them are grenadier battalions, however, each battalion contains a high percentage of non-grenadiers, many of them had also been run out of Hohenreichen earlier that morning. I don’t recall the distance between Hohenreichen and Wertingen, but it isn’t just a mile or two. The French dragoons dismounted and charged Hohenreichen to break through the ad-hoc defenses of the Austrians there. This itself is a bit strange, I’ve never walked in knee high stiff riding boots, but as I understand it, running in them is… difficult.
So, how should the Austrian grenadiers be rated? It is hard to say. Once they form up at Wertingen they fight first east of town and get pushed back to where your game started on the slopes of the hill to the west. Once they reform west of town the dragoons have effectively tired themselves out and start bombarding them with their 8-pdrs. Honestly, it is one of the only engagements where you have an example of “cavalry force infantry into square and then guns come up to blast them” that we all talk about happening constantly, it would seem that historically, it really happens infrequently, but here it did happen. Now, here is the interesting part, in your average wargame – the infantry would get blown apart this way, however, historically, the Austrians mostly hold against the artillery fire. Auffenberg orders the 3-pdr battalion guns to form a battery and fire back on the French guns, despite the fact that the French guns are at the extreme range of the Austrian canon, and up hill from them, making them a terrible target. My general understanding is that Auffenberg ordered the guns to fire knowing they’d be ineffective, because it would stiffen his infantry. Better than being bombarded with no reply right?
The really bad news comes for the Austrians when Oudinot’s grenadier division arrives nearly behind them. They can’t freely maneuver because the dragoons have rested (and Fauconet’s light cavalry have come up), they can’t out shoot the French artillery, and now they are outflanked by the fresh French infantry which effectively cut their route of retreat. And lastly, they must have been outright exhausted.
What I find most interesting is the performance of the French dragoons. Exelmans shows up with effectively two divisions of dragoons to confront ten battalions of infantry. As I understand the action, the dragoons are committed in subgroups – as is supposedly the usual method. A brigade goes, a division goes. It is not until the final moment that everyone goes. This illustrates what interests me: The need to rotate what cavalry is fighting is important. The initial contact at Wertingen is made a bit before 10AM. Before that the dragoons marched to Hohenreichen, fought at Hohenreichen, and then marched to Wertingen. The Austrian infantry don’t break until around 5PM. Anyone who keeps horses will tell you that no horse is running full out more than a couple times during that period.
This also illustrates that the whole “make infantry go square and blast em with guns” notion is not as accurate as often portrayed on the tabletop. If it was, the Austrians would not have lasted until 5PM.
Cheers,
The Bandit
For the most part I deal in high-level games, not tactical ones, and thus the net effects, and thereby the way I consider the issues is subject to that disposition. With that said…
We know some concrete and macro level facts about the three armies going into the campaign:
• The Austrians were under an active reorganization that had not completed. It impacted a very broad swath of how the army was organized, commanded, and functioned even at a tactical level. There was also a political aspect that was at odds with any of these changes being completed coherently or within time for the campaign. The Austrians maintained a fairly static class system within the military ranks.
• The French had been encamped on the channel coast for approximately two years, drilling in – for the period – oddly large organizational systems. And, we know that the number of veterans in this army was proportionally high. The French utilized a system of appointment, this meant a comparatively low ranking officer could be appointed to be in charge of a larger operation, effectively, holding authority above their rank.
• The Russians were seemingly status-quo.
With these as a premise we can look at the way the campaign played out and Wertingen is not a bad example, timely since you just played a scenario for it. This should allow us to see if the premises we have appear useful or not.
Wertingen is a curious battle. The battle doesn’t actually start at Wertingen but at Hohenreichen where the French dragoons contact encamped Austrian infantry. The French successfully flush the Austrians who retreated upon Wertingen where the rest of their force was. The French cavalry massed opposite Wertingen, after a series of charges, pushed the Austrians to the high ground behind Wertingen where they couldn’t make much further progress. The French dragoons had horse artillery and committed it on ground higher than the Austrians. The Austrian infantry had 3-pdr battalion guns on lower ground. Murat and Lannes arrived with Oudinot’s elite division, nearly behind the Austrian position.
So, what happened in the background and how do our premises play into this?
• The instructions from Mack to Auffenberg were relatively vague based on the general assignment of running a reconnaissance-in-force to determine if reports of the French crossing the Danube were accurate. Despite sending Auffenberg on a mission to determine the accuracy of this, Mack had discouraged Auffenberg from believing the premise, i.e. “Go take a bunch of our scant resources and look over there for something you won’t find.”
