Critical Business - The Plan At Large

Good Morning,

By now our website has been live for a week and we have begun to assail Twitter, Facebook and forums with our presence. Putting out faction backgrounds, reaching out to communities, letting you all know we exist and beginning to tip over the kernel that will eventually roll downhill and become an avalanche.

A theme we have uncovered thus far can be summed up as "yeah but where's your game? Where are the pictures? Show me the goods." This is obviously a valid point, but it does serve well to open a conversation about how Critical Snail is electing to do business. In recent years the hobby gaming industry has been through a lot of changes, but arguably no change has been so impactful as the shift to embrace crowdfunding platforms to fund and produce limited run and vanity project games. Clearly there have been some real winners from this, but it also comes bearing a flaw. There have not been many broad scoped, long lasting games produced from crowdfunding. It seems to favor the short term producers and be a disadvantage to game developers that want to produce a game that moves and breathes on its own over time.

This is all well and good, however crowdfunding is NOT what we at Critical Snail are after. We don't want to pay off funders with special trinkets and designs. We want to provide a straight exchange for a legitimate game. So that is what Aggressor: Recon is. Aggressor: Recon is the precursor to Aggressor: Galactic. Recon will be  light on frills - limited artwork, constrained faction background and development, but a fully functional set of core rules. The proceeds and sales form Recon will go exclusively to the funding of Aggressor: Galactic, to pay for fantastic artwork and further development of faction backgrounds and rules.

"But, what about the models Salty Ben? What shall we ever play with?" Well, that is the other key to Aggressor in particular, and Critical Snail in general. You will use whatever models you want. There are rules in Recon that allow for WYSIWYG and conformity. Honestly, you could use Lego people for all we care, just so long as they are modeled with uniform weapons and gear, that's entirely up to you. I will talk about this idea in more detail as it applies to Aggressor in a later post.

What does this mean for you the gamer? This means tons of support, you literally only HAVE to purchase the rule set, AND you get the flexibility to field whatever models you want, without the drag that you hate what is being offered. Hobbyists get a great opportunity to go wild, Table Generals only have to concern themselves with fielding a uniform force, and everyone gets a long lived game. We have chosen this route for a few notable reasons:

First, we are in this for the long haul. We sincerely believe in the setting and opportunities for growth that Pan-Humanic Space (the Aggressor: Recon setting) provides, and we are committed to working with our players to pen that adventure and provide support for as long as people are interested in playing this game.

Second, there are plenty of options available for models and figures, and we are not going to outproduce other more talented sculptors.

Third, we hate selecting an army and having to convince ourselves that we like the models or that the models are cool but the rules suck. Have some rules, have some background you enjoy, and build whatever models you want! Really though we aren't sculptors, so that's not happening.

Critical Snail doesn't expect to ever go to crowdfunding to raise the money to bring you products that we believe you will enjoy, and we think that this business model will allow us to grow the company without relying on gifts and crowdfunding. There is a long way to go before we get a full head of steam on and we are just getting started, so stick with us and enjoy the ride