I was fairly shocked when, on Friday evening, I saw an announcement abruptly stating that Spartan Games, makers of the tabletop
miniatures games Dystopian Wars and Firestorm Armada, and their spinoffs, had
gone out of business. I had assumed based on what I believed was a moderately
successful Kickstarter campaign to add to Dystopian Wars last year, along with
the launching of a Firestorm Kickstarter, that things were puttering along.
It's true to say that the game I actually collected, Dystopian Legions, had
fallen by the wayside, but as one of the regular contributors to the Legions
section of the Spartan forums I myself had recently answered a call for the
formation of a new official group of fans aimed at revisiting and discussing
the future of that game. The very sudden announcement of the closure suggests
to me that the company's directors did not themselves expect the need to close
when it occurred. Seemingly a point was reached at which debts could not be
paid. I've never studied business, but this is what I gather from what I've
read online.
I think there are a few reasons to account for Spartan's
unfortunate demise. I intend to sketch the external ones before considering the
internal ones in-depth. Obviously, tabletop gaming is a very competitive
market. The combined revival or boom of board games along with the appearance
of new toy soldier games obviously means there are many more products vying for
consumers' attention than previously. Nonetheless, Spartan's two main games
seem to have filled something of a niche, as to my knowledge there isn't a glut
of naval combat games in the current market, and I get the impression that
Dystopian Wars was their most successful intellectual property; if so this was
probably because it occupied such a unique position. On the other hand, while
Games Workshop's Battlefleet Gothic doesn't have much presence anymore, I
suspect that in recent years Firestorm Armada faced increasing, and probably
insurmountable, rivalry from big-brand space combat games, particularly the
Star Wars franchise's Armada and X-Wing games. The other factors are, of
course, that running a business is, to the best of my very limited knowledge,
extremely challenging and that personal factors of health seem to have been an
issue as well.
To discuss Spartan's apparent issues from an outsider's perspective
obviously risks presuming a great deal. Not being privy to internal goings-on,
I can mostly discuss Spartan's reputation rather than anything factual.
However, since I became a collector of their products in, if I recall
correctly, late 2013, and having read discussion across the internet, the
following apparent problems seemed to be identified repeatedly.
How do you make guys who look like this and still not manage to get stereotypical nerds to give you loads of money? |
1. Lack of Focus
Almost certainly the most common complaint against Spartan
was that their company's direction lacked focus. When I started collecting,
Spartan had four main games: Uncharted Seas, Firestorm Armada, Dystopian Wars
and Dystopian Legions. Legions was, at the time, seemingly the latest big thing
as I believe there had been a recent number of releases fleshing out the four
starting armies of the game. Spartan promised three more armies in the near
future.
However, this never really came. Instead, the next big
release was Firestorm Planetfall, the ground-based game set in the Firestorm
Armada universe. This seemed reasonable enough to me, as it meant that now the
Firestorm and Dystopian settings had two levels of game. New releases for
Legions dried up, however, and with heavy focus now given to Planetfall the
promised additional armies only manifested in the shape of a couple of pieces
two or so years later. Only one of these was ever expanded upon, and that not
completely.
At this point I started to get the impression that Spartan's
approach was becoming a little unfocused. They had a particular problem of
telling their fans that things were coming, and even setting dates, and then
not matching the expectations they set up. I was rather bemused when Spartan
announced that they had made a deal with Microsoft to make games set in the
Halo universe, and as with everything else this rapidly expanded to both a
space game and a ground game, much like Firestorm. Spartan's own official
announcement admits that the Halo games distracted from the other products,
which rather leaves me wondering why Spartan took on the project in the first
place. Meanwhile it seemed there were occasional bursts of releases for
Dystopian Wars and Firestorm Armada, but I got the sense from what I read that
players of those games felt that there were deeper issues not being addressed.