• Auffenberg’s Austrian command includes six battalions of grenadiers. The Austrian grenadiers were in a bad way due to the reorganization. One of Mack’s ideas for changing the army was that grenadier battalions would no longer be formed from grenadier companies of different regiments (each Austrian infantry regiment included two companies of grenadiers, thus a regiment did not have enough grenadiers to form a battalion (of six companies), Mack’s solution was that each grenadier battalion would be only four companies and only two of those companies would be grenadiers.
• The Austrians continued the practice of including small parcels of cavalry with their infantry columns and the only artillery included were battalion guns that generally did not operate as a battery.
Facing Auffenberg on the ground was Exelmans, who was a comparatively low ranking officer serving on Murat’s staff as an ADC. Under Exelmans’ command were two divisions of French dragoons. Exelmans’ appointment as the mission commander gave him authority over generals of division and allowed him to maintain control over the battlefield as more forces arrived. The French dragoon divisions each had a half battery of 8-pdr horse artillery.
Exelmans was leading a substantial forward element that outclassed Auffenberg in two ways: artillery support and cavalry. Auffenberg had a small detachments of each küirassiers – which could not be expected to scout and were too few in number to combat the French cavalry, and chevaulégèrs – two few to scout the area sufficiently and again, not able to fight the masses of French dragoons. The Austrian artillery was smaller caliber, not organized as a battery, and fewer in number.
Auffenberg was effectively operating alone. Mack was in Ulm, there were no other supporting elements ordered to coordinate with Auffenberg, and Mack had no intentions of sending any support. Compare this to the French command method Auffenberg was fighting against: Exelmans was running the forward French elements, but the region was not run by Exelmans. Murat and Lannes were coordinating forces behind Exelmans. When Exelmans pushed the Austrians out of Hohenreichen and fighting moved towards Wertingen, Mack remained stationary at Ulm, but Murat and Lannes pivoted their advance to Wertingen dynamically. Auffenberg declined initial reports of the fighting at Hohenreichen on the basis that they were not reported by a sufficiently high ranking officer. This meant that Auffenberg wasn’t prepared for the French advance on Wertingen despite having opportunity.
When Lannes arrived with Oudinot’s infantry division, they were showing up behind the Austrian left flank. Oudinot’s infantry division was made up of converged elites that had been formed prior to crossing into Germany.
The French and Austrian methods are pretty starkly contrasted here. The French are using significantly larger bodies of troops, in drastically greater coordination, and responding both to organizational needs and mission needs dynamically. Meanwhile, the Austrians are doing none of these things in this instance. The Austrians are also organized with proportionally less supporting arms. Conversely, the French are bringing up the main arm: infantry, secondarily as the finishing blow, while they used cavalry to set the battle’s location through maneuver, and artillery to support the cavalry in pinning the enemy.
In short, in this campaign, but especially in this instance, the French are playing a drastically wider game than the Austrians.
My general disposition is that the French would have a small edge in troop quality overall due to the training vs the reorganization, but the larger issues that decided the matter were clearly related to organizational structure, allotment of resources, and dynamic methods.
Cheers,
The Bandit
. We ran several games so we’ll be posting more over the coming weeks. Cheers, The Bandit
I’m looking forward to them. BTW talking about your game’s appearance: the autumnal trees in the forest. This is something I never do because, I think, living for decades in a land of evergreens, it doesn’t occur to me. Do you have some sort of criteria for adding such foliage or do you go by the usually reliable, “it looks right”? donald
Funny enough, the trees you see in this game that look to be autumnal are actually spring trees (they do look like fall colors in the photos but in person you can tell). For convention learning games we tend to go by a “looks right” standard. This was basically a “somewhere during the Bavarian Spring of 1809” so spring trees were… sorta correct in that they were spring, though Bavaria should have a lot more pines than the mix on this table.
But, to answer what I think you’re asking, when we run historical scenarios rather than effectively ad-hoc games, yes, we try to use spring trees in spring and fall trees in fall, etc…
Cheers,
The Bandit
Thanks for this. I think when you’re talking at this level of tactics, you’re really doing justice to the period. (Personal opinion). Game looks great too. donald
Thank you, that is kind, very glad you enjoy seeing the after action reports. We ran several games so we’ll be posting more over the coming weeks.
Cheers,
The Bandit
In our ESR Campaign Guides, sometimes victory conditions change midway through a battle – or players have an opportunity to change them. For instance, at 1st Kulm in 1813, on the first day the French goal is to breakthrough the Russian rearguard to continue pursuit of the Allied army. On the second day their goal was to escape alive. Similarly, in 1814 there are several battles where the information the commander received during the battle changed their goal, and so we provide for those.
