Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[Mark Stone]

The discussion about Fast Warrior has gotten me to thinking about Warrior
Battles. What follows is wild speculation and a completely unsolicited opinion,
so feel free to ignore it entirely, but I think I have some surprisingly
relevant experience in this area.

My professional background is in open source software and open source software
development practices. The core of my consulting business (http://tguide.net)
is to offer advice on marketing strategy for companies looking to make some
sort of an open source play. My clients have included Fortune 500 companies and
small Silicon Valley start-ups.

Marketing strategy with open source isn't actually all that complicated. You
identify a core asset that you intend to make money from as your key value
proposition, and you identify the target market in which you offer that core
asset to compete. You then identify a key compliment that enhances the value of
the core asset, but from which you don't need or expect to make money. Ideally
this key compliment should be something that expands the market size of the
market within which your core asset competes for market share. You then make
that key compliment freely available (and there are several possible senses of
"free" here: "free as in speech", and "free as in beer").

The result should be one of two effects, and hopefully both. First, even if your
core asset never gains market share, if your key compliment helps grow market
size, then the total revenue from your core asset will increase. Second, if
your key compliment really does enhance the value of your core asset, then your
core asset ought to gain market share. So: leverage a free offering to grow the
market size and/or market share of your core asset, and you'll make more money.
Simple.

The most salient example of this is IBM, which endorses but does not sell Linux
(Linux is freely available as an open source operating system), and which
pushes the Linux expertise of IBM Global Services. The more people use Linux,
the more likely they are to feel they have a need for IBM Global Services.
Professional services is a very lucrative, high margin business. Selling
operating system software is a commoditized, low margin business.

So what does all of this have to do with Warrior and Warrior Battles?

I think there's a pretty strong parallel, actually. We have a target market:
historical miniatures gamers interested in the pre-1500 AD period. We'd like to
grow that market overall, and then grow Warrior's market share within that
market. The strategy I'd recommend, in my professional (albeit unsolicited)
opinion, would be to sell the printed version of Warrior Battles as a
stand-alone product, and probably to include it in a future printing of the
full Warrior rules set, but to _also_ make Warrior Battles freely available in
electronic form from the FHE website.

How does this grow market size? Warrior Battles, which includes two cut-out
armies, is something that even a board gamer could play and enjoy. That
provides a very interesting bridge to a part of the hobby that we want to
attract. Making it a free web download also means that lots of people can "try
before you buy" who might not be into our period of miniatures, or might not be
into miniatures at all. My son Alex spends most of his allowance on computer
games, and he would _never_ buy a computer game that did not have a decent
demo/trial version available as a free download. That's just the way his
generation thinks, and we very much want to market to that generation.

How does this grow market share? Even if Warrior Battles is available for free
in electronic form, there are several value-adds that would cause people to go
out and buy both Warrior Battles and Warrior in printed form.

First, electronic Warrior Battles may give you templates for two armies, but
people are still going to have to print out and cut out the templates
themselves. So there's a big convenience factor in getting the printed version
where all of this is already done on a nice, heavy, cardboard stock. Second,
most of us don't lug a computer with us to the gaming table, so the Warrior
Battles rules would have to be printed out anyway. My guess is these
convenience factors would cause most people who download the electronic version
to ultimately buy the printed version if they genuinely like the game.

Second, the real purpose of Warrior Battles is to get as many people as possible
interested in, playing, and buying Warrior. Towards that end, selling Warrior
Battles is somewhat secondary to just getting it into as many hands as
possible. That's the best way to drive interest in Warrior. While the cost is
prohibitive to simply print out and give away copies of Warrior Battles, making
an electronic version freely available would be the next best thing.

So that's what I'd like to see: a printed Warrior Battles available for
purchase, and an electronic version freely available online.


-Mark Stone

[joncleaves]

This is being done in various parts of the game hobby (hero games and games
Workshop to name a couple).
It is something I have been seriously considering.

I can tell you that there certainly will be complimentary products made
available free online - the question is, what's the right mix? Something we
will be exploring after the revised rules are out. We'll be needing you guys to
buy those to have the revenue to try some of this other stuff...lol

J

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Stone <mark@...>
To: warrior <WarriorRules@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 16:19:56 +0000
Subject: [WarriorRules] Marketing and Warrior Battles


The discussion about Fast Warrior has gotten me to thinking about Warrior
Battles. What follows is wild speculation and a completely unsolicited opinion,
so feel free to ignore it entirely, but I think I have some surprisingly
relevant experience in this area.

