So...What Next?

[Ashley]

Originally Posted by Mack_JB

It is entirely possible Ogre may never expand to a wider fan base if it hasn't by now. After all, that nearly million dollar Kickstarter campaign generated loads of free press -- and if that didn't mainstream the game, it's hard to see what could mainstream it.

Hard not to agree with this observation.


IMNSHO the problem is that Ogre is a victim of its core mechanisms.


By that I mean a heavy tank is a heavy tank just like any other heavy tank. At a strategic level, an Abrams is a Challenger is a Le Clerc is a Leopard tank.


Which makes for an easy, fun to play game, but doesn't do much in the way of generating sales for PE versus NAC versus Nihon etc counters or models.


I would observe that games like Star Wars X-Wing have more variety and faction differentiation that OGre/GEV, and it is this differentiation that drives sales.

[ColBosch]

I am rethinking my opinions here thanks to this discussion.

As I noted yesterday, Ogre is not a "franchise" game. Ashley is dead-on: it's not a game that lends itself well to expansion. It's too granular in scale, which is (again, as she pointed out) both a strength as a game but a weakness as a game line. As GranitePenguin said, it's difficult to add new units to the game, as opposed to franchise titles like BattleTech, Car Wars, or Star Fleet Battles where it's relatively easy to come up with hundreds or thousands of different 'Mech/car/starship designs. So yes, you're left with trying to sell different "skins" like variant miniatures, maps, and scenarios.

The Kickstarter campaigns continue to be successes, so at least the line has the potential to be a "boutique" title. But, even if it pays for itself, is that enough to make it worth SJ Games's attention? There are always chokepoints in a company, and the most notable here are SJ's and Phil's time. They have to review every project that goes out the door, at multiple points, and there are other lines that are much more important to SJ Games's bottom line.

While nothing is ever carved in stone, SJ Games has committed to two more Ogre projects: Battlefields and the Mk. VI/Doppelsoldner set. Drew swears he'll get Nightfall out to us at some point. Phil has also said that Ogre will remain a focus at SJ Games, even as they draw back their operations somewhat. So nobody is talking about Ogre being dead, and neither do I mean to come across as doom-and-gloom here.

So...what next? I know I'd be happy if Ogre continues as a enthusiast line, as I'm perfectly willing to continue buying such high-quality products. Or should SJ Games look into ways to modify Ogre into a more franchise-friendly brand, perhaps at the cost of losing the game's simplicity? Any other ideas?

[totalfailure]

I think that is a better stated version of what I was going for in my posts - as given, the game scale does not have much room to do anything different as far as differentiating the units beyond ‘this heavy tank is red, and this one is blue’. To grow the game would require something of a different scale, and game system as opposed to what we have, that would allow differentiation and expansion. You could keep the background, but the current game system would have to go. Something I am not sure the diehards would be willing to embrace, and that SJG may not be in a position to risk anyway.

If anyone hasn’t, they should read Phil’s Daily Illuminator of July 11, 2018. He talks about the state of the industry and this company in particular. In short, it looks like some hard decisions are being/are going to have be made.

[Izzy_B]

Ogre isnt a franchise indeed but it is now a framework.

We started with the basic game, then GEV was added, then Reinforcements, Battlefields and scenario books, then minis etc. Nowadays we just call all of it Ogre even though you can have incredibly interesting games without a single cyber tank. Or you can have games with multiple cyber tanks and so on and so on.

Given that some of us have always map bashed and now there are so many options to do so what with OgreMap and all the various official overlays and home made overlays and given that we have so many different kinds of units already and after all these decades I'm betting theres a wealth of "house rules" out there.

In some odd way, Ogre has become almost a GUWS of future warfare.

[ColBosch]

Originally Posted by totalfailure

If anyone hasn’t, they should read Phil’s Daily Illuminator of July 11, 2018. He talks about the state of the industry and this company in particular. In short, it looks like some hard decisions are being/are going to have be made.

Yeah, I alluded to that in my last post. Maybe we shouldn't be swinging for a home run here, just a bunt to advance the runners. For those who don't speak awkward sports metaphor, I mean perhaps SJ Games should just finish its commitments to the line - Battlefields and the Mk. VI/Dopp minis - and then back off. We can keep interest in the game among we grognards with annual Ogrezines until the market clarifies and SJ Games can focus more effort on the game again.