All on board the Legions hype train that never left the station. |
This came to a head when, in 2016, Spartan announced that
they were going to use Kickstarter to launch yet another game, "Dystopian
Empires", which was to be set at a scale between Wars and Legions. Fan
response was overwhelmingly negative, and after much consultation the
Kickstarter was reworked into a Dystopian Wars project intended to support the
existing game. Spartan seemed surprised at the fan response to the Dystopian
Empires proposal, which strongly suggested to me that they had lost touch with
their customer base and were becoming increasingly sidetracked by whichever pet
projects took their leaders' fancy at the time. Another indication of this was
observable in that, at a convention last year, rather than promoting all of
their existing games, Spartan instead demonstrated a "Weird World War
Two" game they had been working on in their spare time called
"Project Götterdämmerung", which was never released for purchase. It appeared
in fact that the "hobby" aspect of the "hobby company" had
taken over, in which the hobby interests of people running the company were
heavily distracting from running the business effectively.
All of this gave Spartan a reputation for spreading itself
too thin, trying to launch lots of games rather than develop them in depth.
Unfortunately, I would be inclined to argue that the launch of Dystopian
Legions was the first mistake, as this started the trend of more and more games
being launched. As Uncharted Seas was already passing out of focus, it seems to
me that Spartan's most sensible approach would have been to keep investing in
Firestorm Armada and Dystopian Wars and to have left the spinoff projects as
speculation. Perhaps then Spartan could have comfortably maintained itself
until such time as it was safe to try something new.
"I never even got my own rules!" |
2. Lack of Market Research
As I have said, it seems that with Dystopian Wars in
particular Spartan had found a strong niche for 19th-century battleship combat
not provided by any other major system. Dystopian Legions, however, was a
different story. The game was trying to enter an extremely competitive 28mm war
game market with many established games. In addition, the game competed with
two major genres: the sci-fi war game market, traditionally dominated by Games
Workshop's Warhammer 40,000, and the historical war game market, which has had
countless rival manufacturers for years. The game was also released using exclusively
metal miniatures. While historical war gamers, who traditionally are from an
older generation or more mature market, would be accustomed to this, younger
game players, particularly of sci-fi games, are used to plastic, and perceive
metal models as cumbersome and irritating. Furthermore, as was repeatedly
pointed out, the Dystopian Legions models were of a slightly larger than 28mm
scale, being closer to 33mm, making them not entirely suitable for use in other
games. The Kingdom of Britannia models in particular could have been used under
different circumstances as substitutes for Games Workshop's Imperial Guard,
particularly the long-abandoned Praetorian army, but players were not willing
to use the larger models for this purpose. Spartan cannot really be blamed for
not making models which were usable in another company's game, but it's worth
noting that making a product which can also be used in the games of Games
Workshop, the biggest company in the market, is a very sensible way of
attracting custom from existing collectors. This is an approach which has
allowed Mantic Games to flourish.
Firestorm Planetfall, meanwhile, was trying to enter a
market for a vehicle-scale science fiction tabletop game, traditionally
occupied by Games Workshop's Epic 40,000 but more recently entered by the game
Dropzone Commander. Spartan was, therefore, probably not well-positioned to
enter this market, particularly when their customers were already desiring changes
for Dystopian Wars and Firestorm Armada, and when Dystopian Legions was not complete.
Not even these guys could heal the cash haemorrage. |
Making a deal with Microsoft to produce Halo games seems to
have been a further unwise decision. Not only was this licensing deal probably
rather costly, it likely suffered from other drawbacks. One is that Halo
is simply not the hot property it was in the mid 2000s. The games are still
popular, but not traditionally with the same demographic as collects tabletop
games. Furthermore, by launching both a space battle and land battle game for Halo,
Spartan not only appeared more unfocused than ever but was in fact competing
with itself by producing rivals to its own Firestorm games.