Some players love it because it puts them in the moment. Others hate it because they want to know what is going on from the start.
Cheers,
The Bandit
slight cost increases to the products needed to foot the packaging resulted in very negative responses from the customers
Out of curiosity, if the cost increase was very slight, did you consider just eating it and see if the presentation positively impacted sales velocity and volume?
I ran a poll and 85% responded that they only really want/need small baggies to keep from losing the figures in transit as I always mail via carboard boxes anyways.
What was the size of the poll and what proportion was it of your customer base that responded?
Something that is strange about the human condition. I suspect if we polled our customers we’d get a similar response, somewhat skewed because of who would choose to answer. However, the reaction to our packaging in terms of sales is very good. So via the one method they’d say no, but via the other they say yes.
Cheers,
The Bandit
We sell the resin cast terrain we carry in plastic bags with header cards as that is the most versatile option based on the varying sizes of pieces, we print our header cards full-color, full-bleed on a fairly high quality coated stock of paper and have them scored, folded, and drilled.
With our ESR Box Sets we package two ways: smaller sets are boxed into blister packs while larger sets are bagged and then loaded into chipboard boxes we had designed, cut, and flood printed. Both are then sealed with a full-color, full-bleed, high gloss label wrap wrapper that covers the majority of the surface area.
We didn’t change any prices to do this, we built it into our margin and in some cases discussed it with our suppliers when appropriate.
Cheers,
The Bandit
It is relatively common in ESR for two cavalry Formations of about the same side to end up with nominally the same fate after combat. One is the “winner” and one is the “loser” but often both end either just as beat up and ineffective (even to the point of removal) as the other. Last fresh squadron wins.
Cheers,
The Bandit
Very good looking miniatures. Like seeing the Russian militia and having them carry banners.
Cheers,
The Bandit
But I need to be able to buy in in the USA from a company that will take a check or money order. Yes, I know.
Leven does have modern buildings, we don’t generally stock them, but we can get anything they make and we’re currently being re-stocked, so if you’re able to put together a list of what you want from Leven’s website: http://levenminiatures.co.uk and forward that list to us, we can put it together as a special order.
Cheers,
The Bandit
I read it as “Vandamme crushes Hitler”!
Ha! In 1809? Did Hitler steal the Doctor’s Tardis? :-p
Cheers,
The Bandit
Okay, according to LPK only the 1st Division were allowed chinstrap scales. That is the Leib-garde, the Leib-grenadier, and the Kexholm Infantry. Everyone sculpts scales and we just have to live with it, just like everyone puts short swords on the jaegers.
Ha! That is some neat trivia…
Cheers,
The Bandit
Something I haven’t been able to find is a list of when cavalry standards were issued – or when new ones were issued. I’m aware that the cavalry banners were changed to a standard white (or green) with gold decoration and elements, but during the Napoleonic period, how many regiments actually switched from using their SYW-era banners to this new standard? And which ones?
Cheers,
The Bandit
So, at the moment it would seem, we’re uncertain if anyone but cavalry commanders wore the 3-color plume and evidence leans towards infantry commanders all wearing black?
Cheers,
The Bandit
Our 3rd game of ESR Napoleonics at NashCon!
Read the after action report and see the rest of the photos in our Gallery.
Notice the gap that opened between the two Austrian Korps?
It was about 2 miles… check out the rest of the photos and you’ll see when the French heavy cavalry decide to fill that hole.
Cheers,
The Bandit
What an amazing looking game!
Thank you!
Indeed, their games always look very impressive. I just received my copy of the ESR rules (the book looks dang amazing and readable. I laughed at the penguin rear on the inside cover as well, great attention to detail!) and I hope to get moving on this project this summer using all of this great inspiration.
Thank you very much, I hope our offerings do not disappoint!
Cheers,
The Bandit
Thank you! And hope that you enjoy it. And… please don’t hesitate to ping us with questions if need be.
Cheers,
The Bandit
Our 3rd and final ESR Napoleonics game of AdeptiCon 2018:
Turns out the Austrian grenadier division should have turned left instead of right, would have been a completely different game!
Cheers,
The Bandit
Sounds like a great game!
Thanks!
Ok, I’ve read the reviews, watched the video, checked out multiple AARs and I think I’m hooked! When does the Complete Guide come out?