Edit: By "we," of course, I mean SJ Games. Sorry for the fanboyism!

[GranitePenguin]

As odd as it sounds, after the new Battlefields comes out, I have what I personally need out of Ogre: a new set of all the old stuff that will likely outlast me. With how little I use elements of the rules beyond G.E.V., I'd be very hard-pressed to justify new rules/units to myself. What made Ogre unique was its simplicity and distilled the war-game to its basic parts. The more stuff you add, the less simple it gets and the less likely that stuff will see the table.

That does nothing to extend the game to new people, but I've spent the last 5 years showing it to people and playing wherever I can in whatever form I have, and I don't see any significant interest. The people that play enjoy it, but not usually enough to get their own. For most people, it's a novelty; not something to invest in.

The only reason we are even talking about this is because ODE did so well. It was pretty obviously meant to be a swan song product that did too well for its own good. The last thing I want to see is major changes to Ogre to make it "fit in" with the cool kids. IMHO, it would be better to let it go with dignity, than make it be something it's not.

[totalfailure]

Perhaps the nostalgia virus has infected this game to an extent too great to save it. The sentiment that it is better for the game to die, than possibly be relevant to others in some other way, is kind of alarming. By that standard, I guess SJG should just shelve doing anything with Car Wars, too, because it won’t be exactly the same thing people played 30 years ago? I guess that will save them some money now, but you will never find the next Munchkin to keep the lights on if your only sales strategy is relying on nostalgia. I get that’s all you want, but shoveling out more of the same is not going to give SJG a future.

[ColBosch]

Yeah, I am seriously against "letting it die." Ogre is a fantastic game, and just because some of us are satisfied with what we've got doesn't mean that it shouldn't live on. That's why I suggested limited continuing support, at the least.

At the same time, maybe there is something to the idea of an Ogre 2.0: a less-granular system that would allow for greater variety in unit types while remaining balanced, giving up some simplicity in the bargain. SJ Games is in the process of heavily redesigning Car Wars for its Sixth Edition, so it's not an unprecedented event. (And I know even mentioning this is an invitation for folks to start posting how they'd improve the game, but please, let's not get into the nitty-gritty here.) As long as the core vision remains - giant robot tanks taking on entire armies - would such a thing be so bad?

[GranitePenguin]

Comparing Ogre to Car Wars isn't an accurate comparison. If anything, Car Wars is a cautionary tale of not letting things get out of control with releases of increasingly strange content. Car Wars was due for a retooling of the rules to get it back under control; Ogre's ruleset is already under control and went through a lot of work to clean up the loose ends and make a cohesive collection of the existing content, but it didn't _change_ in the process.

These are just personal views of what I personally see happening in the market related to Ogre. I'm getting burned out beating my head against the wall of disinterest I see on a monthly basis when playing at a store. Squeezed in-between MtG Drafts and Star Wars tournaments, Ogre has been little more than a brief distraction. It makes me sad, but it's my reality.

My point is if you have to change the game so much that it's not recognizable as Ogre in order to sell, is it worth doing it? What would you change? add deck-building? get rid of the hex map? the CRT? At what point is it not Ogre anymore? It might be a fun game, but it's not Ogre. Objective 218 is a decent example of this. It's Ogre-themed, and it's fun to play, but it's not Ogre.

I don't want to lose Ogre in the name of "making it relevant."

[Dave Crowell]

I think Ogre may be a victim of its own success. The ODE flooded 5000 copies of the game into the world. With Battlefields all of the classic Ogre material will be back in ODE/6e scale.

6e/Reinforcements is going to be a very hard sell to anyone who already has ODE.

M1 is an interesting experiment and maybe something of a novelty.

The plastic minis seem to be popular, but the Armory Box is already sold out, so new players may have difficulty building their collections.

A large box with rules, map, and plastic minis might compete in the board game market better than a box of chipboard, depending on price point. Lots of board games with miniatures seem to be doing well for their initial print runs.

Star Wars X-Wing and the other Star Wars miniatures games have an unfair advantage over Ogre, they are Star Wars and that is a massive mainstream fandom. Ogre fandom is mostly old grognards.

I am not sure what the answer is. I think one key will be Ogre fans getting the profile of the game out there. Play at Conventions and game stores. Get people turned on to what the system can do. Battlefields making green maps available again may help, as I find the GEV style game to lend itself to longer replay than just orange map kill the CP Ogre.