My professional background is in open source software and open source software
development practices. The core of my consulting business (http://tguide.net)
is to offer advice on marketing strategy for companies looking to make some
sort of an open source play. My clients have included Fortune 500 companies and
small Silicon Valley start-ups.

Marketing strategy with open source isn't actually all that complicated. You
identify a core asset that you intend to make money from as your key value
proposition, and you identify the target market in which you offer that core
asset to compete. You then identify a key compliment that enhances the value of
the core asset, but from which you don't need or expect to make money. Ideally
this key compliment should be something that expands the market size of the
market within which your core asset competes for market share. You then make
that key compliment freely available (and there are several possible senses of
"free" here: "free as in speech", and "free as in beer").

The result should be one of two effects, and hopefully both. First, even if your
core asset never gains market share, if your key compliment helps grow market
size, then the total revenue from your core asset will increase. Second, if
your key compliment really does enhance the value of your core asset, then your
core asset ought to gain market share. So: leverage a free offering to grow the
market size and/or market share of your core asset, and you'll make more money.
Simple.

The most salient example of this is IBM, which endorses but does not sell Linux
(Linux is freely available as an open source operating system), and which
pushes the Linux expertise of IBM Global Services. The more people use Linux,
the more likely they are to feel they have a need for IBM Global Services.
Professional services is a very lucrative, high margin business. Selling
operating system software is a commoditized, low margin business.

So what does all of this have to do with Warrior and Warrior Battles?

I think there's a pretty strong parallel, actually. We have a target market:
historical miniatures gamers interested in the pre-1500 AD period. We'd like to
grow that market overall, and then grow Warrior's market share within that
market. The strategy I'd recommend, in my professional (albeit unsolicited)
opinion, would be to sell the printed version of Warrior Battles as a
stand-alone product, and probably to include it in a future printing of the
full Warrior rules set, but to _also_ make Warrior Battles freely available in
electronic form from the FHE website.

How does this grow market size? Warrior Battles, which includes two cut-out
armies, is something that even a board gamer could play and enjoy. That
provides a very interesting bridge to a part of the hobby that we want to
attract. Making it a free web download also means that lots of people can "try
before you buy" who might not be into our period of miniatures, or might not be
into miniatures at all. My son Alex spends most of his allowance on computer
games, and he would _never_ buy a computer game that did not have a decent
demo/trial version available as a free download. That's just the way his
generation thinks, and we very much want to market to that generation.

How does this grow market share? Even if Warrior Battles is available for free
in electronic form, there are several value-adds that would cause people to go
out and buy both Warrior Battles and Warrior in printed form.

First, electronic Warrior Battles may give you templates for two armies, but
people are still going to have to print out and cut out the templates
themselves. So there's a big convenience factor in getting the printed version
where all of this is already done on a nice, heavy, cardboard stock. Second,
most of us don't lug a computer with us to the gaming table, so the Warrior
Battles rules would have to be printed out anyway. My guess is these
convenience factors would cause most people who download the electronic version
to ultimately buy the printed version if they genuinely like the game.

Second, the real purpose of Warrior Battles is to get as many people as possible
interested in, playing, and buying Warrior. Towards that end, selling Warrior
Battles is somewhat secondary to just getting it into as many hands as
possible. That's the best way to drive interest in Warrior. While the cost is
prohibitive to simply print out and give away copies of Warrior Battles, making
an electronic version freely available would be the next best thing.

So that's what I'd like to see: a printed Warrior Battles available for
purchase, and an electronic version freely available online.


-Mark Stone





Yahoo! Groups Links






[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[Doug]

There are a couple of Net businesses selling nice illustrated cut-out
miniatures elements for DBx etc. Maybe you could "partner" with them
by linking to their sites if they will do cut-out Warrior Battles
armies for various pairs.

>>>
First, electronic Warrior Battles may give you templates for two armies, but
people are still going to have to print out and cut out the templates
themselves.
>>>

[joncleaves]

Thanks, Doug, but we already have a plan for that too.

-----Original Message-----
From: Doug <rockd@...>
To: WarriorRules@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 15:14:29 -0400
Subject: Re: [WarriorRules] Marketing and Warrior Battles


There are a couple of Net businesses selling nice illustrated cut-out
miniatures elements for DBx etc. Maybe you could "partner" with them
by linking to their sites if they will do cut-out Warrior Battles
armies for various pairs.

>>>
First, electronic Warrior Battles may give you templates for two armies, but
people are still going to have to print out and cut out the templates
themselves.
>>>




Yahoo! Groups Links






[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]