We’re having The Complete Player’s Guide reprinted presently, it is available to be ordered and we *hope* to have it restocked and shipping again next month (in May). And not knowing where you’re located, I should point out that it is still in-stock in the UK (via Magister Militum).
Cheers,
The Bandit
That’s perfect! I personally have no idea what is really different between a Heavy Cavalry and Curiasser, and things like what characteristics and when is brilliant to use for ImagiNations. I love history, but the few times I have engaged in attempts at playing Napolionics I have fallen foul of the “button counters” and been turned off. I’d rather play ImagiNations as then those same people couldn’t cast stones, as well as loving the fun of creating.
Well, if it helps any, our ESR Napoleonic Campaign Guides include both scenarios *and* uniform plates, so you can paint right from them. But with that said, creating your own historical world is pretty cool, so not trying to dissuade you.
I’d think that if there was some sort of points system that would help with unit creation, as well as some sort of way to help generate those army design “starting funds” for campaign type games. All of the info and details that help a newbie really put together an army.
We’re currently working on a point based army builder that can be used by players who’d rather not use strictly historical orders of battle, so that might speak to this.
Also… Our 2nd ESR Napoleonics game at AdeptiCon, the French managed to succeed in forcing an Austrian withdrawal, but it was costly.
Lots more photos and a brief rundown of the action can again be found in our Gallery.
Cheers,
The Bandit
Not knowing much about Nappies I wouldn’t know which of the moves was foolish (other than being caught crossing) but I think it’s really cool that there are more games than just the tourny types going on at Adepticon. I went 2 years ago and it was a great time and the Con runners are very open to having a wider variety of games.
Frankly, we were blown away by how much interest in historicals there was. I expected it to be an up hill battle to convince players that we had something of interest for them but we got a terrific response and the convention staff were very supportive and interested in what we were bringing to the convention.
Question about force setups in your game: are armies all historical or is there a way to create ImagiNations?
We don’t provide a framework for ImagiNations but I don’t think there is anything to prohibit them. The Raising an Army supplement included in The Complete Player’s Guide offers lots of details on how and when to apply different characteristics and historical examples of them being applied that someone into ImagiNations could use for their own ends.
What sort of specific support, if any, does such require or benefit from?
Cheers,
The Bandit
Thank you!
A base is a battalion in ESR (or a squadron group of cavalry, or an artillery battery). The miniatures are from our new line of ESR Box Sets and are 1:160 scale, aka 10mm. The buildings on the tabletop in this particular engagement were all 6mm buildings from the Leven and Battlescale lines.
Cheers,
The Bandit
Seems to me that if you’re trying to ‘control the user experience’ by adding cool features to the production, then you’re losing sight of the end product and the end customer.
That is certainly a risk and one that comes to pass often – Whirlwind’s example of “spinning around a picture to give the impression of 3D” is a good one.
It would take considerably more motivation for me to make a purchase where the rules are the ‘user experience’, rather than the game with friends. For the ‘game with friends’ experience I want the rules to be as convenient as possible and that usually means as few technical requirements as possible. The rules need to be well written, well organized, well presented and easily accessible. I appreciate the ease and convenience of electronic distribution. I understand the corresponding threat of copyright infringement. But it’s the ‘game with friends’ experience I’m seeking. A proprietary system that restricts that experience has a far, far less chance of gaining me as a customer.
Indeed, I would generally agree. The trouble that businesses must confront is that what the customer wants often includes innate contradictions. For a very basic one, consider what you indicated above – which I think is completely reasonable – you identify three things:
1) Well organized and presented rules.
2) The lowest possible technical requirements making them easily accessible.
3) The convenience of electronic distribution.#2 and #3 are in conflict. Now, in your case you may feel the conflict is minor, but the publisher has to judge determine if your experience is representative enough.
The lowest possible technical requirement for the accessibility of a rule set is printed paper. It lacks the convenience of digital distribution, but any form of digital distribution has a higher technical requirement. I think you’d say that a PDF is not a very high technical requirement and I would agree, but it does mean that the customer has to either own a portable device such as an iPad or e-Reader to carry the rules around, or has to pay to print them either by owning a printer or by using someone else’s. These are higher technical requirements than the product being a pre-printed book.
To many people the requirement of using a digital device at all is not terribly different from the requirement to use a specific app vs a PDF reader such as Preview or Adobe Reader. It all depends on where the audience is coming from.
My argument, if one chooses to call it that, is that software is complex, both in its design and its implementation, and that good intentions commonly lead to unintended results. Thus, while Whirlwind is frustrated by the choice of a magazine publisher, they likely intended to do something they had reasonable cause to believe their customers would really value, though that does not dictate that their intent will come to fruition.