Spartan's apparent naïveté concerning the market was also demonstrated
during the first Kickstarter they launched, in which they attempted to fund a
modular scenery project for which there was no apparent demand, and which did
not have a clear use with their own games. They also appeared to set an
excessively high funding threshold which was too ambitious for a company
performing their first Kickstarter. This project additionally tried to launch through the back door yet another game, a Greek Mythology-themed skirmish game called "Death or Glory". This project had to be canceled when it was
nowhere near completion, and created a sense that Spartan were approaching
projects and products willy-nilly, assuming that if they put a product out
enough people would buy it. Of course I cannot know what the situation really
was, but this was how it seemed to an outside observer.
3. Impenetrability
This may be a more personal reason of mine for Spartan's
problems, but in my view an issue with their products were that the rules for
their flagship games were too complicated. Dystopian Legions I found
manageable, but the rules for Dystopian Wars, when I tried to collect it, I
found virtually incomprehensible, and their sheer complexity and lack of
straightforward organisation put me off collecting the game any further. A
simplified rule set did attract my attention, but of course trying to manage
yet another set of rules was also Spartan seemingly stretching itself even
further.
It's okay that the South won the civil war in this universe because it was fought for different reasons... |
(Probably Unfair) Comparison with Mantic Games
It's worth comparing Spartan with Mantic, who appear to have
been flourishing in recent years. They have used Kickstarter effectively and
have, like Spartan, launched numerous games: Kings of War, Dreadball, Deadzone,
Dungeon Saga, Warpath and two licensed games: Mars Attacks and The Walking Dead:
All Out War. Another game, Star Saga, is upcoming. So what's the difference?
1. Mantic supports their games if they are ongoing or
completes them if they are limited. Kings of War receives regular new releases.
Dungeon Saga had all of its expansions released so that the game was completed.
Spartan, by contrast, released about half of Dystopian Legions and then gave
up, apparently through a combination of insufficient return on their investment
and distraction by other projects. It's a different situation as Legions was
not Kickstarted, but it shows why there needs to be a clear plan for completing
a project when it is begun.
2. Mantic makes straightforward rules. Some might find them
a little too simple, but one of Mantic's biggest advantages are that their
rules are easy to understand. Learning the rules to Kings of War can be
achieved in one or two read-throughs. Learning how to play Dystopian Wars is a
project in itself.
3. Mantic provides a clear alternative to Games Workshop.
This is how Kings of War started, and this approach has continued to allow the
company to fill a niche, in this case for more affordable fantasy and science
fiction miniatures and for alternatives to long-dead Games Workshop board
games. Projects like Dystopian Legions missed an opportunity to poach similar
custom from existing collectors.
4. In their early Kickstarter days, Mantic set humble
funding goals. The initial Kings of War Kickstarter had a goal of $5,000 USD.
Compare that to Spartan's first Kickstarter, for the modular scenery no one
wanted, which asked for a rather unrealistic £80,000. Obviously the circumstances
are different, but it shows different levels of awareness of entering the
crowdfunding scene.
Now, I realise that Mantic has plenty of
its own problems with things like quality control and having issues with
deadlines at times, but nonetheless they've managed to take a fairly robust
approach. Perhaps this comparison is unfair, but Mantic have been, I would
argue, in a position to expand because of the nature of their product. Spartan
were not in a position to because of the largely more niche nature of their
products, yet tried to anyway.
Conclusion
How could you screw up British Redcoats in pith helmets fighting Prussians in pickelhauben? |
I hope the people who worked for Spartan
find their feet, and it'd be nice to imagine the Dystopian and Firestorm
intellectual properties falling into the hands of someone who can handle them
with a more focused and market-savvy approach. It's also possible that I have no idea what I'm talking about, and everything I said is based on random observation and a dilettante's "gut instinct" perception rather than anything scientific or rigorous. Nonetheless, in the meantime I'd
say the fate of Spartan functions best as a warning of the risks associated
with the current tabletop market and a reminder for businesspeople who are also
hobbyists to not let the hobbyist's passion and tendency towards distraction
overwhelm the importance of pragmatism and focus.
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