studiotomahawk.freeforums.org

Anyone noticed there has been quite a drop off of the amount of people posting on this board in the last month or so.can you work out any reason for this.

Here are my guest as to why there is little posters on here, these are my opinions and should be taken as constructive thoughts and not to start a flame war or viewed as trolling. So please put your own reasons you feel there are lack of posters and perhaps the creators or the those making money off the system will show interest in growth and promote it.

I would say one reason is that there is no real website for the game, and the game creators do not update or make available their website for english speaking people. Gripping best sells their game, but the connection ends there for us the end users. When you do a google search what do you get?? ...... exactly, nothing. This being the case people can't read up about the game, see the game in action, etc etc. Once you do end up finding the website, it is never updated and always under construction (english part). This forums is not mentioned on their website from what I can tell, all you see is the french speaking forums. There is no bone thrown out to the masses to use, like for example free scenarios.

This forum is good for those of us that read and speak english, but not easy to navigate. When your reading any post, it will show you the category you are under, but if you don't know what the "for fun" titles are, you will find it not easy to follow. I still don't find it easy to follow but have no choice on the matter and must use it as is.


Things the game makers can promote and keep and grow interest in their games.
1. A company should promote their game.
2. Lower the price of their game, it seems to everyone here where I play to be way over priced for the size and quality of the book and boards. (seriously)
3. Look at the companies doing well, copy the good, learn from the bad. example: Flames of War has always had downloadable stuff, they have started putting out videos on how to play their game, that is well done most of the time. Games workshop does marketing very well, and promotes their game, events all over the place.
4. Find a good marketing company, pay them money to have them help you figure out how to grow your user base.
5. Have a good web site that includes: good> design/layout/navigation/always updated!!!
6. Consolidate forums. where you can see both the french and english ones. (an idea would be linked from their main website).

If the following is done, the user base will go up and such, post will go up.

I hope the company (companies?) is listening, because I sure do enjoy the game.

I think that Studio Tomahawk need to post teasers to give members something to gossip about to get activity going, for example, when will we see the Byzantine board that was going to be released in a magazine?

Hi Steven

Thanks for the comments they are well thought out and too be honest it’s stuff like this that we need to hear, unfortunately Alex is away at the moment so can’t respond directly although I’m sure he will once he’s back. So as someone who is working with Alex on Saga I guess I should give you an honest reply

1. A company should promote their game.
a. Yes this is a no brainer, Gripping Beast do advertise the games in magazines, and we have had the game reviewed on podcasts like Meeples and miniatures and Beasts of War, as well as a few of the smaller blogging networks but this is something we need to look at again
2. Lower the price of their game, it seems to everyone here where I play to be way over priced for the size and quality of the book and boards. (seriously)
a. I’ll be honest, there is no way they can do this and survive, the game has been costed correctly and there are many considerations that have gone into the pricing of the rules, if it was any cheaper then Gripping Beast and Studio Tomahawk would not make any money from it and it’s that money that pays for the next releases
3. Look at the companies doing well, copy the good, learn from the bad. example: Flames of War has always had downloadable stuff, they have started putting out videos on how to play their game, that is well done most of the time. Games workshop does marketing very well, and promotes their game, events all over the place.
a. Yes I agree with you and we have to do more to maintain the impetus we have at the moment
4. Find a good marketing company, pay them money to have them help you figure out how to grow your user base.
a. This is a good idea that’s worth talking about, will mention it to those on-high
5. Have a good web site that includes: good> design/layout/navigation/always updated!!!
a. Actually this is one of my main jobs and I hope to do something over the summer, am thinking around a blog style website where users can upload content and make it a community hub, I don’t want a site that one person maintains I want a proper community to grow up and share ideas between ourselves, this forum has some good stuff on it but we need to do more. We’ve also talked about competitions and stuff like that to reward people who contribute.
6. Consolidate forums. where you can see both the french and english ones. (an idea would be linked from their main website).
a. Agreed, the big issue with this is exporting the historic data from 2 forums and merge it into one. There is a lot of really good information on both forums and I wouldn’t like to lose anything, it would be easier to just have direct links off a central website (as you suggested)