And that is the core reason why we have avoided going digital just yet: it is easy to get right for a minority of customers but hard to get right for the majority of customers.
Cheers,
The Bandit
I actually addressed the points you bring up here directly in my original post that you are replying to, but to try and point them out a bit more:
This is the interesting one to me, in that, for me, it sells me a lot of features I have no or marginal interest in (e.g. spinning around a picture to give the impression of 3D) but eliminates simple but key features that I do want (ability to transfer the product between hardware of *my* choosing; not being dependent upon internet access to access the material).
This all depends on implementation.
Lots of people continue to purchase cable or satellite TV. The primary feature of this product was content but there are also secondary features that these platforms offered over free over-the-air television:
• A live, browsable schedule.
• “On Demand” programming.
• Bundled DVR features.
• Parental controls over content and channels.Whether these are useful to a given customer will vary. For myself, all but the first one is akin to the spinning 3D picture – not useful.
With that illustrated, I would expand on what I was saying some to explain that someone comes to you and says, “Hey magazine publisher! You don’t want to just sell PDFs, forget the piracy concerns – which we can also address – and consider all the cool features we can allow you to provide your customers! Embedded video that can be displayed and browsed both as video the user can scrub through and also as a series of key still images that you designate for those who don’t want to watch a video. Illustrations and instructions that again, can be displayed either as a series of stills, or laid out in a grid for easy reference, or played as an animation so users can see how it all fits together. And you can offer all of these and the user can choose which to use and even switch between while working on their project!”
And it sounds great. And you buy it.
And then you go to implement it. And it is all it claimed to be. But it is hard. And it takes a lot of time. And you settle for “just getting the thing out”. And here we are.
As with most things, the devil is in the details, i.e. the implementation.
For example, when Battlegames was taken over by Atlantic and the digital side was run through exact editions, no party involved said “and we need to do this because Battlegames is losing out on significant sales because of pirating”. This wasn’t given as a reason when Miniature Wargames did the same with Pocketmags after the Warner takeover. And one would wonder what WSS, TooFatLardies and THW are doing by still selling pdfs, in that case.
As I said above, piracy is a valid concern on its face, but that doesn’t tell us if it will come to pass in your case. TooFatLardies rules are pirated, but whether TooFatLardies is concerned is a different story. Perhaps their sales are high enough that the piracy is a non-issue for them. Does that mean the same will be true for your business or mine? Neither of us know, and the decision must be made *before* we choose the platform to use because afterwards we’ve already spent the time and money and experienced whatever negative impacts there were.
I would be happier with the idea of buying content through proprietary software if that were given specifically as the reason for doing so and so everyone had to do it- but I can’t remember that ever being mentioned.
Though few if any companies do this ever with any products. When a car company releases a new model year they don’t say, “We changed the dash because people hated it.” When a company that makes a ball and bat set changes the packaging because kids could easily pull the ball out and it would then get lost in the retail aisle of the stores it was sold in they don’t say, “Now with more tamper proof packaging to prevent your grade schooler from removing the ball, playing catch in the aisles of your favorite store, and then leaving the ball randomly on the shelf causing the store to expense/scrap/return the product as ‘lost/damaged’.”
It would be nice to know, you’re not wrong. But it isn’t realistic in most cases because the details are well, detailed, the motivations are varied and nuanced, and frankly, the result is that most of us would second guess and criticize the decision tree anyway. And none of which helps the company meet any of its goals.
Cheers,
The Bandit
There are several reasons for putting your content into a proprietary software solution, they include:
• “SO YOU CAN OVER CHARGE CUSTOMERS!” – The first one many people reply with but not terribly true.
• “Because people steal!” – The second one many people reply with and your milage may vary, but it is certainly a concern that is valid in general even if it doesn’t prove out to occur in one’s particular case.
• “So you can control the user experience” – More true than one realizes, at least in the intent, PDF only does so much, ePUB – as an example – offers drastically more options, so when choosing a platform one evaluates the feature set and says, “Hey look at all the cool[er] things we can offer!”, whether those happen ends up being a separate decision point down the road.
We’ve looked a lot at publishing our titles digitally and come to two conclusions: 1) Because of the integrated experience we’d want to offer, we can’t just dump them to a PDF and post them online, 2) Because of the work required to accomplish that integration, it would cost more to develop a digital version than the current print version. This hasn’t convinced us not to do it, rather it has caused us not to take it lightly.
Cheers,
The Bandit