Now the biggest problem we have is one of man power, you may all think that there are masses of full time people who support this game but trust me there aren’t, Studio Tomahawk (the company who writes the rules) is made up of 2 men and that’s Alex and Fred, and it’s not even their full time jobs. Then in the UK you have 2 companies who do the manufacturing and distributing, they are Gripping Beast (who handle Saga) and North Star (handling Muskets and Tomahawks), neither of these are huge companies and to be honest at the moment there primary concern is to get the products out to the end users, neither of them are currently involved in the back end work of supporting the game. The work of supporting the game tends to fall to people like myself and Rich who once again are volunteers who hold down full time jobs and we have great ideas on things we can do but very little time to actually do anything (real life does like to get in the way)

We also have to look to the future and trust me there are a lot of new releases coming over the next few years which will excite everyone who loves the games, however we also need to look at what we have and try and do something to support the players we currently have.

So there you are I hope I’ve been able to answer at least some of your questions, be interested in hearing back from you

Thanks for the reply and comment back MikeH.

Everyone where I am at, that has played the game seem to enjoy it.

In terms of forums, if their was a website that had a category/link named Forums, then from forums you list both french and english ones. I wasn't meaning combine them into one singular forums more like having them accessible from one to the other.

I myself just use google translate to read the french side. =p

I do thank you all for your hard work, and understand that manpower can hinder what can be done. I look forward to seeing what else comes out from you guys. After buying SAGA and playing it, I have already bought Musket and Tomahawks, which is a very well written game and I hope to be playing soon, once I get my order in from North Star that is.

I should sign off because we got another game of SAGA this sunday(today) and I should get my sleep.

Good replys and points of view from everyone so far.Yes the rulebook is pricey. but it is lean and mean, every page has stuff you need to play the game.No fluff like reams of background matirial and double page pictures People I know will not play Saga because the dice are expensive but will purchase " Evil Empire" products whlie complaining about their high cost and sometimes poor quality
The often out of stock rulebook and the hard to get dice situation can not be helping things either.

The game's been out a good while; lots of the initial questions have been resolved. That's going to slow down the rate of posting. And it's summertime (though you might not notice it from the weather) so many folk will be away for a bit.

Peter

I think this is still a vibrant forum and everyone is unanimously friendly.

I think some of the "succesful" companies mentioned, particularly GW are soulless corporations and have traded something for their success, Mike H, Darren & Lord S arepeopleyou can chat to on here and at shows, they genuinely love the period and tha game, regardlessof whatever marketting strategies they adopt NONE of them will become millionaires from this industry, thank god.

As for the price, i play lots of SAGA, my cost per hour of enjoying this game is probably about 50p/hour at the moment and dropping!

Im going through a learning revival at the moment, keep going and trust me this game gets better with practice, if you think your good at it youre not its way more subtle than you think.

I also wouldn't look to the forum to give you a representaion of how popular a game is.

I was at Salute, and if you take a low average of 1 sale every 1 minute, that would give you about 540 sales (and the stall was much busier than that I reckon)

There are only 1304 registered members on the forum, and not many of them went to salute from what I have read. so say thats 500 players there not on these boards posting and asking.

I know 4 gamers I saga with that I can deffinately say don't frequent any forums regularly enough to bother signing up, if they look at all.

If you said even 2 per member as an average, thats 2608 people just there not posting.

Its all relative I guess. At the moment I would guess things are settling after the latest releases, summertime, questions have been resolved, etc, and the dice are clinking off many a tall glass as games are being played....

And I also know I would rather have Good and Interesting posts that are useful to read and create healthy debate than lots of rubbish inane ones that do none of "that sort of thing"...

In my experience, questions about rule interp[retations make up the majority of most legitimate posts. The rules are relatively straightforward and the early errata posts clarified any anomolies. So what I would want to see more of is discussion from tyh designers of what is coming next..not speculation but some kind of indicative list so that I can pre-paint figures now when I have time rather than later when I will inevitable be busy agian. Regards Alan